ABUSE TRACKER

FLORIDA
WTSP

Brandon, Florida — The Hillsborough County pastor accused of sexual abuse appeared in court Tuesday morning for a new charge.

Francisco Rios, 44, faces a new charge of molesting a girl under the age of 16. Rios was arrested back in April after two girls and a woman came forward with similar allegations.

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AUSTRALIA
ABC News

The former New South Wales premier Barry O’Farrell has hit out at the Catholic Church for failing to act on allegations of child sexual abuse within the Hunter Region.

Last night’s comments made in State Parliament were in response to the report handed down by the Special Commission of Inquiry, set up to investigate the diocese.

It found that senior Catholics failed to report abuse by former priests Denis McAlinden and James Fletcher, who are both now dead.

Mr O’Farrell says he was motivated to establish the inquiry after seeing ABC reports in 2012 and wanted to see those who abused children brought to justice.

This is behaviour…which I find abominable and frankly unchristian when found amongst so-called men of the cloth.

He singled out five key figures who failed to act on the allegations and criticised cover-ups made by the church.

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OHIO
Vindicator

Published: Tue, June 17, 2014

YOUNGSTOWN

Judy Jones, Midwest associate director of SNAP, voiced the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests’ objection to two recent appointments by Bishop George V. Murry of the Diocese of Youngstown.

Jones, along with Jerry Arnal, SNAP Youngstown leader, and Steven Spaner, SNAP Australia coordinator, talked to the media Tuesday afternoon near the diocesan office at 144 W. Wood St.

SNAP criticized the appointments of Monsignor John Zuraw as chancellor, replacing Nancy Yuhasz, who is retiring; and Joseph Kenneally, who was principal of John F. Kennedy High School Lower Campus in Warren, to principal of the high school.

Jones claimed Monsignor Zuraw, director of the Permanent Diaconate program in the diocese, had to know about allegations of sexual abuse against a teacher who became a deacon and previously was at Cardinal Mooney High School. Arnal asserted he had been abused by this deacon, who has since left the high school. Arnal talked about the alleged abuse last August; SNAP also said it was contacted by another person accusing the deacon of abuse.

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MISSOURI
Missourian

Tuesday, June 17, 2014
BY AUSTIN HUGUELET

BOONVILLE — A former priest pleaded guilty to sexually abusing three teenage boys in the 1980s during his time as a priest in Boonville and after he left the parish.

Gerald Howard entered a guilty plea Tuesday afternoon to two counts of forcible sodomy and one count of attempted forcible sodomy that earned him 12 years in prison.

In accepting the plea deal from Cooper County prosecutor Doug Abele, Howard admitted to three sexual incidents involving three young boys in 1984 and 1985, according to online court records.

Four other felony charges, including kidnapping, were dismissed as a result of his plea agreement.

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AUSTRALIA
The Guardian (UK)

Australian Associated Press
theguardian.com, Wednesday 18 June 2014

The former NSW premier, Barry O’Farrell, has called for a high-ranking Catholic priest to be sacked from a key leadership position for not reporting child sexual abuse to police.

In a speech to parliament on Tuesday night, O’Farrell called for Father Brian Lucas, the general secretary of the Catholic Bishops Conference, to be stood down.

The former leader made the comments while criticising the church’s response to Commissioner Margaret Cunneen’s damning report in late May into an alleged cover-up of child sexual abuse in the Catholic diocese of Maitland-Newcastle.

Lucas gave evidence in Canberra on Tuesday at the royal commission into institutional responses to child sexual abuse.

“He is also a lawyer, which is a relevant fact because he, more than anyone involved in the sorry, squalid and scandalous saga, should have respected the law and reported illegal activities to police,” O’Farrell said.

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MILWAUKEE (WI)
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

By Annysa Johnson of the Journal Sentinel June 17, 2014

Milwaukee Archbishop Jerome Listecki will field questions from local journalists at a Milwaukee Press Club luncheon in September, one month before the scheduled confirmation hearing on the archdiocese’s bankruptcy reorganization plan.

Listecki will be the featured guest at the Sept. 3 Newsmakers Luncheon.

A U.S. bankruptcy judge has scheduled the confirmation hearing on the reorganization plan for Oct. 14-17.

That plan calls for the archdiocese to set aside up to $4 million to compensate 128 of the 575 men and women who filed claims in the bankruptcy alleging they were sexually abused as children by priests, teachers and others associated with the 10-county archdiocese. Survivors have criticized the plan as inadequate and unjust.

The archdiocese filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in January 2011 to address its mounting sex abuse claims, one of several Catholic dioceses and religious orders to do so across the country.

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MISSOURI
Columbia Daily Tribune

By ALAN BURDZIAK
Tuesday, June 17, 2014

BOONVILLE — A former Catholic priest pleaded guilty Tuesday in Cooper County Circuit Court to three felonies for molesting three teenage boys in the 1980s and was sentenced to 12 years, to run concurrently, on each charge.

Gerald J. Howard, who also was known as Carmine Sita, admitted to drugging two 14-year-olds and a 15-year-old and forcing them to commit sexual acts or forced himself on them between May 1984 and September 1987. In taking a plea deal with Cooper County Prosecutor Doug Abele, Howard pleaded guilty to two counts of forcible sodomy and one count of attempted forcible sodomy and four other felony charges were dismissed. Howard admitted to giving the victims marijuana, alcohol, cocaine, LSD and psychotropic mushrooms.

Two of the boys, the 14-year-olds, Howard befriended while a priest at Saints Peter and Paul Catholic Church in Boonville. Howard met the third after he left the parish, Abele said in court. Howard would take at least two of the boys on long rides in the country without other supervision and, in the first two cases, abused them either in the car, at his apartment or in the parish’s rectory. The third boy was raped at Howard’s apartment on Third Street in Boonville, Abele said.

All three of the boys were afraid to disobey a priest and Howard, who turns 70 next year, also threatened them with physical harm if they told anyone, Abele said. Howard also outweighed each victim by about 100 pounds and was several inches taller, Abele said. This size and weight discrepancy enabled Howard to “exercise his will over” the victims, Abele said.

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MINNESOTA
Pioneer Press

By Emily Gurnon
egurnon@pioneerpress.com
POSTED: 06/17/2014

A Minnesota man befriended by a priest when he delivered newspapers to the church rectory as a boy has sued the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis and the Diocese of New Ulm alleging sexual abuse.

The plaintiff in the lawsuit, identified as John Doe 109, said that the Rev. William J. Marks of St. John’s Church in Hector, Minn., sexually abused him in the 1950s.

His family was poor, and Marks would pay the boy for oral sex and other sexual acts, the plaintiff claimed in the suit filed Tuesday in Ramsey County District Court.

“Fr. Marks was pretty free with them $20 bills,” he is quoted as saying in the lawsuit. Marks would also take the boy out to eat at a restaurant where the boy’s mother worked, leaving her big tips.

“Plaintiff’s mother thought Fr. Marks was the ‘nicest guy in the world,’ ” and believed she could trust him, according to the lawsuit.

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UTAH/ARIZONA
ABC News

For immediate release: Tuesday, June 17 2014

Statement by Barbara Dorris of St. Louis, Outreach Director of SNAP, the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests ( 314 503 0003, SNAPdorris@gmail.com )

We hope a judge looks quickly but seriously at the request to disband the police department in Warren Jeffs’ bizarre sect on the border between Arizona and Utah.

[ABC News]

The only thing worse than no police at all is corrupt or complicit police. We strongly suspect that the Arizona Attorney General is right to push for this reform.

Those in law enforcement must not only be above reproach. They should also avoid the appearance of bias. Our strong belief – given how insular and insidious Jeffs and his backers are – is that this so-called police department is in fact dreadfully discriminatory and influenced by this unhealthy cult.

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OHIO
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests

For immediate release: Tuesday, June 17, 2014

Statement by SNAP leader and abuse survivor Jerry Arnal (JerryArnal@yahoo.com)

Last August, the news media covered a SNAP news conference in front of the Youngstown diocese chancery office, where I told of being sexually abused by a teacher who, at the time, worked at St. Christine School (in Youngstown) and later worked at Cardinal Mooney High School (also in Youngstown). He was a teacher and an ordained deacon.

As a result of that event, SNAP was contacted by another victim of the same teacher/deacon. We are grateful to this person, who we’ll call “Alex”, for reaching out to us. That takes courage.

Like me, “Alex” is worried that this deacon may have hurt others or may hurt others in the future.

But Youngstown Catholic officials are still being secretive about this offender and refusing to identify him, violating their repeated promise to be open about clergy sex crimes.

In fact, in Youngstown Vindicator (1/25/13), for the third time in as many years, Bishop George Murray pledged transparency in abuse cases and claimed that they are “taking every action possible” to protect children from sexual abuse. But keeping a predator’s name secret puts other kids in harm’s way. It also exacerbates the harm to victims by leaving them invalidated.

By naming the perpetrator of known abuse, other victims who may have suffered abuse by the same person begin to feel free to come forward to seek help and understanding with their abuse and finally feeling as if they are not alone. Bishop Murray and his staff know this. Yet they refuse to act responsibly to both “out” and oust this deacon, so he can’t hurt others and so that those he HAS hurt can better heal.

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MISSOURI
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests

For immediate release: Tuesday June 17, 2014

Statement by David Clohessy of SNAP, the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, 314 566 9790 cell, 314 645 5915 home, SNAPclohessy@aol.com

Years ago, a Catholic priest pled guilty to molesting a New Jersey boy, changed his name, and was sent to Missouri where he severely and repeatedly sexually assaulted at least four more boys. Now, he has finally pled guilty to a second set of crimes.

[ABC 17]

First, he was Fr. Carmine Sita. Then, he was Fr. Jerry (Gerry) Howard. Now, he’s an admitted felon. And hopefully he will never be able to hurt another child.

We are grateful that Fr. Howard will remain behind bars for at least several more years. And we are glad he’ll have to register as a sex offender if ever he is released.

The credit for this terrific outcome goes completely to the brave men who reported the horror they endured to law enforcement and to the determined prosecutors who pursued this case.

But at least a dozen of Fr. Howard’s Catholic supervisors are criminals too, though they have not been convicted. They hid his New Jersey crimes and they enabled his Missouri crimes by quietly letting him change his name and by sending him to unsuspecting parishioners. Each one of them – in Jefferson City, Jersey City, and with the Servants of the Paraclete (which “treated” him) – are incredibly callous and immoral people who should – if real justice were possible – be locked up as well.

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UTAH
My Fox Phoenix

Posted: Jun 17, 2014

By Brady McCombs
Associated Press

SALT LAKE CITY (AP) – The Arizona attorney general is asking a federal judge to disband the police department in Warren Jeffs’ polygamous sect on the Utah-Arizona border.

In a federal court filing this week, Arizona prosecutors say the former police chief for Colorado City, Arizona, and Hildale, Utah, provided information that proves the agencies are influenced by sect leaders and discriminate against nonmembers of the religious group.

Court records show Marshal Helaman Barlow went to authorities after he was put on leave from his position, and received immunity from prosecutors.

If the judge doesn’t disband the agencies, Arizona prosecutors are asking for a monitor to oversee daily operations and hiring and firing.

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MISSOURI
ABC 17

Jessica Quick, Meteorologist & Digital Content Director, jessicaq@kmiz.com

BOONVILLE, Mo. –
A former Boonville priest appeared in Cooper County Court Tuesday afternoon for a hearing.

Gerald Howard pleaded guilty to two counts of forcible sodomy and one count of attempted forcible sodomy against minor children. One count of forcible sodomy and two counts of attempted forcible sodomy were dismissed.

Howard was sentenced to 12 years in prison on each charge to run concurrently.

The incidents happened between 1983 and 1986, according to court documents.

Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAP) reported in a news release Monday that Father Howard worked at St. Peter and Paul Catholic Church in Boonville, and that the priest allegedly sexually assaulted at least 3 boys in Cooper County.

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MISSOURI
ConnectMidMissouri

by Juliette Dryer

COOPER COUNTY, MO. — A former Boonville priest has pleaded guilty to three child sex crimes and was sentenced to a total of 12 years behind bars.

Gerald Howard pleaded guilty Tuesday in Cooper County Court to two counts of forcible sodomy and one count of attempted forcible sodomy. He was sentenced to 12 years for each charge, with sentences running concurrently.

The victims in the case said the abuse happened between 1984 and 1987.

Howard worked as a priest at Saints Peter and Paul Catholic Church in Boonville.

Before coming to Missouri, Howard had changed his name from Carmine Sita after a 1982 conviction for sexually abusing a minor in Jersey City.

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UNITED STATES
POPE FRANCIS the CON-Christ.

