ABUSE TRACKER

MICHIGAN
The Macomb Daily

By Mitch Hotts, The Macomb Daily
POSTED: 09/01/14

A Mount Clemens priest was “negligent” when he failed to promptly report a sex assault on church property to the police, according to a report by the Archdiocese of Detroit.

The archdiocese on Saturday published the findings of its investigation into the 2011 incident where the Rev. Michael Cooney of St. Peter Catholic Church did not vontact police when he learned a 19-year-old usher had sexually abused a 14-year-old female at a church event.

According to the report, a panel of three canonical, or church law, judges concluded Cooney was “negligent in performing his duties as pastor” at St. Peter “by failing to property report the suspected abuse of a minor in a timely manner” and failing to take measures to protect the teen.

Cooney did advise the girl’s family to report the incident to civil authorities, but he also had the responsibility to notify the authorities once he learned of the suspected abuse, the church panel concluded.

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NORTHERN IRELAND
Voice of Russia

A hearing into the historic transportation of children from Northern Ireland to Australia opened today, with child rights groups calling for a nationwide inquiry into what campaigners have labeled “the largest child abuse scandal in Britain’s history.”

Around 50 former residents of institutions in Northern Ireland are set to give evidence in a series of hearings in Banbridge, County Down, about the child migration programme that ran from the 1920s until the 1970s.

Documentary evidence found that around 140 young children from Northern Ireland, who were in the care of voluntary institutions, religious charities or state bodies were sent to Australia as child migrants, with many allegedly sexually abused.

The hearings form the second part of the Inquiry into Historical Institutional Abuse in Northern Ireland.

The inquiry is set to hear evidence from children who were taken away without the knowledge or consent of their parents.

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NORTHERN IRELAND
News Letter

Some mothers whose children became migrants to Australia were told they had died, a public inquiry in Northern Ireland has heard.

Youngsters themselves thought they were going on holiday, but never returned. When their mothers found out the truth they were overcome with guilt and never-ending mourning, an expert witness said.

Dr Margaret Humphreys works with the Historical Institutional Abuse (HIA) inquiry.

“Many child migrants did not realise they would not be coming back,” she said. “They thought it was a holiday, hardly preparation for a life the other side of the world, never to return again.”

The Nottinghamshire social worker established the Child Migrants Trust, a charity which helps reunite them with their families.

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NORTHERN IRELAND
News Letter

The “disposal” of children by emigration to Australia produced substantial savings, according to a 1928 report by Northern Ireland’s Government.

Support for the migration schemes was broadly due to concern for the child and concern for the community and the religious and moral welfare of the young person, the Historical Institutional Abuse inquiry heard.

Removal also allayed the danger posed by remaining at an unsuitable home or in an institution.

Britain and Northern Ireland was over-populated whereas the colonies were under-populated.

Christine Smith QC, lawyer to the inquiry, said: “There was a need to build up the Empire and ensure the Empire was of white common British stock.”

Emigrants would have a chance to better themselves and make room in overcrowded workhouses and orphanages.

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NORTHERN IRELAND
News Letter

Children in institutions in Northern Ireland were exported to Australia like “baby convicts”, a witness has told a public inquiry into historical abuse.

The Sisters of Nazareth order of Catholic nuns was responsible for the removal of 111 child migrants aged as young as five before and after the Second World War, some of whom faced grave sexual and physical violence after arrival. Another 20 were sent by other institutions.

In some cases parental consent was not sought, migrants were separated from siblings and some deprived of their real identities by withholding of birth certificates, a lawyer for the Historical Institutional Abuse (HIA) inquiry said.

Reasons for transport included boosting “Catholicisation” or other religious authority in the colonies, propping up the number of white inhabitants of the Empire or saving money and emptying overcrowded workhouses, the investigation heard.

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NORTHERN IRELAND
Newstalk (New Zealand)

By: AAP, International News | Tuesday September 2 2014

Horrific details have been given to a public hearing in Northern Ireland about children in institutions who were exported to Australia before and after World War II.

Some were as young as five, and many suffered grave sexual and physical abuse in Australia.

A lawyer has told the inquiry in some cases parental consent was not sought, migrants were separated from siblings and some deprived of their real identities by the withholding of birth certificates.

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NORTHERN IRELAND
BBC News

By Tara Mills
BBC News NI

The Historical Institutional Abuse Inquiry (HIA) began in January and so far almost 70 people have given evidence.

Thirty-four of those were children who lived in homes.

Some have told the BBC they are unhappy with the structure of the inquiry and feel that their vulnerability has not been appreciated when they have taken the stand.

Allison Diver, 44, went to live in Termonbacca children’s home in Londonderry when she was 10.

She said she suffered physical and sexual abuse during her time there, horrors that are still clear in her mind.

“Nights are the worst for me,” she said.

“Where other people would be sleeping, I’m walking the floors. You’re remembering every last detail – smells, bangs. It’s like someone plays a movie and then won’t let it stop and hides the remote control.”

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UNITED STATES
Frum Follies

From my archives of 9/20/12. First posted in the lead-up to Nechemya Weberman’s trial which concluded with a 103-year sentence.

She was a bad girl. Was it because she talked to boys, or she was dressing too fashionably, or she asked too many questions? That didn’t matter. She was bad and the vaad hatznius (modesty committee) of Williamsburg was willing to fix her, for a hefty fee, of course. The alternative was being stuck with a reputation as a nebbish (loser), an oiysvorf (outcast), and a shiksa (gentile). Once you acquired that reputation no decent family would let you marry their son.

Her family’s last hope was a “Torah therapist” who could change her into a good girl. She didn’t know what to expect. But she assumed he would counsel her with words of Torah. He would be a rabbi with a reputation for being zealous about torah and tznius (modesty). That of course meant he would scrupulously observe all the halachos (rules) and minhagim (customs) governing relations between men and women. She was only twelve, just a bat mitzvah, and thus liable for violating any of the halachos applying to a grown woman.

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ILLINOIS
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests

Neither has been publicly accused before
Both victims speak out for the first time
One got a $750,000 settlement last year
SNAP urges archdiocesan outreach now
Catholic officials admit 5 allegations vs. one cleric

WHAT
Holding signs and childhood photos at a sidewalk news conference, two clergy sex abuse victims will speak publicly for the first time about their abuse at that hands of two Chicago predator priests who have never been publicly accused before. (One victim received a $750,000 secret settlement last year.)

Advocates for clergy sex abuse victims will also blast Catholic officials for their continued secrecy about clergy sex crimes and will urge two church institutions to

–be more open and transparent about child molesting clerics, and
–post the names of all credibly accused clerics on church websites.

The victims will also

— urge anyone who saw, suspected or suffered abuse, no matter how long ago, to come forward &
– urge parishioners to ask their friends and family if they were ever hurt by these two priests.

WHEN
Thursday, July 31 at 2:30 p.m.

WHERE
Outside the Chicago archdiocese headquarters,835 N. Rush St. (corner of Chestnut), Chicago, IL

WHO
Two clergy sex abuse victims (one local and one from out-of-state) who have never spoken publicly before and three- four other members of a self help group called SNAP, the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAPnetwork.org).

WHY
1) In 2005, Gail Peloquin Howard reported to Chicago archdiocesan officials that in 1964, as a teenager, she sought guidance from her pastor at Ascension parish in Oak Park, Msgr. John D. Fitzgerald, who sexually attacked her during that meeting and later he offered to pay her for one year of therapy.

That same year (2005), church staffer Leah McCluskey (who has dealt with hundreds of victims) told Howard that her report was “credible” but refused to publicly acknowledge this or publicly admit that Msgr. Fitzgerald had been accused of abuse. The archdiocese has paid for Howard’s therapy.

Howard will provide five pages of correspondence between her and archdiocesan officials. She did not come forward until her mother, who worked for her perpetrator, passed away.

2) A Chicago man, who says he was abused by Fr. Donald J. O’Shaughnessy, has reached a $750,000 settlement with the priest’s superiors in the Jesuit religious order. The victim is releasing a copy of his two page settlement agreement with church officials and a detailed four page letter from an attorney confirming that five others reported to the archdiocese that they too were abused by Fr. O’Shaughnessy.

Fr. O’Shaughnessy molested the m from 1977-1979 when he was a sophomore at Loyola Academy in Wilmette. Fr. O’Shaughnessy was the boy’s school advisor and pulled him out of class daily. Fr. O’Shaughnessy also spent time at the Colombiere Center in Clarkston Michigan (in the Detroit Archdiocese) and Brebeuf Prep. School in Indianapolis Indiana.

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UNITED STATES
Christian Catholicism

September 1, 2014

Jerry Slevin

On Saturday past, I reported on my censorship by the National Catholic Reporter (NCR) here

[Christian Catholicism]

On Saturday, NCR posted a notice that new comments would be deferred until Tuesday for the US Labor Day Weekend. Notwithstanding that notice, NCR permitted comments to be posted until this morning (Monday) by all but me, except that yesterday around 3 pm, NCR closed comments on the one article that NCR bloggers were still using to complain about NCR’s censorship policy! Some bloggers earlier yesterday were still posting censorship complaints, until NCR blocked new comments to that article.

This morning (Monday) NCR had apparently blocked access to all NCR comments, at least when I tried to access them . If this applies to others as well, NCR bloggers cannot now EVEN READ their own or others’ prior comments, including the comments made last week by numerous bloggers objecting to NCR’s censorship approach.

Now (Monday afternoon) an NCR notice has been posted on BishopAccountability (just above my remarks here) saying no comments will be permitted on Labor Day Weekend, even though they had already been permitted for the first two days of this three day weekend. It appears NCR is trying to undercut my remarks, but is doing so in an amateurish and misleading way. This is very troubling, but just shows how NCR currently is operating.

Does NCR think it can just duck its censorship critics with gimmicks like this? Will this creeping censorship ever end? At least for today, I may not be alone in being “banned” from expressing my views at NCR. Will you be the next blogger to be banned by NCR?

While I can only guess at present as to NCR’s reasons for banning me, we have had a longstanding disagreement over calling for a US Presidential Commission to investigate institutional child sexual abuse.

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GUAM
Pacific Daily News

Written by
Tim Rohr

Many are probably wondering “What on Earth?” as the fight within the local Catholic Church spills into the streets and onto the pages of newspapers and nightly news. It’s a mess by anybody’s reckoning. And it’s time for an explanation.

The war is not new. It has been 20 years in the making. Twenty years ago, a certain Fr. Pius Sammut arrived on Guam to plant the Neocatechumenal Way — a particular approach to Christianity started in the 1960s in Spain. Fr. Pius found a warm welcome in Archbishop Apuron and together they set off to plant the Neo flag in Guam.

There are many different groups within the Church, but none have caused such division as the Neocatechumenal Way. The cause of this division is inherent in its structure. For whereas the holy sacrifice of the Mass is the central prayer and unifying act of all Catholics regardless of what group they may or may not belong to, the Neocatechumenal Way celebrates its own version of the Mass apart from the rest of the Church, and usually not even in a church.

It would be difficult to explain the different levels of authority they have or don’t have to do this. The bottom line is that regardless of those permissions or lack of them, the Neocatechumenal Way practices have led to the painful division that is now spilling into the street.

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UNITED STATES
National Catholic Reporter

NCR Staff | Aug. 30, 2014 NCR Today

NCR headquarters is closed for the Labor Day holiday. To make the return next week easier on our staff, we have decided to turn off the comments system for the weekend. So write down what you want to say and come back Tuesday morning to share your thoughts on our stories, blogs and columns!

Have a wonderful weekend. We will see you all on Tuesday.

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MINNESOTA
Star Tribune

Article by: JEAN HOPFENSPERGER , Star Tribune Updated: September 1, 2014

St. Olaf pastor said Rev. John Nienstedt lacks a bond with local Catholics

The Rev. Patrick Kennedy of St. Olaf Catholic Church has called for the resignation of Twin Cities Archbishop John Nienstedt, saying it would create a “collective sigh of relief” from Twin Cities Catholics.

In the Aug. 31 church newsletter, Kennedy wrote that he reached the conclusion after returning to Minneapolis recently following two years away. It was then that he realized “full effect” of the recent clergy sex abuse scandal on Catholics in the pews.

“There appears to be a pall over the Archdiocese that is affecting the ministry we are trying to be about,” wrote Kennedy, pastor at the downtown Minneapolis church.

“People are leaving our parishes. Some have stopped giving money. Others have stayed but carry a heavy heart …” he wrote.

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UNITED STATES
Boston Globe

By James Carroll | GLOBE COLUMNIST SEPTEMBER 01, 2014

A MORAL contradiction casts a shadow on Roman Catholicism, and lately the shadow has lengthened. The church straddles two poles at once, and at times they pull in radically opposite directions. First, it is a community of believers seeking to embody the values of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Yet through accidents of history, that community is organizationally centered on Vatican City — a 110-acre territory where the Holy See, the ancient seat of papal authority, is headquartered. The Vatican is a sovereign state. And like every state, alas, politically empowered Catholicism yields now and then to the amoral pressures of realpolitik.

