ABUSE TRACKER

UNITED KINGDOM
Catholic Herald

By FRANCIS PHILLIPS on Tuesday, 18 March 2014

Last week I met an inspirational Catholic: Dawn Eden, an American survivor of sexual abuse as a child who has turned this trauma into an apostolate to bring hope to others who have experienced similar abuse. Dawn is a convert from Judaism; her abuse happened at the hands of an adult at her local synagogue and from her mother’s boyfriend after her parents split up.

I asked her what led her into the very Church which the media has been delighted to portray as the villain of the piece regarding the abuse of children. Her reply surprises me. She admits that at first she was put off by news of the scandals besetting the Church; but that she then witnessed the grief that ordinary Catholics, as well as members of the hierarchy, showed when they learnt of the crimes and cover-ups. Above all, she was moved by the compassion for the victims that she saw in the Church. Here was a Church that acknowledged its wounds but which also knew that only the light of Christ could transform the darkness within.

This is the point of my blog: instead of focusing on the obvious and negative aspects of this shameful episode in the Church’s recent history, Dawn witnessed to the deeper wellsprings of the Church’s sacramental charity and was thus able to distinguish between the appalling sins of individual members and the loving compassion of the Church as the “mystical body of Christ”. This was the Church she has chosen to join.

In his blog for 7th March, William Oddie did a fine job of defending the Church’s record in rooting out paedophilia within her ranks (and showing how it has been unfairly been made a scapegoat by the media). Dawn’s apostolate, eloquently argued in her book “My Peace I Give You: Healing Sexual Wounds with the Help of the Saints”, complements Oddie’s robust defence. Instead of fixating on the past she wants her audiences and readers to understand the theological virtue of hope. “People keep repeating that abuse is soul-destroying” she said to me, “but Christianity is about hope. The temptation is to continue to live in past pain – but this accentuates it; it doesn’t bring about healing.”

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CANADA
CBC News

A judge in Quebec City heard closing arguments today in a class-action lawsuit that alleges sexual abuse by members of the clergy.

It marks the final stage in the province’s first ever class-action lawsuit over sexual abuse by priests to go to trial. Until now, all other cases had been settled out of court.

Lawyers representing more than a dozen men who attended Séminaire Saint-Alphonse, a private boarding school in Saint-Anne-de-Beaupré near Quebec City, alleged there was systemic abuse and a cover-up at the school.

Serge Létourneau, a lawyer in the case, said that two of the alleged abusers were once principals at the school and also sat on the provincial executive committee of the Redemptorist Order.

During the trial, 12 men testified about being molested regularly in their youth during the ’70s and ’80s.

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NEW JERSEY
The Star-Ledger

By Mark Mueller/The Star-Ledger
on March 17, 2014

Acting with uncustomary speed, the Vatican has expelled a New Jersey man from the priesthood for repeatedly defying a lifetime ban on ministry to children.

Michael Fugee, 53, who attended youth retreats and heard confessions from minors despite signing a court-sanctioned decree forbidding such activities, has been returned to the lay state, said Jim Goodness, a spokesman for the Archdiocese of Newark.

“Very recently all the procedures were completed,” Goodness said Monday night. “He is no longer a priest of the archdiocese.”

The Vatican typically takes a year or longer to expel priests, a process known as laicization. In some cases, the procedure drags on for several years.

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AUSTRALIA
The Australian

DAN BOX THE AUSTRALIAN MARCH 18, 2014

CARDINAL George Pell was closely involved in the handling of a controversial court case brought by a former altar boy who was sexually abused by a Sydney priest, the royal commission has heard.

The evidence, given this afternoon by one of the church’s lawyers, Paul McCann, appears to conflict with other evidence heard by the commission that the former Archbishop of Sydney had little or no role in the conduct of the case.

The Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse is investigating an ultimately unsuccessful attempt to sue the church made by the abuse victim, John Ellis, which was rejected by the NSW Supreme Court in 2007.

Mr McCann said he had been told “to defeat the litigation” and his instructions throughout the case came from Cardinal Pell’s private secretary, Michael Casey, with the apparent authorisation of the then-archbishop himself.

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AUSTRALIA
Eureka Street

Frank O’Shea | 18 March 2014

Let us talk about Catholic priests. Consider especially those who are now in their 60s, after a life of service to their church. They were seminarians in the heady days of Vatican II when everything seemed possible. They managed to survive the aftermath of was Humanae Vitae and continued to preach and counsel, to lead the sacred rites and to be faithful leaders of their flocks.

Some have directed retreats or preached parish missions; others have ministered to the young in schools and youth clubs; all have lived by the dictum that service to the least — the poor and mentally ill, the prisoners and prostitutes, the homeless and the addicted — is service to their god. But while their life has been exemplary, they cannot help being stained by association with those who have disgraced their calling.

In addition to this many priests see themselves as being under siege from an old guard in the Vatican. As this is written, six Irish priests have been silenced so that they cannot hear confessions or officiate at baptisms, weddings or funerals. There is some official term like ‘had their faculties removed’ but that sounds too painful. Two are Redemptorists; the others are a Passionist, an Augustinian, a Capuchin and a Marist — all order men. Tony Flannery, one of the Redemptorists thus silenced, has written of his experience.

In the aftermath of one of the reports on clerical sexual abuse in Ireland, he speculated on how difficult it would soon be to find priests for ordinary parish work. In that context, he said he did not believe ‘the priesthood, as we currently have it in the church, originated with Jesus’.

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NEW JERSEY
The Record

MARCH 18, 2014

EVEN IN death, the Archdiocese of Newark puts the interests of its institutional self above the people it is charged to serve. Its new funeral policy for priests who were removed from ministry on sexual abuse accusations is designed to shield the families of these priests, as well as the Catholic Church, from unwanted publicity. The victims of sexual abuse do not matter.

The policy approved by Archbishop John Myers is skewed toward the clergy. In a letter to priests, the vicar general for the archdiocese writes that the policy “allows for sensitivity to the family of the deceased priest as well as to avoid possible negative publicity or further embarrassment to the family and the Church.”

To further ensure that there is little negative publicity, no publication of the date, time or location of the funeral will be made to the public. The deceased priest — assuming he has not been defrocked — can be buried in clerical vestments.

These now-deceased men were removed from ministry for a reason: credible sexual abuse allegations. The Newark Archdiocese has a terrible history in dealing with abusive priests. Given that, it is impossible to understand why its first concern still is to be sensitive to feelings of these deceased priests’ families. These men are responsible for what they did. If they brought shame onto themselves, the church and their families, that is their own doing. Where is the sensitivity for the victims of their behaviors?

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AUSTRALIA
The Age

March 18, 2014

Mark Russel

Gerald Ridsdale, one of Australia’s worst paedophile priests, told one of his victims: “It was the Lord’s work”, a court has heard.

Another victim said his belief that the Catholic Church hierarchy had known what Ridsdale and other priests were doing was reinforced by Cardinal George Pell’s evidence to the Victorian parliamentary inquiry into child sex abuse last year.

Dr Pell told the inquiry he had only recently discovered that former Ballarat bishop Ronald Mulkearns had destroyed documents relating to sexual abuse allegations.

Bishop Mulkearns was responsible for shifting Ridsdale and several other priests around parishes after concerns were raised by families.

Dr Pell, who has been been appointed the Prefect for the Economy of the Holy See, one of the Vatican’s most senior roles responsible for reforming its administration and finances, lived with Ridsdale at a Ballarat presbytery in the early 1970s but said he was not a close friend.

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AUSTRALIA
Sky News

Cardinal George Pell knew a law firm defending the Catholic Church in an abuse claim would refuse to mediate, challenge the victim’s claims and oppose it on time limit grounds, an inquiry has heard.

Lawyer Paul McCann, a partner at Corrs Chambers Wesgarth, was giving evidence to the royal commission into child sexual abuse about his firm’s actions for the church and the then-Archbishop of Sydney Dr Pell in 2004.

His firm was instructed to defend the case brought by abuse victim John Ellis.

Mr Ellis was abused for five years by priest Father Aidan Duggan at Bass Hill in Sydney, starting in 1974, when Mr Ellis was 13.

Documents shown to the royal commission showed Mr McCann advised the church would ‘vigorously defend’ the case on the grounds of a time limitation applying to when an action could be commenced.

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POLSKA
Gazeta

Ks. Grzegorz K., były proboszcz parafii na warszawskim Tarchominie, został dziś zatrzymany. Ma to związek ze śledztwem prowadzonym przez Prokuraturę Rejonową w Wołominie. – Podejrzenia wobec K. dotyczą gwałtu na małoletnim – podaje TVN 24, powołując się na informacje prokuratora.

– Ksiądz został zatrzymany na polecenie prokuratora. Jutro będą prowadzone z nim czynności – powiedziała rzeczniczka Prokuratury Okręgowej Warszawa-Praga Renata Mazur.

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POLSKA
WP

[z wideo]

Ks. Grzegorz K., b. proboszcz parafii na warszawskim Tarchominie, skazany już prawomocnie za czyny o charakterze pedofilskim, został zatrzymany. Ma to związek ze śledztwem prowadzonym przez Prokuraturę Rejonową w Wołominie.

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POLAND
The News

A Polish priest was detained on Monday in connection with allegations of paedophilia as the Roman Catholic Church in Poland struggles to cope with a rash of child abuse cases.

Father Grzegorz K. (full name withheld under Polish privacy laws) is alleged to have had sexual intercourse with a minor and to have shown the child pornographic material, among other crimes.

The allegations follow Polish archbishop Jozef Wesolowski being recalled last year to Rome amid claims he sexually abused children in the Dominican Republic and a 36-year-old priest, Wojciech G, is also accused of molesting boys while serving as a parish priest on the Caribbean island.

According to Renata Mazur, spokesperson of the District Prosecutor’s Office of Warsaw-Praga, the latest allegations refer to crimes carried out by Father Grzegorz regularly between 1 January 2000 and 7 January 2003.

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PENNSYLVANIA
Catholic Culture

The Diocese of Scranton has issued a statement lamenting a Paraguayan diocese’s decision to allow the incardination of a priest accused of sexual abuse.

In 2005, Bishop Joseph Martino, now retired, suppressed the Society of St. John– which had been known for its promotion of the extraordinary form of the Mass, but also criticized for reports of lavish spending– following accusations of sexual abuse against its founder, Father Carlos Urrutigoity. Bishop Martino’s predecessor, Bishop James Timlin, had suspended the priest’s faculties after a diocesan review board found an abuse allegation credible.

Father Urrutigoity was subsequently incardinated in the Diocese of Ciudad del Este, Paraguay, named a monsignor, and appointed diocesan vicar general.

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NEW JERSEY
The Record

MARCH 17, 2014

BY BERNARD A. HEBDA
THE RECORD

The Most Reverend Bernard A. Hebda is coadjutor archbishop of Newark.

AS I READ Jeff Green’s article (“Lifestyles of the Newark archbishops stand in stark contrast,” March 9) I was disappointed that The Record would have so quickly equated a difference in residence with a difference in lifestyle.

I wish the article would have focused on what Archbishop Myers and I have in common: namely, a commitment to serving the people of the archdiocese and advancing the generous work that has for so long been undertaken by this local church, particularly in support of those who are economically disadvantaged.

In the six months since I was named the coadjutor archbishop of Newark, I have been especially delighted to learn of all that the archdiocese has been doing under Archbishop Myers’ leadership to support elementary and high school students, particularly in our inner-city communities, and to provide needed social services and spiritual support to those most in need throughout Essex, Hudson, Union and Bergen counties. It is largely due to his vision, personal investment of time and talent, and fiscal management that the archdiocese continues to be in a position to put flesh on the Gospel.

While The Record has been quick to criticize Archbishop Myers for the expenditures related to the construction project in Clinton Township, no mention has ever been made of the far greater savings that have come from his decision to live in the Cathedral rectory on Ridge Street these past thirteen years, rather than to maintain a full-time residence of his own. I admire his willingness to forego personal privacy in order to live in community with four or five other priests and I am inspired by his commitment to live in the intensely urban setting of inner-city Newark. While Green notes my three rooms in the dormitory at Seton Hall, he never mentions that Archbishop Myers has only two in the cathedral rectory that he can call his own (a bedroom and an office) or that they are in a zip code that few would consider enviable.