Paris Arrow

June 17, 2014

Former president of Ireland, Mary McAleese, said there was “just something profoundly wrong and skewed” about asking “150 male celibates” to review the Catholic Church’s teaching on family life. “The very idea of 150 people who have decided they are not going to have any children, not going to have families, not going to be fathers and not going to be spouses – so they have no adult experience of family life as the rest of us know it – but they are going to advise the pope on family life; it is completely bonkers,” she said.

Now you go, girl! Go Mary McAleese, go! That was a big punch in the nose of Pope Francis or better still…a kick in his podgy papal butt!

Mary McAleese also added her observations of Pope Francis who said he wanted a new role for women in the church but senior roles in the Vatican continue to be filled by men in a manner which lacked transparency. “You don’t need a new theology of women, you just need to end the old boys club,” she said.

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fFLORIDA
TBO

TBO.com staff
Published: June 17, 2014

A Brandon pastor arrested in April on molestation charges involving church members was back in custody Monday on a new charge, according to jail records.

Francisco Rios, 44, faces an addition count of lewd and lascivious molestation. He was being held without bond Tuesday, according to the Hillsborough County Jail website.

Details on the latest arrest have not been released.

Rios, the pastor at Casa De Amor Church, was arrested April 4 after Hillsborough sheriff’s deputies said he molested three females, ages 12, 17 and 43. He was later released after posting $150,000 bond.

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FLORIDA
Bay News 9

BRANDON —
A Bay area minister is behind bars again.

Francisco Rios was arrested Monday at his home in Brandon. He is facing new charges of lewd or lascivious molestation of a girl under the age of 16.

Rios was arrested in April and charged with three counts of lewd and lascivious molestation. The Hillsborough County Sheriff’s Office began investigating him in August after two girls, 12 and 17, and woman, 43, came forward with accusations, authorities said.

The 12-year-old girl said she was molested by Rios about twice a week over the past year, the sheriff’s office said. The older girl said Rios touched her about 15 times starting in 2011 and that he told her he was doing so because he loved her as a pastor and that she shouldn’t tell anyone because he could get in trouble, the sheriff’s office said.

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IRELAND
Irish Times

Ireland’s portrayal of itself as the purest, holiest or richest country has brought us lies and exclusion

Fintan O’Toole

Tue, Jun 17, 2014

Meet an egomaniac and you know you are also meeting a deeply insecure person. People who are uncertain about themselves sometimes deal with their anxiety by creating an exaggerated image of superiority.

And it is the same with countries – our own for example. There is a certain irony to Ireland’s badness – it arises in part from delusions of grandeur. This place became so vicious partly because of a hysterical insistence on its unique virtue – a habit of mind that has never gone away.

It’s easy to understand why Catholic Ireland became so hyper-virtuous. A long history of denigration, humiliation and subjection creates a profound distortion. It is not enough to be as good as anybody else – you have to be better, indeed the best: uniquely wonderful. But this fantasy is not harmless. At best, it feeds a deluded detachment from reality. At worst, you have to hide, exclude, deny, those who threaten to spoil the picture of perfection.

Unlike the extreme versions of such dark utopias in Nazi Germany or Stalin’s Soviet Union, independent Ireland did not actually exterminate the spoilers of its unique purity. But it did get rid of them – mostly through emigration but also, notoriously, in its vast system of “coercive confinement”: industrial schools, Magdalene laundries, mother and baby homes and mental hospitals.

‘Impure’ women

Thus, the appalling treatment of “impure” women in these institutions was a direct consequence of the insistence that Irish femininity was uniquely pure. This was a key point of national difference: England seethed with sex and sin, Ireland was a paradise of continence and virginity.

This unique virtue in turn compensated for the real economic failures of the new State – what did it matter that we were poor, backward and exporting half our population? Our values were not material but spiritual. And, as Eamon de Valera openly claimed, this unmatched holiness would do nothing less than save the world: “Ireland today has no dearer hope than this: that, true to her own holiest traditions, she may humbly serve the truth and help by truth to save the world.”

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SCOTLAND
BBC News

A priest has gone on trial accused of sexually abusing two children in the Western Isles when he was a teenager.

Father John Angus MacDonald, 69, is claimed to have repeatedly raped a schoolgirl at a property in the Outer Hebrides between 1957 and 1958.

He is also alleged to have used lewd, indecent and libidinous practices towards a 10-year-old boy at various places on an island a few years later.

MacDonald denied all charges against him at the High Court in Aberdeen.

The court heard that MacDonald left the Hebrides just before his 13th birthday to train to be a priest at Blairs College in Aberdeen in 1958.

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MASSACHUSETTS
Road to Recovery

[The 49 Priests Listed in the Final Addendum, Including 24 Names Made Public for the First Time -Order Priests/Brothers – BishopAccountability.org]

Press Release

June 18, 2014

Dangerous pedophile lives across the street from a pre-k/kindergarten in Peabody, MA without the general public’s knowledge

Religious order allows pedophile to travel around the Peabody, MA area without supervision

Children are at risk at North Shore Mall where Carmelite Fathers have mini-church

What: A press conference and leafleting alerting the general public to the presence of a pedophile Catholic religious brother, Br. Damien Chong, O. Carm., living in Peabody, MA, at the Carmelite religious house at 4 Wheatland Street, Peabody, MA, and serving at the Carmelite Catholic Chapel at the North Shore Mall in Peabody, MA.

When: Wednesday, June 18, 2014 from 11:00 AM until 1:00 PM

Where: On the public sidewalk in front of the Peabody, MA, Town Hall and along Peabody’s downtown business district, 24 Lowell Street, Peabody, MA 01960

Who: Allan Bruce, a sexual abuse victim/survivor of Br. Damien Chong, O.Carm.; Robert M. Hoatson, Ph.D., co-founder and President of Road to Recovery, Inc., a non-profit charity that assists victims of sexual abuse and their families; and supporters.

Why: Br. Damien Chong, O. Carm., is a native Hawaiian who has been stationed in Catholic schools and institutions from Los Angeles to Boston. In the Boston suburb of Peabody, MA, the Carmelite Fathers and Brothers, who manage a daily Mass chapel and gift shop at the “Chapel in the North Shore Mall,” and without notifying the public, assigned Brother Damien Chong, O. Carm., to work in the mall chapel and gift shop despite knowing that Br. Damien Chong, O. Carm., is a sexual abuser of children and that a mall is one of the most popular venues visited by families and their children. Thousands of children visit the North Shore Mall annually. Br. Damien Chong’s current residence near the mall is located directly across the street from a facility run by Carmelite nuns for pre-kindergarten and kindergarten children.

Allan Bruce is a sexual abuse victim/survivor of Br. Damien Chong at a high school in California, and he will distribute leaflets to the public in front of the Peabody Police Department in order to inform the unsuspecting public about the presence of Br. Damien Chong, a pedophile. He will also reveal footage of Br. Damien Chong driving a motor vehicle through the streets of Peabody and Lynn with a much younger male riding in the passenger seat.

Contacts: Robert M. Hoatson, Ph.D. – Road to Recovery, Inc. – 862-368-2800
Attorney Mitchell Garabedian – Boston, MA – 617-523-6250

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ST. LOUIS (MO)
Catholic Sentinel

Catholic News Service

ST. LOUIS — Archbishop Robert Carlson says he wants to “set the record straight” and “respond to certain misconceptions” about a deposition he gave in a lawsuit involving alleged abuse by a Minnesota priest 35 years ago.

“I understand this situation has caused concern and frustration for many people, and for that I apologize. Abuse of any kind is a serious moral offense and a crime,” he said in a statement.

Media outlets gave extensive coverage to a video clip of his deposition after the plaintiff’s lawyer highlighted it at a June 9 news conference.

Archdiocesan officials said the clip distorted Archbishop Carlson’s testimony by taking his response to a question out of context, suggesting he “did not know that it was a criminal offense for an adult to molest a child. Nothing could be further from the truth.”

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OHIO
WTRF

[with video]

Officials with SNAP, or the “Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests,” gathered in front of the Catholic Diocese of Steubenville on Monday afternoon.

The organization is concerned, they said, because of allegations brought against Gary Zalenski in 2007, who allegedly sexually abused a parishioner in 1991, while he served as the pastor of Scared Heart Parish in Neffs. He was removed from ministry in 2007 for the allegations, though no criminal charges were brought against him.

On Monday, SNAP organizers asked why Zalenski hasn’t been defrocked. Likewise, they urged Belmont College, Zalenski’s current employer, to suspend him for quote, “the safety of college students and staff.”

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UNITED STATES
The American Conservative

By ROD DREHER • June 17, 2014

Last week, Leadership Journal, a publication of Christianity Today, published an anonymous essay by a former youth pastor. It started like this:

Seven years ago I was hired by my church to be the new youth minister. The youth group was on life support at the time, with only a few students involved. My wife and I, newly married, already had good relationships with the students and their parents and, with my college ministry experience, I seemed to be the perfect fit for the position.
The ministry grew steadily. Within a few years the group that once struggled to fill a minivan was taking over 40 students to camp every summer. Teens were involved in every area of our church. The students were participating in local, regional, and international missions, and were inviting their friends to our activities. The gospel was being taught, and students were accepting Christ, getting baptized, and serving.

You can read the whole thing in PDF format here, but not on the Leadership Journal website. Instead, this is what you get there:

We should not have published this post, and we deeply regret the decision to do so.

The post, told from the perspective of a sex offender, withheld from readers until the very end a crucial piece of information: that the sexual misconduct being described involved a minor under the youth pastor’s care. Among other failings, this post used language that implied consent and mutuality when in fact there can be no question that in situations of such disproportionate power there is no such thing as consent or mutuality.

I think this is too bad. I’m glad they published the piece, and am only sorry that they didn’t do so with better framing at the beginning and the end, to anticipate the objections and deal with them.

The essay is valuable for at least two reasons. First, it shows how this youth minister allowed himself to fall into this grave sin, which is, of course, also a crime. The self-pity (“my wife isn’t paying enough attention to me”), the rationalizations, the secrecy, the all-consuming vanity (he loved being the center of attention in the youth group) — it’s all very human, and very real. If I were teaching a pastoral class at seminary, I would hand this essay out, along with strong warnings to my students to beware these danger signs.

Second, the essay itself shows how the prisoner, though he claims to be 100 percent to blame for his fate, still doesn’t appear to own up to the full consequences of what he did. The first clue is his description of the relationship as an “extramarital affair.” Which it was. But it was also statutory rape, because the female involved was a minor. This is what upset so many readers, and led to CT taking the entire essay down. I think that was an overreaction on the part of readers, and of CT.

The author did, at the end, concede that his partner was, in fact, a minor, and in an update, conceded further that she was a victim, and could not have legally consented to what happened. That wasn’t enough for the critics. I wish CT had left the piece up, but also published strong, reasonable criticism of it. If the piece fails to convey a proper sense of the author’s horror at the magnitude of his sin/crime, perhaps that is part of the lesson it teaches: that sex offenders are so narcissistic that they fail to see their victims as full persons. Or perhaps it was simply an editing oversight. It’s hard to know.

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OHIO
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests

Victims blast 2 new church moves
They’re worried about principal who was selected
And they’re angry about new diocesan chancellor
Group has also heard from another victim of deacon
But bishop refuses to admit several allegations have been made
Prelate’s secrecy continues to endanger kids, SNAP charges

WHAT
Holding signs and childhood photos at a sidewalk news conference, advocates for clergy sex abuse victims will blast two new appointments by Youngstown Catholic officials. They are;

–the new chancellor for the diocese, and
–the new principal for John F. Kennedy High School.
The victims will also

–announce they’ve heard from another victim of a child molesting deacon who was accused last year
— church officials need to identify and suspend the deacon, and
–prod church officials to post on their website the names of proven, admitted and credibly accused child molesting clerics.

WHEN
Tuesday, June 17, 1:30 p.m.

WHERE
Outside of the Youngstown Catholic diocese headquarters, 144 W. Wood Street (corner of Elm) in Youngstown

WHO
Three members of a self help group called SNAP, the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAPnetwork.org), including a Youngstown area abuse victim who spoke up last year for the first time ever about his own painful experiences at the hands of a local cleric

WHY
SNAP will announce they’ve heard from another victim of a child molesting deacon who church officials refuse to identify or suspend. The deacon was publicly accused of abuse for the first time last year.

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

FLORDIA
News-Press

Mary Wozniak, mwozniak@news-press.com
June 17, 2014

A scathing letter sent by 10 priests in the Diocese of Venice to Pope Francis’ United States representative criticizes their bishop, Frank Dewane, for a host of accusations that include bullying behavior and the secret acquisition of properties.

The letter is causing ripples of concern among across the Southwest Florida Catholics. The diocese covers 10 counties, including Lee and Collier. The diocese has 60 parishes and serves about 250,000 Catholics.

Addressed to Archbishop Carlo Maria Vigano, who is the papal nuncio, or the Holy See’s representative in Washington, the letter says that priests are demoralized and fearful of reprisal if their names are revealed to the public.

