ABUSE TRACKER

IRLAND
euronews

800 tote Säuglinge: Irland ordnet Untersuchung an

In Irland werden die mysteriösen Todesfälle von Kleinkindern neu aufgerollt. Bereits 1975 war in der Stadt Tuam ein Massengrab mit fast 800 Leichen entdeckt worden. Dabei soll es sich um Säuglinge aus einem Mutter-Kind-Heim handeln, das von 1925 bis 1961 von katholischen Ordensschwestern betrieben wurde.

“Ich habe Kinder- und Jugendminister Flanagan damit beauftragt, eine Kommission zu bilden, um das Ausmaß und die Beteiligten festzustellen”, sagt der irische Premierminister Enda Kenny. “Es soll herausgefunden werden, ob es sich um einen Einzelfall handelt oder ob es andere gibt, die untersucht werden müssen”, so Kenny weiter.

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DEUTSCHLAND
Neue Presse

[Summary: On theWeihnachtsfeiertag holiday in 1998 there was an uproar in the St. Mary parish in Sonnenfelt. A father got up from his seat, went into the sanctuary and accused the pastor of sexually abusing is son. The boy was an altar boy. The believers were shaken.]

Coburg/Berlin – Am zweiten Weihnachtsfeiertag des Jahres 1998 kommt es in der katholischen Kirchengemeinde St. Marien in Sonnefeld zu einem Eklat. Ein Vater steht auf, geht in den Altarraum und wirft dem Pfarrer während des Gottesdienstes vor, seinen Sohn sexuell missbraucht zu haben. Der Junge war Messdiener gewesen. Die Gläubigen sind erschüttert.

Am 4. Januar 1999 informiert ein Mitglied der katholischen Kirchengemeinde Ebersdorf/Sonnefeld den Generalvikar der Erzdiözese Bamberg, Alois Albrecht. Es folgen innerkirchliche Prüfungen, und dann schaltet das Erzbischöfliche Ordinariat die Staatsanwaltschaft Coburg ein. Eine Lawine ungeahnten Ausmaßes kommt ins Rollen.

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ITALIA
A ragion verduta

[Summary: In Italy, only two dioceses – Bessanone and Verona – after dozens of sexual abuse complaints have decided to establish a commission of inquiry]

Redazione: Questo libro appare la naturale estensione all’Italia del suo precedente lavoro. Nel nostro Paese non si sono però avute commissioni d’inchiesta sull’argomento, abbiamo anzi una conferenza episcopale che pare ami ribadire che non vi è alcun obbligo di denuncia dei sacerdoti pedofili. Come si sta evolvendo la situazione in Italia?

Tulli: In Italia, fino a oggi solo due diocesi in seguito a decine di denunce che peraltro erano rimaste inascoltate per anni hanno deciso di istituire una commissione d’inchiesta: Bressanone e Verona. In entrambi i casi gran parte delle denunce sono risultate fondate ma la prescrizione ha negato la possibilità di ottenere giustizia alle vittime. Si è trattato peraltro di commissioni che hanno agito a livello “locale”. Nel nostro Paese, diversamente dall’Irlanda, Belgio, Stati Uniti, Australia, Olanda, Germania solo per citarne alcuni, non è mai nemmeno stata ipotizzata la possibilità di istituire una commissione d’inchiesta a livello nazionale che facesse luce quanto meno sulle dimensioni del fenomeno.

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DEUTSCHLAND
Sexueller Missbrauch durch Angehorige der katholischen Kirche

“Du sollst nicht schweigen” – Priester erhebt Vorwürfe gegen das Bistum: “Man habe ihm im Priesterseminar nicht beigebracht, dass man so etwas nicht tun dürfe.”

Jahrelang wird eine Minderjährige von einem katholischen Pfarrer missbraucht – drei Jahrzehnte später macht sie sich auf ihre Weise Luft

Von Hans Holzhaider

Würzburg – Zum Aufruf vor dem Zivilrichter Peter Müller am Landgericht Würzburg kommt die Sache Fromm gegen Weiß (Namen geändert). Johannes Fromm, 70, katholischer Pfarrer im Ruhestand, will Claudia Weiß, 40, verbieten lassen zu behaupten, er habe sie sexuell missbraucht oder sexuelle Handlungen an ihr vorgenommen. Ferner soll es, fordert der Kläger, Frau Weiß verboten werden, zwei Schreiben des Missbrauchsbeauftragten und des Generalvikariats des Bistums Würzburg, in denen auf diesen sexuellen Missbrauch Bezug genommen wird, zu verbreiten oder an Dritte weiterzuleiten.

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IRELAND
Finfacts Ireland

By Michael Hennigan, Finfacts founder and editor
Jun 6, 2014

Every country is an Organised Hypocrisy to some degree. Countries have aspirations and stated principles, which more often than not, contrast with a grim reality – – at least in democracies today, there is an opportunity for some rebalancing.