This contradiction was laid bare recently when the Holy See, acting in secret, threw the protective cloak of diplomatic immunity over Archbishop Jozef Wesolowski — the papal nuncio in the Dominican Republic and an alleged serial abuser of minors. In a show of toughness, church officials defrocked Wesolowski and promised to try him according to the laws of Vatican City. In effect, though, church officials once again shielded a predator priest from civil jurisdiction. Victims and officials in the Dominican Republic were left to stew.

The Holy See might have boxed itself into handling the accused diplomat in that odd manner. Before the United Nations last winter, representatives of the Vatican had insisted that it was morally and legally responsible only for abuse perpetrated by Vatican citizens — and not for abuse by thousands of Catholic priests around the world. Both then and now, the Catholic hierarchy has been hiding behind the political prerogatives of a sovereign state, violating broader norms of ethical responsibility. Vatican statehood is part of the problem.

Catholics and others may think of the Vatican as institutionally essential to the church, as if willed by God. But it’s not. Today’s Vatican City is an after-image of the once vast papal states that were lost in 19th-century revolutions. In its present form, this headquarters of world Catholicism was created only in the 20th century. Under the 1929 Lateran Treaty, an agreement with the Mussolini government whose terms ultimately received international recognition, the Holy See began to function from the newly autonomous state of Vatican City.

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PORTUGAL
RTP

[Summary: A former pastor from Golega has been accused of two counts of aggravated sexual abuse of minors. Antonio Julio Santos was arrested in mid-December by judicial police and the Santarem diocese opened a canonical process.]

01 Set, 2014

O antigo pároco da Golegã foi acusado da prática de dois crimes de abuso sexual de menores na forma agravada, confirmou hoje à Lusa o seu advogado.

Rui Rodrigues disse à Lusa que a acusação foi deduzida em meados de julho, não tendo havido da parte da defesa pedido de abertura de instrução.

António Júlio Santos foi detido em meados de dezembro último pela Polícia Judiciária por ser “presumível autor de dois crimes de abuso sexual de crianças cometidos na forma agravada”, tendo a Diocese de Santarém aberto um “processo canónico de averiguações a propósito de suspeitas” sobre o pároco.

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VATICAN CITY
Vatican Insider

The Vatican newspaper “L’Osservatore Romano’s” monthly women’s insert interviews the Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith: “We are not misogynists!” he says, revealing that the number of women in the Congregation will go from two to five or six, at the Pope’s request

ANDREA TORNIELLI
VATICAN CITY

The latest issue of the women’s insert published monthly by Vatican newspaper L’Osservatore Romano reveals the identity of the Pope’s next nomination; more women are going to be joining the international theological Congregation: the number will be rising from two to “five or six”. This is according to the Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Cardinal Gerhard Ludwig Müller who was interviewed by historian Lucetta Scaraffia, a prestigious contributor of the newspaper headed by Gian Maria Vian.

The members of the theological commission that assists the Holy See, particularly the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, in examining crucial doctrinal questions are nominated for a five-year period and there are currently thirty of them, including two women: Barbara Hallensleben (professor of Dogmatic Theology and Ecumenism at the Faculty of Theology in Fribourg, Switzerland) from Germany and sister Sara Butler (professor of Dogmatic Theology at the University of Saint Mary of the Lake – Mundelein Seminary – in Chicago, US).

In the article published by the L’Osservatore Romano’s women’s insert, Scaraffia says the cardinal “also informed me that the new international theological Commission the Pope is about to make nominations for will include more women than previously: As far as I understood the number of women will go from two to five or six.” That would be a significant increase.

The interview took place in the cardinal’s apartment and the Vatican newspaper’s reporter was given an informal welcome. During their discussion, Müller underlined that the female presence in the Church needed to be recognized within its own specific context, it should not be an imitation of the male model. He stressed that the Church needs to be like a mother, not an institution, because an institution cannot love but a mother can.

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AUSTRALIA
Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse

1 September, 2014

The Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse has today published two research reports by the Australian Institute of Criminology:

* History of child sexual abuse offences in Australia
* Brief review of contemporary sexual offence and child sexual abuse legislation in Australia

Royal Commission CEO Philip Reed said the results of this research provide important reference material for the Royal Commission and other organisations carrying out work in this area.

“The first report outlines significant socio-political developments in respect of child sexual abuse which will assist the Royal Commission’s understanding of the way child sexual abuse legislation has developed in Australia. …

A summary of both reports is available below, the full reports can be read on the Royal Commission website

Key findings of reports

History of child sexual abuse offences in Australia

* The report provides an overview of the socio-political factors and events that have influenced the development of Australia’s child sexual abuse legislation from 1788-2013.

* The AIC concludes that during this period child sexual abuse has been marginalised, denied, ‘discovered’ and ‘rediscovered’.

* The report also provides an overview of the development of legislation during the period 1950-2013 in the nine Australian jurisdictions

* Key developments in relevant legislation during this period which are discussed in detail in the report include:

o the decriminalisation of homosexual acts between consenting males

o the removal of gendered language from legislation to enable the law to deal with matters involving male victims, female offenders and same sex offences

o broadening the definition of sexual intercourse

o introduction of specific legislation relating to child pornography

o introduction of mandatory reporting laws

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AUSTRALIA
SBS

Source AAP 1 SEP 2014

The crime of child sexual abuse has been denied, marginalised and “discovered and rediscovered” at various stages throughout Australia’s history, a new report says.

The report, commissioned by the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Abuse, found broader social awareness of child sexual abuse emerged in the 1960s because of the efforts of feminist groups.

Prior to women’s rights advocates challenging government responses to sexual violence, psychoanalysts and other theorists downplayed the significance of sexual abuse on children and officials downplayed its prevalence and impact.

Between the late 1800s and 1960s “child sexual abuse was denied or minimised by academics, psychoanalysts and the broader community as the fantasies of disturbed individuals or the result of sexually promiscuous or aggressive children,” the report said.

The report, prepared by the Australian Institute of Criminology, found that the greatest period of reform in Australia’s child abuse laws occurred after the 1970s.

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NORTHERN IRELAND
UTV

Published Monday, 01 September 2014

Public hearings on child migrants sent from Northern Ireland institutions to Australia have begun on Monday as the Historical Institutional Abuse Inquiry resumes.

The hearings will last for three weeks, during which evidence will be heard from 50 people who are now living in Australia.

They are all former residents of institutions in Northern Ireland and were sent to the country as part of a child migration programme.

The inquiry is being chaired by retired High Court judge Sir Anthony Hart.

In his opening remarks he said: “In their witness statements, many of those who will give evidence describe their experiences after they arrived in Australia in shocking terms, setting out in graphic detail their descriptions of the severe hardships, and grave sexual and physical violence, to which they say they were subjected as children in the institutions to which they were sent in Australia.”

The inquiry is limited to what happened to children in institutions in Northern Ireland and does not have the power to investigate what befell migrants in Australian institutions.

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NORTHERN IRELAND
The Guardian

Henry McDonald, Ireland correspondent
theguardian.com, Monday 1 September 2014

Northern Ireland’s orphanages and homes operated a policy of forcibly transporting children to Australia until the 1950s, a long-running inquiry into child abuse at these institutions will hear on Monday.

Sixty-six former residents have given evidence of how they were sent across the world without their consent between 1946 and 1956. Many of those who have come forward will give evidence via video link over what happened to them under the scheme.

The migration scheme to Australia will be examined at the historical institutional abuse inquiry held at Banbridge courthouse in County Down.

The public inquiry is the largest held into such institutions like orphanages anywhere in the UK. Thirteen Catholic and state-run institutions are under scrutiny.

The inquiry will be told that the transport of children from institutions in Northern Ireland mainly to similar homes in western Australia was part of UK government policy at the time.

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NORTHERN IRELAND
RTE News

An Institutional Abuse Inquiry in Northern Ireland has started to hear evidence of the child migration scheme that selected over 100 children from institutions in the North and sent them to Australia.

It is the first time that a judicial inquiry will hear evidence of the practice operated by the UK authorities in the years immediately after World War II.

When the inquiry team went to Australia last year to begin gathering evidence about Northern Irish children who participated in this scheme, they interviewed a 75-year-old man.

He told them: “We were exported to Australia like little baby convicts. I found it hard to show affection to my children when they were young. I have a nightmare every night of my life. I relive my past and I am happy when daylight comes.”

The man has since died, but his full statement and the video evidence accounts of over 50 others will be heard in Banbridge over the next three weeks.

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NORTHERN IRELAND
BBC News

[with video]

One hundred and thirty children from Northern Ireland, some as young as five, were sent to Australia as child migrants, an inquiry has heard.

The experiences of 50 of them will be heard by the Historical Institutional Abuse Inquiry (HIA) either by oral or written evidence.

It is examining the extent of child abuse in religious and state-run institutions in NI from 1922 to 1995.

A team from the inquiry has already made two trips to Australia.

HIA chairman Sir Anthony Hart said his staff had made the trip for two reasons – to enable those who lived there to have the same opportunity to describe their experiences as others, and to allow the HIA’s legal team to gather a considerable amount of information from their witness statements.

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UNITED STATES
The New York Times

By THE EDITORIAL BOARD
SEPT. 1, 2014

Roman Catholics and much of the world have been closely watching for evidence that Pope Francis has the wherewithal to buck the resistance to reform from the Vatican’s powerful bureaucracy.

An encouraging sign emerged last week with the announcement that the Vatican’s former ambassador to the Dominican Republic had been stripped of diplomatic immunity and could be tried there for his alleged soliciting of underage boys for sexual acts. The announcement reversed a devious and secret stratagem engineered by unidentified Vatican officials last year to recall the ambassador, Archbishop Jozef Wesolowski, before Dominican authorities could bring criminal charges of child abuse against him.

The Vatican’s use of immunity to shield the prelate from criminal prosecution outside the Vatican set off a furor, particularly in light of Pope Francis’s promise that in the pedophilia scandal “there are no privileges” for priests or prelates. That diplomatic immunity was suddenly reversed after an article in The Times by Laurie Goodstein detailing numerous cases of the archbishop’s alleged preying on impoverished Dominican shoeshine boys and others who said they were paid for sex. There are suggestions Pope Francis might have had a hand in the reversal; he previously stressed to a colleague that the Wesolowski case felt like “a dagger” in his heart.

The Vatican denied it had attempted a cover-up in recalling the archbishop, pointing out that he was later defrocked after church officials concluded he was indeed guilty of abusing children. Defrocking is hardly adequate punishment for criminal acts, however, and the Vatican maintains the former archbishop might still face criminal charges under its own laws. There are understandable concerns that this could be used to shield him from full justice in the places where he allegedly abused children. However it ends, the case will be followed as an indicator of Pope Francis’s commitment to true church reform.

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MISSISSIPPI
The Times-Picayune

By The Associated Press
on August 31

HERNANDO, Miss. — A Mississippi man has filed a complaint alleging that a male teacher at a church-run school sexually abused him in an attempt to change his sexual orientation from homosexuality.

Jeff White, 32, said he realized he had a duty to stand up against people who harmed him in the 1990s because such efforts still hurt others.

The Washington Blade reported that White told it in an interview that a teacher at Bethel Baptist School in Walls when he was a student there repeatedly forced him to have oral and anal sex for three years. White said the teacher scheduled an appointment each Wednesday for the sexual abuse to occur.

His parents enrolled him in the school when he was 14 and in the seventh grade.

“He would rape me because I was gay and because it would make me hate men and make me change,” White said.

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NORTHERN IRELAND
Irish Times

Gerry Moriarty

Mon, Sep 1, 2014

The Northern Ireland inquiry into historical institutional abuse in the coming weeks will hear “shocking” evidence of alleged abuse against children who were transported to Australia, the inquiry chairman Sir Anthony Hart said today.

In the next three weeks the Historical Institutional Abuse inquiry will hear, mostly by video-link, evidence from 50 individuals who are now resident in Australia and were former residents of institutions in Northern Ireland.

Sir Anthony Hart at Banbridge court house today recounted how the 50 men and women were part of a group of approximately 130 children who were sent to Australia as part of a child migration programme between 1922 and 1995.

The inquiry is investigating allegations of child abuse in institutions run by the Catholic Church and Northern Ireland state from 1922 to 1995. This includes allegations by those who were part of the migration scheme.

Sir Anthony Hart explained that the inquiry could not investigate any allegations of abuse in Australia that the witnesses will make in the coming weeks, as the inquiry’s term of reference relates solely to institutions in Northern Ireland. However, this information would not be “swept under the carpet” and the authorities in Australia would be notified of any allegations, he said.

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NORTHERN IRELAND
The Guardian

Henry McDonald, Ireland correspondent
theguardian.com, Monday 1 September 2014

Children as young as five were sent from Northern Ireland to Australian orphanages and other institutions where they were sexually and physically abused, the chairman of an inquiry into institutional child abuse has revealed.

Sir Anthony Hart, who is chairing the historical abuse inquiry, said witness evidence will show “in shocking terms” how children were subjected to “severe hardships, and grave sexual and physical evidence” when they arrived in the country.