“Aware of many letters of concern which have been sent to both the Apostolic Nunciature and the Congregation for Bishops in Rome, we come before you now as a united group to say our situation worsens with time and has become intolerable,” the group wrote. The nuncio’s office did not reveal names.

The letter, dated Jan. 17, talks about the believed breach of canon law, including dismissal of a council that investigates and resolves issues related to pastoral works in the diocese. It describes a management style of “absolute authoritarianism,” featuring “outbursts of rage, use of blasphemous language, despotic demands based not on reason or logic.”

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

MINNESOTA
Pioneer Press

By Kyle Farris
Forum News Service
POSTED: 06/17/2014

DULUTH — The Catholic Diocese of Duluth was criticized Monday by a group representing victims of clergy sexual abuse for the church’s handling of rekindled allegations that a priest molested a boy in 1990.

Verne Wagner, northern Minnesota director for the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, urged the church to share any knowledge it has of the allegations against Rev. Timothy Backous, who was asked by the church last week to stop assisting at St. Michael’s parish in Duluth while the alleged incident is investigated further. Backous also is on administrative leave from Essentia Health, where he ministers for Catholic hospitals in the Twin Ports.

“How can this happen in this day and age?” Wagner told reporters during a gathering outside the Duluth Diocese main office.

The investigation centers on allegations that Backous molested a 13-year-old boy during a choir trip to Europe, at which time Backous was working for St. John’s Abbey in Collegeville.

The parents of the alleged victim decided to air the allegations for a second time last month after learning that Backous was still working in proximity to children.

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PITTSBURGH (PA)
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priestsi

And they “out” another Pittsburgh predator priest
Church admits he committed “sexual misconduct”
But cleric is also accused of assaulting a PA boy later
Catholic officials should send more letters, group says
SNAP: Bishop Zubik “only acts when prodded to do so”

WHAT
Holding childhood photos and signs at a sidewalk news conference, clergy abuse victims and advocates will;

– expose another priest who church officials admit was guilty of sexual misconduct and who worked at five Pittsburgh area parishes (but has attracted no attention locally), and
– thank Pittsburgh diocesan officials for sending three “outreach” letters over the past few months to Catholic school alums about several credibly accused child molesting clerics.

They will also urge Pittsburgh Catholic officials to

–send letters to all alums of all local parochial schools, begging others who were molested by clerics to come forward, and
–aggressively use their other resources (church websites, parish bulletins, pulpit announcements and personal visits) to prod victims to speak up and call police, and
–explain why they are letting religious orders hide names and whereabouts of child molesting clerics.

WHEN
Tuesday, June 17, 11 a.m.

WHERE
Outside of the Pittsburgh diocese headquarters (“chancery office”), 111 Boulevard of the Allies (corner of Stanwix) in Pittsburgh, PA

WHO
Two-three members of a self help group called SNAP, the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAPnetwork.org)

WHY
In an unusual move, SNAP is thanking Pittsburgh Catholic officials for writing letters alerting their flock about several child molesting Catholic clerics (Fr. John Wellinger, Franciscan Brother Kenneth Ghastin, Franciscan Friar Michael Ledoux, and Marianist Brother Bernard Hartman).

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

MEXICO
Angulo 7

[Summary: Victor Sanchez Espinosa, Puebla archbishop, said the three people arrested for sexual abuse and violence at Casa Hogard Domingo Savio were not priests and he urged authorities to reach an end to the investigation.]

El arzobispo de Puebla, Víctor Sánchez Espinosa, informó que los tres detenidos por abuso sexual y violencia que atendían la Casa Hogar Domingo Savio, no eran sacerdotes; así como exhortó a las autoridades a llegar a las últimas consecuencias.

Lo anterior fue en entrevista en el Seminario Palafoxiano durante la instalación de una estación de registro sísmico por parte de la Universidad Popular Autonóma del Estado de Puebla (Upaep), donde dijo que Armando Durán Martínez, director de la casa hogar, no es parte de la Arquidiócesis de Puebla, pues aseguró que no existe ninguna persona con ese nombre en los registros.

“Pedimos que se investigue. No tenemos a ningún sacerdote que se llame así”, señaló Sánchez Espinosa.

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VATICAN CITY
Vatican Insider

Francis at Santa Marta thunders again: those who commit this crime “irritate God and cause people to sin”, the way out is to “ask for forgiveness”

DOMENICO AGASSO JR
ROME

The day after stating that “the corruption of the powerful is paid by the poor”, Pope Francis again, “thundered” – what’s more, like other times over the last year – against this “scourge”, involving “several prelates” as well.

When a person “enters” the “road of corruption”, “take his own lives, usurps and sells himself”, he takes advantage of the innocent “with white gloves, without dirtying his hands” he said in the homily at Casa Santa Marta, as Vatican Radio reported.

“A corrupt person irritates God and makes people sin”. Not only that: a corrupt person “is one who kills, who steals”, if they do not ask for forgiveness, they are condemned with “the curse of God”, because “they exploit the innocent”. Pope Francis relaunches his complaint against corruption reflecting on today’s First Reading, the martyrdom of Naboth – narrated in the first Book of Kings – killed at the behest of the corrupt King Ahab who has taken possession of his vineyard. The prophet Elijah, noted the Pope, says that the corrupt Ahab “sold” himself. It’s as though “he is no longer person but a commodity”, “buy and sell”: “This is the definition: it is a commodity! Then what will the Lord do with the corrupt, whatever the type of corruption … Yesterday we said that there were three types, three groups: the corrupt politician, corrupt businessman and the corrupt clergy. All three hurt the innocent, the poor, because it is the poor who pay for the festivities of the corrupt! The bill goes to them. The Lord clearly says what must be done, “I will bring disaster upon you and I will cut you off. For Ahab I will wipe out every male, salve or free, in Israel”.

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AUSTRALIA
Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse

16 June, 2014

The Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse will hear oral submissions in relation to two public hearings into The Salvation Army on Monday 23 June at 10am.

Oral submissions for The Salvation Army Case Study 5 and Case Study 10 and will be heard together.
Case Study 5 commenced in January 2014 and looked at the response of The Salvation Army (Eastern Territory) to child sexual abuse at boys’ homes in Indooroopilly, Riverview, Bexley and Goulburn.

Case Study 10 commenced in March 2014 and examined the handling by The Salvation Army (Eastern Territory) of claims of child sexual abuse between 1993 and 2014.

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AUSTRALIA
The Canberra Times

June 17, 2014

David Ellery
Reporter for The Canberra Times.

A senior Catholic priest has defended the church’s failure to mandate the reporting of alleged criminal activity by clergy in the early 1990s.

Father Brian Lucas, the general secretary of the Australian Catholic Bishops Conference, also defended the practice of not taking notes during meetings with clergy accused of sexual assault and other crimes.

He said he has no recollection of a meeting between himself, Brother Alexis Turton and serial paedophile Kostka Chute in 1993 as he took no notes.

When asked on Tuesday at the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse in Canberra what advice he might have given at the meeting he cannot remember, Father Lucas interjected “we’re tilting at windmills”.

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ST. LOUIS (MO)
Waiting for Godot to Leave

Kevin O’Brien

Hey, St. Louis is suddenly trendy!

The Australians are investigating sex abuse within the Marist order. One of the serial pedophiles was Brother Gregory Sutton. There’s a St. Louis connection here, as Sutton left Australia at one point to become headmaster of a school here in St. Louis.

But that’s not the only St. Louis connection! It turns out events in my home town are also inspiring depositions and testimonies half way around the world!

The Canberra Times reports this testimony from one of Sutton’s Marist brothers …

“Do you mean you didn’t know it was a crime [to molest a child]?,” Royal Commission Chair, Justice Jennifer Coate asked.

“I’m unsure, it could well be the case. I’m unsure of that,” Mr Holdsworth replied.

The former Marist Brother was also unsure if, in 1989, he was aware that children were at risk of predatory sexual behaviour by adults.

“I really can’t put a time line to it [when he became aware of that],” he said.

Justice Coate asked him his age at that time.

“50 something, 54,” he said.

“Did you read newspapers or watch television?” Justice Coate asked.

“In some measure,” Holdworthy said. “I might have turned to the sport first.”

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IRELAND
Irish Times

Jacky Jones

Tue, Jun 17, 2014

Why are we so shocked about the 796 infants and children who died in St Mary’s mother-and-baby home in Tuam, Co Galway? The Sunday World referred to Ireland’s Holocaust, killing fields, and Cambodia. The Daily Mirror had a story entitled “My pals are buried in septic tank.”

This ignorant commentary, implying that there was something sinister about the deaths of children in mother-and-baby homes, is no help to anyone, especially the women whose children died in these institutions.

So far, no child health expert has reminded us that high infant mortality rates were normal for certain groups of people in Ireland until the 1970s. This was not right, but neither was it sinister.

Children died in mother-and-baby homes for the same reasons as those who died in Dublin’s slums: poverty and their mothers’ low status as citizens.

The rate of infant mortality among Travellers was about five times the national average. Children from poor families were four times more likely to die before their first birthday. Unmarried mothers were pariahs, so infant and child mortality rates in mother-and-baby homes were probably about 10 times the national average.

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AUSTRALIA
The Rural

By David Ellery June 17, 2014

When the superior of serial paedophile Gregory Sutton’s Lismore monastery learnt he had taken an overnight trip with a young boy in 1986 it never occurred to him sexual abuse might be the motive.

Brother Anthony Hunt, 72, testified before the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse in Canberra on Tuesday morning.

It had also failed to occur to him that a diary entry in which Sutton had written “Picked up AC. What an afternoon, she is magnificent” may also be linked to sexual abuse.

He told the commission he was not aware sexually abusing a child was a criminal act at that time.

Brother Hunt, who is now retired from teaching and living in a Marist Brothers’ community in Victoria, also denied ever being told of specific allegations made against Sutton by other teachers at St Carthage’s in Lismore.

These included Jan O’Grady, the then-assistant principal and the person who unearthed the incriminating diary entry which helped precipitate Sutton’s departure from the school.

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

AUSTRALIA
The Guardian (UK)

Australian Associated Press
theguardian.com, Tuesday 17 June 2014

The former superior of a NSW Marist Brothers community and deputy principal of a school for 600 students has told an inquiry that in the 1980s he did not associate child sexual abuse with crime.

Brother Anthony Hunt was head of the Lismore Marist community to which Gregory Sutton, who was later jailed for sexually assaulting 15 children, was attached from 1985 to 1987.

Hunt was also deputy principal of the Marist Trinity College in Lismore which had 600 students at the time.

On Tuesday he gave evidence at the royal commission into child sexual abuse that although concerns were raised with him about the behaviour of Sutton at St Carthage’s primary school, he left it to the school to deal with.

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

AUSTRALIA
7 News

BY ANNETTE BLACKWELL
June 17, 2014

A senior Catholic official who was found to be protecting the church from legal action by not taking notes in interviews with alleged sex abusers has defended his actions.

Father Brian Lucas, the general secretary of the Australian Catholic Bishops Conference told the child abuse royal commission he could not remember a meeting in 1993 with child sex abuser John Chute and the Australian provincial of the Marist Brothers, Alexis Turton.

Fr Lucas, a lawyer, said he accepted the meeting had taken place but, as was his practice, he had not taken notes.

The commission is looking at how the Marist Brothers handled accusations against two men later jailed for multiple child sex abuse offences – Chute and Gregory Sutton.

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

MINNESOTA
WDIO

By: Alan Hoglund
ahoglund@wdio.com

A member of an organization that supports victims of abuse by priests is demanding answers from the Diocese of Duluth. This comes after a priest at St. Michael’s Catholic Church was suspended when the diocese learned about allegations of abuse from nearly 25 years ago.

“Whether or not this man is guilty, that’s up for a court to decide,” Verne Wagner, the Northern Minnesota director of the Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests (SNAP), said at a news conference Monday afternoon.

Wagner is talking about Father Timothy Backous. Backous is accused of abusing a child at St. John’s Abbey in Collegeville, Minnesota in 1990. According to the Diocese of Duluth, Backous relocated to Duluth to work at Essentia Health. He has also been serving a roll at St. Michael’s on the weekends.
For now Backous’ work at both locations is on hold.

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UNITED STATES
New York Review of Books

Ingrid D. Rowland

A photograph taken in Argentina in 2007 shows two cardinals, Jorge Mario Bergoglio and Tarcisio Bertone, sitting side by side, although their chairs are on two different levels. At the time, Bertone was the Vatican’s Secretary of State, having traveled to a village in northern Patagonia “in the name of His Holiness Benedict XVI” to preside over the beatification of a turn-of-the-century religious student.