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MINNESOTA
KEYC

By Dan Ruiter, News Director

BLUE EARTH, Minn. –
A Catholic Priest pleads guilty to Criminal Sexual Conduct today.

Father Leo Koppala pleaded guilty to second degree criminal sexual conduct in a Faribault County Courtroom Monday. Koppala was a priest in Blue Earth at the time of the crime.

Investigators say Koppala inappropriately touched an 11-year-old girl at her home last June.

The Diocese of Winona put Koppala on leave while the case was in the courts.

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NORTH CAROLINA
News & Record

By Nancy McLaughlin nancy.mclaughlin@news-record.com
Posted on March 17, 2014

Even if you haven’t heard of Jason Berry, you are probably aware of his work: “Vows of Silence: The Abuse of Power in the Papacy of John Paul II” has Spanish, Australian and Italian editions.
A documentary based on the book won a Best TV Documentary Award.

The Vatican expert and award-winning journalist will speak on “Pope Francis and the Church: “Confronting Sexual and Financial Scandal,” at 7:30 p.m., April 3, at Guilford College. The discussion will take place at the Community Center on campus.

His remarks come at the first year anniversary for Pope Francis.

The event is free and open to the public.

Berry produces documentaries and writes on culture and politics for many publications.

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CANADA
Vancouver Sun

By Kent Driscoll, APTN, The Canadian Press March 17, 2014

IQALUIT, Nunavut – A northern judge is deciding whether to consider the previous convictions of a former priest accused of sexually abusing Inuit children.

Eric Dejaeger, a former Oblate priest, is facing 68 counts of abuse against dozens of children from his time as a missionary in Igloolik, Nunavut, between 1978 and 1982. The allegations range from fondling to the sodomy of a little girl duct-taped to the priest’s bed.

Dejaeger pleaded guilty to another eight counts as his trial began last November.

On the witness stand Dejaeger testified that the most recent offences he admitted to “just happened.” He suggested that the nature of the offences shows that he’s not a violent man.

Crown prosecutor Doug Curliss argued Monday that since Dejaeger brought the question of his character into court, that gives the prosecution the right to introduce information from Dejaeger’s previous convictions.

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NEW JERSEY
U.S. Catholic

By Kira Dault

The Archdiocese of Newark has released a policy for planning the funerals of priests who have been removed from ministry on sexual abuse accusations.

The new policy requires that the funeral Mass be held away from any churches where the priest worked or lived, and that obituaries be published without photos or specific information about when and where the funeral Mass will be held. Furthermore, the viewing “is to be a private viewing (not in a church) for members of the family and close friends only.”

A letter from the archdiocese says that these new procedures will “allow for sensitivity to the family of the deceased priest as well as to avoid possible negative publicity or further embarrassment to the family and the church.”

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CANADA
CBC News

The trial of a former Oblate priest resumed this morning in Iqaluit.

Sixty-six-year-old Eric Dejaeger faces dozens of charges of alleged sexual abuse against children in Igloolik three decades ago.

Today, Crown prosecutor Doug Curliss made an application before the court asking whether he can cross-examine Eric Dejaeger regarding his criminal record.

Curliss argued there are questions surrounding Dejaeger’s character and morality and he wants to ask him about some of his testimony.

Dejaeger’s lawyer Malcolm Kempt says the Crown’s application should simply be denied.

He says the Crown has already asked leading questions of his client

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DEUTSCHLAND
Sachsische Zeitung

[EINLADUNG ZUR PRESSEKONFERENZ AM 24. MÄRZ 2014 IN BONN – Deutsche Bischofskonferenz]]

[Summary: The German Bishops’ Conference once again has started a research project on sexual abuse of minors. The project was approved last week in Munster at the meeting of the conference and is to include priests, deacons and male members of religious orders.]

Bonn. Die Deutsche Bischofskonferenz startet erneut ein Forschungsprojekt zum Thema „Sexueller Missbrauch an Minderjährigen“. Während der Frühjahrs-Vollversammlung in der vergangenen Woche in Münster sei das Projekt „Sexueller Missbrauch an Minderjährigen durch katholische Priester, Diakone und männliche Ordensangehörige im Bereich der Deutschen Bischofskonferenz“ neu beschlossen worden, hieß es am Montag in einer Mitteilung.

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UNITED STATES
BishopAccountability.org

Summary of Case: James F. Kuntz was ordained a Jesuit priest of the New York Province in 1977. He spent his career as an educator in New York, New Jersey and California. From 1994-1999 he was in Abuja, Nairobi where he was the founding principal of a boarding school for children grades 7-12. In February 2008 Kuntz was found to have child pornography on his computer. He pleaded guilty to possession of child pornography in September of that year.

Ordained: 1977

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UNITED KINGDOM
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests

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

A Catholic friar from Camden has pleaded guilty to possession of thousands of extremely graphic child pornography images. We are glad that that he is facing justice, but concerned about potential victims.

[Ham & High]

Timothy Gardner was a religious education teacher at Maria Fidelis Catholic School. It is always extremely troubling when child abuse allegations surface, but it is even more worrisome when that person has worked directly with children. There are hundreds of potential victims.

We hope that anyone who saw, suspects, or suffered abuse by Gardner will contact police. And we hope that Catholic Church officials will aggressively reach out to any possible victims or witnesses.

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UNITED KINGDOM
Ham & High

by Tom Marshall
Thursday, March 6, 2014

Camden education chiefs have sought to reassure parents after a Catholic friar, who taught at one of the borough’s schools, admitted downloading thousands of sickening child abuse images.

Gospel Oak friar Timothy Gardner, described as a “senior figure” in Catholic education by the council, is facing jail after he pleaded guilty at Southwark Crown Court on Monday to 10 counts of making indecent images of children.

He was found with 5,005 pictures. Some were graded at levels four and five, the most extreme categories, which can include scenes of bondage and rape.

Gardner, 41, of St Dominic’s Priory Church, Southampton Road, taught religious education (RE) at Maria Fidelis Catholic School for six years from 2006 to 2012.

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IRELAND
The Journal

BY GREG HARKIN – 17 MARCH 2014

A RETIRED Dublin schoolteacher has spoken of her heartache after her twin brother, a parish priest, was falsely accused of indecent assault.

Fr Eugene Boland (67) returned to his ministry at the weekend, four years after the allegations were made against him and more than 18 months after a jury took an hour to clear him on five charges.

St Mary’s Church in Killyclogher, just outside Omagh in Co Tyrone, was packed with 900 parishioners as Fr Boland returned to ministry, just days after being cleared to do so by church authorities in Rome.

The priest, originally from Moville in Co Donegal, wept as he hugged family and friends.

“This should never have happened,” Fr Eugene’s twin sister Aine told the Herald after the Saturday night Mass.

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NEW JERSEY
The Star-Ledger

By Jeff Goldman/The Star-Ledger
on March 17, 2014

Clergyman removed from churches in the Newark Archdiocese following credible sexual abuse charges can be buried in their ceremonial robes, according to a report on NorthJersey.com.

The policy, approved by Archbishop John J. Myers and the Presbyteral Council in November, also mandates that obituaries not include the time, date or location of the funeral, the report said. The funeral also isn’t allowed to take place in a church where the priest worked or lived.

The archdiocese’s goal is to keep the funerals out of the spotlight and avoid giving “more pain back to the community than they’ve already been through,” spokesman Jim Goodness told the website. A letter to priests at the Newark Archdiocese’s 961 churches also indicated the policy was implemented to protect the priests’ families and avoid negative media coverage, according to the report

Victims rights groups assert that credibly accused religious figures should not have the status of a priest when they’re laid to rest. One group, Road to Recovery Inc, is upset that priests removed from their posts can be buried in Mass vestments and that other priests are encouraged to attend, the report said.

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AUSTRALIA
Daily Telegraph

Monsignor Brian Rayner reveals he ‘welled up’ when he took John Ellis to meet abuser Father Aidan Duggan in a nursing home

JANET FIFE-YEOMANS THE DAILY TELEGRAPH MARCH 17, 2014

CARDINAL George Pell’s former right hand man has disputed evidence given to the royal commission into child sex abuse.

Cardinal Pell has told the commission in a statement that the reason the church fought legal action against a victim of child sex abuse was because he had been told the victim wanted millions – not just $100,000.

However Monsignor Brian Rayner, the former chancellor of the Catholic Archdiocese of Sydney, said today that he would have told the Cardinal, then an archbishop, that the victim, John Ellis, had suggested to settle for $100,000 through the church’s controversial Towards Healing protocol.

“I had regular meetings with the archbishop and I would have kept him informed,” Monsignor Rayner said.

The archdiocese ended up spending around $1.5 million in legal costs but it won the case with a ruling that the church was not a legal entity and could not be sued, blocking any other similar claims against it around the country in what has become known as the Ellis decision.

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CANADA
Grande Prairier

Monday, March 17, 2014

By Erica Fisher
Grande Prairie

The Catholic priest accused of sexual assault of a minor is expected to make his first court appearance in Peace River today.

59 year old Abraham Azhakathu of Manning was arrested earlier this month, after the minor reported assaults that took place in 2013.

He has since been released but cannot live in Manning, where he practiced at the time, or be alone with anyone under the age of 16.

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AUSTRALIA
The Australian

DAN BOX THE AUSTRALIAN MARCH 18, 2014

CARDINAL George Pell and another senior Catholic cleric have given conflicting accounts of the former archbishop of Sydney’s handling of a controversial child-sex abuse case.

The cardinal’s former chancellor, Brian Rayner, told the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse he felt sidelined during the litigation and believed the abuse in question had taken place, contrary to what the church argued.

The 2007 case, in which former altar boy John Ellis unsuccessfully sued the Catholic Church over his abuse at the hands of a Sydney priest, is being investigated by the royal commission.

Church documents tendered in evidence show Cardinal Pell subsequently apologised to Mr Ellis, claiming not to have known about his previous offer to settle the claim for a fraction of the $1.5 million the church ultimately spent defending itself.

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NEW JERSEY
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests

For immediate release: Monday, March 17, 2014

Statement by New Jersey SNAP leader Mark Crawford ( 732-632-7687, mecrawf@comcast.net )

Once again, for clearly selfish reasons, Newark Catholic officials are taking secretive steps to reduce public attention on predator priests. Shame on them.

[The Record]

Church officials will claim that this is about being sensitive to victims. It’s not. Church officials’ use of the phrase “negative publicity” shows their true intent: it’s about keeping predator priests out of the news. Church officials know that every time a child molesting cleric is mentioned in public, other victims, witnesses and whistleblowers might step forward. Preventing such disclosures continues to be a top priority in the Catholic hierarchy.

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MINNESOTA
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests

For immediate release: Monday, March 17, 2014

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

Priest with child sex abuse allegations is promoted
He is accused of molesting at least four boys & was sued
But he went overseas and is second-in-command of a diocese
And at least one child sex lawsuit against him has been settled
Argentine native also was ordained in and worked in Winona MN

A Catholic priest who worked in Winona and allegedly molested several boys is now second-in-command at a diocese in Paraguay. And a victims’ group wants Minnesota bishops to reach out to others he has hurt and urge the Pope to intervene and defrock him.

[Pocono Record]

Fr. Carlos Urrutigoity was accused of sexually abusing at least four boys at St. Gregory’s Academy in a town called Moscow in northeastern Pennsylvania between 2002-2004. At least two civil suits were filed and one of them was settled for $380,000. Scranton Catholic officials sent Fr. Urrutigoity to a church treatment center which concluded that he “should be removed from active ministry and his (priestly) faculties should be revoked.”

But last week, a Boston-based research group called BishopAccountability.org disclosed that Fr. Urrutigoity is now in the Diocese of Ciudad del Este, Paraguay and is its Vicar General.

In the 1990s, Fr. Urrutigioity lived and taught at the St. Pius X Seminary in Winona. He belonged to a controversial and very conservative religious order known as the Society of St. Pius X.