The retired judge made his remarks during the latest session of the inquiry, held at Banbridge courthouse in County Down on Monday. This aspect of the largest public investigation into the abuse of children in state- and church-run homes is focusing on the treatment of 130 orphans and young people in care who were sent to Australia between 1946 and 1956.

Sixty-six former residents of these institutions have given evidence of how they were transported across the world without their consent. Many of those who have come forward will give evidence via video link over what happened to them under the scheme.

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NORTHERN IRELAND
Yahoo! News

Press Association

Children from Northern Ireland who were sent to Australia shortly after the Second World War faced grave sexual and physical violence after arrival in institutions, witnesses have told a public inquiry.

Survivors have given graphic details of their ordeals while aged as young as five, according to the chairman of the Historical Institutional Abuse (HIA) inquiry established by ministers in Belfast.

Approximately 130 young children in the care of religious voluntary institutions or state bodies became child migrants, most in the decade after the war.

The experiences of around 50 of them will be examined in person or via video- link and their statements furnished to the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse in Australia.

Inquiry chairman Sir Anthony Hart said: “In their witness statements, many of those who will give evidence describe their experiences after they arrived in Australia in shocking terms, setting out in graphic detail their descriptions of the severe hardships, and grave sexual and physical violence, to which they say they were subjected as children in the institutions to which they were sent in Australia.”

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

JAPAN
The Japan Times

When parents of students at St. Mary’s International School in Tokyo received a letter earlier this year informing them of an allegation of sexual abuse against a former teacher and elementary school principal at the Catholic boys school, shock waves rippled through the tight-knit school community.

The letter, dated Jan. 31 and signed by the current headmaster, Saburo Kagei, says: “In recent days, it has come to the attention of the school administration that an allegation of sexual misconduct has been made against Brother Lawrence Lambert by a former student. The misconduct allegedly occurred in 1965 when Br. Lawrence was a teacher at the first St. Mary’s campus in Sengakuji.

“After the school administration learned of the situation, we notified the local Japanese police authority and the Archdiocese of the Catholic Church in Tokyo. Both agencies are conducting investigations with the school’s full cooperation. While the investigation is ongoing, Br. Lawrence Lambert is prohibited from having any contact with students, staff or parents at SMIS.”

The following day, the letter regarding Lambert, who was the elementary school principal for around three decades from 1982, went up on the St. Mary’s International School Labor Dispute website, a blog started by an aggrieved former employee, and the news of a sexual abuse allegation at one of Japan’s most prestigious international schools started to circulate around the school community.

Shortly after, the letter was also posted on Sylvia’s Site, a well-read blog dedicated to exposing sexual abuse within the Catholic Church in Canada and elsewhere. St. Mary’s is run by the Brothers of Christian Instruction, a Catholic order founded in France in the 19th century that has schools on every continent.

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

NORTHERN IRELAND
Belfast Telegraph

01 SEPTEMBER 2014

A woman abused while resident at a children’s home in Northern Ireland was left suicidal after telling her story before a public inquiry.

Kate Walmsley, 58, was in an institution in Londonderry from 1964 to 1969, having been admitted as a young child. She recalled being targeted aged eight by a priest in a confessional box while under the care of the Sisters of Nazareth order of Catholic nuns.

The UK’s largest child abuse inquiry so far is to resume again next week. A retired High Court judge is chairing the probe and took harrowing evidence from Ms Walmsley earlier this year.

She said: “It was reliving a nightmare and then being told horrible things about yourself.

“I just thought that I had spoiled my chance, the only chance in my life to get some sort of healing and they have ruined it.

“I ended up being suicidal and thinking I have wasted that day, the special day.”

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

UNITED STATES
Bilgrimage

William D. Lindsey

It’s fascinating to see, this morning, that the posting I made Friday reporting on how National Catholic Reporter has treated Jerry Slevin has had … 1002 reads (and counting)* in a mere two days — and on a holiday weekend at the end of summer at that, when many Americans are out of pocket due to Labor Day and people elsewhere are finishing summer vacations and not spending time online as a result.

It’s remarkable to have this report so widely read and so widely distributed on such a weekend. My stats counter for the posting reminds me that Abuse Tracker and the Catholica blog in Australia have both linked to it, and I’ve noticed it being tweeted by folks to whom I connect on Twitter, too.

I read the interest in this story as a good sign that there are many lay Catholics who are extremely tired of the shoddy way in which many of our Catholic leaders and Catholic institutions play political games to make so many of us voiceless — when many of us, certainly people like Jerry Slevin, have important things to say to the Catholic community, and deserve a hearing. The shoddiness with which NCR has dealt with Jerry Slevin, the lack of transparency about how it censors people making commetns at its blog sites: these mechanisms deserve attention if we really do want to buid a healthy, vibrant, authentically catholic Catholic community.

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

ISRAEL
Haaretz

By Revital Hovel and Yair Ettinger | Aug. 28, 2014

The Jerusalem Regional Rabbinical Court forced a woman to speak privately with her abusive husband after the judges were allegedly swayed by fixers, or macherim, a complaint filed against the judges by the woman revealed.

According to the complaint, the macherim went to the rabbinical judges’ homes and affected the way the case was handled. The complaint suggests that this was not an isolated case.

The ombudsman of the Israeli judiciary, retired Supreme Court Justice Eliezer Rivlin, found the complaint justified. Another complaint against an almost identical panel, which alleged that the judges had refused to accept women’s testimony, was also found justified.

The complaint was filed by a woman whose husband used to beat her and her children. He was convicted of assault and sent to prison. When the woman wanted to divorce him, the rabbinical judges told her that macherim had spoken to them and suggested letting her husband have a private conversation with her for half an hour.

They said that if her husband failed to convince her to take him back, he would grant her the divorce.

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

ISRAEL
Failed Messiah

Shmarya Rosenberg • FailedMessiah.com

The official state Jerusalem Regional Rabbinical Court reportedly forced a woman to meet privately with her violent and abusive husband against her will. The rabbi-judges apparently made the move after haredi fixers taking the side of the husband visited them privately and convinced them to do it.

According to a complaint filed with the state ombudsman for the judiciary, retired Supreme Court Justice Eliezer Rivlin, the fixers went to at least on rabbi-judge’s home and lobbied him. Ha’aretz reported that the complaint indicates that this was not an isolated incident.

Rivlin found the complaint justified, Ha’aretz reported.

The complaint was filed by a woman whose husband beat her and beat her children. He was convicted of assault and imprisoned.

When the woman filed for divorce, the rabbi-judges told her that the haredi fixers had spoken to them and suggested that they allow her husband have a private conversation with her for half an hour.

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

ISRAEL
Failed Messiah

Shmarya Rosenberg • FailedMessiah.com

Israel’s state prosecution will soon file a wide-ranging criminal indictment, pending a hearing, against former Ashkenazi haredi Chief Rabbi of Israel Yona Metzger, Arutz Sheva reported based on a report by Israel’s Channel 10 News.

Metzger was arrested in November on fraud, embezzlement bribery, money laundering and breach of public trust charges and stepped down as chief rabbi shortly afterward.

He allegedly took millions of shekels through bribes and embezzlement from charities he controlled or worked with.

Metzger had a long history of sexual abuse and fraud allegations before he was elected chief rabbi 11 years ago in a back room deal orchestrated by the former top Ashkenazi haredi rabbi, Yosef Shalom Elyashiv, who passed away two years ago. After the election, Elyashiv admitted to Shmarya Rosenberg through a spokesperson that he knew the details of the accusations against Metzger before backing him but backed him anyway in order to “return the glory to the Chief Rabbinate.”

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

WASHINGTON
KING

[with video]

Alison Morrow and Alex Rozier, KING 5 News

On August 22, nine current Mars Hill pastors submitted an accusatory letter to church leadership demanding Mark Driscoll step down from his role as lead pastor.

The letter describes a “lack of transparency” and creating a “culture of fear.” It also accuses Mark Driscoll of misrepresenting the condition of the church and his leadership.

One of the pastors who signed the letter, Pastor Mark Dunford, was terminated on August 27, five days after the letter was submitted, sources tell KING 5. Dunford was an unpaid lay pastor at Mars Hill Portland.

Sources tell KING 5 the reason for his termination was “rebellion against the church.”

The other pastors who signed the letter were called into a meeting Thursday with Mars Hill leadership.

In recent months, Driscoll has been embroiled in controversy, including being kicked out of the Acts 29 Network he helped create.

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

UNITED STATES
POPE FRANCIS the CON-Christ.

Paris Arrow

Updated August 31, 2014

To idiot Catholics members and priests of the Legion of Christ,

Below is our added REBUTTAL to the MM analogy between Marcial Maciel and Mary Magdalene – where we analyse sentence by sentence – the two key paragraphs of the booklet for the Magdala project. The Legion of Christ members are very stubborn in trying to justify their religious existence despite the fact that their order was founded by an evil man – thus making their congregation as a “castle built on sand”. And they will try to use this analogy in another shape and form again. This MM analogy reflects their deep-rooted fanaticism in their charismatic founder Marcial Maciel who is akin to Adolf Hitler (but in the Catholic Church). Hitler was so charismatic he convinced the youth and the entire nation of Germany to fight to be the superior race. The Legion’s Magdala project in Galilee is tantamount to having a Hitler project – with Hitler’s Nazis’ looted money – for the purpose of Holocaust victims. The Legion’s Magdala project in Galilee is already – and will be – an exploitation of women.

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NEW YORK
Staten Island Advance

By Mira Wassef | mwassef@siadvance.com
on August 30, 2014

STATEN ISLAND, N.Y.– Two female former basketball coaches at Moore Catholic High School are accused of having sexual relationships with students, and the NYPD is investigating the allegations, according to a report Saturday in the New York Post.

Megan Mahoney, 25, who was an assistant basketball coach and gym teacher at the Graniteville school, is accused of having a sexual relationship with a 16-year-old student that lasted months, and Moore’s athletic director, Richard Postiglione, allegedly failed to report the the accusation, the article states.

The report said Postiglione and the principal, Bob Manisero, both knew about the allegations of faculty-student relationships.

The Post reports that the boy’s mother claims she informed the Archdiocese in April, but got no reply. The Archdiocese told the paper it contacted the Staten Island District Attorney’s office when it learned of the allegations.

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

NEW YORK
New York Post

By Brad Hamilton
August 30, 2014

Two female basketball coaches turned a Catholic secondary school into Horndog High, bedding students for years under the watch of a skirt-chasing athletic director, according to an alleged victim and three school sources.

The NYPD says it’s now investigating sordid allegations swirling around Moore Catholic HS, a top Staten Island institution founded by nuns in 1962 and charging $8,000 in annual tuition.

Among the claims is that Megan Mahoney, a former assistant women’s basketball coach and gym teacher, had a months-long sexual relationship last year with a 16-year-old student; and that Richard Postiglione, Moore’s athletic director and chief operating officer, failed to report multiple faculty-student affairs to authorities beginning as early as 2006, though he and the principal were told of the randy romps.

The most recent alleged victim, whose name is being withheld by The Post, said he and Mahoney engaged in multiple trysts in her car, beginning last fall after she approached him in the gym and offered to coach him in basketball.

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

INDIA
Hindustan Times

Avantika Mehta , Hindustan Times New Delhi, August 31, 2014

A traumatised eight-year-old, who was raped on Janmashtami by a 70-year-old priest from a temple, says she doesn’t want to fall asleep again. “I see Baba’s face every time I close my eyes,” she explains.

A fortnight after the incident, she has to relive the trauma over and again — giving her statement to police, identifying her rapist in the Test Identification Parade (TIP), and the unwavering gaze of journalists eager for a story.

The report of her rape has translated into legal proceedings before a magistrate’s court in Saket, and this eight-year-old has already had to confront her rapist twice — during identification and when he was sent to judicial custody on August 19.

On Sunday, she laid supine on a chattai, surrounded by her mother, father, neighbours, and acquaintances — but only another seven-year-old friend, sitting quietly by her — the priest’s other victim — could truly empathise.

The incident was discovered on August 18 — Janmashtami day. The priest — a trusted member of the girls’ village near Mehrauli for over a decade who had been repeatedly raping both girls for a week — tried to have penetrative sex with the eight-year-old child. Unable to endure any more traumas, the girl broke down and told her family everything.

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

CANADA
CBC News

By Azzo Rezori, CBC News Posted: Aug 31, 2014

Where does misery begin. Where does it end?

In the lives of some people it follows them around like a shadow, always and everywhere, even in the dark where they think they’re safe.

“Where does one start?” asked Catherine Dinn in her statement to the court charged with sentencing her for her part in defrauding the Anglican parish of St. John the Evangelist in Topsail of money collected for missionary work, including support for orphans in Uganda.

More than $9,000 went missing between July and November of 2012. Catherine and her husband John Dinn, the parish’s former priest, pleaded guilty to stealing it.

The Dinns were sentenced on Friday. He got two months house arrest, she a conditional discharge recognizing that he is out of a job and she is now the only breadwinner in their family of four.