Thomas Jefferson, America’s third president and a cruel slave master, who had penned the line in the 1776 Declaration of Independence: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal…” fathered at least six children with his slave Sally Hemings but he regarded them as sub-human, while Karl Marx a German philosopher, who had seen the grim existence for workers in Germany and Britain in the first century of the industrial revolution, would not have expected to become the god of brutal dictatorships that crushed the human spirit in the twentieth century.

The revelation that 796 babies died in a facility run by a religious order in Tuam, County Galway over 36 years, is shocking even after the litany of stories of abuse in recent decades.

Two sectarian states had developed in Ireland from the 1920’s and in the South, behind the veneer of “republican principles,” conservative elites held power and brooked little opposition.

In the Irish Times in 2009, the late journalist Mary Raftery wrote on Mr Justice Seán Ryan’s report on decades of child abuse in Ireland: “It’s is quite simply a devastating report. It is a monument to the shameful nature of

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IRELAND
Journal

IN THE SPACE of two weeks, the story about a mass grave at a former mother and baby home in Galway has grown from something that was just talked about locally in Tuam to a worldwide news story.

The oh-so-gradual unfolding of the story, beginning in the 1970s with the discovery of multiple skeletons, seemed to take people by surprise. After breaking in the media almost a fortnight ago, it took more than a week before any politician made a comment about it, and it was days before national mainstream outlets covered it.

Here, we look at how the story has unfolded, and all of the many, many questions that still remain.

What is the home at the centre of the controversy?

From 1925 until 1961, an order of nuns calls the Bon Secours Sisters ran an institution at this building in Tuam in Co Galway.

The institution was called St Mary’s but was known locally as The Home. Unmarried women in the area who became pregnant were sent there to give birth away from their families, as at the time, having a so-called ‘illegitimate’ child was regarded as shameful.

The babies were then left in the orphanage to be raised by the nuns. Some of them were put up for adoption while some remained in the care of the nuns.

Some of the poorer women who gave birth were forced to work for the nuns in the institution after they had their child as a way to pay for the service which had been provided to them.

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IRELAND
Irish Mirror

Jun 06, 2014 00:11 By Jilly Beattie

The 81-year-old said she now knows her son Anthony was “lucky” because he “lived and loved” although she was never reunited with him

Movie inspiration Philomena Lee spoke yesterday of her horror over the mass baby grave.

The 81-year-old’s struggle to find her son Anthony who was taken from her in an unmarried mother and baby home touched millions when it hit the big screen as an acclaimed film starring Dame Judi Dench.

And yesterday, Philomena said: “Now I know we were the lucky ones.

“For 50 years I kept my sweet boy a secret until I could hold it in no longer.

“My dream was to be reunited with him but sadly it was not to be and the grief I have suffered has broken me many times.

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IRELAND
Irish Examiner

By Michael Clifford

THE Tuam babies story this week says much about the past, but about the present also.

The graveyard in the grounds of the former so-called mother-and-baby home was first discovered by two 12-year-old boys, in 1975. One of them opened the concrete cover and was met with the horror below. Pretty quickly, the cover was drawn across again. In the 1970s, the past had not yet been acknowledged. Indeed, the past wasn’t even past.

The next major juncture in the story was last October, by which time local historian, Catherine Corless, had painstakingly compiled and matched records from the home. Corless concluded that the concrete tank must contain most, if not all, of the nearly 800 infants who had died in the home during its existence, between 1925 and 1961.

The story was first published in the Connaught Tribune on October 10 last, which reported that the number of babies allegedly involved was 788. Continuing research has brought this number up to 796.

Declan Tierney’s report in the Tribune began: “Research has shown that there are 788 children, from newborns to eight-year-olds, buried in a graveyard that was attached to an old orphanage in Tuam.

“And a group of interested individuals have now established the names of each of the children, what age they were when they died, and the causes of their deaths. It is now their intention to erect a memorial in their honour and this will contain the names of each of the 788 children.”

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VIRGINIA
Fredericksburg.com

BY AMY FLOWERS UMBLE / THE FREE LANCE–STAR

Priests at a Stafford County Catholic church are ready to handle any concerns that arise from the news that a former church member faces 111 felonies involving child molestation.

A Stafford grand jury indicted Thomas Francis Villacres on those charges Monday. Villacres, a former chairman of the Stafford County School Board, now lives in Florida.

While living in Stafford, Villacres was a member of St. William of York Catholic Church in North Stafford.

The Rev. Robert DeMartino is prepared to answer any questions parishioners may have about Villacres and the charges, said Michael Donohue, spokesman for the Catholic Diocese of Arlington. And if anyone comes forward to report abuse, DeMartino would encourage them to contact law enforcement, Donohue said.

