ABUSE TRACKER

KENTUCKY
WLKY

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

Allen Lehmann is charged with sodomy and sexual abuse.

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

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

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

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AUSTRALIA
The Age

June 16, 2014

Bryan Keon-Cohen and Joseph Poznanski

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

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

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

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

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

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AUSTRALIA
SBS

AAP

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

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

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

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

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

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

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AUSTRALIA
Scoop

by John A Brown
June 12, 2014

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

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

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

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AUSTRALIA
ABC News

By the National Reporting Team’s Lorna Knowles

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

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

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

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

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

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AUSTRALIA
ABC News

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

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

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

The community included the now convicted paedophile Brother Gregory Sutton.

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

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AUSTRALIA
Daily Mail (UK)

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

By FREYA NOBLE

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

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

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

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

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

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

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UNITED STATES
Christianity Today

Halee Gray Scott

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

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

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

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

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

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

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SPAIN
Morocco World News

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

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

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

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

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MINNESOTA
Northlands News Center

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

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

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

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

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

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OHIO
WTOV

Updated: Monday, June 16 2014

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

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

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

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

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IRELAND
UTV

Published Monday, 16 June 2014

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

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

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

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

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

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MINNESOTA
Star Tribune

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Most recent public statement

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

Proposals to be considered

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

Keynote speakers

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

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IRELAND
Irish Times

Joe Humphreys

Mon, Jun 16, 2014

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

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

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

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

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IRELAND
Irish Times

Fr Gerard Moloney

Tue, Jun 17, 2014

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

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

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

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

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

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

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UNITED STATES
Janet Mefferd Show

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

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UNITED STATES
Associated Baptist Press

By Bob Allen

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

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

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

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

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

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UNITED STATES
Pilgrim’s Road Trip

June 16, 2014 By Michelle Van Loon

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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OREGON
The American Conservative

By ROD DREHER • June 16, 2014

This is shocking, but not surprising:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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AUSTRALIA
Sky News

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

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

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

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

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

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UNITED STATES
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests

For immediate release: Monday, June 16 2014

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

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

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

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

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

[GlobalPost]

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

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ST. LOUIS (MO)
Riverfront Times

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

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

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

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

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

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AUSTRALIA
Courier-Mail

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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AUSTRALIA
Daily Telegraph

JANET FIFE-YEOMANS THE DAILY TELEGRAPH JUNE 17, 2014

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

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

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

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

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

Mr Kelly answered: ‘‘No.’’

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AUSTRALIA
Daily Mail (UK)

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

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

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

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

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
Public Catholic

June 16, 2014 By Rebecca Hamilton

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

I understand and share the emotions it raises.

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

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

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

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

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OHIO
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests

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

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

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

WHEN
Monday, June 16 at 1:30 pm

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

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

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

[Belmont College]

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

MINNESOTA
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests

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

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

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

They will also

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

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

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

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

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

[BishopAccountability.org]

[Duluth News Tribune]

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

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
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests

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

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

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

The group will also prod Jesuit officials to

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

WHEN
Monday, June 16 at 1:00 pm

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

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

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

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

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

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

[BishopAccountability.org]

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

[Gonzaga University]

[Gonzaga University]

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

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

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IRELAND
Irish Independent

Sarah Carey
Published 16/06/2014

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

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

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

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

DISTORTIONS

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

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

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UNITED STATES
National Catholic Reporter

Thomas Reese | Jun. 14, 2014 NCR Today

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

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

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

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

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ARGENTINA
GlobalPost

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

Will Carless
June 16, 2014

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

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

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

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

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FLORIDA
National Catholic Reporter

Tom Roberts | Jun. 16, 2014

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

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

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

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

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AUSTRALIA
The Canberra Times

June 16, 2014

David Ellery
Reporter for The Canberra Times.

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

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

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

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

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

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AUSTRALIA
The Canberra Times

June 16, 2014

David Ellery
Reporter for The Canberra Times.

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

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

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

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

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

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AUSTRALIA
The Guardian (UK)

Australian Associated Press
theguardian.com, Monday 16 June 2014

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

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

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

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

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AUSTRALIA
9 News

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

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

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

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

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

AUSTRALIA
Broken Rites

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

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

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

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

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

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IRELAND
Irish Independent

John Downing and Ralph Riegel

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

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

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

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

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IRELAND
Irish Times

Carl O’Brien

Mon, Jun 16, 2014

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

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

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

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

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

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

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IRELAND
Irish Times

Carl O’Brien

Mon, Jun 16, 2014

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

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

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

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

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

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IRELAND
Irish Times

Padraig O’Morain

Mon, Jun 16, 2014

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

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

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

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

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IRELAND
Irish Mirror

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

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

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

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

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

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IRELAND
Irish Examiner

By Eoin English
Irish Examiner Reporter

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

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

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

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

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UNITED STATES
Renew America

By Matt C. Abbott

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

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

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

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IRELAND
Irish Examiner

By Joanne O’ Riordan

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

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

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

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

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

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UNITED STATES
POPE FRANCIS the CON-Christ.

Paris Arrow

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

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

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

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UNITED KINGDOM
BBC News

By Robert Pigott
Religious affairs correspondent, BBC News

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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MASSACHUSETTS
Road to Recovery

Press release

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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AUSTRALIA
Sky News

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

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

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

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

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

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AUSTRALIA
ABC Indigenous

Updated June 16, 2014

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

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

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

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

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AUSTRALIA
Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child sexual abuse

live stream

Denis Doherty, former Marist brother.