‘Many paths to this sad ending’

Not once in her statement did Catherine Dinn take responsibility for what she did. Instead, she presented herself as a victim of life-long misery.

“Looking back at my life from this end, there are many paths that have led me to this sad ending,” she wrote.

That ending involved not just the Dinns. It cast a lasting chill over the entire parish.

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

NORTH CAROLINA
Winston-Salem Journal

Posted: Sunday, August 31, 2014
Wesley Young/Winston-Salem Journal

The bishop of the Catholic Diocese of Charlotte will preside at a memorial Mass in Kernersville for the Rev. Joseph Kelleher, a priest who served in the Triad for a number of years and who was accused of child sex abuse in 2010 for an alleged incident more than 30 years earlier in Albemarle.
Bishop Peter Jugis will lead the service at Holy Cross Catholic Church on Wednesday morning.

Kelleher, 86, died in High Point on Aug. 20, weeks after a criminal charge against him was dismissed because of his poor health.

“The bishop always celebrates memorial Masses for priests,” David Hains, the director of communication for the diocese, said on Saturday. “Father Kelleher is a lifelong Catholic. This is the type of Mass that would be celebrated for the life of any Catholic.”

The Charlotte leader of SNAP (Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests), David Fortwengler, called the bishop’s decision “painful.”

“I’m really disappointed and sad for the victims of Father Kelleher,” Fortwengler said. “I’m not shocked. I’m not surprised, but I sure wish they cared about the victims as much as they do about the offending priests. I certainly do not rejoice in his death. But they could certainly do it more low key without the bishop presiding.”

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

UNITED KINGDOM
Telegraph

By Simon Danczuk 31 Aug 2014

The ball bounces high in the shadows off the gable end and a handful of kids chase it down the road. Under the stairway to the flats nearby, half a dozen teenage girls lie sprawled on the concrete, sheltering from the slate-grey drizzle. They watch the ball ping back up the street, strung out in the fading evening light, as the acrid smell of cannabis hangs overhead. Further down the road, a group of lads in hoodies mill around the off-licence asking passers-by if they can buy a few cans of strong lager for them.

It’s a scene you’ll find in many parts of northern England and one I’m all too familiar with. Even now, when I see the boredom and despair in kids’ eyes out on the streets, the same feeling comes back to me. Growing up in a single-parent family near Burnley, drinking at 14 and hanging around off-licences asking grown-ups to buy me a drink, just as I see in Rochdale now, I knew about the vulnerability of kids roaming the streets with nothing to do. There were dangers then, but now it’s worse. For gangs of men looking to groom kids to be violently abused, they’re easy prey.

Scenes like this are not far from Rochdale Council’s new £50 million offices. But when I spoke to child-protection bosses in the wake of Rochdale’s grooming scandal a few years ago, where young girls had been continually raped by gangs of men, I may as well have been in a foreign country. Despite talking about a reality that existed a few minutes’ drive from their offices, there was no awareness of what life was like for these kids. No connection, no empathy. The head of the Rochdale Safeguarding Children Board told me they needed to take “a deeper dive into the theory” to understand the problem. The director of children’s services implied to me that young girls who were being raped were “making lifestyle choices”. She later admitted to an incredulous home affairs select committee that she’d never met any of the victims.

The impression I got was that they viewed these girls as an astronomer would look through a telescope at planets. Their lives were so far from the girls’ experiences that to them, they might as well have been a remote dot.

The Rochdale grooming scandal would have never come to light had it not been for the fantastic health care workers who helped these young girls. They listened, they understood and they cared. They were steeped in working-class community values, not remote theory. One of them in particular tried desperately hard to get the police and social services to listen to the girls and take action, but to no avail.

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

UNITED STATES
Roger E. Olson

August 30, 2014 by Roger E. Olson

Some Thoughts about Evangelical Superstar Pastors and Evangelists and Why They Fall

In recent weeks and months another American evangelical superstar pastor (also author and popular speaker) has fallen off his pedestal—if not completely at least partially and with a loud noise. As always when this happens, his followers and fans are divided. Some support him almost unconditionally while some accuse him of spiritual abuse, abuse of power and various misdeeds. It has all gone viral. This time, fortunately, the national secular media are not paying attention. I assume that’s because there’s no sex scandal to feast on. (In my opinion America’s secular media exudes a rare combination of prurience and Puritanism.)

I’m not interested in delving into all the charges against the pastor (whom Christianity Today once described as “Pastor Provocateur”). I’m not close enough to the situation even to form an opinion other than to say a significant number of his former friends and colleagues in ministry (elders of his church) have departed and are going public with accusations and charges of misconduct (but not sexual). The situation is severe enough that the pastor in question is taking a leave of absence from the church and ministry he built up to mega-status.

Anyone who has been around in American evangelical life for fifty years (and probably less) can remember so many evangelical superstar pastors and evangelists who fell off their pedestals with a thunderous crash. Sometimes the thunder is only local (as in the case of a pastor I once worked with and knew very well); sometimes its echoes and shock waves spread out nationally and even internationally. But it always leaves behind disillusionment and confusion.

Our tendency is always to point our accusing fingers at the minister who fell. He (it’s almost always a he) let us down, betrayed us, humiliated us (for being his fans), besmirched the reputation of evangelicalism. That’s understandable.

However, my concern is that we evangelicals (and others) take a deeper look into the causes of this pattern. Why does this happen so often? Could we have met the enemy and discovered it’s us—as much as the persons who fell?

Here’s my diagnosis and prescription for this chronic evangelical problem.

I believe we tend to put too much trust in mere mortals once they attain a certain crucial level of evangelical ministry “stardom.” We want to believe there are men who rise above the temptations and sins the rest of us face and fall into. We want to believe in near, if not total, Christian perfection. So we gradually allow, even encourage, lack of accountability. “That person,” we think, “is so close to God he doesn’t need to be accountable to mere mortals like us.” Gradually these evangelical superheroes, with their inevitable feet of clay (that we try to ignore), fall—partly because they are mere mortals and power corrupts mere mortals and unaccountability is power. We set them up for failure.

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

DOMINICAN REPUBLIC
The Post and Courier

Associated Press
Aug 31 2014

SANTO DOMINGO, Dominican Republic – A court in the Dominican Republic has taken the first steps toward possible sexual abuse charges against a former Vatican ambassador to the Caribbean country.

An investigative magistrate is examining allegations against Josef Wesolowski to determine if there is sufficient evidence to warrant criminal charges, the Santo Dominican prosecutor’s office announced last week.

The announcement came a day after the Vatican said its former ambassador had lost his diplomatic immunity.

The Vatican recalled Wesolowski in August 2013 after allegations emerged he had sexually molested boys there.

Dominican officials say his presence is not required in the country for authorities to review an investigation of the allegations and decide whether formal charges are warranted.

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

UNITED STATES
Christian Catholicism

Jerry Slevin

One of the clear effects of Pope Francis’ strong management style has been an expanded Vatican media “management” effort that includes trying to cultivate more “papal apologists”, while also employing papal apologists to try to curtail Vatican critics.

As a longtime Vatican critic, I have recently experienced what appears to me to be an instance of this curtailment effort. I am being barred without explanation from making future comments on the National Catholic Reporter (NCR) website, after having made around 10,000 NCR comments, plus having written two NCR columns , over the last four and a half years.

Admittedly, as a Harvard Law trained retired Wall Street lawyer, I sometimes write with an “edge”. But the rape of thousands of innocent children by perverted priests protected by ruthless bishops makes a grandfather like me “edgy” sometimes.

This has been picked up by other websites, including Bilgrimage. A quick review of the comments to date to the current Bilgrimage column by theologian, Bill Lindsey, suggests that the NCR censorship efforts may be backfiring. Catholics are waking up! Amen!!

For what I am driving at, please see Bill’s column and the many new comments here:

[Bilgrimage]

In thinking about why Catholics are turning off to escalating Vatican spin efforts, the “elephant in the room” is, of course, always the continuing priest child abuse scandal. This is increasingly exacerbated by Pope Francis’ failure after almost a year and a half to address honestly and transparently holding bishops accountable for covering up, as well as for failing effectively to deal with, the continuing scandal.

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

NORTHERN IRELAND
RTE news

Northern Ireland’s Historical Abuse Inquiry is to hear evidence about the practice of sending children from homes in the North to institutions in Australia.

Documents examined by the Inquiry have revealed how in the decade up to 1956 the child migration scheme was in place and it has gathered testimony from over 60 people who were sent to Australia.

The Historical Abuse Inquiry was set up by Northern Ireland’s power-sharing executive.

It is tasked with investigating what took place at residential institutions, run by the state and religious organisations in the 73 year period up to 1995.

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INDIA
Cosmopolitan UK

By Ellen Scott

India’s streak of making headlines for horrific acts of rape and sexual assault continues this week with the revelation that two young girls, aged seven and eight, were raped in a temple in South Delhi by a 70 year old priest.

The priest, Baba Vishvabandhu, allegedly molested the girls over the course of a week, taking advantage of Janmashtami day, when celebrations were taking place. The eight year old girl broke down and revealed what happened to her mother, after complaining of pain in her abdomen and difficulty passing urine.

The girls said that the man molested them each time they had gone to the temple in the past week. He offered money and food to buy their silence, and threatened them to ensure they told no-one about what he had done.

When the news broke, residents of the area dragged the priest out of the temple and beat him before going to the police. He has been arrested, but there are not yet any details of the length of his sentence.

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FLORIDA
New York Daily News

BY CAROL KURUVILLA
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS Thursday, August 28, 2014

A Florida youth pastor has been busted for reportedly victimizing the same age group he set out to serve.

Lucas Dillon Brandenburg, 30, was arrested Thursday on 10 counts of possession of child pornography, the Florida Department of Law Enforcement confirmed in a statement.

Cops were tipped off to the Titusville pastor’s deranged preferences in July after identifying a computer at his home that was reportedly sharing images of young girls involved in sexual activity with men and boys. Some of the victims were as young as 9 years old.

In his arrest affidavit, Brandenburg “stated he has been viewing child pornography for over 10 years,” WESH.com reports.

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

PENNSYLVANIA
Justice4PAKids

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
September 1, 2014

Contact: Maureen Martinez, info@justice4pakids.com or call 610-296-3264

Justice4PAKids is excited to announce its second annual Motorcycle Ride4PAKids presented by Meridian Bank and held Sept. 20, 2014. This event was created to recognize victims of child sexual abuse and also serve as the group’s only fundraiser. Motorcyclists are meeting at “The Office Bar and Grille” in Malvern, PA between 9:30AM-11AM to register. Motorcycles will be on display and DJ Danny Madonna from Superior Sound will add to the fun.

Register is $25 per bike for a self-guided tour of Northern Chester County from 11am-1pm. At 1pm, riders meet back at The Office with non-riding Justice4pakids supporters for the “After Party” with food, drinks, exciting raffle items and a very special guest speaker, Matt Sandusky. A survivor of abuse, he will deliver a message of the importance of recognizing abuse.

“We need to find ways to leverage community empowerment rather than community destruction. We need to strengthen the connections between people, survivors and non survivors, by breaking down the silence and secrecy that enables abuse and by providing more support and better communication for individuals and families who need help. This event is a step in that direction and I am excited to be part of the effort,” says Matt Sandusky.

“This event is rain or shine. If you are not a bike rider, come out and enjoy the food and festivities and help support our cause,” says Bob Riley, Co-Founder of Justice4pakids.

Justice4PAKids is a 100% volunteer run non-profit dedicated to ending child sexual abuse. Find out more at www.justice4pakids.org.

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GUATEMALA
Daily Mail

Ultra-Orthodox Jews who moved from Canada to Guatemalan village to find ‘religious freedom’ are forced to leave because the locals don’t like them

By JENNY AWFORD FOR MAILONLINE
PUBLISHED: 09:41 EST, 30 August 2014

A community of Orthodox Jews have been expelled from their homes in a bitter conflict with hostile villagers.

Just a few months after fleeing from Canada amid allegations of child abuse, members of the Lev Tahor community were forced to leave San Juan La Laguna in Guatemala yesterday.

The village Elder’s Council voted to kick them out because the group refused to greet or have physical contact with the community, according to a member of the council.

Lev Tahor is a radical strain of Hassidic Judaism that believes television and computers are bad and must be avoided.

The group rejects the state of Israel because it views the Jews as a people who must remain in exile.

Verbal abuse, threats to cut off power and eject them by force were the last straw for the Jews, some of whom have been there for six years.

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AUSTRALIA
The Age

August 31, 2014

Annabel Crabb

Who can say where Cardinal George Pell gets his lines?

When he drew his recent analogy between church organisations and trucking companies, it was honestly difficult to spot whether he had got the idea from some parchment-shuffler in Vatican PR, or practiced it himself in front of the mirror that morning with a hairbrush.

“If the truck driver picks up some lady and then molests her, I don’t think it’s appropriate – because it is contrary to the policy – for the ownership, the leadership of that company to be held responsible,” he told the Royal Commission.