The priest also plans to announce Villacres’ arrest, although those plans are not concrete yet. Church bulletins were printed Monday, before the charges against Villacres were published in the newspaper, Donohue said.

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LAS VEGAS (NV)
KTNV

CREATED Jun 6, 2014

Las Vegas, NV (KTNV) — A youth pastor from California has been arrested in the death of a Las Vegas man from last year.

Family members confirm police arrested Robert L. Cox on Tuesday. According to police records, Cox is accused in the murder of Link Ellingson, who died in December, 2013 of head injuries from an altercation outside a Las Vegas pub that happened months earlier.

Police records show Cox was visiting Las Vegas on June 13, 2013, with his family and interns as part of a ministry program. The group stopped for food at the Four Kegs Sports Pub on North Jones Boulevard near U.S. 95. The altercation with Ellingson took place in the parking lot afterwards, police wrote.

In police documents, officers said Cox punched the 6’8 Ellingson, who fell and hit his head. The records show Cox later denied throwing any punches.

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CHICAGO (IL)
Chicago Tribune

By Melissa Harris
Tribune columnist
4:02 p.m. CDT, June 6, 2014

Illinois Supreme Court Justice Anne Burke, a Roman Catholic who has clashed with Chicago’s Cardinal Francis George, has presided over two gay weddings this year, including a double wedding last week.

The double ceremony, held at Keith House in Chicago’s South Loop, marked the first time a member of the state’s highest court has married a same-sex couple since all counties began issuing marriage licenses to them in June, Burke said.

A brother and sister each married same-sex partners, said Burke, whose daughter knows one of the couples.

“That’s how they reached out to me,” Burke said. “The guys walked the girls down the aisle, and then took their respective partners’ hands. The girls wore wedding dresses. The guys had on nice suits and royal blue ties.”

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TEXAS
Valley Morning Star

By ILDEFONSO ORTIZ

A Mission teenager claims a Catholic deacon at a Mission church sexually abused him for about two years, according to a lawsuit filed Thursday.

The victim — now 18 years old — claims that from 2010 to 2012, when he was an altar boy at the San Cristobal Magallanes parish in Mission, Deacon Ronaldo Mitchell Chavez sexually assaulted him, the teen’s attorneys said in the lawsuit.

Police on Jan. 17 arrested Chavez on a charge of continuous sexual abuse of a child. Last month, an Hidalgo County grand jury returned an indictment against him on the sexual abuse charge. The case remains pending in the 430th state District Court.

In the lawsuit, attorneys seek exemplary damages claiming that the diocese should have known that Chavez was a danger to children, but instead he had unlimited access to the altar boys at the parish.

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PARAGUAY
ABC Color

El obispo de Ciudad de Este, Mons. Rogelio Livieres Plano, dijo ayer a ABC Color: “No voy a pedir perdón mientras que (Cuquejo) no se retracte de lo que dijo de mi sacerdote. ¿De dónde sacó la prensa que yo le llamé?”. Su tío, Mons. Jorge Livieres Banks, intentó mediar, pero no tuvo éxito.

Livieres Plano sigue con su enojo con el arzobispo de Asunción, Mons. Pastor Cuquejo. Ayer, en contacto con ABC Color, dijo categóricamente que no le va a pedir perdón. “No voy a pedir perdón mientras que (Cuquejo) no se retracte de lo que dijo de mi sacerdote (Carlos Urrutigoity, acusado de abuso sexual). ¿De dónde sacó la prensa que yo le llamé?”, preguntó en alusión a publicaciones en la web que daban como un hecho la reconciliación e incluso mencionaban que había llamado a Cuquejo para pedirle perdón.

El obispo paranaense agregó que estaba con la conciencia tranquila, “aunque él sea el metropolitano”.

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PARGUAY
ABC Color

CIUDAD DEL ESTE (De nuestra redacción regional). Las repercusiones que tuvo la advertencia de autoridades religiosas de los Estados Unidos acerca del supuesto peligro que representa el sacerdote argentino Carlos Urrutigoity para los jóvenes podrían sentirse en los estrados judiciales locales. Urrutigoity fue denunciado por conductas homosexuales y pedófilas en Argentina y Estados Unidos.

La fiscala de la Niñez de Ciudad del Este María Graciela Vera Colmán explicó que ayer recibió una denuncia verbal de que habría una o varias víctimas de abusos sexuales de Urrutigoity, pero que no tiene informaciones concretas.

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PARAGUAY
El Universal

[Summary: The bishops of two major cities in Paraguay are in a public confrontation regarding the Argentina priest Carlos Urrutigoity who is alleged to have assaulted a student in the United States.
The battle between Rogeligo Livieres Plano of Ciudad del Este and the Archbishop of Asuncion, Pastor Cuquejo, broke after the second suggested that an investigation be reopened to find study allegations of child molestation against Urrutigoity. Livieres appointed Urrutigoity as his number two official and has defended him saying the case is closed.]