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CANADA/UNITED STATES
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests

For immediate release: Monday, March 17, 2014

For more information: Melanie Jula Sakoda ( 925-708-6175 cell, melanie.sakoda@gmail.com ), Cappy Larson ( cappy@rlarson.com ), David Clohessy (314-566-9790 cell, SNAPclohessy@aol.com)

Clergy sex abuse victims beg synod to defrock archbishop
He was Orthodox Church’s highest ranking cleric in Canada
But he was just found guilty of sexually assaulting a young boy
SNAP to church officials: “You’re breaking your own abuse policy”

Members of an abuse survivors’ group are urging Orthodox Church officials to defrock Canada’s highest ranking archbishop who has been found guilty of molesting a child.

Leaders of SNAP, the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, say that the denomination’s panel which is responsible for disciplining clergymen is breaking church policy by not permanently ousting Archbishop Seraphim Storheim, who was convicted in January of sexually violating an 11 year old boy.

[Winnipeg Free Press]

The synod of bishops of the Long Island based Orthodox Church in America (OCA) will begin its spring session in Syosset, New York, tomorrow. Among the items on their agenda are further “decisions” concerning Storheim.

[Orthodox Church in America]

[Pokrov]

The Policies, Standards, and Procedures on Sexual Misconduct, approved by the OCA’s synod at their Fall 2013 meeting, state that “Any clergy … found to have committed child sexual abuse … shall be deposed by the Holy Synod of Bishops, and shall be permanently prohibited from exercising any functions or responsibilities of parish ministry. …”

[Orthodox Church in America]

“This is a no-brainer and should have happened weeks ago,” said Cappy Larson of SNAP. “Both Archbishop Seraphim’s guilt and church policy are crystal clear. Church officials’ delays and indecision are helping a criminal and hurting his victims.”

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UNITED STATES
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests

For immediate release: Monday, March 17

For more information: Barbara Blaine, SNAP Founder and President +1 (312)399-4747, SNAPblaine@gmail.com and David Clohessy, SNAP Executive Director +1 (314) 566-9790 cell, SNAPclohessy@aol.com

Victims upset about papal sainthood
Several travel to Rome soon to hold vigil
Group: Honoring John Paul II “rubs salt into deep wounds”
“It also will likely encourage more church cover ups,” they say
SNAP “Church must denounce, not praise, those who hurt kids”

An international support group for clergy sex abuse victims plans to hold a vigil on the eve of the canonization of Pope John Paul II.

“He did many things well but for decades, he turned a blind eye to clergy sex crimes and cover ups,” said Barbara Blaine, president of SNAP, the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests. “For leaving kids in harms’ way, he should not receive further honors and praise because rewarding wrongdoers encourages wrongdoing.”

Few dispute that Pope John Paul II “did almost nothing to help stop priests from raping children and stop bishops from hiding these crimes,” Blaine said.

SNAP believes that the pontiff “must have known” about the multiple sexual abuse allegations against Legionaries of Christ founder Fr Marcial Maciel Degollado. Instead of disciplining or defrocking Fr. Maciel, the pope held a highly publicized special ceremony celebrating the anniversary of Maciel’s ordination.

[Irish Times]

“It sends a disturbing message when Catholic officials, who ignored or concealed abuse, are honored,” said Miguel Hurtado of London SNAP. “The message is ‘keep putting the reputations of officials above victims, keep putting children in danger. There will be no negative consequences for you in this church.’”

“Catholic officials must punish, not praise, those who hurt kids, whether directly or indirectly. Not doing so leads to continued cover ups,” said Nicky Davis, Australian SNAP Leader. “It also rubs salt into already deep wounds of victims and betrayed Catholics.”

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UNITED STATES
National Catholic Reporter

Tom Roberts | Mar. 17, 2014

MELBOURNE AND SYDNEY, AUSTRALIA More than a hundred people turned out on a Sunday afternoon in late November to the crypt of historic St. Patrick’s Church in Sydney for a presentation by a forensic psychologist on the sex abuse scandal jarring the Catholic community in Australia.

During a question-and-answer session, a woman in the audience made a sarcastic reference to priests once thinking they were “ontologically different.” The phrase provoked an immediate howl of laughter, as if she’d delivered a punch line of a joke.

This over-50 (and probably well over-60) crowd, the equivalent of a Call to Action gathering in the United States, represents the very generation raised on such notions of clerical superiority and priestly otherness. It is the same generation that, in terms of numbers of priests, nuns and people in the pews, had brought Australian Catholicism to a zenith not too many years ago.

A linchpin of that phenomenon — a clergy standing “in persona Christi” and marked indelibly as something different from the rest of humanity — is now as much taken for granted as a laughing point as it once was a tenet of faith. Granted, the line was an offhand observation in a presentation and discussion of more immediate matters. But it contained, like an exploration of Catholic DNA, a key to a striking transformation of Catholic life that appears to be occurring in regions where Catholicism once seemed a settled and unchanging reality.

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CANADA
Sylvia’s Site

The sex abuse trial of now-defrocked Oblate priest Eric Dejaeger continues tomorrow (Monday, 17 March 2014),. While Dejaeger is no longer a Roman Catholic priest he is still an Oblate.

You may recall that the Dejaeger sex abuse trial was adjourned 23 January of this year to allow the Crown time to prepare a legal case to allow the introduction of Dejaeger’s criminal record as evidence.

Prior to the adjournment Dejaeger had been testifying in his own defence. He has entered guilty pleas to to eight of the approximately 80 charges against him. A handful of charges were dismissed – Dejaeger, who has been twice convicted in the past, denies all of the multitude of other charges against him.

According to Nunatsiaq Online, at the time the trial was adjourned Justice Kilpatrick, the presiding judge, said that, starting 17 March 2014, the trial will take a week to wrap up “to tie up loose ends.” “It will be over that week,” Kilpatrick warned the lawyers. “All evidence must be in.”

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AUSTRALIA
Daily Telegraph

Disabled boy wanted to kill sex predator, Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse told

SALLY BROOKS THE ADVERTISER MARCH 17, 2014

THE mother of an intellectually disabled youth allegedly sexually abused by paedophile bus driver Brian Perkins two decades ago is still searching for answers from the Catholic Church, an inquiry has heard.

After submitting a list of 35 questions to Archbishop Philip Wilson, Helen Gitsham told the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse on Monday that she is still waiting for them to be answered.

The inquiry is probing the handling of claims of child sexual abuse at St Ann’s Special School at Marion between 1985 and 1991.

In her opening address, counsel assisting the commission Sophie David said Perkins was employed by the school as a bus driver. “He also volunteered in the woodwork class and provided respite care to parents on weekends,” Ms David said.

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AUSTRALIA
The West Australian

BY MARGARET SCHEIKOWSKI
March 17, 2014

An intellectually disabled boy became so angry at being repeatedly sexually abused by his school’s bus driver that he put a knife to the man’s face, an inquiry has been told.

“I wanted to kill him, I wanted him to die,” the now 38-year-old man told the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse on Monday, at its first Adelaide sitting.

The commission’s ninth case study is focused on events from 1986 to 1991 at St Ann’s Special School for children with intellectual disabilities.

It will investigate responses made by the South Australian police, the school and the Catholic Archdiocese of Adelaide to claims of child sexual abuse by Brian Perkins.

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NORTHERN IRELAND
Belfast Telegraph

BY GREG HARKIN – 17 MARCH 2014

Almost 1,000 worshippers burst into applause 17 times as they welcomed a parish priest back to their church after he was cleared of child sex abuse.

Nearly four years to the day after false assault allegations were made against him, Father Eugene Boland looked nervous as he returned to his flock in Killyclogher near Omagh on Saturday.

Around 900 people crammed into St Mary’s Chapel and hundreds more in the parish hall next door to welcome back the 67-year-old cleric.

Fr Boland was returning to the ministry 18 months after being found not guilty by a jury on five charges of indecent assault, “inappropriate touching” of a girl, then aged 15, in Londonderry more than 20 years ago.

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CALIFORNIA
KABC

SAN BERNARDINO, Calif. (KABC) — The lead pastor of Muscoy United Methodist Church in San Bernardino has been arrested on suspicion of molesting at least two boys.

Stephen Howard, 54, was taken into custody Thursday and booked at the Central Detention Center for lewd acts with a child under 14, oral copulation with a person under 18, and sodomy with a person under 18. He was being held in lieu of $25,000 bail.

Investigators say at least two victims, one 14 years old and the other 23 years old, claimed Howard paid them for sex acts.

The 23-year-old says Howard has been abusing him since he was 9 years old. The alleged abuse occurred in the cities of San Bernardino, Rancho Cucamonga and Fontana.

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AUSTRALIA
Brisbane Times

March 17, 2014

Annette Blackwell

A close associate of Cardinal George Pell has contradicted the former archbishop’s assertion that he was unaware of how much money abuse victim John Ellis was seeking from the church.

Monsignor Brian Rayner was chancellor and vicar-general of the archdiocese when Mr Ellis went through the internal church system of dealing with victims, Towards Healing.

Mr Ellis was abused for five years by priest Father Aidan Duggan at Bass Hill in Sydney, starting in 1974, when Mr Ellis was 13.

The monsignor, who represented the church authority in Towards Healing, told the royal commission into child sexual abuse on Monday he had told then-archbishop Dr Pell that Mr Ellis wanted $100,000 to cover counselling and accommodation.

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IRELAND
Irish Examiner

Sixteen survivors of the Magdalene Laundries have sought a review of the amount of compensation they have been offered by the State.

By Conall Ó Fátharta
Irish Examiner Reporter

According to figures released by the Department of Justice, 722 survivors have applied for redress, with 321 letters of formal offer having been issued.

To date, 238 survivors have accepted the offer, with 211 payments having been issued at a cost of in excess of €7.6m.

However, 16 women have formally asked for an internal review of the offer they have received. Of that number, five have been decided by the review officer, with one survivor currently appealing her offer to the Office of the Ombudsman.

Steven O’Riordan of the Magdalene Survivors Together has repeatedly expressed concern that survivors were being offered lesser amounts of compensation than they were entitled to due to the records of the Orders not matching the accounts of the women in terms of duration of stay.

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IRELAND
Irish Independent

SARAH MACDONALD – UPDATED 17 MARCH 2014

Priests have “clearly suffered a lot” and need support structures to help raise their morale, the Catholic Bishop of Limerick has warned.

Speaking to the Irish Independent, Bishop Brendan Leahy revealed he has created two new offices in his diocese, one of which is aimed specifically at boosting priests’ morale as many of them are still reeling from the fallout of the abuse scandals.

Dr Leahy, who next month will celebrate his first year in office, said he has appointed Fr Muiris O’Connor as episcopal vicar for the pastoral care of priests.

It is an entirely new position and will be full-time, such is the importance of the role in the eyes of the bishop.

Comparing priests with a seismograph, Dr Leahy said priests are the ones registering the earthquake that is going through the church in terms of changes, new structures and a transition to a new era.

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AUSTRALIA
ABC News

[with audio]

An intellectually disabled man has told the Royal Commission he was abused by a paedophile bus driver at his Catholic school in the early 1990s. The Commission is sitting in Adelaide for the first time to investigate how the Catholic Church and South Australian police handled the case of paedophile bus driver Brian Perkins, and how the victims and their families have been affected.

Transcript

ELEANOR HALL: The sexual abuse Royal Commission is holding its first hearings in Adelaide today to investigate how the Catholic Church and the South Australian Police handled the case of a paedophile bus driver.

This morning an intellectually disabled man set out how he was abused by the paedophile bus driver, Brian Perkins, at his Catholic school in the early 1990s.

Sam Donovan is at the hearing in Adelaide and joins us now.

Sam, what did this first witness tell the hearing about what happened to him?

SAMANTHA DONOVAN: Well, it’s been very disturbing evidence, Eleanor.

The significance of the evidence of the witness known as LH is that of the 30 or so boys who were abused by Brian Perkins at St Anne’s School in the early 1990s, LH is pretty much the only one who has any power of speech. Most of the boys who were abused during those years were severely intellectually disabled and unable to describe what happened to them.