Bertone’s wooden armchair sits on a dais that puts him a good six inches higher than Bergoglio, the Archbishop of Buenos Aires, who perches uncomfortably on his metal-and-plastic seat, and the man known to many as the “vice-pope” occupies his virtual throne with kingly complacency, clad in yards of fine Italian filetto lace beneath his golden cope, with a sporty pair of aviator sunglasses to complement his gold-embroidered miter (and is that a Rolex on his wrist?). Next to him, in Jesuit black under plain white robes, Cardinal Bergoglio, with his iron cross and his horn-rimmed spectacles, looks open-mouthed upon the radiant spectacle, his famously mobile face providing the perfect caption to the picture. Six years later, Bergoglio became Pope Francis, and things have not been the same since.

On May 19, the glossy, gossipy German newspaper Bild Zeitung printed a report that made immediate headlines in Italy: Vatican prosecutors had begun to investigate allegations that Cardinal Bertone, as the Holy See’s Number Two from 2006 to 2013, had embezzled 15 million euros ($20 million) from Vatican accounts, apparently to benefit an Italian television producer, a former director of the state broadcaster RAI named Ettore Bernabei, with deep connections to Italy’s conservative establishment and a longtime membership in the powerful Catholic organization Opus Dei. The transfer of these funds allegedly occurred in December 2012. The Vatican press corps swiftly denied that a “criminal investigation” was underway, and Bertone himself insisted that the deal had followed “all the rules.”

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KENTUCKY
WLKY

A judge agreed to modify the bond for a former minister accused of sexually abusing three children.

Allen Lehmann is charged with sodomy and sexual abuse.

The 76-year-old was a former substitute teacher in Valparaiso, Indiana and a minister at an Assembly of God Church in Louisville.

He was indicted last month, but the allegations date back to 1993.

The judge changed his bond from $100,000 full-cash to $100,000 unsecured, meaning he can use property to pay the bond.

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AUSTRALIA
The Age

June 16, 2014

Bryan Keon-Cohen and Joseph Poznanski

Of fifteen recommendations put forward by an inquiry into institutional child sex abuse, the Premier has only acted on three. Why?

In response to community concern about the media coverage of extensive child sexual abuse within the Catholic Church and Salvation Army, the Victorian government initiated an inquiry. It was a significant milestone.

The inquiry’s report identified the Catholic Church and the Salvation Army to be the largest institutional offenders, among many ‘offending’ institutions.

The report, by the family and community development parliamentary committee, was tabled in the Victorian Parliament on 13 November, 2013. Six months later, the Napthine government has implemented just three of its 15 recommendations.

Notably, the report, entitled Betrayal of Trust: Inquiry into the Handling of Child Abuse by Religious and Other Non-Government Organisations, identifies reforms that are critical to: (i) bringing justice to the victims of child sexual abuse in religious and non-religious institutional settings through amendments to the criminal and civil law in Victoria; (ii) future prevention of child sexual abuse in institutional settings, where children are meant to be provided with care and protection; and (iii) future assurance that all institutions engaged in provision of services to children, will be strictly child-safe in their basic standards of care and accountability.

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AUSTRALIA
SBS

AAP

A senior Catholic Church official who gave evidence at a NSW sex abuse inquiry is back in the witness stand at the royal commission in Canberra.

One of the Catholic Church’s most senior officials will give evidence on Tuesday at a national inquiry into child sex abuse in Canberra.

Father Brian Lucas, the general secretary of the Australian Catholic Bishops Conference who also testified at a NSW commission into child abuse by Catholic clergy, will be in the witness box at the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse.

The Canberra hearing is in its second week and is examining how the Marist Brothers Order handled allegations against two members subsequently jailed for multiple offences against children.

The commission has already heard that former brothers Gregory Sutton and John Chute were moved around multiple schools in NSW, Queensland and the ACT during their careers which spanned a period from 1950s to the 1990s.

Last week and on Monday it was revealed that suspicions about both men were raised with provincials of the order by people who worked with them in various schools.

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AUSTRALIA
Scoop

by John A Brown
June 12, 2014

AUSTRALIA The Australian Royal Commission into child sexual abuse is soon to announce its interim findings after more than 18 months investigating these abuses throughout Australia.

The Royal Commission is set to attempt regulate and to control a group of predators that has run out of control throughout society, it has taken 18 months of horrific evidence and is scheduled to release its interim findings excluding findings on the notorious suicide producing Towards Healing process in Australia which is still undergoing investigation with more case studies in associated areas expected to be announced soon. The Royal Commission currently is showing that it too is a product of the main predatory group and is being used as a control measure and as a means of educating the main predatory groups so that they can adapt new measures with the aim of continuing their successful methods of ensuring their survival and wealth as well as their power and control. Protecting the hierarchy is of paramount importance though when put under pressure the higher levels will move to protect close companions while remaining willing and able to sacrifice those in the lower ranks in order to protect the top end of the chain; this has been evident in evidence repeatedly taken at the Royal Commission.

This form of human predation is currently being put on display by the Royal Commission which labors under the illusion that it has been set up to ensure the protection of the children of the masses which is the main target of the hierarchy as without them their future and easy way of life is threatened. Set up is an appropriate way to describe this although it is not possible at this point to be aware of the Royal Commission’s own understanding of that other than through the examples it sets and most obviously through the upcoming interim report. The Royal Commission is currently seeking further funding from government as it is attempting to deal with more than 1000 institutions involved in child sexual abuse in Australia. At this point the Royal Commission has only publicly investigated around 11 or 12 institutions.

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AUSTRALIA
ABC News

By the National Reporting Team’s Lorna Knowles

A judge has ordered that a victim of child sexual abuse should not be forced to pay his abuser’s $20,000 legal bill.

Mark Wurth was repeatedly sexually assaulted by his housemaster, Neville Gilbert Betteridge, at the Blue Mountains Grammar School in the 1970s.

Years later he sued his abuser and the Anglican Church, which ran the school, for damages.

The church paid him a confidential settlement and Mr Wurth then offered to withdraw his action against Betteridge.

But as the ABC reported exclusively in April, Betteridge demanded that Mr Wurth first pay his $20,000 legal bill.

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AUSTRALIA
ABC News

A senior Catholic Marist Brother said it never occurred to him that kissing and cuddling children in a locked room amounted to sexual abuse.

Brother Anthony Hunt has given evidence at the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse in Canberra.

He was the deputy principal of a school at Lismore in northern New South Wales during the 1980s and was also in charge of the the local Marist Brothers Community.

The community included the now convicted paedophile Brother Gregory Sutton.

Brother Hunt said he received allegations of inappropriate behaviour by Brother Sutton during the 1980s but did not report them, in part, because he did not think the sexual assault of children was a crime.

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AUSTRALIA
Daily Mail (UK)

‘I didn’t know paedophilia was a crime’: What church leader and former deputy school principal told hearing into child sex abuse despite being warned about predatory teacher

By FREYA NOBLE

The former superior of a NSW Marist Brothers community and deputy principal of a school for 600 students has told an inquiry he did not associate child sexual abuse with crime in the 1980s.

Brother Anthony Hunt was head of the Lismore Marist community to which Gregory Sutton – who was later jailed for sexually assaulting 15 children – was attached from 1985 to 1987.

Brother Hunt was also deputy principal of the Marist Trinity College in Lismore which had 600 students at the time.

On Tuesday he gave evidence at the royal commission into child sexual abuse that although concerns were raised with him about the behaviour of Sutton at St Carthage’s primary school, he left it to the school to deal with it.

Towards the end of two-and-a-half hours of evidence he said he considered complaints of inappropriate behaviour by Sutton as ‘excessive expressions of affection’ and had not heard the word pedophile at the time.

‘When you give that answer, that as the deputy principal of that Catholic college in the mid-to-late 80s in this nation, you did not understand that the sexual assault of children was a crime?’ Presiding Commissioner Justice Jennifer Coate asked.

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UNITED STATES
Christianity Today

Halee Gray Scott

In 1958, Vladimir Nabokov rocked America’s sleepy, conservative culture with the publication of Lolita, the story of a middle-aged scholar obsessed with a 12-year-old girl. Lolita is perhaps the most brilliant, well-crafted example of a literary device called “the unreliable narrator”—a narrator who cannot be trusted because of limited knowledge, mental illness, or questionable morals.

The book’s narrator is Humbert Humbert, a literary scholar who has long been obsessed with prepubescent girls.

From the first sentence, “Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins. My sin, my soul. Lo-lee-ta: the tip of the tongue taking a trip of three steps down the palate to tap, at three, on the teeth. Lo. Lee. Ta,” we’re plunged into the mind of a sexual predator and pedophile.

Throughout the novel, Humbert shows little remorse for his emotional and sexual affair with a child—at least not enough to break the relationship. He tries to stir the sympathies of his audience as his describes events to reflect well on himself, presenting himself not so much as a perpetrator as a victim of the “seductress” Lolita.

Last week, when I read the Leadership Journal article, “My Easy Trip From Youth Minister to Felon,” I had much the same reaction as when I first read Lolita. “This is a narrator who cannot be trusted. This is the voice of a sexual predator.” For many people, like me, it was all too familiar. We readily recognize the biased perspective of sexual predators because we’ve been on the other side, as victims.

I appreciate Leadership Journal’s original intention to draw attention to the issue of sexual abuse by clergy, and I applaud their decision to take the post down and subsequent apology. I do think it’s helpful, though, to also reflect on the mindset of the sexual predator, for this can reveal the skewed perspectives we find in many churches.

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SPAIN
Morocco World News

Rabat- Spanish TV channel “La Sexta” broadcasted a video clip on Monday of a Spanish priest involved in an alleged sexual abuse of a Moroccan woman who worked for him as maid.

Speaking to the Spanish channel, the woman declared that the priest had been exploiting her for four years, sexually abusing her and subjecting her to psychological and physical torture.

Answering the reasons behind her silence all these years, the Moroccan victim stressed that she was afraid of deportation. “Due to the economic recession in Spain, it had been hard for Spanish job seekers to land a job, so for me as an immigrant it is worse,” she said.

“He dominated me, humiliated me insulted me and kept me dirty,” she noted. The alleged victim gave details of the way the priest continuously abused her, adding that whether she accepted or not he forced her to bow to his demands.

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MINNESOTA
Northlands News Center

Duluth, MN (NNCNWO.com) — A member of the Survivor Network of Those Abused by Priests (SNAP) is asking questions regarding sexual abuse allegations that have surfaced against Duluth Priest, Father Timothy Backous.

Father Backous has been accused of sexual misconduct 20 years ago, while on a choir trip with Saint John’s Abbey in Saint Cloud, Minnesota.
.
Backous has since worked in Duluth at Essentia Health Saint Mary’s Hospital as the Vice President of Mission Integration and Benedictine Sponsorship for the hospital.

A statement from the hospital says, “Essentia Health has placed Father Backous on administrative leave pending the outcome of its internal investigation into the matter.”

Verne Wagner, the Northern Minnesota Director of SNAP is asking questions.

“When did the Duluth Diocese receive notice about Father Backous’ alleged abuse and how long did they pull him from service? Did the Duluth diocese ever review his personnel file and ask Father Backous, or past Diocese he has worked in, any questions regarding sexual abuse?” said Wagner at a news conference outside of the Duluth Diocese on Monday.

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OHIO
WTOV

Updated: Monday, June 16 2014

“Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests” or SNAP protested Monday afternoon because of a former local priest, accused of abusing a child.

That priest was removed from practice years ago, but the Vatican still hasn’t taken action in his case, and that’s just part of the concern today.

The concern from the group SNAP, is that this same man is now teaching at a local college. The priest we’re talking about is Gary Zalinski – he was removed from his parish after citing “credible evidence” of attacking a child. Holding up signs in protest, SNAP rallied outside of the Catholic Diocese of Steubenville.

“This is extremely important. If he can’t be let back into a parish as a priest he is too dangerous,” said Judy Jones, SNAP Midwest Associate Producer. The case against Gary Zalenski has been going on since 2007, when the bishop removed Zalenski as pastor from Sacred Heart Parish in Neffs.

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IRELAND
UTV

Published Monday, 16 June 2014

As an inquiry gets underway into the deaths of almost 800 babies and toddlers believed to be buried at a mass unmarked grave in Co Galway, two men have told UTV Live Tonight the stories of their life after being separated from their mothers.

Catholic nuns from the Sisters of the Bon Secours order ran St Mary’s Orphanage in Tuam between 1925 and 1961.

Within the grounds of the former orphanage lies a grotto shrine first thought to be a famine grave.

The Tuam burial site was discovered in 1975 by schoolfriends Barry Sweeney and Frannie Hopkins.

Locally it was referred to for years as a famine burial site where youngsters who had died in the 1840s disaster were buried in a mass grave, often on unconsecrated ground.