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IRELAND
Irish Times

Olivia Kelleher

Sun, Jun 15, 2014

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

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

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

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

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

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

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IRELAND
Irish Times

Mark Hilliard

Sun, Jun 15, 2014

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

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

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

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IRELAND
Sunday Independent

Published 15/06/2014

Pertussis: also described as whooping cough

Convulsions: seizures

Marasmus: acute malnutrition

Debility from birth: weakness

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

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

Uraemic fits: seizures associated with kidney failure

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IRELAND
Sunday Independent

Surname Forename Date died Age Cause of death

Derrane Patrick 22/08/1925 5 mts Gastroenteritis

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

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

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

Lally Peter 25/12/1925 11 Mts Intestinal Tuberculosis

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

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

McWilliam Joseph 05/03/1926 6 mts Congenital Syphilis

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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IRELAND
Sunday Independent

Jody Corcoran
Published 15/06/2014

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

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

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

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

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IRELAND
Forbes

Eamonn Fingleton Contributor

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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IRELAND
Irish Independent

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

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

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

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

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IRELAND
Sunday Independent

Maeve Sheehan
Published 15/06/2014

THEY are the babies that society has tried to forget. Many were born in “shameful” circumstances to unmarried or impoverished mothers at a home in Tuam.

Those who weren’t given up for adoption were sent to industrial schools or Magdalene Laundries.

Seven-hundred and ninety-six babies died, their resting place unmarked.

The local historian who discovered the scale of baby deaths in St Mary’s can find no burial records. They are thought to have been buried in unmarked graves on the site of an old septic tank. There is no plot with their names on it that says they lived – for however short a period – or that they died.

Today we publish for the first time official public records documenting the harsh, short lives of the 796 babies and children who died in Tuam.

The records, compiled by the General Register Office and released on Friday to this newspaper, do not say where the babies are from to protect their privacy. The records give the babies the dignity of being called by their name, while the notes and causes of death entered after their names tell their own story.

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IRELAND
Journal

CONVULSIONS. MALNUTRITION. DELICACY.

Babies died at the Bethany Home in Dublin’s Rathgar for a raft of reasons. Some, like Victory (1924) and Addison (1925), were stillborn.

Others, like Patricia Bass and Eleanor Allen, who died within a day of each other in February 1925, aged four months and five weeks respectively, died of ‘general debility’.

Evelyn Dixon was six weeks old when she died on 3 October 1926. The cause of death was marked as ‘syphilis’.

Charles Heffernon was 18 months old when he died of German measles on 17 May 1924 at the home. In 1935, both Margaret McKnight (three months) and Helen Parker (two-and-a-half months) died of ‘stomach trouble’ on the same day: 15 November.

June Spence lived for just six weeks before she died of marasmus (malnutrition) in the Bethany Home.

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IRELAND
Irish Central

PATRICK COUNIHAN @irishcentral June 15,2014

Details are emerging of the horrific stories behind some of the 796 deaths at the Tuam mother and baby home – where 18 children died of hunger.

12 of the 18 who starved were girls and there is a suspicion that some were mentally retarded.

One child wasn’t even given a name by the Bons Secours nuns who ran the Tuam home.

The youngest child to die was recorded as just ‘10 minutes old’ while the oldest was eight, a girl who had lived all her life in the home until measles killed her.

Bridget Agatha Kenny was two months old when she died as a result of marasmus, child malnutrition, on August 23, 1947. She is described as having been ‘mentally defective.’

She was one of 18 children whose cause of death was listed as child malnutrition or the official term “marasmus.”

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IRELAND
Irish Mirror

Marie Kierans

The decision by the Government to hold an investigation into mother and baby-homes will not take away the heartbreak caused by the atrocities in these places of terror.

But hopefully the probe will at least finally expose the unforgivable practices that went on, hold those responsible accountable and give proper recognition to the thousands of children who died through neglect and cruelty.

That so-called religious people could inflict such brutal suffering
on any human being – never mind innocent babies and their poor young mothers whose only “crime” was to get pregnant outside of marriage – is truly incomprehensible.

It is only right the inquiry is not confined to the revelations concerning the former Bon Secours home in Tuam.

All similar facilities must come under scrutiny so we face up to and address this shameful time in our history once and for all.

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IRELAND
Journal

A FIANNA FÁIL senator who herself was adopted from a mother-and-baby home has called on the government to give all adoptees the right to access their birth certs.

Senator Averil Power has noted that adopted people in the United Kingdom have had access to their original birth cert, which includes their mother’s name and their own original name, since 1975.

“Forty years later, Irish adoptees still don’t have that right,” she said in a statement this afternoon.

Power was adopted from the Temple Hill mother-and-baby home in Dublin
She said the conditions within these homes tell “just half the story”.

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ST. LOUIS (MO)
Fox 2

BY ELLIOT WEILER

ST. LOUIS, MO (KTVI) – This week, FOX 2′s Elliot Weiler, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch’s national and political editor Christopher Ave and reporter Stephen Giegerich look at the St. Louis County Executive race, Republican Eric Cantor’s primary election defeat, and Archbishop Carlson’s video testimony in a sexual abuse case.

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UNITED STATES
Friendly Atheist

I applaud the editorial team’s response, particularly this portion:

There is no way to remove the piece altogether from the Internet, and we do not want to make it seem that we are trying to make it disappear. That is not journalistically honest. The fact that we published it; its deficiencies; and the way its deficiencies illuminate our own lack of insight and foresight, is a matter of record at The Internet Archive

Any advertising revenues derived from hits to this post will be donated to Christian organizations that work with survivors of sexual abuse. We will be working to regain our readers’ trust and to give greater voice to victims of abuse.

It’s unusual for a Christian organization to even consider journalistic integrity in their actions, and to try to make amends with those they’ve hurt by allocating revenue to appropriate charity groups — see, for example, the World Vision gay employee policy reversal fiasco earlier this year, which left approximately 2,000 kids without sponsors. So I’m excited that they’re not completely trying to whitewash this.

But it’s not good enough. This is not restitution, this is a bare-minimum sort of response. (And as an aside: what charities are they giving to? Can we see numbers on this?)