It is not the first time Cardinal Pell has selected an unfortunate transport-related analogy to reinforce his argument that the Catholic Church has been unfairly targeted in the matter of sexual abuse.

“We are not interested in denying the extent of misdoing in the Catholic Church. We object to it being exaggerated,” Cardinal Pell said in November 2012, responding to the establishment of the Royal Commission.

“We object to being described as the only cab on the rank.”

In the ongoing titanic struggle between Cardinal Pell and his own mouth, it’s become increasingly easy to demonise the church. Crimes against children are unspeakable enough; to complain implicitly that one’s own organisation is less free to commit those crimes than another sounds reprehensible principally because it is.

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AUSTRALIA
Sydney Morning Herald

August 31, 2014

Damien Murphy

The former president of Ireland Mary McAleese will deliver the Rosemary Goldie Lecture at Sydney Town Hall on Sunday week but local Catholics, it seems, are being discouraged from attending.

The Catholic Weekly newspaper refused to take advertisements for the lecture which honours an Australian Catholic theologian who became the first woman to serve in an executive role in the Roman Curia.

Professor McAleese had criticised the former Catholic Archbishop of Sydney Cardinal George Pell for his “boy’s club” appointment of a Sydney colleague to a key position in the Vatican.

She had also openly attacked Rome over its refusal to ordain women and said it should rethink it stance on homosexuality, saying the issue was “not so much the elephant in the room but a herd of elephants” for the church.

The Irish Echo, Australia’s Irish newspaper, ran The Catholic Weekly‘s refusal to run the McAleese advertisements as a front-page story this week.

The story claimed the advertisements were refused because Professor McAleese’s views did not accord with the Church.

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MICHIGAN
Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Detroit

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Aug 30, 2014
For more information contact:
Joe Kohn, Director of Public Relations
Kohn.Joseph@aod.org
313-237-5802

In 2011, the Archdiocese of Detroit became aware of the failure of the pastor of St. Peter Parish in the Archdiocese of Detroit, Father Michael N. Cooney, to report suspected abuse of a minor in a timely manner. The incident occurred in the final months of 2011 on St. Peter Parish property in Mount Clemens, Michigan. Initially, Father Cooney was suspended from office from February 10, 2012 to April 22, 2012. Subsequent to that action, as provided by Church law, Archbishop Allen H. Vigneron appointed a panel of three canon lawyers/judges to conduct an independent review of the incident. With the panel’s findings now in hand, Archbishop Vigneron has taken the necessary steps to conclude this formal process.

Following a canonical (Church law) trial, a panel of judges has concluded that in a 2011 instance, Father Michael Cooney was negligent in performing his duties as pastor of St. Peter Parish, Mount Clemens, by failing to properly report the suspected abuse of a minor in a timely manner and failing to take proper measures to protect an alleged victim. It was the conclusion of the of the judges that although Father Cooney did advise a family member of the alleged victim to report the suspected abuse to civil authorities, he had the responsibility to— and should have— reported what he knew to authorities when he first learned of the suspected abuse.

Archbishop Allen Vigneron takes seriously his responsibilities regarding the protection of minors. He deeply regrets that this matter occurred and apologizes for it. Father Cooney has acknowledged his failure to take proper action in this instance and apologized.

Whenever a crime— as defined in church law— has occurred, some penalty must be given. Archbishop Vigneron has issued a personal rebuke to Father Cooney, required him to make a retreat, and to write letters of apology to the parish and to the family and others affected by the failure to report. There will also be a program to review with Father Cooney the full requirements of civil and ecclesiastical law in these matters. In determining these actions, Archbishop Vigneron has also considered the 24 years of priestly service of Father Cooney at St. Peter’s and the otherwise exemplary program of child protection in place at the parish. For his part, Father Cooney, a Detroit priest in good standing, has cooperated fully in the resolution of this matter.

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MICHIGAN
The Detroit News

Archdioscese of Detroit finds Mount Clemens priest ‘negligent’ in duties by delaying to report suspected abuse

LAUREN ABDEL-RAZZAQ THE DETROIT NEWS

The Archdioscese of Detroit has concluded an investigation into a Mount Clemens priest accused of not informing police quickly enough when an usher sexually abused a teen at a church event.

The abuse took place in the final months of 2011 on the St. Peter Parish property.

Rev. Michael Cooney was suspended from Feb. – April 2012, and following that, a panel of canon lawyers launched an investigation. More than two years later, the panel’s findings have been reported to Archbishop Allen Vigneron.

The report states that Cooney “was negligent in performing his duties as pastor of St. Peter Parish, Mount Clemens, by failing to properly report the suspected abuse of a minor in a timely manner and failing to take proper measures to protect an alleged victim,” according to a press release from the Archdiocese.

The panel determined that although the pastor advised a family member to report the abuse to authorities, he had the responsibility to report the abuse immediately when he learned of it.

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AUSTRALIA
Sydney Morning Herald

August 31, 2014

Annabel Crabb

Most of us – if asked – would agree that the sexual abuse of children is about as bad as human behaviour gets.

Most of us would like to think that we would do anything within our power to avert it, if given the opportunity.

But in the real world, people’s reasons for looking the other way are many and varied.

In Britain this week, the South Yorkshire city of Rotherham – a regional metropolis just a bit smaller than Canberra – was devastated by the release of a report finding that 1400 young girls had been sexually abused and trafficked in the local area over the past seven years.

Councillors, council staff and police – the report found – had profoundly under-reacted to the widespread abuse of children, which was mainly inflicted by men of Pakistani origin.

“Several councillors interviewed believed that by opening up these issues they could be ‘giving oxygen’ to racist perspectives that might in turn attract extremist political groups and threaten community cohesion,” the report found.

Former Labour MP for the area, Denis MacShane, confessed that he had failed to inquire deeply enough into what was going on.

“I think there was a culture of not wanting to rock the multicultural boat, if I may put it like that,” he told the BBC.

In Australia at present, the focus is very much on institutions, thanks to the current Royal Commission into sexual abuse.

It’s easy to register the failure of an organisation to respond properly to abuse. It’s easier still when the leadership of that organisation appears to have difficulty registering – on a human level – exactly where that abuse should rank in terms of its priorities.

When Cardinal George Pell drew his recent analogy between church organisations and trucking companies, it was honestly difficult to spot whether he had got the idea from some parchment-shuffler in Vatican PR, or practised it himself in front of the mirror that morning with a hairbrush.

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IRELAND
Irish Examiner

By Noel Baker

Some 186 survivors of the Magdalene laundries are now receiving payments under the Government’s new redress scheme.

Figures provided by the Department of Social Protection show that since the weekly payments commenced in June, 186 women are now receiving the payment, which is one of the steps recommended in the Magdalene Commission Report, also known as the Quirke Report.

The figures also reveal that in the year to August 19, €387,785 had been paid to Magdalene Survivors living overseas — and €366,826 of that amount was paid in the one month period to August 19.

Recipients living overseas receive a monthly payment, while those living in Ireland receive it weekly.

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UNITED STATES
Religion News Service – Rhymes with Religion

Boz Tchividjian | Aug 30, 2014

In the past few years, a there has been a growing interest amongst many Americans in raising awareness and combatting the international commercial sexual exploitation of children. This is when an adult solicits or engages in a sexual act with a child in exchange for something of value. Many incredible individuals and organizations are focusing on this global horror and are beginning to make a real difference in the lives of untold numbers of vulnerable children around the world. Only recently are our eyes beginning to open to the ugly fact that this evil also permeates in the small towns and big cities of this nation. This has been clearly evidenced in a report released this past week by SharedHope, a Christian organization that is combating sex trafficking and serving abuse survivors. The Demanding Justice Report is one of the first comprehensive studies of its kind that examines the domestic commercial sexual exploitation of children. The heartbreaking and eye-opening findings of this study are a loud call to action to every American. Especially to those of us who call ourselves Christ followers.

Everyone should take the time to read this report. In this short post, I want to highlight just a small sample of its findings and what they mean for those of us who are a part of a faith community:

Who are the buyers? The age of those who commit these sexual offenses against children ranged from 18-89 years of age, with the average age being 42. Ninety-nine percent of these offenders were male. In the cases where the profession of the perpetrator was available, over 65 percent were in professions of authority such as attorneys, police officers, and ministers. Fifty-six percent were identified as working in occupations that had regular access to children, including teachers, coaches, and youth service organizations.

Who are the victims? Of the cases studied, almost 80 percent of the child victims were female. Approximately 10 percent of the victims were under the age of eleven, while almost 42 percent were between the ages of 11 and 15. The rest were between the ages of 16 and 18. In at least five of the cases reviewed during this study, children who were abused were actually charged with prostitution! Surprisingly, in only a small number of the cases were the young victims identified as being a runaway.

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AUSTRALIA
Telegraph

Catholic Church needs to beg for our forgiveness and Cardinal George Pell should be first in line says Angela Mollard

THE SUNDAY TELEGRAPH AUGUST 30, 2014

SOME stories never leave you. They settle in your bones and you revisit them, year after year, as if time might bring fresh insight or healing.

Such is the case with B’s story. I was lying on her bedroom floor when she told me, feet propped on her bed.

She took a deep breath. During her teenage years, she told me, someone close to her family had sexually abused her. She’d kept it secret but the perpetrator was about to get married. She was concerned: what if he went on to have a daughter?

My friend didn’t want to confide in her parents, to destroy their lives. As a practising Catholic she’d decided to tell the priest at the church she attended.

Priests were dependable, she reasoned. Problem solvers. Conduits to God and wisdom.

The priest said he’d think about how best to handle it. And so she waited. And waited.

“Has he done anything?” I’d ask as we drank tea. She’d shake her head.

What we didn’t know was that the priest had a secret of his own. At the same time he was sexually assaulting a teenager, a girl he’d groomed from the age of 12 and who he’d continue to abuse for six years.

In 1994, seven years after my friend had confided in him, the priest was found guilty of sexual assault and jailed for four years.

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INDIA
Hindustan Times

Avantika Mehta, Hindustan Times New Delhi, August 30, 2014

Two minor girls, aged seven and eight, were raped in a south Delhi temple by a 70-year-old priest on Janmashtami day, at a time when celebrations were on in full swing.

Baba Vishvabandhu, who is also accused of molesting the girls for over a week, was arrested that very day (August 18) after the girls’ parents lodged a complaint at Mehrauli police station.

The incident, which took place in a village near Mehrauli, came to light after the eight-year-old girl complained to her mother of pain in her lower abdomen and difficulty passing urine before finally breaking down in tears and revealing the truth. The mother went to the house of her daughter’s friend, where she too narrated the same story.

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CALIFORNIA
CBS Sacramento

[with video]

Ron Jones

WOODLAND (CBS13) – A Davis priest who pleaded guilty to charges of having a sexual relationship with a teenager was sentenced by a Yolo County Superior Court judge Friday.

CBS13 confronted Fr. Hector Coria about the allegations and sentencing.

“Excuse me father, what do you have to say about the sentencing? What do you have to say about that?” we asked.

“No comment,” Coria said.

“No comment at all? So the allegations are true?” we asked.

“No comments.”

Investigators and church officials say Coria admitted to having an ongoing sexual relationship with one of his alter girls –- a 16-year-old –- at St. James Parish in Davis.

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MICHIGAN
Insurance News Net

By Patricia Montemurri, Detroit Free Press
McClatchy-Tribune Information Services

Aug. 30–After more than 19 months, members of St. Thomas More Catholic parish are getting a full-time pastor to formally replace the Rev. Edward Belczak, the Catholic priest charged with embezzling $700,000 from the Troy parish.

This week, Detroit Catholic Archbishop Allen Vigneron said Msgr. Thomas Rice will become pastor of the large Troy parish, which struggled with attendance and donations in the wake of the accusations against Belczak and former parish manager, Janice Verschuren. Rice, who is now pastor of St. Louise de Marillac in Warren, will take the helm of St. Thomas More on Nov. 29.

Rice, 64, has been pastor of St. Louise for 24 years. From 1999 to 2012, he also served as publisher and editor-in-chief of the archdiocese’s newspaper, the Michigan Catholic.

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FLORIDA
WESH

LIVE IN BREVARD COUNTY, MICHELLE MEREDITH, WESH 2 NEWS. FORMAL CHARGES HAVE BEEN FILED AGAINST A WINTER SPRINGS PASTOR ARRESTED FOR FAILING TO REPORT CHILD SEX ABUSE. WESH 2’S BOB KEALING REPORTS, AS A RESULT INVESTIGATORS SAY THE ABUSE WENT ON FOR ANOTHER YEAR. SEMINOLE COUNTY PROSECUTORS HAVE FILED FORMAL CHARGES AGAINST WINTER SPRINGS PASTOR CAESAR CHIN OF FAILING TO REPORT CHILD SEX ABUSE. A THIRD DEGREE FELONY. INVESTIGATORS SAY CHIN LIED TO THEM TO PROTECT THE ALLEGED ABUSER.