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MINNESOTA
Star Tribune

Article by: EMBER REICHGOTT JUNGE Updated: June 16, 2014

It has been heart-wrenching to read, over many months, disclosure after disclosure of Catholic priests credibly accused of committing child sexual abuse, and of those who protected them. It is stunning to hear church official after church official declare an inability to “remember” the details.

The past year of disclosures came about because legislation was passed in Minnesota in May 2013 opening the courts to those who suffered sexual abuse. But why only then? Why weren’t disclosures made years ago, so that other children could be protected from the trauma of sexual abuse?

It could have been otherwise. Sexual abuse survivors worked for years to pass similar legislation to open the courts to such disclosure. But the sobering reality is that opponents, including Catholic church leaders, vigorously and successfully resisted its passage.

As an original author of this legislation, I write to set the historical context. In 1989, after significant testimony from mental health professionals, the Legislature passed a law that gave more time to victims of child sexual abuse to bring forward legal actions. Recognizing that the impact of sexual abuse may not surface for years or even decades, the Legislature gave victims six years to initiate legal action starting after they “knew or had reason to know that the injury was caused by sexual abuse.”

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

The third annual assembly of the Association of U.S. Catholic Priests will be held in St. Louis, Missouri, June 23-26. Media coverage is invited to the assembly, to be held at the St. Louis Airport Hotel Marriott.

Most recent public statement

In early June, the AUSCP sent a letter to Pope Francis in support of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious, which has received critical comments from a Vatican official. The letter to the pope expressed hope that “a genuinely dialogic process, conducted with gentleness and reverence, will bring this issue to a conclusion more in keeping with Acts 15, Vatican II, and your own pastoral approach.”

Proposals to be considered

During the assembly, members will consider eight proposals, including the social justice issues of comprehensive immigration reform and full payment of worker pensions. Other issues include ordaining married men, supporting the Catholic Common Ground Initiative, opening up the process of selecting bishops and setting up a process to help with the next translation of the Roman Missal. Additional proposals call for improving association relations with diocesan bishops and expanding AUSCP membership.

Keynote speakers

The assembly keynote speakers include Donald Senior, C.P., writer and professor at the Catholic Theological Union; Michael Crosby, a Capuchin Franciscan and author on biblical discipleship; Dianne Bergant, C.S.A., professor of Old Testament studies at Catholic Theological Union; and Father Jim Bacik, a theologian, author, teacher and pastor.

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IRELAND
Irish Times

Joe Humphreys

Mon, Jun 16, 2014

Former president Mary McAleese has described as “completely bonkers” Pope Francis’s plan to ask a synod of bishops to advise him on whether church teaching on the family should change.

She said there was “just something profoundly wrong and skewed” about asking “150 male celibates” to review the Catholic Church’s teaching on family life.

Commenting on a planned October synod in Rome on the issue, she said: “The very idea of 150 people who have decided they are not going to have any children, not going to have families, not going to be fathers and not going to be spouses – so they have no adult experience of family life as the rest of us know it – but they are going to advise the pope on family life; it is completely bonkers.”

She was speaking in a public interview at UCD to mark her receipt of the university’s highest honour, the Ulysses medal.

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IRELAND
Irish Times

Fr Gerard Moloney

Tue, Jun 17, 2014

Even though I am currently in Indianapolis on sabbatical, even at a distance of 4,000 miles it’s impossible not to feel people’s shock at reports of what may be a mass grave of children and infants in the grounds of a home run by nuns in Tuam, Co Galway, up to the 1960s.

The story has reverberated around the world, including to Indiana. Hopefully, the investigations that are promised will proceed quickly, because the full truth needs to emerge, about this and other similar homes.

When a story like this breaks, it’s like deja vu all over again for the Irish church. One had hoped that after all the inquiries of recent years, the church’s dirty linen had been exposed, and it could begin the process of recovery.

Then another storm erupts, and it’s as if we’re plunged back to the beginning – except it’s worse now.

The cumulative effect of all the scandals means that each new one has a more devastating impact than the one that went before.

Anger is the predominant emotion. People are angry at the church. They wonder how these things could have been allowed to happen; how such a culture could develop in the church and nobody said stop.

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

UNITED STATES
Janet Mefferd Show

Hour 3- Janet talks with attorney Susan Burke about the Sovereign Grace Ministries sex-abuse lawsuit.

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UNITED STATES
Associated Baptist Press

By Bob Allen

A Southern Baptist leader criticized for supporting a ministry colleague accused of covering up child sex abuse advised pastors June 10 to immediately dial 911 at the first report of any abuse.

“Know beforehand that if you get any report of any kind of sexual abuse — certainly involving a minor — you be committed before that ever happens, that before you leave that room you are going to dial 911 and you’re going to call for help,” Albert Mohler, president of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Ky., said during a panel discussion between sessions of the 2014 Southern Baptist Convention annual meeting in Baltimore.

“We’re not in the position of being able to be investigative agents,” Mohler said. “That’s not our job at that level. There are young people, the vulnerable, to be protected, and you need to call.”

“If you’re not doing that, you’re not only putting those children at risk, you’re putting your entire ministry at risk,” Mohler continued. “Call. Let the authorities start to sort it out.”

“That doesn’t mean that you don’t exercise pastoral ministry and church discipline, but those are your responsibility after you have called 911, and they are a big responsibility,” he said. “One of the things we need to do is create safe places where people can come and report this kind of thing knowing that we’re going to respond in the right way.”

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UNITED STATES
Pilgrim’s Road Trip

June 16, 2014 By Michelle Van Loon

Last week, Leadership Journal magazine posted an article penned by a youth pastor who groomed, then sexually abused a girl in his youth group. He is now in prison for his crimes. The anonymous article was saturated with a self-pitying tone, some horrifying reframing of his sin (statutory rape is not an “affair”), and a stunning lack of concern for the young woman upon whom he preyed. It took a couple of very intense days of social media activity by those infuriated by the platform given to a semi-repentant sexual predator before the editors acknowledged that a few edits could not redeem this terrible piece. They removed it from the site late Friday afternoon. Mary DeMuth wrote a helpful summary of the situation here if you’d like to read more about it.

The story led me to do a little reflection about the collateral damage caused by a youth leader’s sexual sin. I’m thinking here about those who were not directly affected by the actions of a predatory leader: the rank-and-file youth group kids.

In my forty years of being a part of the big “C” church, sexual sin by leaders has pot-holed my journey:

* A lead pastor with a porn addiction eventually had an affair with a congregant.

* A twenty-something youth leader on the fast track to the paid position of youth pastor in our church had a “friends with benefits” relationship with another young woman who was over 18 – and was secretly dating one of the youth group girls at the same time.

* A youth pastor at a nearby megachurch had sexually abused a number of young men in his charge over a period of several years. When his sin was about to be exposed, he killed himself. We had the parent of one of the young men this predator had abused in our small group in the year immediately following the suicide.

* Another youth pastor had a history of forming sexually-charged, boundary-crossing unhealthy relationships with adult and youth group kids alike. He stayed justthisside of physical affairs, but left a trail of chaos and confusion in his wake.

I mentored a young woman who had been sexually abused by her cousin, a youth pastor.
My husband was in church leadership at two of the congregations where some of these events unfolded. He was involved as an advocate for a survivor at a third. Those little bullet-points on the list above have taken an inordinate amount of our time and emotional and spiritual energy through the years. Either we have a stunning knack for choosing especially messed-up churches or this is happening in too many congregations. Debate about the former can wait for another day. The latter, however, is ugly reality.

Read more: http://www.patheos.com/blogs/pilgrimsroadtrip/2014/06/the-collateral-damage-from-a-youth-pastors-sexual-sin/#ixzz34pwZPlkv

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OREGON
The American Conservative

By ROD DREHER • June 16, 2014

This is shocking, but not surprising:

A former Corvallis priest pleaded guilty to child pornography charges and was sentenced to nearly four years in prison.

Stanley Brittain, 39, who also went by the name Father Isidore, pleaded guilty this week to four counts of first-degree encouraging child sex abuse.

Police raided a property on the 2400 block of Southeast Eighth Avenue in Albany in April. According to court documents, investigators tracked the sharing of explicit movies showing the sexual abuse of children to Brittain’s phone and computer.

Court documents state Brittain was naked in his camper in front of his computer at the time of his arrest and said he had just injected methamphetamine.

Brittain told police he had started using meth two years ago and at the same time started collecting and trading child pornography on the internet, court documents state.

According to court documents, Brittain admitted having an extensive collection of child pornography on his computer that he would share online with other men. Police said most of the movies depict children from the age of infants to 12 years old.

Until a week before his arrest, police said Brittain had been associated with the St. Anne Orthodox Church in Corvallis.

After pleading guilty in court Tuesday, Brittain was sentenced to three years and nine months behind bars.

Thank God they’ve put this wretched man behind bars. He should have been defrocked years ago. Why? According to a 2011 internal investigative report in the Orthodox Church in America (PDF here), Metropolitan Jonah reassigned him even though he sexually harassed a Reader at a church in Alaska (the details of the case are pathetic), and was allegedly discovered seeking out online gay hookups after he left for Australia in the company of his former bishop. The internal (SMPAC) report was right to hold Jonah responsible for allowing the depraved monk Brittain to serve in that Oregon parish, but what the internal report did not say was that Bishop Benjamin of the OCA’s Diocese of the West specifically requested that Brittain be released to his care and supervision. As I wrote a couple of years ago:

Jonah defended his decision to lift Fr. Isidore’s suspension by saying Bishop Benjamin of the West had requested it, and had promised to keep Fr. Isidore under close watch. According to Jonah, Benjamin wanted this, and Jonah agreed to it, as a sign of hope for his recovery.

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AUSTRALIA
Sky News

One of the Catholic Church’s most senior officials will give evidence on Tuesday at a national inquiry into child sex abuse in Canberra.

Father Brian Lucas, the general secretary of the Australian Catholic Bishops Conference who also testified at a NSW commission into child abuse by Catholic clergy, will be in the witness box at the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse.

The Canberra hearing is in its second week and is examining how the Marist Brothers Order handled allegations against two members subsequently jailed for multiple offences against children.

The commission has already heard that former brothers Gregory Sutton and John Chute were moved around multiple schools in NSW, Queensland and the ACT during their careers which spanned a period from 1950s to the 1990s.

Last week and on Monday it was revealed that suspicions about both men were raised with provincials of the order by people who worked with them in various schools.

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UNITED STATES
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests

For immediate release: Monday, June 16 2014

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

Several victims of pedophile priests in Buenos Aires report that they were ignored or rebuffed by Pope Francis when he headed that archdiocese. We ache for them and their suffering but deeply appreciate their courage in speaking up now. Pope Francis should meet with them, apologize to them and take action to protect others from their perpetrators.

We especially feel compassion and admiration for Julieta Añazco (who was abused by Fr. Ricardo Gimenez who is still a priest in Buenos Aires), Sebastian Cuattromo (who was abused by Fr. Fernando Enrique Picchiochi) and Beatriz Varela (whose son was abused by Fr. Ruben Pardo).

Ariazco never got a reply when she wrote to then-Cardinal Bergoglio. Cuattromo was rebuffed when he sought help from then-Cardinal Bergoglio. And Varela was belittled by Bergoglio’s staff and forcibly removed from Bergoglio’s office by security.

Pope Francis should watch these short videos and hear how the dismal response by Catholic officials caused these courageous individuals more suffering.

[GlobalPost]

It’s especially tough to report clergy sex crime and cover ups in the developing world, and perhaps most difficult of all in the Pope’s home diocese. These individuals should be commended for their courage. They are doing what Francis refuses to do – taking brave and effective action to safeguard children from pedophile priests.

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ST. LOUIS (MO)
Riverfront Times

By Ray Downs Mon., Jun. 16 2014
.
Archbishop Robert Carlson has had a bad month. But St. Louis’ holiest man has faith that if he makes the right excuse, a miracle will happen and it’ll all just go away.

For the second time in a week, the public relations wizards at the St. Louis Archdiocese have sought to address the uproar that came as a result of Carlson saying in a deposition that he could not remember if he knew sexually abusing a child was a crime during his time at the Minneapolis-St. Paul Archdiocese during the 70’s and 80’s.

After the deposition was released, the Archdiocese issued a press release that accused the plaintiff’s lawyers of taking Carlson’s comments out of context and then blamed the media for eating it up.

But on Friday, Carlson put out a video statement in which he says that he simply misunderstood the question, and that’s why he said he didn’t know sexually abusing a child was a crime.

“In the deposition last month, I misunderstood a series of questions that were presented to me,” Carlson says in the video. “I wish to clarify that situation now.”

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AUSTRALIA
Courier-Mail

Ex-­Marist brother Denis Doherty tells royal commission he raised sex abuse suspicions with Catholic Church in the 1970s

THE former principal of a Queensland school became emotional as he told of his anger when a pedophile brother was arrested two decades after he had first reported him to the Catholic Church.