I think they should have left the post up, because while the Internet is forever, the post is representative of their bad decision, and it is only right that you should own your words and your mistakes on the Internet. Taking it down was, I know, something a lot of my peers in the blogging world begged for, but that’s not a real solution.

A better solution would be this: run a full issue dedicated to telling the stories of victims of pastoral abuse, in their own words. Include articles from Elizabeth Esther, G.R.A.C.E. staff members, Recovering Grace representatives, Kathryn Joyce, and lawyers involved in representing victims of sexual abuse by Catholic priests. You want a cautionary tale for pastors? Don’t go to a man who ended up in jail for raping a minor in his youth group. The way to go about it is to talk to those involved in seeking justice for the victims of sexually predatory spiritual leaders.

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UNITED STATES
Dianna E. Anderson

13 June 2014

Today, Leadership Journal offered a small mea culpa in the form of some brief language changes and a note at the beginning. I’ve reproduced the note here:

Editorial Note: Since publishing the following piece on Monday, there has been a tremendous backlash from readers. Many voiced concerns that the author mischaracterized the nature of the relationship he had with his student and failed to acknowledge the gravity of his crime. We’ve heard your criticisms and would like to add the following clarifications.

First, the intent of this article was to serve as a cautionary story for church leaders and to prevent future abuse. According to Richard Hammar, a leading expert specializing in legal and tax issues for churchesand clergy, sexual abuse is the number one reason churches end up in court. Cases involving youth leaders abusing students are particularly common and this piece was meant to draw attention to this tragic problem. We simply can’t deny the pervasiveness of this problem or the deep and lasting wounds instances of abuse leave on the lives of victims.

Second, we in no way meant to downplay the severity of the author’s crimes. He is currently serving time in prison and has taken 100 percent of the responsibility for what transpired. Some of the language in the article did appear to portray the “relationship” he had with his student as consensual. We regret any implication of that kind and strongly underscore that an adult cannot have a consensual sexual relationship with a minor. This was not an “affair.” It was statutory rape. To make sure the article does not communicate otherwise, we have changed the language to reflect the true nature of the author’s crimes.

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AUSTRALIA
Broken Rites

By a Broken Rites researcher (article updated 15 June 2014)

Catholic Church authorities ignored the crimes of a paedophile religious Brother – Gregory Joseph Sutton – and transferred him to other schools (giving him more victims), according to evidence given to Australia’s national child-abuse Royal Commission.

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

According to evidence at the Royal Commission, the Marist headquarters in Sydney (not the local school) made each of these appointments. Whenever a new child-abuse complaint surfaced about Brother Greg, the local principal was not allowed to deal with it (“because Greg is a Brother, not merely a lay teacher”). Each principal was forced to hand the matter to the Marist headquarters in Sydney, which would then send Brother Greg to another school, without warning the next principal (or the parents) about Brother Greg being danger to children.

According to evidence at the Royal Commission, the Marist leadership avoided reporting these crimes to the police. Finally, after twenty years, one family considered contacting the child-protection police. But, meanwhile the Marist headquarters gave Brother Greg a plane ticket to North America where (perhaps) he would be beyond the reach of the Australian police.

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AUSTRALIA
The West Australian

COLLEEN EGAN The West Australian
June 15, 2014

Giving emotional testimony at royal commission hearings in April, former child migrant witnesses believed their alleged abusers were probably all dead.

The once-powerful Christian Brothers who ran institutions – young boys’ guardians and, as several tearful men testified, their sadistic tormentors – were thought to be in the grave.

But _The Weekend West _ has discovered there is at least one surviving Brother who was never called to the witness box.

Brian Morgan, 82, was twice named in evidence by Maltese child migrants who were sent to Tardun farm school and orphanage. He was not accused of committing or being aware of sexual abuse.

Witness VG told the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse that then-Brother Morgan, with other Brothers, was involved in the bashing of a boy “until he could no longer stand”.

Raphael Ellul testified about a beating of himself and his older brother and another incident when he had run away from Tardun and attempted to report sexual abuse by Brother Patrick Synan to the police at Mullewa.

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MINNESOTA
Winona Daily News

Leslie Hittner

“I looked at it more as a sin than a crime.” — Thomas Adamson

In reality it was both. But thanks to Bishop Fitzgerald, Bishop Watters, Bishop Harrington, Archbishop Roach, and other members of our Catholic Church hierarchy – members of the Diocese of Winona and the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis – it became much more.

When confronted by a man who claimed his three brothers and others had been abused by Father Adamson, Bishop Watters is reported to have responded that “little boys heal.”

When informed by another priest that Adamson had had sex with a little boy, Archbishop Roach simply told the priest to “handle it” and then the archdiocese began to “posture itself in such a way that any publicity will be minimized.”

Reports from relatives were trivialized and the behavior was covered up and Father Adamson was pushed to and fro throughout the diocese.

Reports from priests led to decisions to coverup the conduct and Father Adamson was pushed to and fro throughout the archdiocese, with a cautionary measure to ensure that his assignments were not in parishes that were close to the Diocese of Winona.

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SOUTH AFRICA
Sunday Times

BOBBY JORDAN | 26 May, 2014

One of South Africa’s oldest schools has been engulfed in a sex scandal – prompting allegations of a cover-up spanning two decades.

Cape Town’s prestigious private boys-only Diocesan College, better known as Bishops, this week confirmed two alleged incidents of sexual abuse.

The first incident involves a former pupil who alleged he was sexually abused by a fellow pupil. The claims of the former pupil, now living in the US, were published this week in Noseweek magazine.

The Sunday Times has since established that a second incident involving a teacher and a Grade 11 pupil has been kept under wraps since 1990, when the boy’s parents lodged a complaint.

Incredibly, the teacher, Leonard Kap-lan, was allowed to remain at the school for more than 20 years despite the matter being widely known among the school community. He retired four years ago.