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AUSTRALIA
ABC News

By Nina Tietzel, Loukas Founten

The case of a paedophile school bus driver who abused dozens of intellectually disabled boys will be the focus of this week’s royal commission hearings in Adelaide.

Brian Perkins already had a criminal record for sexual abuse when he began working at St Ann’s Special School.

He sexually abused up to 30 boys in the late 1980s and early 1990s, including Peter Mitchell’s intellectually disabled son.

Mr Mitchell says the abuse of his son has scarred the whole family and he has called on the Catholic Church to end a 12-year civil case for compensation.

“I’ve had a heart attack since the allegations came out. My wife is on heavy doses of anti-depressants, as well as myself,” Mr Mitchell told the ABC.

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AUSTRALIA
The Guardian (UK)

Australian Associated Press
theguardian.com, Monday 17 March 2014

Cardinal George Pell was told an abuse victim was seeking only $100,000 from the Catholic church, contrary to earlier evidence that Pell denied he knew the figure, a royal commission has heard.

The commission is examining John Ellis’s experiences when he approached the Catholic Archdiocese of Sydney over sexual abuse by a priest between 1974 and 1979.

It heard last week that Ellis sought an ex-gratia payment of $100,000 because of needs arising from ongoing trauma following abuse by Father Aidan Duggan at Bass Hill.

Monsignor Brian Rayner, who was chancellor and vicar-general of the archdiocese between 2003 and 2005, told the inquiry on Monday he ran all financial matters by Pell. As such, he was Pell’s right-hand man in administrative affairs.

Asked by counsel for the commission Gail Furness SC whether he had told Pell that Ellis and his wife Nicola had asked for $100,000 for counselling and accommodation costs related to the impact of the abuse, Rayner replied: “Yes, he would have been told that.”

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AUSTRALIA
ABC News

BY COURT REPORTER CANDICE MARCUS, STAFF

March 17, 2014

The mother of an intellectually disabled boy abused by paedophile bus driver Brian Perkins has broken down on the witness stand at a royal commission hearing in Adelaide.

The woman’s son was one of many intellectually disabled boys molested by Perkins while they were students of St Ann’s Special School, run by the Catholic Church.

Perkins was not jailed until more than a decade after the abuse, and died in jail in 2009.

He already had a criminal record for sexual abuse when he began working at St Ann’s Special School, and sexually abused up to 30 boys in the late 1980s and early 1990s.

Many of the other parents whose children were molested by Perkins did not find out until years later, the inquiry was told.

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UNITED STATES
Salon

The final message of the HBO series reinforces a dangerous American mythology — that the end justifies the means

JOSEPH LAYCOCK, RELIGION DISPATCHES

For the first seven episodes True Detective was actually a struggle between two modern and intertwined mythologies of evil. In last night’s finale one of those mythologies won in spectacular fashion.

Nic Pizzolatto constructed True Detective’s plot from a pair of sources, the first of which occurred in Ponchataoula, Louisiana, in 2005, when a former pastor told police that his church had turned from “Jesus to the devil.” He claimed they’d been holding Satanic rituals for years that involved animal sacrifice and the molestation of children. Or, as Jezebel put it in its headline, “Did a Horrifying Real Satanic Sex Abuse Case Inspire True Detective?”

While the case in Ponchataoula generated headlines about Satanic cults on both sides of the Atlantic, the details of Satanic worship were wholly invented. Accounts of black robes, blood orgies, and the rest appear to have been an “atrocity tale” in which accused child molesters sought to gain sympathy with claims of Satanic brainwashing. Buried in the bottom of one story about the case was a report from an FBI agent that no pentagrams or animal blood were found at the church—even with a “cult informant” guiding the investigation.

The second source is the book The King in Yellow, written in 1895 by Robert W. Chambers. Part of the fin de siècle decadence movement, this work is an anthology of horror stories about a fictional play called “The King in Yellow,” which renders anyone who reads it insane. Chambers presents snippets of this play that allude to a forbidden city called Carcosa—a trope first introduced by Ambrose Bierce in 1891. The King in Yellow mythology has since been invoked by H.P. Lovecraft and The Blue Oyster Cult.

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AUSTRALIA
Northern Rivers Echo

Mark Furler 17th Mar 2014

A SUNSHINE Coast church accused of failing to take action against the man who killed Daniel Morcombe says it has removed four pedophiles from its congregation in recent years.

Two of those were sent to jail.

And a senior police officer, who has worked for more than 15 years in child protection and also attends the large Woombye church, said hundreds of registered sex offenders were living on the Sunshine Coast and thousands more across Queensland.

In 2011, during the Daniel Morcombe inquest, police revealed they had more than 500 new persons of interest in relation to Daniel.

At the time of Daniel’s disappearance there were reports, which police refused to confirm at the time, of more than 70 registered pedophiles in the Palmwoods-Woombye area.

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LOUISIANA
Daily Mail (UK)

EXCLUSIVE: Babies in black dresses abused while laying in a Pentagram, drinking cat’s blood and Satanic writings on church walls: The twisted confessions of the pedophile pastor from Louisiana who inspired ‘True Detective’

By LAURA COLLINS IN AMITE, LOUISIANA

At 1.15pm on 16 May, 2005, Pastor Louis Lamonica Jr strolled into Detective Stan Carpenter’s office in Livingston, Louisiana and made his confession. What he had to say ‘floored’ the detective.

The pastor of Hosanna Church in nearby Hammond claimed he had performed satanic rituals, child abuse and animal sacrifice in the church and that he was not alone.

He named his fellow perpetrators and he named their child victims. It marked the beginning of the Hosanna Church Scandal and exposed a vicious pedophile ring in a case whose shockwaves reverberate in Lamonica’s former parish of Tangipahoe to this day.

This week writer Nic Pizzolatto, hinted that this case was his inspiration for HBO’s massive hit ‘True Detective,’ in which detectives Marty Hart and Rust Cohle, played by Woody Harrelson and Matthew McConaughey, uncover a string of ritualistic satanic murders committed under the cover of a powerful evangelical establishment in South Louisiana.

Now, for the first time, MailOnline has seen the full shocking confession that fired the starting pistol on the most notorious scandal in recent Church history, reviewed hundreds of pages of Lamonica’s own writing and spoken to the officer who took the pastor’s confession that day.

Major Carpenter, 62, recalled: ‘Lamonica walked into my office and sat down, just as calm as you and me talking now.

‘I was Detective Supervisor at the time. When he came in he basically thought that after he told us what he did he was just going to go on about his business of the day.

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AUSTRALIA
The Australian

DAN BOX THE AUSTRALIAN MARCH 17, 2014

A SENIOR Catholic cleric has given a conflicting account to that of Cardinal George Pell about the church’s handling of a child sexual abuse case.

The Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse is currently investigating the case of John Ellis, a former altar boy who unsuccessfully attempted to sue the church after being abused by a Sydney priest.

During a private meeting in 2009, the commission heard, Cardinal Pell said he did not know Mr Ellis had previously offered to settle for a fraction of the roughly $1.5 million the church ultimately spent on the case.

An internal church file note of the meeting, tendered to the commission states: “The cardinal went on to indicate that he had no idea that Mr Ellis had sought an ex gratia payment of $100,000.”

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AUSTRALIA
Sydney Morning Herald

March 17, 2014

Catherine Armitage
Senior Writer

A senior Catholic Church official has admitted he swore a “deceptive” and wrong affidavit for court proceedings in the John Ellis case, the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to child sex abuse has heard.

The Archdiocese’s Chancellor, Monsignor Brian Rayner, apologised that an affidavit he swore in the court proceedings in 2004 was “deceptive”. He agreed he had information about the abuser Father Aidan Duggan’s appointments to the parish of Bass Hill between 1974 and 1978. Yet he had signed an affidavit conveying the impression the church had no evidence Father Duggan was at Bass Hill during the years Mr Ellis alleged he was abusing him there except for 1975. “If the affidavit is deceptive then I regret that aspect,” Monsignor Rayner said. He said he did not prepare it and did not read it carefully nor take the opportunity to correct it.

Sixteen years after they last had sexual contact, the former altar boy Mr Ellis visited Duggan at the Little Sisters of the Poor Nursing Home at Randwick.

The church had used the excuse that Duggan was too far gone in senile dementia to answer allegations against him as a basis for treating Mr Ellis’ claim of abuse as “uncorroborated”.

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NEW JERSEY
The Record

MARCH 16, 2014

BY JEFF GREEN
STAFF WRITER
THE RECORD

Related: Letter from Bishop Edgar da Cunha to priests about the new archdiocese policy (PDF)

Related: Funeral arrangements policy (PDF)

The Archdiocese of Newark is rolling out a policy for the funerals of priests who were removed from ministry on sexual abuse accusations that it says caters to both the sensitivities of surviving victims and the clerics’ families.

But victims and their advocates say the policy, approved by Newark Archbishop John J. Myers, bends in favor of the offending priests, still providing them a celebratory funeral that all archdiocese clergy are encouraged to attend and in which they are buried in their liturgical robes.

The policy, sent to the archdiocese’s 961 Roman Catholic priests earlier this month, requires the funeral Mass to be held away from any churches where an offending priest worked or lived. It also stipulates that obituaries be stripped of photos and the time, date and location of funeral services.

Depending on their restrictions, the priests can be buried in their Mass vestments.

The policy applies only to priests who were removed from active ministry because a church review process concluded they had abused children.

An archdiocese official said in a letter to clergy this month that the policy was intended to protect the priests’ families and shield the church from further negative media coverage.

Jim Goodness, an archdiocese spokesman, played down the letter, saying the intention of the policy is to keep the funerals low-key, private affairs, out of communities where pain might be relived by those affected by alleged abusers.

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AUSTRALIA
ABC News

[with audio]

The Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse is sitting in Adelaide for the first time to investigate how the Catholic Church and South Australia Police handled the case of paedophile Brian Perkins who abused about 30 intellectually disabled children at St Ann’s Special School in the early 1990s. A lawyer acting for several of the families says the Church must explain why it failed to alert most of the families to the abuse and the police must justify why it took them nearly a decade to bring Perkins to justice

Transcript

CHRIS ULHMANN: This week, for the first time the Catholic Church will be asked to explain publicly why it failed to tell more than 20 families that their children may have been abused by a paedophile bus driver at St Ann’s Special School in Adelaide in the early 1990s.

The Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse is about to hold its first hearings in Adelaide and it’s not just the church that will face uncomfortable questions.

Samantha Donovan reports.

SAMANTHA DONOVAN: In the early 1990s about 30 families began to notice dramatic changes in the behaviour of their sons who were attending the Catholic Church’s St Ann’s Special School in Adelaide.

Lawyer Peter Humphries.

PETER HUMPHRIES: Going from a child who was notwithstanding a disability, friendly and socialised, to someone who became very introspective, sexually aggressive, molesting immediate family members: step mothers, sisters and behaving very, very inappropriately in public and they were told in each case, no, the school had no knowledge of anything that might’ve accounted for that.

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AUSTRALIA
ABC News

[with audio]

Francis Sullivan is the chief executive of the Truth, Justice and Healing Council which is coordinating the Catholic Church’s response to the Royal Commission. He spoke to AM about the about the St Ann’s case.

Transcript

CHRIS ULHMANN: Francis Sullivan is the chief executive of the Truth, Justice and Healing Council which is coordinating the Catholic Church’s response to the Royal Commission.

He spoke with Samantha Donovan about the St Ann’s case.

FRANCIS SULLIVAN: This is a horrible case and the Church’s handling in all its detail, forensic detail needs to be examined.

SAMANTHA DONOVAN: One parent who AM has spoken to has an online petition with 88,000 signatures calling on the Church to settle his son’s compensation claim; why hasn’t the church settled the claim all these years later?

FRANCIS SULLIVAN: I’m not quite sure but one thing’s very important, is that litigation isn’t the way to best address sex abuse cases and I hope that all the families that have an action against the Church can take up the offer of getting into mediation so that compensation and settlement can happen quickly, not be in a protracted adversarial litigation process.

SAMANTHA DONOVAN: It’s been more than 12 years though since some of these families lodged their claims for compensation, why is the Church taking so long?