Denis Doherty, an ex-­Marist brother, was principal of a north Queensland primary school where Brother Gregory Sutton, who was later jailed for 67 counts of child sexual abuse, started his career in the 1970s.

Mr Doherty told the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse that Sutton had “pets” among the students and he once entered a school room and found the teacher on the floor with three boys.

He also said Sutton would ride on a tractor mower with a boy sitting between his legs.

Mr Doherty raised his concerns with the Church and was reassured the matter would be dealt with.

Mr Doherty said he was never asked to write a report about Sutton but he heard in 1996 that he had been arrested in the US and would be extradited to Australia.

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AUSTRALIA
Daily Telegraph

JANET FIFE-YEOMANS THE DAILY TELEGRAPH JUNE 17, 2014

A FORMER Catholic Church education boss said he had never met a paedophile — while one of the country’s most notorious child molesters was working under his nose.

John Kelly was director of Catholic education for the Diocese of Lismore when Marist Brother Gregory Sutton, later jailed for 12 years for 67 sex offences, was teaching at the local St Carthage’s Primary School in the 1980s, the child sex abuse royal commission was told yesterday.

Mr Kelly said he was not suspicious about Brother Gregory even after the school’s deputy principal Jan O’Grady spoke to him after Sutton was caught lying about taking an afternoon off.

Ms O’Grady had read an entry in Sutton’s diary: ‘‘Picked up (10-year-old girl). What an afternoon. She is magnificent.’’

Counsel assisting the commission, Simeon Beckett, asked Mr Kelly: ‘‘There was no suspicion in your mind that a criminal offence may have occurred between Brother Gregory and (the girl)?’’

Mr Kelly answered: ‘‘No.’’

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AUSTRALIA
Daily Mail (UK)

A pedophile Marist brother attended and probably organised the funeral of a young man he had molested as a boy, an inquiry has been told.

The man’s family later learned of the link between their son’s suicide and the fact he had been molested by Gregory Sutton when he was just eight or nine while attending a Marist Brothers primary school in North Queensland in the 1970s.

The Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse was told on Monday that Sutton, who has since served 12 years in jail for sexually assaulting boys, offered to arrange the funeral of the boy – referred to as ADO – who committed suicide in 1989.

The former brother was later confronted by the father of ADO and confessed he had molested him.

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UNITED STATES
Public Catholic

June 16, 2014 By Rebecca Hamilton

It’s a bitter pill for Catholics, watching the videos of Archbishop Carlson’s testimony.

I understand and share the emotions it raises.

But we do not serve ourselves or our Church by pretending that it ain’t so. We’ve got to face this because it is reality. It doesn’t change in any way the simple fact that Jesus said “You are Peter and on this rock I will build my Church and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.”

What it changes is the blind notion that many Catholics have — that we all want to have — that our religious leaders are sinless Christ figures themselves.

They’re just people, just like us. They are conduits of the graces in the sacraments. God can and does reach through them and into us when we go to them for support and help in our troubles.

But the miracle in that is all on God, not on them. They don’t create the miracle, they don’t control the grace. I know from personal experience that God can reach out and touch anyone, anytime. I believe that all that’s needed on our parts is a willing heart. All we have to do to receive God’s healing grace is say yes to it.

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OHIO
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests

Predator priest now teaches
And they want his defrocking status disclosed
SNAP: “Catholic officials should move faster!”
Steubenville prelate should “push harder,” they say
Accused child molesting cleric was sent to 3 treatment centers

WHAT
Holding signs and childhood photos at a sidewalk news conference, advocates for clergy sex abuse victims will prod a college president and board to suspend a credibly accused predator priest. They will also prod Steubenville’s Catholic bishop to

— disclose the status of the priest’s defrocking,
— push Vatican officials harder to speed up the process,
— reveal, for the safety of kids, where the predator is now, and
— post the names, work histories and photos of all credibly accused predators on his website and in parish bulletins.

WHEN
Monday, June 16 at 1:30 pm

WHERE
Outside the Steubenville diocese headquarters/chancery office, 422 Washington Street, Steubenville

WHO
Two-three members of a support group called SNAP, the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests ( SNAPnetwork.org )

WHY
A Steubenville priest who is accused of molesting girls, is being defrocked and was sent to three predator treatment centers is now teaching at Belmont Collage.

[Belmont College]

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MINNESOTA
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests

Victims want answers from Duluth bishop
SNAP: “Why delay suspending accused predator?”
Cleric is accused of abusing a child in Europe St. Paul
But local Catholic officials waited at least two weeks to act
Group calls on those who were hurt to “protect others by speaking up”

WHAT
Holding signs and childhood photos at a sidewalk news conference, clergy sex abuse victims will blast Duluth’s Catholic bishop for

–-waiting two weeks to suspend an accused predator priest, and
–-letting his top aide publicly praise the priest which deters other victims from speaking up.

They will also

–plead with anyone who may have information or suspicions about the priest to speak up now,
–urge the bishop to disclose the names of every child molesting cleric in the diocese and permanently post their names on his website, and
–beg every person who saw, suspected and suffered clergy sex crimes and cover ups in Minnesota (especially current and ex-Catholic employees) to come forward, call police, protect others and start healing.

WHEN
Monday June 16 at 1:30 p.m.

WHERE
Outside the Duluth Diocese main office at 2830 East 4th street in Duluth

WHO
Verne Wagner a clergy sex abuse victim and Northern MN Director of a support group called SNAP, the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAPnetwork.org)

WHY
A Catholic priest has just been suspended from his post at a local church and a hospital because of allegations that he molested a Minnesota boy years ago. Victims believe he should have been vetted better and suspended sooner. They also want Duluth’s bishop – and a local hospital – to aggressively seek out others the priest may have hurt and urge them to call police and prosecutors.

[BishopAccountability.org]

[Duluth News Tribune]

Last month, parents of a former member of the St. John’s Boys’ Choir came forward charging that Fr. Timothy Backous had inappropriate sexual contact with their son in the 1990s on a choir trip. The choir is affiliated with St. John’s Abbey in St. Cloud Minnesota. The parents were prompted to act when they learned that Fr. Backous had said mass in late May at the Basilica of St. Mary in Minneapolis. They immediately wrote and complained to Archbishop John Nienstedt and current St. John’s Abbot John Klassen.

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WASHINGTON
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests

Predator priest is now at Catholic college
For at least seven years, he worked in Seattle
Cleric is accused of molesting two Alaskan boys
Church officials claim he has 24-hour supervision
But he now works in “campus ministry” at Gonzaga
Group wants Seattle & Spokane prelates to “warn their flocks”
And they want Jesuit officials to “oust priest & explain their recklessness”

WHAT
Holding signs and childhood photos at a sidewalk news conference, clergy sex abuse victims and their supporters will urge Catholic bishops in Seattle and Spokane to

–warn their flocks about a twice-accused and once-suspended predator priest who now works at a college,
–publicly denounce the Jesuits who put him there, and
– permanently post on their websites the names, photos and whereabouts of child molesting lcerics who have worked in their dioceses.

The group will also prod Jesuit officials to

– suspend this predator, for the safety of college students and staff,
– explain and apologize for their “reckless and callous” decision to put him back to work, and
– also post predators’ names, photos and whereabouts on their websites.

WHEN
Monday, June 16 at 1:00 pm

WHERE
On the sidewalk outside the Seattle Catholic archdiocesan headquarters (“chancery”) 710 9th Ave. (corner of Cherry St.) in downtown Seattle

WHO
Three-four members of a support group called SNAP, the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAPnetwork.org)

WHY
A once-suspended Catholic priest – who worked in Seattle for seven years and is allegedly under 24-hour supervision – now works with Gonzaga University students despite at least two allegations that he molested kids.

The Gonzaga University website shows that Fr. Bradley “Brad” R. Reynolds is the assistant director of campus ministry. And Catholic church records show that Fr. Reynolds was put on leave by his Catholic supervisors in August 2008 when he was sued by two men who say he repeatedly molested them in Alaska.

Fr. Reynolds worked in Seattle from 1983-1990 at Seattle University. Both Gonzaga and Seattle University are Jesuit institutions. But Jesuit priests can only work in a diocese with the permission of the local bishop, SNAP says. So the group is begging Seattle Archbishop Peter Sartain and Spokane Bishop Blase Cupich to warn the public and their parishioners about Fr. Reynolds, insist that Jesuits suspend him and “aggressively reach out” to others he may have hurt.

In January 2009, Jesuit officials sent Fr. Reynolds to a Portland Jesuit community to allegedly live under 24-hour supervision.

[BishopAccountability.org]

However, SNAP has recently learned that Fr. Reynolds has quietly been put back on the job.

[Gonzaga University]

[Gonzaga University]

“Catholic officials let Fr. Reynolds work in two countries and several states in jobs where he had direct access to kids and today, he still does,” said David Clohessy of St. Louis, SNAP’s director. “Now, they have a moral duty to keep him away from youngsters and a civic duty to help police see if he can be prosecuted.”

“The odds are that there’s at least one person in Washington who was assaulted by Fr. Reynolds,” said Barbara Dorris of St. Louis, SNAP’s outreach director. “That person may well be struggling today with suicidal thoughts, addictions, shame, isolation, depression or self-blame. He or she needs to be found and helped and reassured that the abuse wasn’t their fault and that healing is possible.”

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IRELAND
Irish Independent

Sarah Carey
Published 16/06/2014

The Tuam babies story presents us with the usual depressing challenges, but some hope.

The challenges include distinguishing the facts from the hysterics and the blame-storming from the truth.

Rosita Boland in The Irish Times did us all a favour by interviewing Catherine Corless, who spent significant time and money researching the deaths at the home.

Boland reported Corless’ dismay that about headlines claiming that the remains of 796 bodies were dumped in a disused sewage tank.

DISTORTIONS

No such discovery took place. No one even knows if the vault was ever used as a septic tank. And they think about 20 bodies were in it anyway. Considering the facts are horrendous in themselves, the distortions are inexcusable.

Historian Sean Lucey has revealed the social context of the “committals” to these Mother and Baby homes. He recounted one case of a girl sent to Bessborough – not by a priest – but by a council official in Kerry on the recommendation of a local “respectable” woman.

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UNITED STATES
National Catholic Reporter

Thomas Reese | Jun. 14, 2014 NCR Today

To help prepare for the October Synod of Bishops on the family, a working paper written by the secretariat of the Synod of Bishops will be released before the end of the month, according to Cardinal Donald Wuerl of Washington. Wuerl, a member of the synodal council that approved the paper for distribution, said it will be released as soon as the Italian version is translated into other languages.

The working paper, technically called the instrumentum laboris, is a distillation of the material sent to Rome from bishops, bishops’ conferences, and others in response to the questionnaire sent out by the secretariat in October 2013. It is supposed to stimulate further discussion of the synod topic rather than attempt to be the first draft of any conclusions coming out of the synod.

Thirty-four years ago this October, more than 200 bishops from some 90 countries met in Rome for the first synod on the family. It was the first synod of the papacy of John Paul II and ultimately resulted in Familiaris Consortio, his 1981 apostolic exhortation on the family.

The 1980 synod on the family also had an instrumentum laboris and, not surprisingly, it focused on some of the same issues that are alive today.

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ARGENTINA
GlobalPost

[Pope Francis and Clergy Sexual Abuse in Argentina – BishopAccountability.org]

Will Carless
June 16, 2014

BUENOS AIRES, Argentina — Pope Francis made headlines last month when he announced the Vatican will take a “zero tolerance” policy toward sexual abuse in the church.

In a historic move, Francis also promised to celebrate mass in Italy in June with several victims of sexual abuse, a gesture lauded for its significance in helping to overcome decades of inaction from the Vatican on an issue that has ruptured the foundation of the church.

But in the pope’s home city of Buenos Aires, these two announcements stirred a different reaction: Dozens of victims of sexual abuse in Argentina’s Catholic churches say they are still waiting for recognition of their plight from the Vatican.

Abuse victims and their representatives contacted by GlobalPost said they spent fruitless years seeking an audience with Francis when he was the highest-ranking Catholic representative in Argentina, the archbishop. They said they were turned away by his office or offered gifts in exchange for meeting with the man then known as Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio.

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FLORIDA
National Catholic Reporter

Tom Roberts | Jun. 16, 2014

A group of 10 priests in the diocese of Venice, Fla., describing what they said had become an “intolerable” situation, took the highly unusual step earlier this year of composing a letter severely critical of their bishop, Frank Dewane, and sending it to the pope’s representative in the United States.

The letter, addressed to Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò, the papal nuncio, accuses Dewane of ignoring or violating canon law, abandoning consultative processes and ruling by “intimidation, the use of fear, shaming, bullying and other non-Christian behaviors.”