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SOUTH AFRICA
News 24

Cape Town – Business tycoon Raymond Ackerman has been approached to help resolve a sex abuse crisis at Cape Town’s prestigious Diocesan College – more commonly known as Bishop’s.

According to the Sunday Times, Ackerman, a former pupil and president of the Old Diocesan Union, was asked to step in to sort out allegations of boy-on-boy sexual abuse and that of inappropriate behaviour by a senior teacher.

However, despite his best efforts, the newspaper reports that allegations continue to mount amid calls for a private investigation. A group of former pupils also claim Ackerman’s efforts are being derailed by Mike Bosman, the chairperson of the school council.

The group claims that Bosman sent a letter to a former teacher, Tim Hamilton-Smith, pressuring him to resign as secretary of the old boys’ union.

This move is believed to have been an attempt to placate a former student who went to Hamilton-Smith for help after being sexually abused by an older pupil more than 30 years ago. Hamilton-Smith is accused of allegedly ignoring the plea for help.

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UNITED STATES
The Tribune-Review

Published: Saturday, June 14, 2014

Martin Sixsmith

The discovery of a grave containing the remains of as many as 800 babies at a former home for unmarried mothers in Ireland is yet another problem for the Irish Catholic Church.

The mother and baby home at Tuam in County Galway was run by the nuns of the Sisters of Bon Secours and operated between 1925 and 1961. It took in thousands of women who had committed the “mortal sin” of unwed pregnancy, delivered their babies and was charged with caring for them.
But unsanitary conditions, poor food and a lack of medical care led to shockingly high rates of infant mortality. Babies’ bodies were deposited in a former sewage tank.

Sadly, the mass grave at Tuam is probably not unique. I visited the site — the home was demolished in the 1970s — and spoke with locals who remember babies’ skulls emerging from the soil around their houses. When boys broke open the cover of the sewage pit, they found it “full to the brim” of skeletons.

Tuam was only one of a dozen mother and baby homes in Ireland in the years after World War II, all of which treated their inmates in a similar fashion.

During 10 years of research into the Catholic Church’s treatment of “fallen women” — I wrote about one of them in my book, “Philomena,” later turned into a feature film starring Dame Judi Dench — I discovered that the girls were refused medical attention, including painkillers, during even the most difficult births; the nuns told them the pain was the penance they must pay for their sin.

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UNITED STATES
Slactivist

June 14, 2014 By Fred Clark

This is a pleasant surprise. They took down that post.

By “that post” I mean the horrible rape apologia published earlier this week by Leadership Journal, Christianity Today’s magazine for white evangelical pastors.

And by “they” I mean both Leadership Journal — which removed the post entirely, and “they” the dozens of Christians, mostly women, who wrote to the editors of LJ, commented, wrote blog posts and started the Twitter hashtag #TakeDownThatPost. The latter “they,” remarkably, were the ones who persuaded/forced the former “they” to begin to correct their ghastly mistake.

That’s tremendous, considering that Leadership Journal is decidedly and determinedly an institution at the heart of white evangelical institutionalism. That’s not an arena where the voices of women are usually able to make themselves heard. Especially not young women (and “young,” in Christianity Today terms, means anybody under 50). And not young women who don’t have a market or media platform or any formal, institutional support. And most especially not young women who ask too many questions, or who are too vocally critical of white evangelical purity culture, or who do not have the proper Official Stance opposing LGBT people and feminism.

And yet, astonishingly, dozens of just such women were able — eventually — to force the powers that be at Christianity Today to listen and to respond. That happened because they had the courage to speak up and to refuse to be silenced. And because they were right. They were obviously, powerfully right. And in the end, the men who run Christianity Today had to acknowledge the truth of what these women were saying.

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UNITED STATES
Belleville News-Democrat

June 15, 2014

St. Louis Catholic Archbishop Robert Carlson drew the ire and derision of many people this week after testifying in a lawsuit deposition that he wasn’t sure he knew years ago that it was a crime for an adult to have sex with a child.

The archdiocese said his remarks were taken out of context, but it’s perfectly clear what he was doing. He was trying to justify why, when he was in the Archdiocese of Minneapolis-St. Paul, law enforcement wasn’t called in to investigate allegations that a priest had sexually abused a minor.

Leaders in the Belleville Catholic Diocese, Freeburg School District 70 and St. Clair County government would have similarly difficult times explaining why they never reported the sexual abuse or harassment that went on in their jurisdictions. Their failure to quickly respond to the problems, more so than the problems themselves, have cost people collectively millions of dollars.

A fifth former Freeburg student just filed a lawsuit alleging he was sexually abused by former Superintendent Robin Hawkins. The district has paid four other former students a combined $5.6 million to settle their claims. Another cost: Hawkins took his own life.

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UNITED STATES
Questions from a Ewe

What a curious week. On one hand I read that the US bishops voted in their annual spring meeting to “stay the course.” My initial reaction? Oh goody! We can look forward to yet another year of bishops trying to expand their theocracy’s marginalization of women and homosexuals further into secular government. And, we’ll be treated to an encore performance hearing them intermittently and indignantly ejaculate “Religious liberty!” while they do it despite them trouncing on others’ religious liberties in the process. …Something about “self-awareness” keeps popping into my head.

Wait a minute…I’m also getting a reading from my psychic barometer. It predicts these ejaculations will increase in frequency and volume the closer we get to the US’s mid-term elections. Yippee! Can’t wait.

On the other hand, this week I also listened to one of my friends describe how his kids’ Catholic school enrollment has been cut almost in half after experiencing a raging alcoholic pastor followed by one who is a Protestant convert still enveloped in Protestant charismatic preaching styles. Now, this is a new trend it seems…the iconic mega-church fundamentalist Protestant preacher in Catholic priest’s clothing. Don’t say the old dogs can’t learn new tricks sometimes. But, since this trend began before the bishops decided to “stay the course,” I think that means this new tactic is part of the course they will keep. I can only guess that the objective is to cut Catholic school enrollments in half again.