FRANCIS SULLIVAN: I think the time period that this has taken is a matter of concern and again, the Church needs to explain how it has taken so long to get everything organised and addressed.

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AUSTRALIA
Australian Teacher Magazine

ADELAIDE, March 17 – The royal commission into child sexual abuse is holding its first sitting in Adelaide to examine church and police responses to claims children were sexually abused at St Ann’s Special School.

The school’s former bus driver, Brian Perkins, was arrested in 2001 on charges of sexually abusing profoundly disabled children at the school.

He pleaded guilty to five offences involving three students, although as many as 30 children were understood to have been abused by him.

Perkins was sentenced to 10 years in jail, where he died in 2009.

The Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse will consider the responses by the Catholic Archdiocese of Adelaide and the South Australian police to the original allegations involving Perkins.

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MICHIGAN
Midland Daily News

Sunday, March 16, 2014

By Nancy Janoch, Nancy Rivet, Susan Dusseau and Harry Grether

This year, the local Catholic organization, Mid-Michigan Voice of the Faithful will be 10 years old.

Formed in the Tri-City area in 2004, this group is an affiliate of the organization that began in 2002 in Massachusetts as a response to the sexual abuse crisis in the Catholic Church. Since then, it has grown to more than 30,000 members in the United States and in 21 countries. If many have never even heard of this group in the past years, some may ask how this is relevant to Catholics here in the Tri-City area?

When the first people joined together for VOTF, they were shocked, hurt and upset. They saw the great injustice of the sexual abuse by clergy and the following cover-up, and they demanded that changes begin in our church. VOTF became committed to a mission to provide a prayerful, Spirit-filled way for all Catholics to actively participate in the guidance and governance of the present-day Church. This follows Canon Law, which states that the laity “have the right and even at times the duty to manifest to the sacred pastors their opinion on matters which pertain to the good of the Church and to make their opinion known to the rest of the Christian faithful, without prejudice to the integrity of faith and morals, with reverence toward their pastors, and attentive to common advantage and the dignity of persons.” (Canon 212 §3)

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PHILADELPHIA (PA)
Catholics4Change

MARCH 16, 2014 BY SUSAN MATTHEWS

The Philadelphia Archdiocese was a topic this morning on “Inside Story,” a local news show on ABC. The panel discussed the recent move by the Archdiocese to discontinue tuition-free education at archdiocesan schools for the children of clergy sex abuse victims. They uniformly agreed that it was mishandled – especially on the communications front. The “best case study of bad public relations,” said journalist Larry Platt. Sadly, the public relations response mirrors the pastoral response to victims. No one was buying the cost cutting argument, either. Renee Amore pointed out that the archdiocese paid for priests’ legal fees.

They went on to discuss the March 22 Healing Mass. When panel moderator Tamala Edwards asked communications strategist Jeff Jubelirer what he thought, his response was – And? Mass is nice, but what else? Panelists agreed that archdiocesan efforts are falling far short of expectations. Larry Platt commented on the lack of an ongoing archdiocesan program. That reminded me of the “Honesty, Healing and Hope in Christ: Confronting Sexual Violence in Our Archdiocese,” program Archbishop Chaput rolled out in May of 2012. The program was supposed to take place at the parish level and consist of four phases over six months. That went well. I’m sure it made an especially huge difference at Our Lady of Calvary as parents were left uninformed about their pastor Father John Paul.

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UNITED STATES
BishopAccountability.org

Summary of Case: James E. Jacobson was ordained a priest of the Portland Province of the Society of Jesus in 1959. He lived and worked in remote Alaskan villages until 1976, when he went to Berkeley, California for what was to be a year-long sabbatical. His stay in the area was extended another three years, during which time he did community organizing in Oakland. He returned to Alaska in 1979 intending to organize native Alaskans, but was soon assigned to a chaplaincy at the state penitentiary in Salem, Oregon. His role there lasted until he was removed in 2005. Documents show that Jacobson’s superior and a Fairbanks bishop knew of “serious moral concerns” about Jacobson in 1967, including that he had fathered two children. Neither Jacobson, the Jesuits nor the diocese took responsibility for Jacobson’s offspring. In 2005 he was accused in a lawsuit of sexually assaulting two native Alaskan women, one in 1965 and the other in 1975. Both women gave birth to sons. DNA tests showed in 2005 that the children were Jacobson’s. He was subsequently removed from ministry and sent to live in a Jesuit residence in Spokane. In a 2006 lawsuit Jacobson was accused of raping a 16-year-old girl in 1967, in a remote Alaskan village. His accuser said she told two Jesuits at the time of the abuse, who did nothing in response. In 2007 Jacobson admitted to fathering four children, sexual involvement with seven Alaskan village women, and to visiting prostitutes during trips to Anchorage and Fairbanks.

Ordained: 1959

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AUSTRALIA
The Australian

DAN BOX THE AUSTRALIAN MARCH 17, 2014

THE Catholic Church spent years disputing the account of an altar boy who claimed to have been sexually abused by a Sydney priest, despite having been told almost two decades earlier that the priest had abused another child.

The case, currently being investigated by the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse, sparked widespread controversy after the victim, John Ellis, lost his bid to sue the church in 2007.

Church documents tendered to the commission also show the priest, Aidan Duggan, worked as a chaplain in Sydney’s Royal Alexandra Hospital for Children and as “controller of a flourishing childcare centre” years after the first report of his abuse.

The Archdiocese of Sydney spent years contesting Mr Ellis’s claim to have been sexually abused during the 1970s on the basis that Duggan was too infirm to be interviewed and there was no record of any other allegation against him.

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AUSTRALIA
Sydney Morning Herald

March 17, 2014

Frank Brennan

Cardinal George Pell is about to appear before the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse. He will face a detailed cross-examination under oath by Justice Peter McClellan and counsel assisting Gail Furness, SC. They will focus on the archdiocese of Sydney’s handling of the John Ellis case. But they will also take the opportunity to question Pell about the history of the Australian Catholic Church’s handling of abuse allegations.

Pell has often expressed his disgust and regret at the sexual abuse of children by church workers, especially priests. Since 1996, when he was appointed archbishop of Melbourne, Pell has worked hard to reduce the prospect of such abuse and to set in place procedures for helping victims and weeding out perpetrators. Initially, he decided to establish his own process in Melbourne, rather than working with the other bishops and religious leaders who were developing the Towards Healing protocol.

Pell has already faced the Victorian parliamentary inquiry into child abuse. Having been auxiliary bishop in Melbourne between 1987 and 1996, he told that inquiry: ”As an auxiliary bishop to Archbishop Little, I did not have the authority to handle these matters and had only some general impressions about the response that was being made at that time but this was sufficient to make it clear to me that this was an issue which needed urgent attention and that we needed to do much better in our response.”

The Victorian inquiry was critical of Frank Little and the Catholic Church processes before 1996. Many people inside and outside the church were left wondering if Archbishop Little didn’t respond adequately between 1987 and 1996, why didn’t his auxiliary bishop, Pell, do something? And if the archbishop knew during those nine years, why didn’t his auxiliary?

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AUSTRALIA
Newcastle Herald

By JOANNE McCARTHY March 16, 2014

MAITLAND-Newcastle Catholic Bishop Bill Wright has stunned parishioners by urging a community to forgive a ‘‘repentant’’ priest because ‘‘there is more joy in heaven over one repentant sinner than 99 just people’’.

Bishop Wright, named as a possible replacement for Cardinal George Pell in the Sydney archdiocese, reinstated Father Des Harrigan to Taree in September last year despite noting the likelihood of ‘‘concern and distress’’ among some parishioners about the priest’s conduct.

In a letter of ‘‘reinstatement and support for Father Des Harrigan’’ read out at all Taree church services in September, the bishop asked parishioners to ‘‘look at these matters not with the mind of those who demand nothing less than perfection from anyone professing to be Christian, but according to the mind of Christ who teaches us there is more joy in heaven over one repentant sinner than 99 just people’’.

‘‘Where people fail to live up to the expectations of their position but are forthright in acknowledging their responsibilities and truly repentant, our faith tells us there is forgiveness and we are given second chances,’’ Bishop Wright wrote.

In a statement last week, the diocese noted Father Harrigan ‘‘chose to refrain from entering schools and giving homilies’’ after his evidence to the NSW Special Commission of Inquiry in July about owning adult male pornography. The diocese confirmed he had also been the subject of complaints about his ‘‘temperament and style’’. Father Harrigan has not been the subject of any child sexual abuse allegations.

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CALIFORNIA
Los Angeles Times

By Ruben Vives
March 14, 2014

A Riverside County pastor has been arrested on suspicion of rape, and authorities are searching for other possible victims.

Jerome Anthony Clay Sr. — who is pastor of Compassion Church in Perris — was arrested Thursday after a search warrant was served at his home in the 400 block of Perris Boulevard, just around the corner from the Riverside County Sheriff’s Department.

Investigators also searched Compassion Church at 190 E. 5th Street, according to the Sheriff’s Department, which is under contract to provide policing services for the city of Perris.

Clay, 41, is being held at the South West Detention Center in Murrieta in leiu of $55,000 bail.

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CALIFORNIA
The Press-Enterprise

MARCH 13, 2014 BY MICHAEL WATANABE

A Perris pastor has been arrested on suspicion of rape, and Riverside County sheriff’s officials believe there are more victims.

Jerome Anthony Clay Sr., 41, of Perris, was arrested at 10:30 a.m. Thursday, March 13, at his home in the 400 block of South Perris Boulevard in Perris after sheriff’s officials served search warrants at the residence and at Compassion Church at 190 E. 5th St. in Perris, according to a sheriff’s news release.

He was booked into the Southwest Detention Center in French Valley on suspicion of rape, oral copulation with a person under 16, and sexual penetration by force, booking records show. He is being held in lieu of $110,000 bail.

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CALIFORNIA
KABC

By Abc7.com staff

PERRIS, Calif. (KABC) — A pastor in Riverside County has been arrested for rape and other sex crimes, and investigators say there may be more victims.

Jerome Anthony Clay Sr., a pastor at Compassion Church in Perris, is charged with raping a person under the age of 16. Authorities did not say whether the victim was a church member.

Clay, 41, was taken into custody Thursday after search warrants were served at his church and his home in the 400 block of Perris Boulevard. He is being held on $110,000 bail and is expected in court on March 17.

Perris residents had mixed reactions to the news.

“There was a lot of bad stuff that goes on at this church, they say it doesn’t, but it does,” Jordan Egbert said.

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PERU
La Republica

[Summary: Actor Jason Day has ratified his statements that a priest attempted to sexually abuse him when he was a child. He said he has told his story publicly to support other victims. Day said he family was aware of the attempted abuse but chose not to report it.]

Y cuenta detalles sobre iniciativa que emprende para apoyar a otras víctimas.
Mañana, en el diario La República, usted podrá leer una entrevista al actor Jason Day donde ratifica que un sacerdote intentó abusar sexualmente de él cuando era niño.

Day revela que su familia sí estaba enterada del hecho, pero optó por no denunciarlo. Además, asegura que el sacerdote involucrado conocía a sus parientes.

“El cura de mi primera comunión no solo me conocía a mí, sino a mis dos hermanos y a mi primo. No se acuerda de mí, ¿pero sí de los demás?”, cuestionó.

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GEORGIA
Action News Jax

[with video]

DARIEN, Ga. — A middle school band director has been arrested on child molestation charges, and police are investigating whether there are more potential victims.

James Ray Clark Jr. is being held at the McIntosh County Sheriff’s Office on charges of aggravated child molestation and criminal attempt to commit statutory rape after two people claim he sexually assaulted them decades ago.

The Darien Police Department said the investigation began when a person came forward to say they had been assaulted by Clark in 2000-2001 while he worked as a youth minister at the Loganville First United Methodist Church.

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GEORGIA
Florida Times-Union

By Terry Dickson

A Darien man who was working until Tuesday as a middle school band director in Glynn County has been arrested on charges of child molestation and attempt to commit statutory rape, the Darien police said.

The Darien Police Department initiated an investigation after receiving a call from someone who said they had been sexually assaulted between 2000 and 2001 in Loganville, Ga., while the suspect was working there as a Methodist youth minister, Darien police Lt. Nick Roundtree said in a prepared release.