The letter, dated Jan. 17, was first reported by TV station NBC2 in Fort Myers, Fla. NCR has since spoken to two of the signatories, who confirmed the authenticity of the letter and that 10 priests signed it. They spoke only on condition that their identities not be revealed, nor would they permit specific examples of Dewane’s behavior to be reported, because they said those would allow the priests to be identified.

While initial reports said that the signers included some pastors as well as other priests, one of the priests and another layperson familiar with the development of the letter told NCR that all 10 signers are either pastors or administrators and together represent significant years of experience.

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AUSTRALIA
The Canberra Times

June 16, 2014

David Ellery
Reporter for The Canberra Times.

A former Marist Brother told his superiors Gregorý Sutton was a possible child molester decades before his crimes were exposed.

Denis Doherty told the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse on Monday he had been told to “mind your own business” in 1976 when he asked what was being done about the now disgraced former Marist Brother.

Mr Doherty said he had been very upset to learn Sutton had been charged with numerous counts of sex abuse in 1993.

“I was extremely angry that I had told the brothers in the 1970s and they did nothing and Greg went on to do some of the most dreadful things,” he said in response to questions from Simeon Beckett, the counsel assisting the commission.

Mr Doherty said he first met Sutton in 1973 when he arrived at the north Queensland school where he was teaching.

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AUSTRALIA
The Canberra Times

June 16, 2014

David Ellery
Reporter for The Canberra Times.

A former Marist Brothers principal was “not sure” as late as 1989 that committing a sex act against a child was a crime, the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse heard on Monday.

John Holdsworth, who left the order in 1999, went to a meeting between Gregory Sutton and the father of one his victims who had committed suicide.

The youth, identified as ADO, had told his elder brother that Sutton had molested him shortly before taking his own life.

On learning this, the youth’s father sought a meeting with Sutton, who was then in Sydney, and asked Mr Holdsworth to attend to curb any violent impulses he might have.

Sutton, who had been close to the youth’s family, had assisted them with the funeral arrangements.

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AUSTRALIA
The Guardian (UK)

Australian Associated Press
theguardian.com, Monday 16 June 2014

Even after a paedophile teacher confessed to the father of a boy who had taken his own life that he had molested him, the Marist Brothers did not go to police, a royal commission has heard.

John Holdsworth, who oversaw the primary school in North Queensland where Gregory Sutton, later jailed for 67 counts of child sexual abuse, taught in the 1970s, has told the inquiry in Canberra he was not concerned by Sutton’s behaviour at the time.

Holdsworth, the then community superior, said he could not recall the principal of the primary school, Denis Doherty, raising concerns about Sutton’s behaviour in 1974.

Doherty – a Marist Brother at the time – gave evidence on Monday at the royal commission into child sexual abuse that he had complained to the superior about Sutton’s “unprofessional” behaviour.

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AUSTRALIA
9 News

A pedophile Marist brother attended and probably organised the funeral of a young man he had molested as a boy, an inquiry has been told.

The man’s family later learned of the link between their son’s suicide and the fact he had been molested by Gregory Sutton when he was just eight or nine and attending a Marist Brothers primary school in North Queensland in the 1970s.

The Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse was told on Monday Sutton, who has since served 12 years in jail for sexually assaulting boys, offered to arrange the funeral of the boy, referred to as ADO, who committed suicide in 1989.

The former brother was later confronted by the father of ADO and confessed he had molested him.

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AUSTRALIA
Broken Rites

By a Broken Rites researcher (article updated 16 June 2014)

Catholic school authorities failed to report the child-sex crimes of Brother Gregory Joseph Sutton to the police, even after one of his victims eventually committed suicide, according to evidence given to Australia’s national child-abuse Royal Commission on 16 June 2014. Brother Sutton admitted the crimes to the boy’s family.

Brother Greg Sutton (born 19 March 1951) was a member of the Marist Brothers Order, which sent him to teach primary school children, from the early 1970s until the late 1980s, in Catholic schools in Queensland, New South Wales and the Australian Capital Territory.

Brother Greg (as pupils called him) had his first teaching job was in 1973-75 in a North Queensland town where the Marists conducted a primary school and an adjoining secondary school. The Marist Brothers lived in cottages on the campus.

Brother John Holdsworth, who was the Marist superior for both these schools, told the Royal Commission that in the 1970s he was not concerned by Greg Sutton’s behaviour towards children.

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IRELAND
Irish Independent

John Downing and Ralph Riegel

CHILDREN’S Minister Charlie Flanagan is to extend adopted children’s rights to allow them to seek information about their birth parents. New draft legislation is to be published within a month.

It has also emerged that the upcoming mother and baby home inquiry is expected to seek crucial documentation from US immigration authorities and three American archdioceses over ‘secret’ adoptions in the 1930s and 1940s.

Mr Flanagan wants to have an outline of the Adoption Information and Tracing Bill published before the Dail summer recess in late July. “I take the view that a person’s name and identity are fundamental rights. Everybody must be entitled in law to as much information as is possible,” Mr Flanagan told the Irish Independent.

The draft law was promised for last year but experts have warned about a conflict over the right to privacy for birth parents who do not wish to reveal their identity.

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IRELAND
Irish Times

Carl O’Brien

Mon, Jun 16, 2014

At the age of 19, Hanna Greally was admitted to St Loman’s Psychiatric Hospital in Mullingar. It was the mid-1940s and she had just returned home from London, where she had witnessed the horrors of the blitz.

She thought she was being admitted to the hospital for “a rest”.

Despite several escape attempts and pleading letters to relatives to sign her out, she remained there for the best part of 20 years.

St Ita’s psychiatric hospital in Portrane, north DublinCall to extend mother and baby homes inquiry to mental homes

Bird’s Nest Soup, her book published in the 1970s, captured in haunting detail the lives of others stripped of their human rights – social outcasts, the unloved, the incurably embittered and the dispirited.

“The patients inside, expectant, waited for the letters and the visits, until finally, one day, they would find themselves rejects, outcasts, and no explanation given. Sometimes a crushed spirit breaks, from mental agony and anguish, when she understands at last she is captive in a free society.”

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IRELAND
Irish Times

Carl O’Brien

Mon, Jun 16, 2014

Campaigners say an inquiry into mother and baby homes should be widened to include mental hospitals following further controversy over high death rates, unmarked graves and allegations of patient mistreatment.

Research shows that 33,000 patients died in overcrowded and disease-ridden psychiatric hospitals between the late 1920s and early 1960s, with death rates significantly higher than in the general community.

The State also had the highest rate of admissions to mental hospitals recorded anywhere in the world at the time, peaking in the late 1950s, when more than 20,000 people were resident in these institutions.

Mind Freedom Ireland, which campaigns for the rights of psychiatric patients, said the proposed inquiry should examine the role of mental hospitals in wrongfully detaining healthy individuals.

“The inquiry should include the sub-human treatment of people in psychiatric institutions . . . including involuntary detention, seclusion, four-point restraint and forced treatment including the administration of electroshock against a person’s will,” said the group.

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IRELAND
Irish Times

Padraig O’Morain

Mon, Jun 16, 2014

“When it came to the signing of the papers I remember being brought over to the room. There were two men and a big, big table. I knew I was signing the baby away but I was terrified not to sign it. I remember my hand was trembling and I think it was the cruellest thing.”

That is how one mother described to me, in an interview arranged by Barnardos in 1996, the process of signing her baby over for adoption.

Powerlessness and fear, combined with invisibility, are at the heart of the story of the mother and baby homes, of which we can expect to hear a great deal more in the near future. Remember that word “invisibility”. We have our own invisible people these days, but more of that later.

“It is fair to say that when a girl became pregnant outside marriage, she lost control of her life,” I wrote on a website I put up in the late 1990s to explain to adoptees abroad that their mothers had little choice in what happened to them. (The articles from this website are now on a section of my mindfulness website at padraigomorain.com)

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IRELAND
Irish Mirror

A woman locked away in a notorious home and forced to give up her son
for adoption, broke down yesterday and said: “I’d give anything to meet him again.”

The heartbroken mum gave birth to her little boy at Bessborough Mother and Baby Home in Cork more than 40 years ago at the age of 19.

She marched in the city with more than 100 others demanding justice for mothers and children yesterday.

Clutching a brown teddy in memory of the baby she was made to give away, the woman said: “My child was taken out of my arms. I was forced to give him up for adoption. I was told, ‘Get him dressed’.

“I’d give anything to find my son. I’ve tried. I’ve been up to Sister Sarto [in Bessborough], but I’ve just gotten nowhere.

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IRELAND
Irish Examiner

By Eoin English
Irish Examiner Reporter

The UN must be involved in any inquiry into Ireland’s mother-and-baby homes scandal, a rally in Cork was told yesterday.

Touched by the Tuam babies tragedy, mother- of-five Fiona O’Leary said she organised the event at City Hall in an effort to ramp up public pressure on the Government to establish a full and independent public inquiry.

“This is a human rights issue. I live in Ireland and I can’t sit back and ignore this kind of atrocity. It hurts,” she said.

“I didn’t want to do a vigil because I think we’ve done enough praying. We need to move forward and help these women get some kind of closure.

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UNITED STATES
Renew America

By Matt C. Abbott

Sixteen years after the still-unsolved murder of Father Alfred Kunz of the Diocese of Madison, Wis., another priest who celebrated the Traditional Latin Mass, Father Kenneth Walker of the Priestly Fraternity of Saint Peter (FSSP), was murdered just a few days ago in Phoenix, Ariz.

While I sincerely doubt there’s any connection between the two murders, it nonetheless is quite unsettling, particularly given that Christians in general have been facing increasing hostility and persecution.

From The Associated Press:
Police said the investigation into a deadly priest shooting at a Roman Catholic church in Phoenix has been stymied by a lack of usable surveillance video and a vague account of the attack by a second severely injured clergyman….

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IRELAND
Irish Examiner

By Joanne O’ Riordan

OVER the past few weeks we have all been flabbergasted by the Tuam Mother and Child Home controversy.

It has shed some light on what appears to be a dark past that not only treated women as second class citizens but allowed their children to suffer and die in circumstances that are not imaginable in today’s society.

It would appear that mother and baby homes are not the only places that have mass graves, which begs the question as to whether or not other homes, such as the Magdalene laundries and industrial schools, will be included.

In 1993 a mass exhumation was carried out at one of the biggest Magdalene Laundries in Dublin known as High Park, run by The Sisters of Our Lady of Charity. The discovery of over 155 bodies led to a public outcry, but 21 years on we still don’t know who these women were and how they die

It would appear that the women exhumed are not the women they had permission to exhume, and out of the 155 names listed on the licence only 103 match that licence.

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UNITED STATES
POPE FRANCIS the CON-Christ.

Paris Arrow

The Opus Dei Beast PR stunt of the day: Don’t blame the holy Catholic virgin nuns because they didn’t do it alone.

Opus Dei PR Deceits Team Strategy: from condemnation to approval … to feel-good Catholic euphoria in up-coming visit of Irish monarch, Pope Francis.

The (MSM) mainstream media belong to the Murdoch media empire joint with the Vatican. Controlled by Opus Dei Beast PR Team – MSM journalists are now all saying that the nuns had the legal approval of the state and the support of the devout Catholics people of Ireland and the USA. The Americans bought – those healthy babies whom the nuns sold for adoption. The Irish were silent – about the babies dumped in septic tanks and unmarked graves whom the nuns killed — in nuns’ houses they run throughout Ireland for women. The Catholic Church condemned the mortal sin of sex outside the Sacrament of Marriage committed by these unwed mothers who were denied painkillers during childbirth as part of their penance for their mortal sins.

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UNITED KINGDOM
BBC News

By Robert Pigott
Religious affairs correspondent, BBC News

The Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby is to meet the Pope in Rome later to discuss their project to combat people-trafficking and slavery.

The idea of joining forces to tackle the problem came to the Pope and archbishop over a private lunch they shared last year.

Archbishop Welby mentioned his concern about the abject misery of people forced, tricked or blackmailed into lives of systematic abuse.

Pope Francis responded with equal passion and the Global Freedom Network was born.

It is the first time since the Church of England was created at the time of the Reformation that the two churches have co-operated in a practical campaign to tackle a world problem.

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

By Bill McClellan bmcclellan@post-dispatch.com 314-340-81431

If I were to retire sometime in the relatively near future and write a novel about a fictional city, I think I would make the city a struggling, Midwestern city with a distinguished history and an uncertain future. There would be a strong Roman Catholic presence in the city. In some ways, the church would mirror the city — distinguished history, uncertain future.

One of the characters in the novel would be the new archbishop.

He would be considered — by people inside and outside the church — as a breath of fresh air. That’s because he was replacing a bombastic and polarizing man. The new fellow seemed anything but bombastic. He was quiet, friendly and understated.

He had come from another city, of course, and like all the leaders of the American church in the early years of the 21st century, he had to account for his time during the Troubles. What did he do in the early days of the sex scandal that would rock the church? It was almost like being a German politician in the years following the Second World War. The question hung over them all — what did you do?