On yet another hand, this week I also read the deposition of Robert Carlson, a man some people call “archbishop” but for whom I cannot choke out that word since “bishop” means “overseer” and when I read his deposition he exhibits no behaviors associated with tending his flock like a caretaker. His favorite three words in the deposition were “I don’t remember.” It is so prevalent that I wonder if the man can remember what color pants he wears, though presumably it is standard clerical black … every … single … day.

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IRELAND
Journal

THE CHILDREN’S MINISTER is eager for “as many groups as possible” to be included in the inquiry into all mother-and-baby homes in Ireland.

However, he has ruled out a complete investigation into county homes as part of this inquiry.

An alliance of four groups last night urged for the inclusion of county homes and the Magdalene Laundries as part of the investigation’s terms of reference.

Speaking today, Minister Charlie Flanagan said he expects the investigation will “incorporate different people and groups who have had unjustifiable grievance over a long number of years”.

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IIRELAND
Sunday Independent

Maeve Sheehan
Published 15/06/2014

Labour leadership candidate shares her story with Maeve Sheehan and tells of tracing her family and the journey |to find her birth mother

THERE are thousands of photographs of Joan Burton, but only one of when she was a baby. The sole pictorial record of her infancy is on a very old passport which is stamped with entry visas, one for Newfoundland and one for the United States. She was probably just months old when the Sisters of Charity applied for it, expecting to ship her across the Atlantic to be adopted by a Canadian or an American family.

She was a thin child and it was thought she wasn’t strong enough for the journey. The nuns arranged for her to be “boarded out” with three different families until, at the age of two, her adoptive mother, Bridie Burton, came to the convent in Blackrock, gathered her in her arms with joy and took her home to Rialto Cottages in Dublin 8.

From that one bedroom artisan dwelling, Joan Burton prospered. She won a scholarship to UCD; had a career in accountancy. After 25 years in politics she is Minister for Social Protection and is in a contest with her government colleague, Alex White, to be the next leader of the Labour Party.

Despite her political connections, her journey to find her birth mother was no different than thousands of others born to unmarried mothers or parents too poor to feed them. It was a road littered with bureaucracy, secrecy and long and frustrating delays. Now 65, she saw her passport for the first time more than a decade ago, around the time she also finally found out who her mother was.

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IRELAND
The Wellbeing Foundation

The trauma of childhood sexual abuse is almost incomprehensible. Here, Michael Corry and Aine Tubridy explain some of the consequences

I’ve come to realise that sexual assault is an imposed death experience for the victim. That is, the victim experiences her life as having been taken by someone else.
— Evangeline Kane

The emerging self, with its inherent potential, needs to be protected, and like a seedling, nurtured in fertile ground. Sexual abuse, like no other trauma, eclipses this natural unfolding with an impact of such magnitude that is rarely appreciated. Upwards of 150,000 adult women and men in Ireland have experienced statutory rape in childhood. Five times that figure experienced other forms of sexual abuse, ranging from inappropriate touching to the forced witnessing of exposure.

Picture an infant, whose window on the world is the rim of their cot, whose cry or smile elicits the unqualified unconditional attention of her mother and father, their watchful eyes holding her gaze completely, making her feel for those moments, the absolute centre of the world. In the infant’s tiny mind an inner knowing is forming ‘I am the reason this is happening’.

Now fast forward to a time when the same apparently loving father is gradually beginning to express his ‘love’ in a sexual manner, involving her in sex games which evolve over time into full sexual intimacy such as that shared by consenting adults. Her protestations are mollified, her cooperation validated and her secrecy rewarded. Variations of this premature sexualisation occur. Not for some fathers the process of seduction, but rather sadistic, brutal intercourse, instilling terror and pain, where every orifice is violated. She has no escape. Drunk or sober, day or night, he has access to her. Her reason for living has been reduced to being a sexual object, a sex slave. Once again, and in both examples of fathers, the belief holds ‘I am the reason this is happening’. The same interpretation will be formed if the attentions are those of a grandfather, uncle, sibling, neighbour or babysitter.

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UNITED STATES
The Worthy Adversry

Posted by Joelle Casteix on June 14, 2014

St. Louis Archbishop Robert Carlson has a lesson for all of us, and I don’t think it’s the lesson he intended.

The situation: When asked by victims’ attorney Jeff Anderson in a recent deposition if he knew in the 1984 that child sex abuse was a crime, Carlson responded, “I’m not sure if I did or I didn’t.” The result: he didn’t report. Countless children were put at risk and many others were abused because he couldn’t pick up the phone and call the police.

Which leads to the following question: Do YOU know how to report suspected or witnessed abuse?
I am going to go into much greater detail on this subject in my upcoming book, but I feel that it’s necessary to post and repost this information as much as possible.

First, some assumptions: I consider everyone a mandatory reporter. Child sex abuse is a crime with lasting consequences. There is a victim and an alleged criminal. If you see or suspect abuse, it’s an adult’s civic and moral obligation to report.

If you are a mandatory reporter in the eyes of the law, your employer should provide you specific training on your reporting procedures. If you have not had that training in the past year, demand that your employer provide it to all mandatory reporters at your work.

How to report child sexual abuse

If you are a victim or witness abuse:

1) If you are a victim of sexual assault, call 911. If it is not an emergency requiring immediate medical care, call your local police department and ask to speak to someone who can take a report of the sexual assault of a(n) child/adult. If you feel that it’s necessary to call 911, do it.

2) If you see sexual abuse taking place, call 911. Treat the crime like a robbery, car accident or shooting. It’s a crime that needs immediate attention.