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TEXAS
American-Statesman

By Philip Jankowski
American-Statesman Staff

A Bastrop youth minister has been charged with three counts of sexual assault of a child after he was caught having sex with a 16-year-old girl, according to the Bastrop County Sheriff’s Office.

Isahiah Arellano, 25, was a youth minister with Faith Impact Fellowship in Bastrop County. Arellano had been staying with a family who had taken him in because he said he did not have any place to stay. One of the family members caught him having sex with the girl on April 29, the sheriff’s office said.

Arellano admitted to having sex with the girl and said it was their only sexual encounter. However, the girl said they had engaged in sexual intercourse three times in April, the sheriff’s office said.

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TEXAS
KEYE

Updated: Thursday, August 28 2014

A 25-year-old Bastrop County youth minister is charged with sexual assault of a child.

The Bastrop County Sheriff’s Office says they were notified of the alleged assault in April. Investigators say a witness saw Isahiah Arellano having sex with a 16-year-old girl.

The incident happened at a Bastrop County family’s home Arellano had been allowed to move into last year because he had no electricity in his trailer, the Sheriff’s Office says.

The victim told investigators they’d had three other sexual encounters in the past — which Arellano denied, the Sheriff’s Office says.

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TEXAS
KHOU

BASTROP, Texas — A youth minister in Bastrop has been charged with three counts of sexual assault of a child.

Isahiah Arellano, 25, is accused of having sex with a 16-year-old girl.

According to the Bastrop County Sheriff’s Office, a family member saw Arellano and the girl having sex at a friend’s house in April. The alleged victim told investigators she and Arellano had sex three times in April. Arellano admitted to having sex with the girl and denied any other sexual encounters.

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TEXAS
Daily Tribune

BASTROP, Texas (AP) — Texas authorities have charged a Bastrop youth minister who they say had sex with a 16-year-old girl.

The Bastrop County Sheriff’s Office says 25-year-old Isahiah Arellano was arrested and charged with three counts of sexual assault this week. Authorities say Arellano was a youth minister with the Faith Impact Fellowship in Bastrop County. They say a family member caught him having sex with the teen at a friend’s house in April.

Arellano tells authorities he only had sex with the teen once. She tells them it happened three times.

Authorities are working with the church pastor. No other cases have been reported.

The teen’s relatives tell KXAN-TV that they stopped attending the church. The pastor says Arellano was fired.

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OHIO
Toledo Blade

BY TK BARGER
BLADE RELIGION EDITOR

Kristopher Schondelmeyer, 30, is the associate pastor at Christ Presbyterian Church in Toledo, responsible for youth and small-group ministry and adult education. When he was a teenager, a minister touched him sexually, he alleges, but even so, he became a minister. And though he serves the Presbyterian Church, he is suing it. He claims that repressed memory kept him from realizing until November 2012 that he was a victim of clergy sexual abuse in July 2000.

His attorneys filed a legal petition in Fulton, Mo., on April 14, and an initial hearing was held in Columbia, Mo., Aug. 18, for a lawsuit against Fulton’s First Presbyterian Church and the larger bodies that Fulton’s church is a part of, including the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.). The Presbyterian Foundation, which holds church funds, is also a defendant. And Jack Wayne Rogers, 69, at the time an ordained Presbyterian lay minister, now a federal prison inmate convicted in 2004 of child pornography and obscenity, is named as the abuser and is also being sued. The Rev. Schondelmeyer is asking for “compensatory and punitive damages” and “other and further relief,” the lawsuit says.

Rev. Schondelmeyer’s allegations include that Rogers and the Presbyterian Church established a ”trust relationship” with him and, exploiting that, Rogers “engaged in non-consensual sex acts with the plaintiff” on a church trip to a youth conference in Maryland. Rogers had been convicted of child pornography in 1992, and the lawsuit alleges the church knew, yet made him a chaperone for youth, and also that the church was “encouraging [Rogers] to commit the abuse and battery” and “actively concealing the abuse after it occurred.” The Church also violated its own policies and procedures regarding sex abusers, the lawsuit says.

His Toledo congregation is very supportive of Rev. Schondelmeyer, said its pastor, the Rev. Tom Schwartz. “Our governing body, or session, had talked with Kris about it,” and a letter was sent to all members. The alleged abuse, cover-up, and lack of accountability, response, and help by the Church is “out of line. It’s why we would agree that his desire to litigate would be something we would be in support of.”

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AUSTRALIA
Dubbo Photo News

Saturday, 30 August 2014 13:26 Written by Tony Webber

During his testimony to the royal commission into child sexual abuse Cardinal George Pell compared the church’s situation to that of a trucking company.

In an analogy so clunky that if it was a truck it would be unroadworthy, Pell said the actions of a sex offending truck driver could not be held against the company who employed him/her.

But of course a trucking company would report its errant driver to the police. For decades the church did not.

The trucking company would not relocate the driver to another route in the full knowledge of his/her crimes and therefore the awareness that not only would he/she continue to rape children, but that being an unknown would expose him/her to the children of unsuspecting families whose suspicions had not already been raised.

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SPAIN
Catholic News Agency

Madrid, Spain, Aug 29, 2014 / 04:27 pm (CNA).- The appointment of Carlos Osoro Sierra as the new Archbishop of Madrid is another step forward in the renewal of the ranks of the Spanish bishops that at the same time raises expectations for Curia reform.

The Vatican announced Aug. 28 that Archbishop Osoro, who headed the Valencia archdiocese, would go to Madrid to take the place of Cardinal Antonio Rouco Varela, who resigned due to reaching the age limit for archbishops set by Church law.

Cardinal Antonio Canizares Llovera, who has served in the Vatican as prefect of the Congregation for Divine Worship since 2008, will take Archbishop Osoro’s place as the new Archbishop of Valencia.

Known for his liturgical principles, Cardinal Canizares, 69, has long been rumored to be willing to return to Spain.

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MONTANA
Wall Street Journal

Helena Diocese to Ask for Approval of Insurance Settlement for Abuse Cases

By TOM CORRIGAN CONNECT
Aug. 29, 2014

The Roman Catholic Diocese of Helena in western Montana will soon ask a bankruptcy judge to approve a key settlement with its insurance carriers that will be used to compensate about 380 individuals who allege they were sexually abused by clergy members.

According to a legal notice released Thursday, a $10.9 million settlement with six insurance carriers would be used to fund a proposed $15 million compensation package.

In exchange, the insurance carriers would receive immunity from any future lawsuits related to the abuse claims.

“The insurance companies are in effect buying back their policies from the diocese, and the money is going to the settlement of the claims,” said Dan Bartleson, a spokesman for the diocese.

Ford Elsaesser, an attorney for the diocese, said Friday that the church would formally ask Judge Terry Myers of the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Butte, Mont., for approval of the settlement within a matter of days.

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GUAM
Pacific Daily News

Written by
Gaynor Dumat-ol Daleno
Pacific Daily News

Archbishop Anthony Apuron on Thursday, during a Mass at Father Duenas Memorial School, spoke publicly about his decision to fire Monsignor James Benavente, saying he didn’t fire Benavente “to be mean.”

Benavente was rector at the Dulce Nombre de Maria Cathedral-Basilica for nearly 20 years and director of Catholic Cemeteries until Apuron fired him last month, alleging poor financial management.

Apuron said, in his 28 years as the archbishop, he “only sought to do the will of God and to follow whatever commands I receive from Rome.”

“And I’m trying to be obedient. And I really do this out of a good conscience; I don’t do it to be vindictive. I don’t do it really to be mean.”

The archbishop acknowledged that he’s been criticized by some in the local Catholic community, including in letters to the Vatican and on blogs.

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UNITED STATES
dotCommonweal

Read part one here, and part two here.

Grant Gallicho August 29, 2014

Fr. Carlos Urrutigoity knew it would be a tough sell. He wanted Jeffrey Bond to help build his dreamed-of Catholic liberal-arts college. Bond had moved to Shohola, Pennsylvania, in 1999 to be near the Society of St. John, soon after it had acquired property there. But he already had a job teaching at a New Jersey high school. And Urrutigoity’s offer was hardly a no-brainer. It’s hard enough to run a college that already has buildings and students. The College of St. Justin Martyr, as it would be called, had neither.

Urrutigoity assured Bond that the Society would provide the necessary funds—by covering tuition for its members and by raising money for the college until it could stand on its own, according to sworn testimony Bond would later give. (A chronology prepared by the SSJ claimed Urrutigoity “warned” Bond about the group’s “difficult financial position.”) Nevertheless, Bond, who had taught at Thomas Aquinas College, a conservative great-books school in California, found the idea intriguing. He would develop the school’s theoretical framework, hire its faculty, and oversee its educational mission—all under the spiritual care of priests committed to the “restoration of the traditional Catholic liturgy and civilization,” as a Society of St. John mailer put it. So Bond took the job. His career with the SSJ began on April 1, 2000. It would be a short honeymoon.

Bond and a few others incorporated the college separately in August 2000. The idea was to start by teaching SSJ novices, eventually developing the institution into a four-year college open to the public. By mid-October, SSJ postulants began taking a full course load taught by seven professors, including Nestor Sequeiros, who was brought over from Argentina to teach Latin. His reputation preceded him.

“Long before Mr. Sequeiros arrived…we had heard Society members speak of his awesome abilities, penetrating intellect, and academic prowess,” according to a 2001 letter Bond wrote (with Fr. Richard Munkelt) to auxiliary Bishop John Dougherty of Scranton. He was so smart, rumor had it, that he had two PhDs. Sequeiros, who had taught Urrutigoity years before, was supposedly working on an “entirely new method of teaching Latin based on the liturgy” that would restore the language to “the center of Catholic life and thereby launch the Society into renown and glory,” Bond and Munkelt wrote. “Imagine our surprise,” the letter continued, when Sequeiros arrived and proved “unable to communicate effectively in English.”

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CALIFORNIA
Daily Democrat

By Sarah Dowling
sdowling@dailydemocrat.com @woodlanddowling on Twitter

CREATED: 08/29/2014

Davis priest Hector Coria Gonzalez, front, was sentenced for unlawful sex… (Courtesy of Facebook)
Girl tells court it was consensual

A Roman Catholic priest began to cry on Friday as his attorney read the words of the teenage girl in which he admitted to having a sexual relationship while working at a Davis church.

Rev. Hector Coria Gonzalez, 45, entered his plea at a conditional hearing in June, where he admitted to one felony count of unlawful sexual intercourse with a minor, identified as M.L., a 17-year-old parishioner at St. James Parish in Davis.

The remaining charges — two counts of unlawful sexual intercourse, and a single misdemeanor count of oral copulation with a minor — were dismissed.

Gonzalez was present and out of custody at Friday’s hearing, where he was sentenced three years of felony probation, with 90 days in county jail for his acts, which M.L. claims were consensual.

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CANADA
Toronto Star

[timeline]

By: Tim Alamenciak News reporter, Published on Fri Aug 29 2014

WINNIPEG—There are two sacred boxes in the offices of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission.
One is a bentwood box sculpted from a single piece of cedar by an indigenous artist. Its panels are adorned with the mournful carved faces representing First Nations and Métis who suffered through the residential schools era, when government-sanctioned institutions systemically tried to eradicate indigenous culture, tore apart families and operated havens for child abuse.

The other box is a tall obelisk tucked away in an air-conditioned closet. Its blinking lights and bright blue screen belie the sacred stories that lie within. The archive stored on the server — more than four million letters, photographs and government records — is the life’s work of the truth commission. Where the bentwood box represents reconciliation, the black server tower holds truth.

This story is about the struggle for history. The government of Canada was responsible for the creation and administration of a system that included more than 130 residential schools spread across the country. Many were tucked into the corners of the nation, run for more than 100 years by dozens of different church groups including denominations of Catholics, Anglicans, Presbyterians and the United Church. All of these parties kept records of the institutions they ran.

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WORCESTER (MA)
Telegram & Gazette

[Retired in 1984. Placed on leave after man filed suit in 1994 alleging that O’Donoghue sexually assaulted him at age 13 in 1978. Suit referenced 2 previous allegations. Suit settled 1999 for $300K. Transferred 12 times in 1st 15 years as priest. 1999 civil suit by a 2nd plaintiff who alleged abuse in 1962 settled in 2001. Additional suits filed in 2002 & 2004. – From BishopAccountability.org database]

WORCESTER – Rev. Brendan W. O’Donoghue, 92, died Tuesday, August 26, 2014 at the St. Francis Nursing Center.

Father O’Donoghue was born in Worcester, son of William T. and Mary E. (Carrigan) O’Donoghue.

Father O’Donoghue graduated from St. Peter’s High School and St. Anselm College in Manchester, NH. He studied for the priesthood at the Seminary of Philosophy and later the Grand Seminary in Montreal, Canada. He was ordained to the priesthood in 1950 at the Cathedral of St. Paul by then Bishop John J. Wright.

He served many years as a priest in the Diocese of Worcester before retiring in 1997. St. Matthew’s Parish in Southborough was his last assignment as a Pastor. He had a strong interest in liturgical music and was choir director at several parishes during his ministry.