Our fictional archbishop did nothing extraordinary. He did nothing dishonorable. Certainly, he was not guilty of sexual abuse himself. Nor did he move abusers from one church to another. On the other hand, he did nothing heroic. He never once contacted police to report abuse. He tried to control the damage to the church.

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MASSACHUSETTS
Road to Recovery

Press release

What: A press conference demanding the release of all information regarding alleged
inappropriate sexual texting by former assistant athletic director James Cerbo and information relating to all other sexual abusers who sexually abused at Catholic Memorial School.

When: Monday, June 16, 2014 at 11:00 AM

Where: On the public sidewalk at the corner of Baker and Gardner Streets in front of
Catholic Memorial School, 235 Baker Street, West Roxbury, MA

Who: Former teacher, coach, and Assistant Headmaster of Catholic Memorial School,
Dr. Robert M. Hoatson, who currently is President of Road to Recovery, Inc., a non-profit charity that assists victims of sexual abuse and their families; supporters, and friends.

In approximately 1981, Dr. Hoatson alerted the Catholic Memorial administration of his suspicion that Vice Chancellor Monsignor Frederick J. Ryan, an Archdiocese of Boston priest and former chaplain of the school, was sexually abusing students in the football program. In 2002, two students from that program went public with stories of having been sexually abused by Msgr. Ryan. Msgr. Ryan is now defrocked and living in Iowa.

In approximately 1983, Dr. Hoatson was a staff member of the school when teacher Benjamin Hopkins was allowed to retire after allegations surfaced that Mr. Hopkins sexually abused at least one student. Just recently, another sexual abuse claim was successfully settled against teacher Benjamin Hopkins.

In approximately 1986, Dr. Hoatson was informed by a parent of a Catholic Memorial student that a Catholic Memorial Christian Brother, Michael Walsh, took students on a camping trip and took sexually explicit and nude photos of them.

Why: Catholic Memorial School has had a long history of sexual abuse of children,
dating back at least to the early 1980s. During that time, the following lay teachers, Christian Brothers, and clergymen were accused of sexual abuse, but the school never warned parents, alumni, or the general public about the sexual abuse or the sexual abusers:

1) Vice Chancellor Monsignor Frederick J. Ryan, an Archdiocese of Boston priest, sexually abused several students over a number of years.

2) Benjamin Hopkins, an English teacher, now deceased, was accused of sexually abusing at least two students in his apartment in Cambridge and elsewhere. Catholic Memorial recently settled a claim of sexual abuse against Mr. Hopkins.

3) Br. Michael Walsh, a deceased Christian Brother, was accused of taking sexually explicit and nude photos of students on a camping trip in or around 1986.

4) Br. George Paramo, a deceased Christian Brother, was accused of voyeurism in the Catholic Memorial locker room and a local sports facility by many students.

5) Most recently, Assistant Athletic Director, James Cerbo, allegedly sent sexually explicit messages to students which led to his firing and a current criminal investigation.

Catholic Memorial School will be asked to release all information it has about sexual abuse of students by faculty and staff so that victims can heal, the public will be alerted and children will be safer. By doing so, sexual abuse victims will become empowered and realize they are not alone. It is time for Catholic Memorial to become transparent for the sake of healing and the safety of children. It is time for Catholic Memorial School to give to the authorities all information in its possession concerning the sexual abuse of students by faculty and staff.

Contacts: Dr. Robert M. Hoatson, Road to Recovery, Inc. – 862-368-2800
Attorney Mitchell Garabedian, Boston, MA – 617-523-6250

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AUSTRALIA
Sky News

Even as a 21-year-old in his first teaching job Gregory Sutton’s behaviour raised suspicions among his colleagues.

The Marist Brother started his career in 1973 at a school in north Queensland and within a short time senior teacher Denis Doherty was worried.

‘I gradually started to feel uneasy about some of Gregory’s interactions with children,’ Mr Doherty has told a royal commission investigating the adequacy of institutional responses to child sexual abuse.

The commission hearings continue on Monday, sitting for a second week in Canberra and looking at the case of Sutton and fellow former Marist Brother John Chute, also known as Brother Kostka.

The pair taught at schools in NSW, the ACT and Queensland for decades through until the late 1980s and early 1990s and have since been jailed for scores of sexual offences against children.

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AUSTRALIA
ABC Indigenous

Updated June 16, 2014

An Aboriginal legal service is encouraging Indigenous people in north-west Victoria to consider sharing their stories at the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse.

There has been an overwhelming response from survivors of sexual abuse wanting to talk to the commissioners during private sessions.

This week, legal forums in Mildura for Indigenous people will outline how to give evidence or make a written statement to the commission, as well as the counselling and support service available.

The legal office, Know More, was set up to serve people wanting to contribute to the royal commission.

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AUSTRALIA
Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child sexual abuse

live stream

Denis Doherty, former Marist brother.

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IRELAND
Irish Times

Olivia Kelleher

Sun, Jun 15, 2014

In the region of one hundred people attended a public protest at Cork City Hall this afternoon organised by groups who are looking for justice for mothers and babies abused at the hands of the Church and State.

Among the speakers was Dave Dineen, who first encountered sexual abuse at the age of seven.

Through a stormy childhood he found himself placed in the care of a religious institution in Cork.

Mr Dineen, who is the chief executive and founder of the Lamh Healing Foundation, says his healing journey has been about learning to live with a difficult past.

‘All to do with an Ireland past, of course. We’re much more tolerant now. Enda pulled out all the stops in the Dáil. In fairness, he’s damn good at this. He oozes compassion and understanding.’‘This is about the kind of country Ireland was where women were the focus of shame’

“I stand as someone who has gone through the institutions. I also stand as someone who has been abused in a home as well. I am very conscious over the last few weeks of the traumatic episodes that have been happening in Ireland where families have been ripped apart by secrets that are deep deep inside. One of the priorities for me today is to say to people to take care of yourselves. These are very deep soulful stories. There is danger that we keep re traumatising ourselves with no support.”

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IRELAND
Irish Times

Mark Hilliard

Sun, Jun 15, 2014

Sally Mulready, the London- based Irish community campaigner, has welcomed an inquiry into Ireland’s mother and baby homes and has sought a meeting with Minister for Children Charlie Flanagan.

A former resident of a mother and baby home on the Navan Road, Dublin, she said an exercise to address the scope of the commission of investigation, announced this month, was important, but cautioned about its potential effects.

“I am pleased with the promptness of the action and the decision to do it,” she said. “But . . . this is deeply, deeply sensitive stuff. It’s going to open wounds. It’s going to bring back pain and hurt for lots and lots of women in particular and I think it needs to be handled really sensitively.”

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IRELAND
Sunday Independent

Published 15/06/2014

Pertussis: also described as whooping cough

Convulsions: seizures

Marasmus: acute malnutrition

Debility from birth: weakness

Congenital syphilis: bacterial infection that can be passed on to an infant in pregnancy

Congenital idiocy: archaic term covering range of neurological and developmental conditions

Uraemic fits: seizures associated with kidney failure

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IRELAND
Sunday Independent

Surname Forename Date died Age Cause of death

Derrane Patrick 22/08/1925 5 mts Gastroenteritis

Blake Mary 23/09/1925 3 1/2 Mts Anaemia Since Birth

Griffin Matthew 18/10/1925 3 Mts Meningitis (2 Days)

Kelly Mary 06/12/1925 6 Mts Debitity from birth

Lally Peter 25/12/1925 11 Mts Intestinal Tuberculosis

Hynes Julia 26/12/1925 1 Yr Bronchitis (3 mts)

Murray James 04/11/1925 4 Weeks Syncope coming from natural causes

McWilliam Joseph 05/03/1926 6 mts Congenital Syphilis

Mullen John 09/03/1926 2 1/2 Mts Gaestritis (14 Days)

Wade Mary 05/04/1926 3 Yrs & 3 Mts Measles (7 Days)

McTigue Maud 08/04/1926 6 1/2 yrs Measles (5 Days) Meningitis

Lynch Bernard 15/04/1926 3 yrs Measles (10 days) Gastritis (2 days)

Shaughnessy Martin 18/04/1926 1 1/2 Yrs Measles (2 days)

Glynn Bridget 17/04/1926 1 yr Debility from birth

Glynn Margaret 19/04/1926 1 Yr Measles (8 days)

Gorham Patrick 20/04/1926 1 Yr 9 mts Measles (6 Days)

O’Connell Patrick 21/04/1926 1 yr Measles. Convulsions

Carty John 22/04/1926 1 Yr 9 mts Measles (4 Days) Convulsions (2 Days)

Bernard Madeline 22/04/1926 2 1/2 Yrs Spinal Bone Disease. Measles

Kenny Maureen 22/04/1926 8 Yrs Measles (2 days)

Donohue Kathleen 24/04/1926 1 Yr Measles (9 days) Pneumonia (3 Days)

Donelan Thomas 26/04/1926 2 1/4 yrs Measles (9 days) Pneumonia (3 Days)

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IRELAND
Sunday Independent

Jody Corcoran
Published 15/06/2014

Who was Mary Connolly? She died on April 30, 1944, one of three children to die that day of measles. It seems likely she had spina bifida, that is, her spinal column had failed to form properly while she was developing in the womb.

Contributing to her death was “congenital hydrocephalus”, more commonly known as “water on the brain”, the cause of which is usually genetic but can be also acquired within the first few months of life.

What was remarkable about Mary is that she lived for seven years before she seems to have succumbed to an outbreak of measles which also claimed the lives of Julia Kelly and Catherine Harrison that day.

In the language of the time, under cause of death, there is also written the word “idiot” alongside Mary Connolly’s name. It is coldly shocking to see now, but was commonly used in the Tuam mother and baby home, and elsewhere, at the time.

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IRELAND
Forbes

Eamonn Fingleton Contributor

In this space last week I challenged the sensational tabloid story of the moment: the idea that nuns at an orphanage in Ireland had “dumped” nearly eight hundred babies’ bodies in a functioning septic tank. The story had caused global outrage – but, as I pointed out, it not only did not ring true but no media organization had come even close to establishing the facts. Many of the reports were contradictory and even the most reliable-sounding evidence was at best confusing.

My reservations have now been vindicated and the “796 babies dumped in a septic tank” story has been revealed as one of the most outrageous press hoaxes in recent years. To their credit, some of the world’s more reputable news organizations have revisited the facts and published correctives. In particular the Washington Post and the New York Times have tacitly admitted that the implied image of satanic depravity that turned the story into a global sensation – that of wicked-witch nuns shoveling countless tiny human forms into a maelstrom of excrement and urine – almost certainly never happened. Their updated accounts can be read here and here.

At the end of the day, these facts seem well founded:

1. A total of 796 babies and children died at an orphanage in the town of Tuam in County Galway.

2. Even judged by the standards of the time (the orphanage operated between 1925 and 1961), this represented a disturbingly high death rate.

3. The babies’ final resting place has gone unrecorded.

4. Basing their opinion on practice at other such institutions at the time, experts believe that the babies were buried in unmarked graves within the grounds of the orphanage.

5. In the mid-1970s, two boys playing on the site came upon what seemed like a crypt in which the skeletons of perhaps 20 babies were discovered.

6. Some observers have recently concluded that the so-called crypt had at one stage been a sewage tank dating from the nineteenth century.

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IRELAND
Irish Independent

If scientists ever invent time travel, the first people into the pod for a trip back to the past should definitely be those who insist that “Nothing Has Changed”. There have certainly been a lot of them about recently, in the wake of reports that the remains of 800 babies may have been hidden in a septic tank in the grounds of a mother and baby home in Co Galway.

In their desperation not to allow apologists for Catholic orders to consign questions about the treatment of women safely to the past, many of those commenting on the tragedy of the Tuam babies were to be heard insisting that the plight of women in modern Ireland is just as invidious, and the official attitude to them equally cold, albeit that such negative attitudes are more subtly hidden or fiendishly encoded. They even purported to believe the alleged slowness of the response to the story from both Government and the mainstream media was somehow proof that there was no will to face up to the horrors perpetrated by the church.

First of all, this supposed reluctance to deal with the appalling mistreatment of residents of mother and baby homes is a figment of their imaginations. Of course governments may be less than keen to start down a road which may lead to expensive compensation claims, especially after getting its fingers burned once before over clerical child abuse; and of course officialdom does sometimes have to be prodded into action. But it’s only been a few weeks since the story broke through from the low-level awareness which swam around for years into public consciousness. Already the impetus towards a full inquiry is under way.

There was a whole year between the broadcast of the late Mary Raftery’s seminal RTE documentary States of Fear in 1999 and the establishment of the Ryan Commission. The gap between Raftery’s follow-up programme on child abuse in the Dublin diocese and the start of a commission of inquiry was

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