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NEW YORK
Roman Catholic Archdiocese of New York

June 14, 2014

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: June 14, 2014

POPE FRANCIS APPOINTS THREE NEW BISHOPS FOR NEW YORK

Our Holy Father, Pope Francis, has appointed three priests of the Archdiocese of New York to serve as Auxiliary Bishops to Cardinal Timothy Dolan, the Archbishop of New York. The announcement was made today in Rome and in Washington.

Bishop-elect John Jenik, 70, currently the pastor of Our Lady of Refuge Parish in the Bronx, Bishop-elect John O’Hara, 68, currently directing the archdiocesan planning process Making All Things New and former pastor of Saint Teresa of the Infant Jesus Parish on Staten Island, and Bishop-elect Peter Byrne, 62, currently the pastor of Saint Elizabeth Parish in Manhattan, all bring many years of experience as pastors to their new roles as bishops. Cardinal Dolan praised the appointments, saying, “All three bishops-elect are seasoned pastors of the archdiocese, with years of acclaimed ministry in all areas of the archdiocese. “

The three new bishops will be ordained as bishops on August 4, 2014 in Saint Patrick’s Cathedral. They join Bishop Gerald Walsh and Bishop Domenick Lagonegro as auxiliary bishops of New York. Cardinal Edward Egan, Archbishop-emeritus, is the retired Archbishop of New York, and Bishop Robert Brucato and Bishop Josu Iriondo are retired auxiliary bishops.

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NEW YORK
Staten Island Advance

By Vincent Barone | vbarone@siadvance.com
on June 14, 2014

STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. — Pope Francis has named three priests to serve under Cardinal Timothy Dolan as auxiliary bishops to the Archdiocese of New York. Two of the bishop-elects are John O’Hara and Peter Byrne, 30-year priests who have been staples in the Catholic community on Staten Island.

Bishop-elect O’Hara, 68, is currently the director of strategic pastoral planning for the archdiocese. He was once the pastor of the Church of St. Teresa of the Infant Jesus on Staten Island and has served in the borough for a total of 24 years.

Byrne, 62, is the former longtime pastor of Immaculate Conception, where he served for 18 years, from 1995 to 2013.

The news was announced Saturday morning in Washington D.C. by Archbishop Carlo Maria Vigano, apostolic nuncio to the United States.

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AUSTRALIA
The Australian

JORDAN BAKER THE SUNDAY TELEGRAPH JUNE 15, 2014

CATHOLICISM’S top job in Australia ­remains vacant almost four months after Cardinal George Pell said he was heading to Rome, despite the Vatican saying his replacement would be fast-tracked.

Some church watchers believe the delay is due to tension over the appointment, which comes as senior clergy are grilled over their response to child sexual abuse at the royal commission.

Many in the Catholic Church believe an announcement is imminent. But if a new Archbishop of Sydney is not announced in the next few weeks, the key position will likely remain empty until September because Rome shuts down during the hot months of July and August.

Former priest Paul Collins said the four-month wait might point to problems.

“It’s taking some time, which probably means there’s something of a tussle going on,” he said.

Cardinal Pell will be highly influential in the selection of his ­replacement. He is the only Australian member of the ­Vatican’s Congregation for Bishops, which will recommend a candidate for Sydney to the Pope. …

The contenders

Anthony Fisher, 54

Bishop of Parramatta, was the youngest ever bishop when ordained in 2003. Has Pell’s strong support, but seen by some as too young, and others as too academic.

From Dominican order, not a diocesan priest.

Mark Coleridge, 65

Archbishop of Brisbane, (right) previously auxiliary Bishop of Melbourne and Archbishop of Canberra. Well-respected, spent time in Rome but new to Brisbane and it’s been a long time since he was a hands-on priest.

Bill Wright, 61

Bishop of Maitland-Newcastle, ordained a bishop in 2011. Knows Sydney as he spent many years as a suburban priest. Considered to have handled sex abuse inquiry well, but may still be tainted by the issue.

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NEW ORLEANS (LA)
National Catholic Reporter

Joshua J. McElwee Brian Roewe | Jun. 13, 2014

NEW ORLEANS
A key question for the nation’s Catholic bishops, says their president: How can they encourage one another in their ministry while respecting different leadership roles?

Louisville, Ky., Archbishop Joseph Kurtz said he is examining, “What does it mean for us to be instruments of encouragement to one another as bishops?”

“I think the conference is not meant to take the place of leadership of bishops, it’s meant to support that leadership,” said Kurtz, who was elected to lead the U.S. bishops’ conference last November and is serving a three year term.

“Just as a bishop’s leadership in a diocese is not meant to take the place of the leadership of the baptized faithful and the priests who are serving — but it’s meant to inspire and be a catalyst,” he continued.

Kurtz was speaking in an NCR interview Thursday at the end of the bishops’ spring plenary assembly, held in New Orleans this week. The assembly, which saw the bishops on Wednesday address 17 issues at breakneck pace before listening to a series of speakers on Thursday, wrapped up Friday morning with prayer.

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UNITED STATES
BishopAccountability.org

Summary of Case: A California Province Jesuit ordained in 1946, Monaghan worked as a high school teacher and counselor, and as a parish priest. He was assigned to San Francisco, San Jose, Sacramento and Santa Clara, CA, as well as to Phoenix, AZ. Monaghan was accused in the early 1990s of molesting a 7-year-old girl during a counseling session between 1988-1989 in Sacramento. He pleaded no contest to charges related to the accusation and was sentenced to 120 hours of community service and five years’ probation. Monaghan was sent to live at the Sacred Heart Jesuit Center in Los Gatos, CA in 1992, where he remained until his death on October 18, 2004.

Ordained: 1946
Died: Oct. 18, 2004

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UNITED STATES
Public Catholic

[with video]

June 14, 2014 By Rebecca Hamilton

Deacon Greg, as usual, has the story.