The 26-year-old man who said he is a victim said he contacted police in Darien, where he learned the man was living, because he heard the man was working as a band director at Jane Macon Middle School in Glynn County, Roundtree said.

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GEORGIA
Walton Tribune

By Robbie Schwartz

A former youth pastor at Loganville United Methodist Church is behind bars after his arrest Tuesday on charges of aggravated child molestation and criminal attempt to commit statutory rape. The investigation began with an alleged victim from Loganville.

The incidents reportedly took place between 2000-2001 and involved James Ray Clark Jr., 48, now a resident of Darien, and Chris Childs, 27, who was 13 years old when the alleged sexual assaults began. He went public with the incidents in a story in the Mayport (Fla.) Mirror.

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ARIZONA
Case Grande Dispatch

The attorney for a Casa Grande man accused of two counts of sexual abuse has asked that the two cases be severed.

Tempe attorney J. Scott Halverson filed a motion to sever the two charges against Florentino Tarango. Tarango was charged in connection with incidents related to his position as a deacon at St. Anthony of Padua Catholic Church.

In his Feb. 21 motion, Halverson wrote that the two counts should be separated because one incident is alleged to have occurred in the fall of 2009 and the second allegedly occurred in May 2013. And, he wrote, the 2009 incident wasn’t reported to police until after the 2013 incident had been reported.

Tarango has a right to sever, Halverson wrote, because evidence from the 2009 allegation would not be admissible in the trial of the 2013 alleged incident if the first offense had been reported earlier and a trial held.

The Pinal County Attorney’s Office responded in another motion, asking that the judge deny the motion to sever the cases.

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IRELAND
Irish Independent

EAMON DELANEY – PUBLISHED 16 MARCH 2014

Christine Buckley was one of those who lifted the covers on an ugly chapter in Ireland’s history and forced the country to confront the reality of its reputation as a Republic which protected children and the vulnerable.

The physical and sexual abuse of children supposedly in care in religious and state institutions had been known for decades, but the abuse was either ignored or denied by the authorities. Christine was determined to put this right and to tell the world about her own torment and that of countless others.

In 1992, she did an RTE radio interview with Gay Byrne in which she first publicly described how she was physically abused as a child in Dublin’s Goldenbridge orph- anage, which was run by the Sisters of Mercy.

The early Nineties were a time of momentous change and confrontation in Irish society in these areas and in matters of Catholic and state conservatism. 1992 was also the year of the X Case, in a divided State in which family planning, divorce and homosexuality were all illegal. The fact that the religious ethos that informed such conservatism was also harbouring a pattern of secretive, systematic abuse was especially strange and galling.

In 1996, Christine’s story featured in Louis Lentin’s ground-breaking drama documentary Dear Daughter which shocked the nation with its detailed account of the abuses at Goldenbridge. In one incident a kettle of boiling water was poured over the legs of a 10-year-old Christine. On another occasion, she had to get almost 100 stitches in her leg, after being beaten so badly by an unidentified nun.

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UNITED STATES
Pocono Record

March 16, 2014

“When you go in through those doors, it is supposed to be a spiritual, wholesome place. .. You don’t know who you’re listening to anymore … It’s like using the word of God for other purposes.” — Roman Catholic Jose Soto, 44, talking to Fox News in Arecito, Puerto Rico

Pope Francis and the American Cardinal Timothy Dolan recently expressed puzzlement as to why the Roman Catholic Church has been singled out by ongoing criticism over child sex abuse.

The pope told an Italian newspaper that the Catholic Church “is perhaps the only public institution that has moved with transparency and responsibility” to ferret out abusers and address the problem. “No one has done more,” the pope said, “and yet the church is the only one to have been attacked.” Later on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” the cardinal said he cheered the pope’s words. Then, claiming to speak for lay Catholics, he said Catholics, too, wonder why the church is being picked on when in recent years it’s been “an example of what to do.”

Surely these two highly educated, distinguished scholars and leaders of the Catholic faith understand all too well why the church continues to be singled out for criticism. Yes, child sexual abuse occurs across society, but when it’s discovered, the perpetrators are prosecuted. That wasn’t true for many, many decades in the Catholic Church, as reports of long-ago, ignored child sex abuse show

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UNITED STATES
Christian Catholicism

Jerry Slevin

There are many needed reform actions Pope Francis has failed even to initiate after one year. The worst failure has been his avoiding making cardinals and bishops accountable for aiding predatory priests who hurt defenseless children. Kissing dozens of babies and washing prisoners’ feet make great photo ops, but fail to protect one defenseless child or comfort one abuse survivor.

President Obama will meet for the first time in less than two weeks on March 27 with Pope Francis. Obama can be expected to address this failure directly in private. Obama also needs to try to focus Francis on Russia’s President Putin. Francis recently, and perhaps naively, enhanced Putin’s prestige by welcoming him to the Vatican in a well publicized photo op. With Russia’s virtual invasion of Ukraine, Francis’ approach to Putin warrants a close review, as Germany’s concerned Chancellor Merkel would likely as well encourage Francis to undertake. She even may already have done so privately.

Please see my related recent Advice to President Obama on Pope Francis’ strategy here

[Christian Catholicism]

While it may be debatable who has been the worst of the Catholic Church’s predator protecting hierarchs, Los Angeles’ Cardinal Mahony arguably tops the list. Almost a billion dollars of LA Catholics’ contributions have been needlessly expended so far on settling claims related to abusive priests that Mahony should, and in many cases probably could, have curtailed. He also seemingly wasted almost another 200 million dollars on an unnecessary new LA cathedral, the so called “Raj Mahal”, apparently mainly to satisfy his “edifice complex”.

On the day the UN Committee recently blasted the Vatican on its decades of child abuse prevention failures, Pope Francis said Mass with Mahony and then met privately with him. They discussed US Latino politically related issues, but not the priest child abuse scandal, per Mahony’s own personal website. Then again, who is the Pope to judge?

When the LA abuse scandal uproar was being widely reported a year ago as damning documents were then revealed about Mahony’s extensive complicity, LA’s Archbishop Gomez went through a well publicized “distancing” of the LA Archdiocese from any further active ministry for Mahony. So what’s the “good Cardinal” up to now?

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MISSOURI
KMBC

KANSAS CITY, Mo. —The Kansas City-St. Joseph Diocese is not considering bankruptcy, despite having paid millions of dollars for legal fees and settlements in sexual abuse cases involving priests in recent years, a diocese spokesman said.

The diocese has paid $6 million in settlements on sex abuse cases since May, as well as $7 million on legal fees for sex abuse cases in the last two fiscal years. And it still faces more than two dozen sexual abuse lawsuits and a breach-of-contract case filed by plaintiffs who settled with the diocese for $10 million in 2008, The Kansas City Star reported.

Those costs have raised concerns about possible bankruptcy among parishioners, including a group that has petitioned Pope Francis to remove Bishop Robert Finn for his handling of the sexual abuse allegations.

“Among the active and retired clergy, there is a genuine and sincere concern of diocesan bankruptcy,” said Jeff Weis, a Kansas City Catholic who started a petition drive seeking Finn’s removal. “There’s a fear that this diocese is being driven into the ground financially.”

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UNITED STATES
Pope Francis the CON Christ.

Paris Arrow

Puerto Ricans must stop calling priests “Padre” and reserve this title only to their husbands and fathers of their children

Children must call “Father” – only their own biological fathers oradoptive fathers – and they must not give away this unique paternal title and allegiance to other men on earth.

Children must call “Father” – only their own biological fathers oradoptive fathers – because these lay men alone deserve this unique title which they have rightfully earned through their daily labour and lifetime dedication.

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NEW YORK
Staten Island Advance

By John M. Annese/Staten Island Advance
on March 13, 2014

STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. — A “spiritual reader” from Port Richmond is accused of sexually abusing a 15-year-old girl by rubbing her body with raw steak and molesting her during a supposed ritual to ward off evil spirits.

Rafael Paulino, 42, conducted what he described to detectives as a “spiritual cleansing” inside an apartment on Scribner Avenue in New Brighton, authorities allege.

Paulino, who lives on Bryson Avenue, has a business card with the name Omi Chango’, an image of Christ, and the words “priest” and “spiritual leader” printed on it, according to a law enforcement source familiar with the case.

The source couldn’t say if “Omi Chango'” was meant to be an assumed name, or a reference to “Chango,” a deity worshiped by followers of Santeria.

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CHICAGO (IL)
WLS

Two lawsuits were filed in Cook County Circuit Court Thursday against the Archdiocese of Chicago, accusing two priests of sexual abuse at parish schools.

One suit was filed by a man claiming he was molested by a priest nine or ten times between 1971 and 1973 while he was a student at Resurrection Grammar School on the city’s West Side.

The suit claims the priest inappropriately touched and fondled the boy when he was alone with him in the church rectory, often calling him into the rectory and separating him from other students under the guise of disciplining him for misbehavior.

The man claims he was afraid to talk about the abuse at the time because the priest was in a position of authority and respect in the community, according to the suit.

He subsequently repressed memories of the abuse but recalled the incidents in September 2013 and connected them to a number of emotional and mental issues stemming from the abuse, the suit claims.

The second suit was filed by a different man claiming he was sexually abused by a priest when he was a student at Our Lady Gate of Heaven School, 2338 E. 99th St. The suit claims the priest rubbed the boy’s genitals and sodomized him multiple times from late 1990 to early 1991.

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KANSAS CITY (MO)
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests

For immediate release: Saturday, March 15

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

The child sex crimes and secrecy in Bishop Robert Finn’s Catholic diocese of Kansas City continue as two school teachers have been recently accused of allegedly molesting students. One of them was apparently quietly removed and the teacher who replaced him is now charged with child sex crimes.

[KCTV]

In the less-troubling case, Jackson County prosecutors filed charges on Friday against St. Thomas More elementary school teacher Tod. A. Barnard, 53, of Independence who allegedly repeatedly groped an 11-year-old girl.

In the more-troubling case, Catholic school officials admit they were informed on March 3 that the Independence Police Department was investigating an allegation of suspicious conduct by a school employee but apparently choose secrecy over openness twice. First, they kept that information hidden from parents and the public until two days ago. Second, they apparently quietly suspended the accused and kept that information hidden from parents and the public until two days ago too.

Shame on them.

Why the continuing delays and secrecy? If they suspended a teacher for alleged abuse, why did they not tell parents and the public? And if they learned of abuse allegations on March 3, why did KC Catholic officials conceal them until March 13?

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SCRANTON (PA)
Roman Catholic Diocese of Scranton

On March 14, 2014, a story was published in the Pocono Record newspaper regarding the status of Reverend Carlos Urrutigoity (the story is included at the end of this statement). That story, which has since been referenced by other media outlets and websites, contained an inaccurate statement whereby Bishop Joseph F. Martino, former bishop of the Diocese of Scranton, allowed Reverend Carlos Urrutigoity to transfer to the Diocese of Ciudad del Este in Paraguay. The following statement clarifies how the Diocese of Scranton handled this matter:

Diocese of Scranton

Statement Regarding the Status of Reverend Carlos Urrutigoity

In response to a local media report concerning the status of Reverend Carlos Urrutigoity and the Diocese of Scranton, it is documented that during his time as Bishop of Scranton, the Most Reverend Joseph Martino, D.D., Hist. E.D. took the necessary steps to suppress the Society of Saint John and to deal with the priests of the extinguished Society. Father Urrutigoity was a member of the now suppressed Society. In so doing, the Diocese reported its serious concerns about this cleric to appropriate church officials, including Bishop Rogelio Livieres, Bishop of the Diocese of Ciudad del Este, Paraguay; the Apostolic Nuncio to Paraguay; and the Apostolic Nuncio to the United States.

In every instance, Bishop Martino clearly expressed his reservations concerning Father Urrutigoity, who was identified as posing a serious threat to young people. Bishop Martino also carefully and consistently expressed his grave doubts about this cleric’s suitability for priestly ministry and cautioned the Bishop of the Diocese of Ciudad del Este, Paraguay to not allow Father Urrutigoity to incardinate into his diocese. Despite these serious cautions, Bishop Rogelio Livieres informed the Diocese of Scranton that he was allowing Father Urrutigoity to incardinate into his Paraguay diocese.