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MINNESOTA
Pioneer Press

By Marino Eccher
meccher@pioneerpress.com
POSTED: 08/29/2014

The Ramsey County judge presiding over sex abuse lawsuits against the Roman Catholic Church has been named Trial Judge of the Year by a legal group.

The Minnesota Chapter of the American Board of Trial Advocates presented Judge John Van de North with the award Aug. 21. The group cited his promotion of “integrity and civility among all parties in his courtroom” and his good reputation among colleagues.

The group is an association of lawyers and judges that promotes the integrity of civil litigation.

Van de North is hearing lawsuits against the Diocese of Winona and Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis. Doe 1, a man who claims he was sexually molested by former Rev. Thomas Adamson, sued in May 2013, claiming sexual abuse by Adamson at St. Thomas Aquinas in St. Paul Park. His attorney, Jeff Anderson, has used the case to gain disclosure of records by both the diocese and archdiocese on priests with substantiated claims of abuse.

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UNITED STATES
HSLDA

by Michael Farris

The following article will appear in the Second Quarter 2014 Home School Court Report, due in mailboxes late August.

Two prominent speakers on the homeschooling circuit have experienced dramatic falls from favor due to admitted sin. Bill Gothard and Doug Phillips have both been accused of serious sins involving young women. The accusations are sexual in nature. Both men have admitted to some form of sin with regard to these accusations, although each has disputed some of the details. Gothard disputes that his sins were sexual in nature. Phillips admits to an improper physical “relationship” with one young woman.

Although some people want HSLDA to be the police force of the homeschooling movement—removing those who miss the mark in some manner—that is not our role. Even though I have been uncomfortable with the teaching coming from each of these men for several years, it is not my place to try to remove viewpoints from the homeschooling community just because the HSLDA board or I hold a different view. Our role is to defend the freedom of everyone to homeschool.

But with these recent scandals in view, we think it is now time to speak out—not about these men’s individual sins, but about their teachings. Their sins have damaged the lives of their victims, and should be addressed by those with the appropriate legal and spiritual authority in those situations, but their teachings continue to threaten the freedom and integrity of the homeschooling movement. That is why HSLDA needs to stand up and speak up.

Frankly, we should have spoken up sooner. How much sooner is hard to say. There is a subtle difference between teaching that we simply disagree with and teaching that is truly dangerous. While we did not directly promote their teachings using our own resources, we did allow Vision Forum to buy ad space to promote their products and ideas. We were wrong to do so. And we regret it.

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UNITED STATES
Christian Post

Homeschool Advocate Michael Farris Responds to Sex Scandals of Homeschool Leaders Bill Gothard, Doug Phillips

By Napp Nazworth , Christian Post Reporter
August 29, 2014

The Home School Legal Defense Association criticized the patriarchy movement among some Christian and homeschool leaders as unbiblical and harmful, and apologized for not speaking up sooner about the issue.

In an article posted to the HSLDA website, and which will appear in a publication that goes to members called Home School Court Report, HSLDA Chairman Michael Farris apologized on behalf of himself, HSLDA President Michael Smith and the HSLDA Board of Directors for “failing to speak up sooner.”

In close to 2,500 words, Farris addressed the teaching of patriarchy, a view among some Christians regarding the role of women in church, families and society, and how that teaching relates more specifically to the recent sex scandals involving Bill Gothard and Doug Phillips.

“The philosophies of Gothard and Phillips damage people in multiple ways,” Farris wrote.
Related

Farris had “been uncomfortable with the teaching coming from each of these men for several years” but was reluctant to speak out because he did not believe it was the role of HSLDA to police the teachings of those within the homeschooling community.

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UNITED STATES
The Raw Story

By Travis Gettys
Friday, August 29, 2014

A prominent leader in the Christian homeschooling movement has denounced the “Christian patriarchy” movement followed by the prolific Duggar family.

Michael Farris, founder of the Home School Legal Defense Association and Patrick Henry College, described the Quiverfull ideology – which promotes procreation and the primacy of men – as “truly dangerous” in the wake of two sex scandals involving leaders in the evangelical movement.

Farris issued a newsletter article Thursday saying he had been uncomfortable for years with the teachings of Doug Phillips and Bill Gothard, but he had not spoken out because his organization defends the right of anyone to homeschool their children, reported Right Wing Watch.

“Frankly, we should have spoken up sooner,” Farris wrote. “How much sooner is hard to say. There is a subtle difference between teaching that we simply disagree with and teaching that is truly dangerous.”

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MINNESOTA
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests

For immediate release: Monday, August 25, 2014

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

Minnesota archdiocese names a judge as the head of the new department responsible for child safety. We hope he puts the safety of kids before the reputation of the church and predators.

The former head of the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension, Judge Timothy O’Malley, has been hired as the director of Ministerial Standards and Safe Environment for the Twin Cities archdiocese. O’Malley has expressed his disappointment in how the church has responded to the child abuse scandal and hopes to make a difference.

Time and time again we see church officials claiming that they put the safety of children and the needs of victims first, but in reality they do little to nothing. We hope O’Malley sticks to what he says and exposes predators and those who cover it up, reports abuse to police, and is open and transparent about child sexual abuse. Only then will change began to happen and children will really be safe.

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OHIO
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests

For immediate release: Monday, August 25, 2014

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

A Cleveland judge has denied defense lawyers request that a priest, Fr. James McGonegal, be allowed into an alternate sentence program. We applaud this move. Citizens are safest when predators are locked up.

It seems to us that Catholic officials – both those who commit and those who conceal sex crimes – often attempt to avoid justice through legal technicalities. That diminishes the faith that many have in our justice system and discourages them from reporting more crimes. That, in turn, makes vulnerable adults and innocent children more apt to be sexually violated in the future.

We hope as this case goes to trial that anyone else who may have been hurt by or witnessed crimes committed by McGonegal will come forward and report what they know.

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UNITED STATES
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests

For immediate release: Monday, August 25, 2014

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

Now, after a page 1 New York Times story, Vatican officials have stripped a former archbishop of his diplomatic immunity. We hope Josef Wesolowski is caught by police before he flees.

It should not take embarrassing international headlines to force the Vatican to turn over a fugitive to law enforcement. Helping secular officials catch, charge and convict child molesting clerics routinely, not rarely, should be the norm.

There isn’t much progress when wrongdoers change only when caught.

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OHIO
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests

For immediate release: Tuesday, August 26, 2014

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

As Toledo, OH welcomes their new bishop, we hope that Bishop Daniel E. Thomas will be a better advocate for clergy sex abuse victims than his predecessor was.

In 2010, Toledo Catholic officials kept quiet about and waited six months to investigate alleged sexual misdeeds by Kevin Yeckley, a Catholic school counselor. He admitted “periodically” hugging a girl, working “alone for several consecutive Saturdays” with her and telling her “he was . . .having uncomfortable feelings for her.”

Toledo Catholic officials admit that in around March 2009, a victim told a teacher about Yeckley’s alleged misdeeds, but they only started to investigate in October, some six or seven months later. Delays like this endanger kids and enable predators to intimidate victims, threaten whistle blowers, discredit witnesses, destroy evidence, fabricate alibis and keep hurting children.

Dennis Gary is another example of the Diocese of Toledo irresponsibly handling child sex abuse. Gary was sued in 2002 and 2003 for sexually abusing boys. The diocese had been warned about Gray in the 1980s, but they allowed him to leave the priesthood without taking action against him or warning his future employers. Gray was later found working as a teacher and SNAP believes in 2012 he was trying to join a church in Perrsyburg.

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NEW YORK
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests

For immediate release: Tuesday, August 26, 2014

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

A retired New York priest plead guilty to possession of child porn and has avoided a prison sentence. We are disappointed by this outcome, but are glad he will have to register as a sex offender.

Fr. Robert Ours, who is currently living in Syracuse, was arrested in May on child porn charges. We hope church officials at the Syracuse Catholic diocese aggressively seek out others who may have seen, suspected or suffered Fr. Ours’ crimes and urge them to contact police and prosecutors immediately.

It is important to remember that children were hurt in the making of these photos. The word ‘porn’ does not accurately describe what has taken place. These are violent child sexual images and the children involved are the victims of a horrific crime.

We fear others have been hurt and are fearful to come forward. We would encourage anyone who has been harmed by Fr. Ours to come forward, get help, begin healing and work with law enforcement. Often there are people in the community who have seen or suspect Fr. Our’s misdeeds. No matter how old or insignificant the information may seem we hope they will contact law enforcement.

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UNITED STATES
Bilgrimage

William D. Lindsey

An important discussion has been taking place here in the past several days on two different threads. At both threads (cited below), Jerry Slevin reports that he was recently blocked from making comments at National Catholic Reporter — blocked without explanation or warning. And when he has sought an explanation for this from the powers that be at NCR, he receives no replies to his questions.

Bilgrimage readers will perhaps know Jerry (who’s a Harvard-trained interational lawyer with extensive experience in the legal field) as the author of provocative, valuable statements about various issues in the Catholic church today. He’s published some of his pieces here, and they can be retrieved by clicking on his name in the labels beneath this posting. Jerry also maintains the noteworthy Christian Catholicism blog, which is in my blog list here at Bilgrimage, and has contributed significantly to discussions of Catholic issues in discussion threads at NCR for several years now.

The inexplicable choice of NCR‘s managing staff to block Jerry Slevin from commenting at that site — again, according to Jerry, he received no forewarning and has been not been done the bare courtesy of being provided with any explanation — deserves attention, in my view. For my own discussion of (and serious concerns) about NCR‘s mechanism of censorship, which I’ve found directed against me, too, please see these postings — here, here, and here.

Unlike Jerry, I have not been blocked from commenting at NCR, though I’ve found comments I’ve made there deleted with no explanation, while nasty, and in many cases, outright homophobic, commenters to whom those comments were directed in some cases are allowed free rein to keep commenting. I decided after my last experience of censorship by NCR that I will no longer leave comments at that site. In my view, its process for censoring contributors is not in the least transparent, and it’s capricious in a way that often serves the interests of folks who want to misuse the Catholic tradition and Catholic teaching to inflict misery on others — while it takes away from those who want to respond to these commenters any effective voice to respond.

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OREGON
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests

For immediate release: Wednesday, August 27, 2014

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

Two Oregonian men have filed a lawsuit against the Seventh-day Adventist Church for allowing a convicted child molester to run a church sponsored youth club. We are grateful to these brave survivors for stepping up.

Leslie “Les” Bovee was hired as the leader of the Pathfinder Club, which is a Seventh-day Adventist Church sponsored youth group in Multnomah County, despite having spent two years in prison for abusing at least one boy. Church officials should be held responsible for allowing a convicted abuser to – not only be around children – but to be in a position of authority.

We urge church officials to explain how Bovee was able to get a job as a youth leader and publically change their employment policies to ensure child safety. We also urge officials to reach out to anyone else who might be suffering in silence and self blame.

We hope this lawsuit will encourage other officials working with children to do their due diligence when hiring youth workers and we hope it encourages others who saw, suspect, or suffered child sex crimes to come forward, report to secular officials, and start healing.

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AUSTRALIA
Herald Sun

TOM ELLIOTT HERALD SUN AUGUST 30, 2014

THE ongoing Royal Commission into Child Sexual Abuse has already shone some welcome light into a variety of dark places.

One such place is the Catholic Church’s requirement for its priests to remain celibate. Physical intimacy with a significant other is a normal and fundamental part of human existence. It can’t be a good idea for priests to repress that urge.

When asked about this a few days ago, the Catholic Archbishop of Melbourne, Denis Hart, described celibacy as “fulfilling” and a “wonderful vocation”. He also refused to accept a sexual life was necessary for all people. On which planet is the Archbishop living?

In the animal kingdom, the desire to procreate and ensure one’s genes continue is a powerful innate force. Male lions fight each other, sometimes to the death, for access to females. Adult elephants will form a protective ring around a sickly youngster to keep predators at bay.

The human world is really not very different. Middle-aged men buy expensive sports cars, dye their hair and bleach their teeth in an effort to impress women.

And on a more serious note, adults of either gender will go to extraordinary lengths to protect and nurture their children.

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CANADA
VOCM

John Dinn, the former rector of St. John the Evangelist Anglican Church in Topsail, and his wife were sentenced in court today for defrauding the parish. VOCM’s Andrew Hawthorn reports live from provincial court.

John Dinn, who had his licence revoked by the Church, was given 60 days incarceration plus a year’s probation and mental health counselling, while his wife Catherine was given a conditional discharge, requiring them both to pay back the remaining $1,600 within the year.

In a personal statement, Catherine had cited a poor upbringing and addiction as bad influences on her choices, but Judge Mike Madden said the statement contained little mention of the impact their crime had made on the parish.

In sentencing, Judge Madden said the crime was not unsophisticated, easily detectable, and since paid back.