So, there’s this Archbishop in St Louis who is accused of the same old enabling of child sex abuse by a priest stuff we’ve gotten to know too well. Mr Archbishop the supposed priest gave a deposition about these accusations.

In that deposition, he did the lawyered-up, don’t-give-them-anything di-doh. It was a masterful performance of I don’t know nothin, sung to the tune of I Can’t Remember.

The all-time show-stopper was when the attorney asked Mr Archbishop if he knew that an adult having sex with a child was a crime back when all this was going on. “I’m not sure if I knew it was a crime or not. I understand today it was a crime,” Mr Archbishop answered. The look on his face while he said it was classic the-dog-ate-my-homework.

The attorney pursued it, and the Archbishop kept right on lying.

If you’ve got the stomach for it, have a look.

I didn’t write about this when I first saw it because, to be honest, it made me sick. I felt so sad. Bereft, almost. I had nothing to say. I just wanted to go away from this and not deal with it.

Then, just to make sure that nobody ever believes him again, the Archbishop started the second quadrille to his little dance. Deacon Greg covered it. Mr Archbishop had the St Louis Archdiocese release another the-dog-ate-my-homework statement.

This time, it was a totally idiotic accusation that inaccurate and misleading reporting “has impugned Archbishop Carlson’s good name and reputation.” This was so daft it made me question if they knew that there was a tape of the deposition out there on YouTube.

The letter goes on. But it doesn’t matter. We have the video.

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UNITED STATES
Irish Central

Niall O’Dowd @niallodowd June 14,2014

There are up to 2,000 Americans who were secretly adopted from Mother and Baby homes in Ireland according to the leading adoption rights campaigner Mari Steed.

Many of whom have never known who their now elderly or deceased Irish birth parents are says Steed.

Thousands of those secret and illegally adopted children ended up in America after essentially being sold to wealthy families.

Mari Steed of the Adoption Rights Alliance was one of them, born at the notorious Bessborough Home in Cork in 1960 and sent to America as a toddler where she now lives near Philadelphia.

She says the latest news of the Irish government inquiry must be the moment that Ireland finally is forced to open its adoption and medical records.

“The government can no longer afford to look away,” Steed says, believing that Tuam has opened a floodgate that cannot be shut.

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IRELAND
Irish Central

John Fay @irishcentral June 10,2014

Father Edward Flanagan, founder of “Boys Town” made famous by the Spencer Tracy movie, was a lone voice in condemning Ireland’s industrial schools back in the 1940s – and he was viciously castigated by church and government for doing so.

Fr. Flanagan, from Co. Roscommon, left Ireland in 1904 and was ordained a priest eight years later. In 1917 he was living and working in Omaha, Nebraska, when he hit upon the idea of a “boys town,” which offered education and a home for the poor and wayward boys of Omaha.

However, demand for the service was so great that he soon had to find bigger premises. Boys Town, built on a farm 10 miles from Omaha, was the result. …

The success of the film “Boys Town,” meant Fr. Flanagan was treated like a celebrity on his arrival.

His visit was noted by the The Irish Independent, which said that Fr. Flanagan had succeeded “against overwhelming odds,” spurred on by the “simple slogan that ‘There is no such thing as a bad boy.’”

But Fr. Flanagan was unhappy with what he found in Ireland. He was dismayed at the state of Ireland’s reform schools and blasted them as “a scandal, un-Christlike, and wrong.” And he said the Christian Brothers, founded by Edmund Rice, had lost its way.

Speaking to a large audience at a public lecture in Cork’s Savoy Cinema he said, “You are the people who permit your children and the children of your communities to go into these institutions of punishment. You can do something about it.” He called Ireland’s penal institutions “a disgrace to the nation,” and later said “I do not believe that a child can be reformed by lock and key and bars, or that fear can ever develop a child’s character.”

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PENNSYLVANIA
Mainline Media News

Published: Friday, June 13, 2014

By Cheryl Allison
callison@mainlinemedianews.com

The second of what will be at least three zoning hearings on St. Charles Borromeo Seminary’s plan to consolidate operations on a portion of its upper campus in Wynnewood drew a standing-room-only crowd to a meeting room at the Merion Fire Co. of Ardmore’s station house June 10, spilling over into a hallway for much of the 5 ½-hour session.

There was a noticeable change from the first session last month before the Lower Merion Zoning Hearing Board. Balancing the turnout of Wynnewood and Merion neighbors concerned about potential development on the lower campus was a large contingent of clergy and other seminary supporters from area parishes.

That led to tense moments when an individual neighbor, Anthony Gowa of Indian Creek, cross-examining a seminary witness, asked if any retired clergy or a priest associated with a pedophile case would reside on campus. The question triggered an objection by the seminary’s attorney and outcries from the audience.

“You’ve shown your true colors,” one person called out.

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AUSTRALIA
Courier-Mail

Former mayor calls for all churches to pay taxes, and donate it to victims of child abuse

DES HOUGHTON THE COURIER-MAIL JUNE 15, 2014

FORMER Brisbane Lord Mayor Jim Soorley yesterday called for all churches in Australia to pay rates and taxes with some money going to the victims of child abuse by the clergy.

Mr Soorley, a former Catholic priest, sparked uproar by accusing some churches of profiteering and abusing their rate-exempt status by banking large tracts of land.

“Why should they be exempt?” Soorley said.

“Rates are collected to pay for vital infrastructure in our cities. The churches and their followers use public infrastructure and they should pay their share.’’

He said the churches had squandered much goodwill with shameful criminal behaviour.

He singled out the Salvation Army, the Catholic Church and the Anglican Church for special criticism for harbouring pedophiles.

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IRELAND
Journal

THIS IS THE LETTER from the Minister for Health’s office in 1957 that approved the Bon Secours mother and baby home in Tuam, County Galway.