While the Diocese of Scranton continues its commitment to report accusations of child sexual abuse to appropriate law enforcement and governmental entities and to create safe environments for children and young people, it also recognizes the responsibility of the Universal Church to respond to such accusations responsibly, transparently and with expediency. To this end, the Diocese of Scranton continues to reiterate its efforts in this particular matter despite what appears to be a lack of reciprocity in this particular case. In acknowledging the frustration brought about by this case, the Most Reverend Joseph C. Bambera, D.D., J.C.L., Bishop of Scranton, commented, “Every case of sexual abuse is appalling and leaves profound wounds. Cases such as this demand the promise of every diocese, parish and school throughout the Church to do all we can to learn from the mistakes of the past and establish safeguards for the future.”

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PENNSYLVANIA
Pocono Record

March 15, 2014

In response to a local media report concerning the status of Reverend Carlos Urrutigoity and the Diocese of Scranton, it is documented that during his time as Bishop of Scranton, the Most Reverend Joseph Martino, D.D., Hist. E.D. took the necessary steps to suppress the Society of Saint John and to deal with the priests of the extinguished Society.

Father Urrutigoity was a member of the now suppressed Society. In so doing, the Diocese reported its serious concerns about this cleric to appropriate church officials, including Bishop Rogelio Livieres, Bishop of the Diocese of Ciudad del Este, Paraguay; the Apostolic Nuncio to Paraguay; and the Apostolic Nuncio to the United States.

In every instance, Bishop Martino clearly expressed his reservations concerning Father Urrutigoity, who was identified as posing a serious threat to young people. Bishop Martino also carefully and consistently expressed his grave doubts about this cleric’s suitability for priestly ministry and cautioned the Bishop of the Diocese of Ciudad del Este, Paraguay to not allow Father Urrutigoity to incardinate into his diocese. Despite these serious cautions, Bishop Rogelio Livieres informed the Diocese of Scranton that he was allowing Father Urrutigoity to incardinate into his Paraguay diocese.

While the Diocese of Scranton continues its commitment to report accusations of child sexual abuse to appropriate law enforcement and governmental entities and to create safe environments for children and young people, it also recognizes the responsibility of the Universal Church to respond to such accusations responsibly, transparently and with expediency.

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CHICAGO (IL)
Daily Herald

By Christopher Placek

Archdiocese of Chicago officials say they will release more documents later this year that detail instances of child sex abuse by 35 priests that go back decades.

The files represent about 25 percent of the 349 abuse cases — going back to the early 1950s — that the archdiocese says are “substantiated” allegations of child sexual abuse.

Information on the other 75 percent of the cases — comprising some 6,000 pages of internal communications regarding 30 abusive priests — was publicly released in January.

On Friday, archdiocese officials told the Daily Herald Editorial Board they will release the additional documents voluntarily and “in the name of transparency,” once information has been redacted that could possibly harm the victims.

“We will do all that’s possible that this (abuse) will never happen again,” said Bishop Francis Kane, the archdiocese’s vicar general. “I am horrified by the abuse that has occurred. I had the terrible responsibility of looking through so many of these files.

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MILWAUKEE (WI)
Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Milwaukee

Event Date:April 08, 2014
Time:7:00 PM
Occurring:April 08, 2014

Description

Archbishop Jerome E. Listecki will celebrate a Mass of Atonement at Lumen Christi Catholic Church, Mequon.

The Mass of Atonement acknowledges the wrongs of archdiocesan clergy and laity, both past and present, in relation to the abuse of our most vulnerable throughout the Archdiocese of Milwaukee.

Protecting our children and loved ones with special needs remains a top priority. At this Mass, we offer victims and their families our prayers in the name of Jesus Christ. Open to the public, we encourage victims of abuse to attend.

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PENNSYLVANIA
Citizens Voice

BY JOSEPH KOHUT (STAFF WRITER)
Published: March 15, 2014

A former Diocese of Scranton priest, accused more than a decade ago of abusing local children in a federal sexual abuse lawsuit, is now second-in-command of a diocese in Paraguay.

Monsignor Carlos Urrutigoity was described as vicar general of the Diócesis de Ciudad del Este in a database of accused priests recently released by BishopAccountability.org, which seeks to hold U.S. bishops accountable to “civil, criminal and cannon law” by acting as a cache of documents detailing abuse.

Urrutigoity has been vicar general since February, the website states. A review of the Paraguayan diocese website confirms the leadership position.

An email to Urrutigoity in Paraguay was not returned.

Urrutigoity was a member of the Society of St. John, which was housed in the former St. Gregory’s Academy in Elmhurst before relocating to Shohola, Pike County. In 2002, a former academy student filed a federal suit against the then Revs. Urrutigoity and Eric Ensey claiming abuse. The Lackawanna County district attorney’s office began a criminal investigation that same year, but decided that the statute of limitations periods had expired for filing a criminal case against them.

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NORTHERN IRELAND
Ulster Herald

A PACKED congregation is being anticipated in St Mary’s Church, Killyclogher tonight (Saturday) for the Vigil Mass to mark the resumption of duties by Fr Eugene Boland.

The Parish Priest of Cappagh stepped aside from the exercise of his Ministry on August 15, 2010, following allegations of indecent assault which were made against him. A series of legal proceedings took place over the coming two years.

Fr Boland was found not guilty of all charges after a trial in Derry Crown Court in 2012 and a Church canonical process has also now been completed and totally exonerated him. T

he chief celebrant at the Vigil Mass, which is at 7.30pm, will be the Derry Diocese administrator, Fr Francis Bradley. He welcomed Fr Boland’s return to the parish and spoke of his gladness that the various processes had been completed.

“The result now is that Fr Boland can return to the role from which he stepped aside until these matters were carefully and completely investigated,” Fr Bradley said. – See more at:

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UNITED STATES
CounterPunch

by NANCY SCHEPER-HUGHES

Dedicated to Jack Kernaghan, SJ.

There are sins and there are mortal sins. There are crimes and there are heinous crimes. Finally, there are abominations, sins so violent and godless that they cried out to heaven for vengeance–or so I was taught in catechism class in Brooklyn in the 1950s.

Today some of those abominations would fall under the secular judicial category of war crimes and crimes against humanity. But, we were told, all human transgressions, even the most heinous and abominable, can be forgiven by God. This is the solid bedrock of Roman Catholic doctrine on the question of sin, confession and forgiveness. It would be vainglorious and prideful to assume that any human act, no matter how egregious, could trump or surpass the absolute and limitless Divine Mercy of God. But there are conditions to be met. First, the penitent must make a full, detailed, and complete confession. No dirty little secrets can be held back in the confessional.

(“Bless me father for I have sinned”). This includes an admission of personal guilt and responsibility (“Mea culpa, mea maxima culpa” — it was my fault, my most grievous fault). The confession must be followed by a sincere act of contrition. (“I am sorry for these sins because they offend Thee, my God, and Your infinite goodness”). Lastly, absolution and forgiveness requires the expression of firm resolve to sin no more and to resist the temptations to do evil.

Thus, even the most heinous crimes against humanity committed by the generals and their henchmen during the Argentine Dirty War (1973-1982) could technically be forgiven and erased. The Proceso de Reorganización (the military dictatorship’s name for the war) turned ordinary people into enemies of the state and waged a war through the process of limpieza, a political cleansing of dangerous and dirty elements, subversives, beginning with leftist guerrillas, those suspected of supporting the left, union leaders, university students, artists, writers, journalists, psychoanalysts, nuns and priests who lived and worked with the poor, and then going after the politically neutral, the unaligned, until finally the crazy generals went after the merely ‘indifferent’.

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UNITED STATES
VICE News

By Keegan Hamilton
March 14, 2014

From the moment he christened himself Pope Francis, the charismatic Argentine Jorge Bergoglio reinvigorated an office that under his predecessors had often been accused of hypocrisy, greed, and the championing of conservative dogma. Over the course of his first year as pope, Francis has spoken out against homophobia, attacked corruption within the Vatican, pushed for a peaceful end to the conflict in Syria, and even amassed millions of followers on Twitter.

But mostly lost amid the fanfare over Bergoglio’s one-year anniversary as pontiff yesterday was a new report that raises troubling questions about his complicity in the sexual abuse scandal that has plagued the Catholic Church for more than a decade.

Earlier this week, BishopAccountability.org released a report entitled “Pope Francis and Clergy Sexual Abuse in Argentina.” The report focuses on Bergoglio’s stint as archbishop of Buenos Aires from 1998 to 2013, and includes a database with links to public documents and media reports about 42 priests in Argentina previously accused of sexual misconduct. Specifically, the report focuses on five cases of sexual abuse by priests in which it alleges that “Bergoglio knowingly or unwittingly slowed victims in their fight to expose and prosecute their assailants.”

The principal researcher behind the report is Anne Barrett Doyle, co-director of BishopAccountability.org. In an interview with VICE News, Doyle described herself as a devout Catholic who was inside the Vatican last year during the papal conclave that elected Bergoglio pope. Doyle co-founded BishopAccountability.org in 2002 amid revelations of sexual abuse by priests in the Archdiocese of Boston, and eventually made her work with the non-profit her full-time job. Prior to focusing on Argentina, the organization published a similar database of priests accused of molestation in America.

“We try to aggregate all public information about the sexual abuse crisis,” Doyle said. “When we suddenly had a pope from Argentina, the first or second question that occurred to us was: How did he manage the sex abuse crisis when he was archbishop of Buenos Aires? He was there 15 years. He was the most powerful Catholic bishop in Argentina.”

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UNITED STATES
Slacktivist

March 14, 2014 By Fred Clark

Tamara Rice, who blogs at Hope. Fully. Known, grew up in another part of the fundamentalist bubble — as a missionary kid in the Association of Baptists for World Evangelism.

ABWE, like so many other fundamentalist institutions steeped in authoritarian patriarchy and purity culture, is dealing with a sex-abuse scandal. Or, rather, it seems to be doing everything it can not to deal with its sex-abuse scandal. It’s another iteration of the same pattern we’ve seen at other fundie institutions, including Pensacola Christian College and Bob Jones University. So Rice has been following these stories closely.

ABWE initially hired the abuse-investigation group GRACE (or “G.R.A.C.E.,” which stands for Godly Response to Abuse in the Christian Environment) to help them clean house. Then, earlier this year, they fired GRACE, apparently because the group was actually intent on cleaning house.

Bob Jones University did the same thing with GRACE — hiring them to investigate alleged abuse, then firing them when they seemed to have confirmed the allegations. After that blew up in their face a few weeks later, BJU changed its mind, again, and re-hired GRACE to finish its investigation.

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CALIFORNIA
KESQ

SAN BERNARDINO COUNTY, Calif. –
A 54 year old pastor of Muscoy United Methodist Church in San Bernardino has been arrested after being accused of child molestation.

Authorities said Stephen Howard was taken into custody on Thursday evening on multiple charges of lewd acts with a child. The abuse allegedly took place in San Bernardino, Rancho Cucamonga and Fontana.

The victims are 14 and 23 years old and previously attended the Muscoy Methodist Church, where Howard has been the lead pastor since 2001, police said in a statement.

The 23 year old victim told police the abuse began when he was nine years old and continued into adulthood. Both victims said Howard was sexually abusing them in exchange for money.

The Crimes Against Children Detail was brought in to assume the investigation on March 10th. Howard was booked at the Central Detention Center and is being held on $250,000 bond.

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CALIFORNIA
Modesto Bee

The Associated Press
March 14, 2014

SAN BERNARDINO, CALIF. — A Southern California pastor has been arrested on suspicion of molesting two boys — one of them for years.

The San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department says 54-year-old Stephen Howard was arrested Thursday.

He remains jailed on $250,000 bail.

Howard has been lead pastor at Muscoy United Methodist Church in San Bernardino since 2001. He was youth director at a United Methodist Church in Ontario from 1989 to 2001.