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INDIANA
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests

For immediate release: Wednesday, August 27, 2014

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

A former Hammond Baptist pastor, who is serving a 12 year prison sentence for child sexual abuse, has had his petition to overturn his sentenced denied. We are glad the judge saw through this farce and upheld this rightly deserved sentence.

Rev. Jack Schaap was charged with using his position at the church to abuse an underage girl. He voluntarily agreed to a plea deal, and later claimed that he had a bad lawyer and his sentence should be tossed out. Gail Riplinger, a noted religious scholar, in a letter to the judge, wrote that since Schaap is a well educated man, with many lawyer friends, “(his) ‘assertion that he could not understand the words regarding the sentencing seems preposterous.’” We applaud Riplinger for speaking up.

It is always disheartening when predators attempt to avoid justice through legal loopholes or by playing ‘dumb’. We are glad he failed in his goal and that he must serve his sentence. We also hope that First Baptist Church of Hammond aggressively reaches out to anyone who saw, suspects or suffered abuse at the hands of Schaap.

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DOMINIKANA
Newsweek

Wymiar sprawiedliwości Dominikany wszczął postępowanie karne w sprawie pedofilii, o którą oskarżany jest były nuncjusz w tym kraju arcybiskup Józef Wesołowski – podała włoska agencja prasowa ANSA powołując się na tamtejsze media.

Prokuratura w Santo Domingo złożyła już w sądzie dokumentację z zarzutami stawianymi arcybiskupowi Wesołowskiemu.

Decyzja o postępowaniu w sprawie czynów popełnionych w czasie pełnienia przez niego misji to rezultat informacji, jakie napłynęły w poniedziałek z Watykanu, który ogłosił, że były nuncjusz nie ma już immunitetu dyplomatycznego i może zostać osądzony przez inne wymiary sprawiedliwości.

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UNITED STATES
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests

For immediate release: Wednesday, August 27, 2014

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

The Dominican Republic has begun criminal proceedings against the former archbishop. We are glad the prosecutor’s office in Santo Domingo has moved quickly to begin criminal proceedings and we hope Josef Wesolowski is apprehended and made to face justice immediately.

We urge law enforcement officials in the Dominican Republic to reach out to anyone else who might be suffering in silence and self blame because of the deplorable actions of Wesolowski. And we urge Vatican officials to do everything in their power to apprehend him before he flees.

We hope anyone who saw, suspects, or suffered child sex crimes will come forward, speak up, report to law enforcement, and start healing.

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UNITED STATES
National Catholic Reporter

Thomas Reese | Aug. 29, 2014 Faith and Justice

Defenders of the status quo in church governance often say, “The church is not a democracy,” with the implication that the church can learn nothing from civil governments. The truth is that the church has been borrowing government structures from civil society almost from the beginning.

In fact, we know that bishops, including the bishop of Rome, were elected by the people in the early days of the church. Later in Rome, the Roman Senate was sometimes involved in selecting popes prior to the creation of the College of Cardinals.

Not surprisingly, the cardinals for many centuries saw themselves as successors to the Roman Senate, and until the revision of the Code of Canon Law in 1983, the College of Cardinals was referred to in church law as a senate. During some periods, the cardinals were so powerful that the pope could not do anything without their approval.

The Greek and Latin origin of many church terms reveals their political origins. “Ecclesia,” the Greek term we translate as “church” was a common term for an assembly, or a gathering of people in a public place. “Diocese” was a territorial division in the Roman Empire. “Curia” was the Roman Senate or where it met. “Dicastery” was a court or judgment hall.

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VATICAN CITY
Newsmax

Friday, 29 Aug 2014
By Nick Sanchez

Vatican officials denied this week that Pope Francis is a target of ISIS, but the Italian government is stepping up security across the nation as it continues to collect intelligence on the growing terrorist group.

“There is nothing serious to this,” spokesman the Rev. Federico Lombardi S.J. told Catholic News Agency in responding to a claim made by Italy’s Il Tempo newspaper. “There is no particular concern in the Vatican. This news has no foundation.”

Claiming the pope was under threat, the original Il Tempo report published Monday drew upon an unnamed source who said a number of Muslim jihadists had entered the country.

The source said the Islamic State, also known as ISIS or ISIL, considers the pope “the greatest exponent of the Christian religions” and the “bearer of false truth.” Because of this, Islamic fundamentalists led by self-proclaimed Caliph Al-Baghdadi seek to “raise the level of confrontation” by putting Pope Francis “in the crosshairs.”

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VATICAN CITY
Daily Breeze

By Nicole Winfield/The Associated Press
POSTED: 08/28/14

Pope Francis said Friday he took personal responsibility for the “evil” of priests who raped and molested children, asking forgiveness from victims and saying the church must be even bolder in its efforts to protect the young. It was the first time a pope has taken personal responsibility for the sex crimes of his priests and begged forgiveness.

Francis’ off-the-cuff remarks were the latest sign that he has become sensitized to the gravity of the abuse scandal after coming under criticism from victims’ advocacy groups for a perceived lack of attention to, and understanding of, the toll it has taken on the church and its members.

The evolution began last month when he named four women and an abuse survivor to a sex abuse advisory panel that the Vatican has suggested will address the critical issue of sanctioning bishops who cover up for pedophiles.

Francis delivered the comments to members of the International Catholic Child Bureau, a French Catholic network of organizations that protects children’s rights. Sitting with them in his library at the Vatican on Friday, Francis spoke slowly, deliberately and softly in his native Spanish, deviating from his text.

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IRELAND
Irish Examiner

By Claire O’Sullivan
Irish Examiner Reporter

A grave just discovered by the Justice for Magdalenes group shows that, in one plot in North Dublin alone, a third of the woman buried remained at the Magdalene laundry for more than 50 years.

Such discoveries, which form part of the Justice for Magdalenes Research Graves Project, are in contrast to the findings of the McAleese report into the Magdalene laundries which stated that the median length of stay for the women was 27 weeks.

The interdepartmental report also stated that 60% of the women at the laundries from 1922 to 1996 stayed less than a year at the laundries — figures which have been hotly contested.

According to Claire McGettrick of Justice for Magdalenes, the deaths of women who never left the laundries and remained living with the nuns, in many cases working in the convents, after 1996 were not included in the 2013 McAleese report.

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AUSTRALIA
The Chronicle

29th Aug 2014

THE case against a former teacher of a Toowoomba Catholic school charged with child sex matters has been adjourned.

The 44-year-old man and the school involved cannot be named for legal reasons.

He is charged with indecent treatment of a child under 16 (indecent film), two counts of indecent treatment of a child under 16 (expose), and one count of indecent treatment of a child under 16 (take photograph).

The man has not as yet been required to enter any pleas to the charges and he was not in Toowoomba Magistrates Court when the matters were mentioned yesterday.

It is believed the allegations date back to the mid-1990s and involve two male students under the age of 16.

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NEW YORK
New York Law Journal

Mark Hamblett, New York Law Journal
August 29, 2014

Lawyers for both sides in the litigation over sexual abuse at Yeshiva University High School for Boys came under intense questioning by a federal appeals panel Thursday.

Judges Reena Raggi (See Profile), Guido Calabresi (See Profile) and Denny Chin (See Profile) of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit grilled the attorneys on their arguments about the statute of limitations on claims that Yeshiva was deliberately indifferent to sexual predations against 34 students by one-time principal George Finkelstein and a former teacher and student at the school.

On one side was plaintiffs’ attorney Kevin Mulhearn, who argued that Southern District Judge John Koeltl (See Profile) got it wrong in February when he held the statute of limitations expired long ago and that positive statements the school made about the abusers, even after abuse was reported, were not enough to stop the clock on the three-year statute.

On the other was the attorney for the school, Karen Bitar of Greenberg Traurig, who prevailed before Koeltl below and who insisted the victims were put on inquiry notice from the moment of their abuse and should acted to expose the alleged indifference by school officials.

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UNITED STATES
World

By DANIEL JAMES DEVINE
Posted Aug. 28, 2014

Longtime homeschool attorney and advocate Michael P. Farris, who founded the Home School Legal Defense Association in 1983 and founded Patrick Henry College in 2000, issued a public statement Wednesday distancing himself from “patriarchy.” Specifically, he criticized the teachings of two leaders formerly popular among homeschoolers, Doug Phillips and Bill Gothard, who both recently stepped down from ministries amid allegations of sexual misconduct.

Phillips, an attorney himself, worked with Farris at HSLDA for six years. He went on to launch The Vision Forum Inc. and Vision Forum Ministries with his wife Beall. Last year, Phillips resigned as president of Vision Forum Ministries after admitting to an inappropriate relationship with a young woman. The ministry closed soon after.

Gothard was a longtime ministry leader who drew thousands of families to weeklong seminars in the 1970s and ’80s, teaching practical applications of biblical principles and warning against debt and rock music. He resigned as president of the Institute in Basic Life Principles in March amid allegations of sexual misconduct with multiple young women. (Gothard admitted to crossing the “boundaries of discretion” with some young women but denied any “sexual intent.”)

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NEW YORK
The New York Times

By BENJAMIN MUELLER
AUG. 28, 2014

A lawyer for dozens of men who say they were sexually abused as high school students by rabbis at Yeshiva University High School for Boys in Manhattan asked a federal appeals court on Thursday to reinstate a lawsuit claiming that the school had covered up the misconduct for decades.

Contending that a federal judge who had earlier dismissed the case misconstrued the statute of limitations, the lawyer, Kevin T. Mulhearn, argued that the school, in Washington Heights, should be held accountable for hundreds of acts of abuse from the 1970s through the early 1990s because its complicity had only recently come to light. The case hinges, in part, on whether it was the obligation of the victims to pursue hints of a cover-up before school administrators acknowledged that they had known of the crimes.

The suit, filed on behalf of 34 clients, was thrown out in January by a federal judge, John G. Koeltl, who ruled that too many years had elapsed since the alleged abuse had taken place. Mr. Mulhearn countered in his appeal that the clock did not start ticking on their case until Yeshiva’s role in protecting the two rabbis accused of abuse was revealed in a December 2012 article in The Daily Forward.

The arguments provoked often stinging replies from a three-judge panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, which focused on when the former students could have known that Yeshiva had put them in danger by ignoring claims of abuse by the rabbis. The judges challenged the timelines sketched by both sides; they disputed the notion that the former students could not have pursued legal action before 2012, as well as Yeshiva’s claim that it was the students’ duty to raise complaints of a cover-up immediately after the abuse occurred.

Noting that Yeshiva had allowed the rabbis to remain on the faculty for years after students had reported being abused, Judge Reena Raggi suggested that that sent a clear signal of a cover-up, triggering the start of a three-year window when the former students were eligible to file a lawsuit. “How does that not put your clients on notice that the school was deliberately indifferent?” she asked.

Mr. Mulhearn countered that the cover-up had put the students in an impossible bind, preventing them from discovering Yeshiva’s role in the abuse even as the school continued to conceal its misconduct. The basis for the students’ complaint was that the school’s efforts to conceal earlier allegations had paved the way for his clients to be abused, he said, a fact that they did not discover until the university’s chancellor admitted in 2012 that he had known of the allegations and dealt with them privately.

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NEW YORK
Courthouse News Service

By ADAM KLASFELD

MANHATTAN (CN) – At a tense hearing Thursday, an attorney for Yeshiva University drew the ire of appellate judges by claiming that the clock of the statute of limitations started ticking the moment that rabbis allegedly victimized their high school students.

Thirty-four former students of the Yeshiva University High School for Boys sued the university, its directors and administrations in New York in 2013 for $380 million, for the “horrific abuse” they said they endured between 1968 and 1998.

Now in their late 30s and early 60s, the former students claim that the school knew about the assaults and did nothing to stop them.

Rabbi George Finkelstein “preyed on the children of Holocaust survivors,” and Rabbi Macy Gordon sodomized a 16-year-old boy with a toothbrush, according to allegations of the graphic , 148-page complaint.

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VATICAN CITY
John Thavis

A new chapter in Pope Francis’ revolution was written today when the pope named Cardinal Antonio Cañizares Llovera as archbishop of Valencia, Spain.

The appointment was remarkable mainly because it violated the age-old Roman Curia maxim, “You can’t go home again.” Cardinal Cañizares was being sent back to Valencia, where he was ordained a priest 44 years ago, after a five-year stint as head of the Vatican’s Congregation for Divine Worship and the Sacraments.

Traditionally, Roman Curia department heads, especially if they’re cardinals, stay on the job until retirement. And after they retire, most continue to reside in Rome rather than returning to pastoral work in their home countries.

I’ve argued that if Pope Francis really wants to emphasize service over prestige in Vatican appointments, he should make it clear that those called to Rome are there temporarily, with no guarantee of career advancement, and can expect to return home after their five-year term is over.

That’s what’s happening to Cardinal Cañizares. A theologian known in Rome as the “little Ratzinger,” he was archbishop of Toledo when he was picked by Pope Benedict to head the liturgy congregation, where he presided over a series of conservative decisions (his latest instruction was to tone down the exchange of the sign of peace during Mass, to reflect greater “sobriety” in liturgy.)

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