The letter (which can be viewed here) states that the minister of the day, Fine Gael’s Tom O’Higgins, approved a number of maternity homes under the provision of section 25 of the Health Act 1953.
Many of these homes were already registered prior to the 1953 provision in the Act, as stated in the letter.

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IRELAND
Irish Examiner

By Conall Ó Fátharta
Irish Examiner Reporter

Taoiseach Enda Kenny’s claim that a referendum may be needed to give adopted people basic rights has been dismissed as one which “does not survive scrutiny”.

Mr Kenny made the claim, which has been previously asserted by former children’s minister Frances Fitzgerald, in the wake of the mother-and-baby homes scandal.

The Government has promised tracing legislation for adopted people since 2011 but has so far failed to publish a heads of bill.

However, senior lecturer in Constitutional Law at UCC, Conor O’Mahony, said on his blog that such a claim was without foundation.

“This is a familiar claim when calls for reform are being resisted; governments are fond of attributing their inaction to constitutional restrictions. In this case (as in many others) the claim does not survive scrutiny,” wrote Dr O’Mahony.

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IRELAND
Irish Times

Dan Griffin

Fri, Jun 13, 2014

Victims who have suffered at the hands of those motivated by “religious ethos” need improved mechanisms for redress, according to a new report.

The Irish Council for Civil Liberties (ICCL) has called on the UN Human Rights Committee to recommend that Ireland introduce “more effective, comprehensive and independent mechanisms” for “truth finding and redress” concerning victims of Magdalene laundries, symphysiotomy, mother and baby homes, and status-based employment discrimination.

The recommendation is the “overarching theme” in the ICCL’s fourth periodic examination of Ireland under the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, according to the organisation’s director Mark Kelly.

The report also calls on the UN to urge Ireland to make provision for effective mechanisms to implement and enforce international human rights standards in Ireland, including the setting up of an independent National Human Rights Institution.

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IRELAND
Irish Central

Niall O’Dowd @niallodowd June 14,2014

There are some undeniable facts about the unmarried mother’s homes in Ireland from the time they were established in the 1920s until they were closed sometime in the 1960s.

Children died needlessly by the thousands in them. Many, possibly 800 in Galway, were buried without coffins, thrown in the earth, some in a septic tank.

Some deniers have claimed there were high rates of deaths anyway due to the times. But 100 out of 162 babies in Bessborough in Cork?

Here is what happened there. A conscientious health official, Dr .James Deeny, visited, and here are his exact words written in 1951:

“Shortly afterwards, when in Cork, I went to Bessborough. It was a beautiful institution, built on to a lovely old house just before the war, and seemed to be well-run and spotlessly clean. I marched up and down and around about and could not make out what was wrong; at last I took a notion and stripped all the babies and, unusually for a Chief Medical Adviser, examined them.

“Every baby had some purulent infection of the skin and all had green diarrhea, carefully covered up. There was obviously a staphylococcus infection about.

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ST. LOUIS (MO)
Missourinet

June 14, 2014 By Mike Lear

St. Louis Catholic Archbishop Robert Carlson has released a statement and a video saying he has understood for his entire adult life that sexual abuse is a “grave evil and a criminal offense.”

The statement is an attempt to respond to the release of video of a deposition Carlson gave last month as part of a sexual abuse lawsuit in Minnesota. Carlson and the St. Louis archdiocese say his comments in that deposition have been “misconstrued” to suggest that Carlson was not aware it was a criminal offense for an adult to molest a child. The archdiocese has said in a statement that the exchange in question was about Minnesota’s child abuse reporting law, not whether it was illegal to molest a child.

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IRELAND
Irish Examiner

By Claire O’Sullivan
Irish Examiner Reporter

THE Ryan and Cloyne reports into child abuse in the Catholic Church could be seen in simple black and white terms: It was easy to loathe the abusers and the parish priests and bishops who colluded to protect them, to shudder at how bereft and powerless the child victims were, and at the torment of parents when they learned what had gone on around them.

But, following Martin McAleese’s Magdalene report last year, the lines began to blur. We saw that 25% of women sent to the laundries had been referred by an arm of the State, 8.8% by priests, and a notable 10.5% by families. We saw how Church, State, and families were complicit in subjugating, degrading, and dehumanising young girls who had fallen foul of Catholic and therefore societal, norms.

The uproar about conditions in mother-and- baby homes over the past number of weeks has underscored this theme — with the finger increasingly pointed at the families and communities that wanted these pregnant women and their babies out of view; who shoved crying girls through the front door of these homes in the dead of night, expected them to feed, care for, and love a child for a year and then to hand their child to a stranger without question.

Nowhere is this blinkered, ignorant, craven supplication and groupthink better illustrated than in the Twitter feed of @limerick1914, where Limerick librarian and historian Liam Hogan posts excerpts from regional newspapers, local authority, and public health archives.

A Tuam Herald report revealed how, in 1907, the Carlow Board of Guardians wholeheartedly approved the Viceregal Commission’s recommendation that all unmarried mothers who had two or more children should be detained at the workhouse. These women were seen as beyond redemption.

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MASSACHUSETTS
Fox Boston

WEST ROXBURY, Mass. (MyFoxBoston.com) — The assistant athletic director at Catholic Memorial School has been fired amid allegations of inappropriate text messaging.

A school spokesperson confirmed James Cerbo’s employment has been terminated due to an investigation into inappropriate texts.

“It has been determined that the text messages were unacceptable, and clearly violate the school’s policies pertaining to harassment, electronic communications and boundaries,” read a statement from the school.

The statement went on to say the school takes its moral and legal obligation to protect its students seriously and that officials have notified the Department of Children and Families of the allegations.
A parent who declined to go on camera told FOX 25 that two students complained to school officials about texts they say they got from Cerbo.

Cerbo was not at his Walpole home but his father was. He did not want to speak on camera but said that working with kids has always been his son’s passion.

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