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CALIFORNIA
The Press-Enterprise

MARCH 14, 2014 BY BRADLEE LOCKE

A Fontana man who serves as lead pastor at a Muscoy church has been arrested on suspicion of molesting two boys who had attended his church and giving them money in exchange, San Bernardino County sheriff’s officials said.

Stephen Howard, 54, lead pastor at Muscoy United Methodist Church, was arrested Thursday, March 13, five days after sheriff’s officials first received a report of a child molestation occurring in San Bernardino, Rancho Cucamonga and Fontana, according to a Sheriff’s Department news release.

Howard has been the lead pastor at Muscoy United Methodist Church since 2001, and before that was a youth director at a United Methodist Church in Ontario from 1989-2001.

No one from the Muscoy church could be reached after hours Friday evening.

Officials said two males, ages 14 and 23 and both residents of Rancho Cucamonga, used to attend the church in Muscoy, an unincorporated area northwest of San Bernardino. The 23-year-old said his abuse began when he was 9 years old and continued into adulthood.

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CALIFORNIA
CBS Los Angeles

SAN BERNARDINO (CBSLA.com) — A 54-year-old pastor in San Bernardino has been accused of sexually abusing two male victims.

Stephen Howard, the pastor of Muscoy United Methodist Church, was arrested and charged with lewd acts with a child under 14, oral copulation with a person under 18 and sodomy with a person under 18. He’s being held on $250,000 bail.

On March 8, deputies responded to a report of child molestation occurring in the cities of San Bernardino, Rancho Cucamonga and Fontana.

An investigation, led by the sheriff’s Crimes Against Children Detail, revealed that the alleged victims, ages 14 and 23, previously attended Muscoy Methodist Church.

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MISSOURI
KMBZ

INDEPENDENCE, Mo. – A part-time band teacher and a band assistant at St. Thomas More School have been suspended after allegations of “suspicious behavior” surfaced.

A letter from the principal to parents did not detail the allegations.

According to Principal Brian Borgmeyer, Independence police notified the school that they were investigating the teacher as of March 3. The school got a separate complaint on March 6 about the assistant.

The police investigation ended without charges being filed against the instructor, but the school is doing their own internal investigation.

Kansas City police are still reviewing the allegations against the assistant.

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MISSOURI
Fox 4

[with video]

March 13, 2014, by Michelle Pekarsky and Robert Townsend

KANSAS CITY, Mo. — An assistant band teacher who worked at St. Thomas More Elementary School, 11800 Holmes Rd., has been charged in Jackson County with two misdemeanor counts of child molestation in the 2nd degree and two 3rd degree assault counts.

FOX 4 was first to report on Thursday the allegations against Tod A. Barnard, 53, after an 11-year-old girl said he inappropriately and repeatedly touched her breast.

Barnard was taken into police custody and charges were filed on Friday.

According to the police report, the girls’ parents became concerned when she expressed anxiety about her band class and said she no longer wanted to participate in band.

Her parents called the principal last Thursday, March 6, who then brought in the counselor. During the meeting, the girl told the counselor that the assistant in her band class had touched her breast several times, beginning in December 2013. She said he started doing it about once a week.

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KANSAS CITY (MO)
KCTV

KANSAS CITY, MO (KCTV) –
A 53-year-old Catholic school teacher is in police custody after he allegedly groped a student’s breast on multiple occasions.

In a letter to families, St. Thomas More Elementary Principal Brian Borgmeyer said that a second person at the school is on leave after a separate incident. No charges have been filed.

However, charges were filed by the Jackson County Prosecutor’s Office on Friday after an 11-year-old student said she had been groped. Tod. A. Barnard, 53, of Independence was charged after being questioned by police.

Barnard is charged with two counts of second-degree child molestation and two counts of third-degree assault. These are misdemeanors.

The Catholic Diocese of Kansas City-St. Joseph said Barnard was not paid by the diocese, but paid by the man who is on paid leave because of the second incident. Barnard was assistant band teacher at St. Thomas More where he taught percussion.

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MINNESOTA
Legal Examiner

Diocese of St Cloud Adds 4 Names to List of Priests Accused of Sexually Abusing Minors

Posted by Mike Bryant
March 14, 2014

The Diocese of St Cloud released a list today of 4 additional priests accused of sexually abusing minors. The release adds to their previous list of 33. Along with the list the Bishop of St Cloud, Rev. Donald J. Kettler released a statement.

The List :

• Neal Emon, who worked at St. Peter Parish in St. Cloud. He lives in Phoenix.

• Gerald Funcheon, a former St. Cloud Cathedral High School employee. He lives in Missouri.

• Justin Weger, St. Therese Parish, Vineland. He is deceased.

• James Moeglein, Cathedral of St. Mary. He lives in Onamia.

According to the St Cloud Times the statement included:

St. Cloud Bishop Donald Kettler said in a written statement that the names are being released after they appeared on abuse lists released by other religious communities.

Let’s guess that the community is the list that last week was released by the Crosiers. On that list were six that had worked in St Cloud. The disclosre today left out:

That Emon also worked as weekend priest/spiritual director, Central Minnesota TEC Program, 1978–88

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CONNECITCUT
CT Post

Keila Torres Ocasio
Published 11:40 pm, Friday, March 14, 2014

NORWALK — In what Jamie Dance, Voice of the Faithful chairwoman, called a “historic occasion,” Bishop Frank Caggiano met with the organization for what he said was the beginning of a conversation.

Several people noted the group was started to seek reform within the Catholic Church and to support those sexually assaulted by priests, but Caggiano was not asked to formally address the topic nor did he volunteer an opinion during the nearly two-hour meeting.

The question-and-answer session, punctuated by many moments of humor provided by the Brooklyn, N.Y., transplant, was held Thursday night on Pope Francis’ first anniversary as leader of the church.

And like the pope, Caggiano has already proven to be very different from his predecessor.

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CANADA
CBC – The Passionate Eye

[with video]

As Pope Francis marks his one-year anniversary, Holy Money investigates the financial scandals that have rocked the Catholic Church and the efforts of the new Pope to clean up its multi-billion-dollar business dealings amid allegations of money laundering, corruption and embezzlement of funds.

Today, the Pope leads a church with more than one billion Catholics but also a business empire of global dimensions. The Catholic Church is the world’s richest religious institution with vast real estate holdings and its own Vatican Bank.

Pope Francis has made it his mission to get the Vatican’s financial house in order but there are stumbling blocks on the road to his newly announced reforms and the stakes are sky high for everyone involved.

Led by University College London Historian John Dickie, a leading expert in Italian history, the documentary deconstructs the mechanisms by which the Church administers and invests its money. It reveals the inner workings of the Vatican Bank, and tells the story of a priest known as Father 500 Euros, charged in January, 2014 with money laundering millions of Euros through Vatican Bank accounts.

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CANADA
The Globe and Mail

JOHN DOYLE
The Globe and Mail
Published Saturday, Mar. 15 2014

Is it drama that you want? Is it, perchance, stories of seediness, mobsters and corruption in high places? How high the place? Well, there’s the Vatican.

Few dramas airing right now can match the story told in Holy Money (Sunday, CBC NN 10 p.m., on The Passionate Eye). Oh sure, the current Pope has the image of an awesome guy – for a Pope, anyways. Man of the people, sensible guy with old-fashioned values and an appetite for change. He is swiftly remaking the image of the Papacy.

But image is surface. What’s really going on in the Vatican is a high-stakes battle over money and power. Pope Francis, we’re told, wants to shift the institution away from a culture of crime and crookedness.

Such as? “Priests charged with corruption, donations diverted to pay for sex, dioceses in bankruptcy, money-laundering inquiries and, at the core of it all, the dirty dealings of the Vatican Bank,” according to promotional material for Holy Money. “The foundations of the Holy See are being rocked by one financial scandal after the other and, despite the appearances, Pope Francis faces an uphill struggle.”

In the doc, the man asserting all this is not some tabloid reporter: He’s an expert on the Italian Mob. That’s John Dickie, a University College of London historian and the author of the book Cosa Nostra: A History of the Sicilian Mafia.

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PHILADLEPHIA (PA)
Philadelphia Inquirer

HAROLD BRUBAKER, INQUIRER STAFF WRITER
POSTED: Friday, March 14, 2014

The Archdiocese of Philadelphia delivered some relatively positive financial news Friday.

Catholic Health Care Services, for example, which operates six nursing homes and a retirement home, had an operating profit of $3.9 million in the year ended June 30.

Results at the facilities, which have been for sale since last summer, improved significantly from a loss of $497,454 the previous year, according to an audited financial statement released Friday.

The nursing-home report was one of 16 published by the Archdiocese, covering the Catholic Church’s diverse operations locally, including cemeteries, high schools, and homes for the disabled.

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CANADA
The Province

BY KEITH FRASER, THE PROVINCE MARCH 14, 2014

An aboriginal man who alleges he was sexually and physically abused more than 40 years ago when he was placed into foster care by a society with links to the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Vancouver will get his day in court.

The man, a member of the Squamish Indian Band who is only identified by the initials N.J. in a court ruling, was in the care of William and Mary Aitken, both of whom are now deceased, from 1956 to 1971.

He claims that he was sexually assaulted by William Aitken more than 100 times, from age five onward.

It’s alleged that the Archdiocese knew or ought to have known that Aitken was a pedophile with a history of abusing children in his care.

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UNITED STATES
Bilgrimage

William D. Lindsey

John XXIII knew.

Paul VI knew.

John Paul II knew.

Benedict XVI knew.

The story told in the recent RTÉ documentary about Marcial Maciel and the Legion of Christ won’t be new to many of us who watch it. Even so, it’s exceedingly painful to watch–even when one already knows the story of who Maciel was, what he did.

And of how one pope after another from John XXIII forward covered for him, blessed him, assisted him in expanding the power and privilege of the money-generating machine of a religious community he founded, until Benedict XVI found it impossible to continue with this travesty as people everywhere became critically aware of the facts of Maciel’s story. I watch the documentary, and hear its drumbeat of insistence–“John XXIII and John Paul II knew, they ignored pleas to stop Maciel’s abuse of seminarians, and they’ll be canonized in a few weeks”–and feel absolutely crushed.

By the end of the video, I’m where Marita La Palm tells us she has ended up after spending her entire childhood and young womanhood in the Legion of Christ’s lay branch Regnum Christi: How is it possible to continue any connection to a church whose top leaders all knew and did nothing? Aren’t they responsible, too?

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CONNECTICUT
The Hour – Voice of the Faithful

By FRANCIS X. FAY JR.
Hour Senior Staff Writer | Posted: Friday, March 14, 2014

NORWALK — Bishop Frank Caggiano, the new leader of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Bridgeport, proved as appealing in his first formal meeting with the Voice of the Faithful (VOTF) on Thursday night as his his boss, Pope Francis, has proven to international audiences.

The short, spare native of the Bensonhurst section of Brooklyn, N.Y., who came to the priesthood via the unconventional path of Yale College graduate and book salesman before entering the seminary, gave 160 attending the historic meeting in the First Congregational Church on the Green the hope that their dialogue would continue.

Quite a contrast to his predecessor, Bishop William E. Lori, who shunned the organization and even prohibited its use of church property for meetings or the diocesan newspaper for announcements.

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NEW YORK
New Haven Register

By Register Staff
POSTED: 03/14/14

Cardinal Edward Egan has canceled his appearance at a celebration featuring a chorus of 200 youths from New York, New Jersey and Connecticut.

Egan, retired archbishop of New York, drew a protest from the Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests. Egan has been accused of failing to remove priests accused of sexual abuse when he was bishop of the Diocese of Bridgeport from 1988 to 2000. He retired in 2009.

A notice on St. Ignatius of Loyola Church’s website says, “We had hoped to have Cardinal Egan here to celebrate Mass on Saturday evening. Unfortunately, he is not free. We look forward to inviting him on another occasion.”

The Mass was part of the Pueri Cantores Children’s Choir Festival.

In a statement, SNAP said, “We know this decision will be a relief to some suffering victims and caring Catholics. We hope this decision will deter other managers — inside and outside the Catholic church — from concealing heinous child sex crimes in the future.

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