El sacerdote argentino Carlos Urrutigoity fue acusado en Estados Unidos de asaltar sexualmente a un estudiante

Los obispos de las dos principales ciudades de Paraguay protagonizan un enfrentamiento público en torno a la figura de un sacerdote argentino que fue suspendido por pedofilia en Estados Unidos y ahora vive en el país sudamericano.

La batalla entre el obispo de Ciudad del Este, Rogeligo Livieres Plano, y el arzobispo de Asunción, Pastor Cuquejo, estalló después de que el segundo sugiriera reabrir una investigación para averiguar si son ciertas las acusaciones de abuso de menores contra Carlos Urrutigoity.

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PARAGUAY
Entorno Inteligente

[Summary: The public ministry has opened an official investigation of Argentine priest Carlos Urrutigoity who is accused of pedophilia. Maria Graciela Vera said they will verify all the charges against him and try to contact the family to see if they wish to make a complaint. Penalties for rape of children can be prison terms of up to 15 years or more. At the same time, the U.S. organization called Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests issued a statement asking that Paraguay suspend the priest from his clerical functions. Urrutigoity is now second in the structure of the Ciudad del Este diocese.]

Hoy.com.py / El Ministerio Público abrirá una investigación de oficio, contra el sacerdote argentino Carlos Urrutigoity, quien es acusado de pedofilia.

La fiscal de la niñez y adolescencia, María Graciela Vera, confirmó a la redacción de HOY, que investigará de oficio al cura Carlos Urrutigoity.

“Vamos a verificar todas las acusaciones en su contra y tratar de contactar con los familiares para ver si desean formular una denuncia”, expresó Vera.

Las penas por violación en niños, pueden ser de hasta 15 años, e incluso más, dependiendo del agravante de cada causa.

Sobre este mismo caso, la organización de Estados Unidos, denominada Red de sobrevivientes abusados por sacerdotes, emitió un comunicado días atrás, solicitando que Paraguay suspenda al cura .

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UNITED STATES
Bilgrimage

William D. Lindsey

Hans Küng, Can We Save the Catholic Church?: An Excerpt re: President George W. Bush and Pope Benedict XVI

I’ve mentioned in the comboxes here in the past several days that I’m now reading Hans Küng’s new book Can We Save the Catholic Church?, trans. Dr. Herrlinger of Tübingen, with reworking by Thomas Riplinger and Andrew Lyon (London: William Collins, 2013). Kathy Hughes, a faithful reader of and contributor to this blog, kindly sent me a copy of the book.*

In days to come, I’ll be sharing some reports from my reading. As I begin the book, I’m struck by how the question in its title is echoed in a book another faithful reader of and contributor to Bilgrimage has sent me: Ruth Krall recently sent me a book by Sister Karol Jackowski entitled The Silence We Keep: A Nun’s View of the Catholic Priest Scandal (NY: Harmony, 2004). I’ve only dipped into this book, but as I begin Küng’s book, it interests me very much to see that Jackowski starts the final chapter of her book with the following questions:

So what happens next? Is this the end of the Catholic Church? Is this curtains for Catholicism?

Why are so many people asking such questions right now, I wonder as I begin Küng’s book. People who are, after all, “official” representatives of the church: Küng is a priest, a theologian, and was a peritus at Vatican II; and Jackowski is a nun . . . .

Meanwhile, here’s an excerpt from Küng’s book that caught my attention yesterday:

It was no coincidence that at Bush’s invitation, Benedict happily celebrated his 81st birthday in the White House, together with the autocratic president: both men, Bush and Ratzinger, proved themselves over the years incapable of learning anything, for example in their common stance on the issue of abortion (60-1).

Keep in mind that Küng knows Ratzinger intimately, that both were periti at Vatican II, and were friends during that period. Küng notes that, when Ratzinger was made pope, Küng held out hope that Benedict would begin to repair some of the tremendous damage he had inflicted on the whole church as the German shepherd watchdog heading the former Inquisition, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, under the autocratic pope now known as St. John Paul II.

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IRELAND
Irish Times

Donald Clarke

Sat, Jun 7, 2014

Much confusion still surrounds the alleged discovery of human remains near a mother-and-baby home run by the Sisters of Bon Secours in Tuam.

Since its appearance in the Irish Daily Mail, the story has buzzed furiously about social media while broadcasters and other newspapers tried to sort rumour from hard fact.

By Wednesday, Charlie Flanagan, Minister for Children and Youth Affairs, was sufficiently concerned to describe the revelations as “a shocking reminder of a darker past in Ireland when our children were not cherished as they should have been”.

Further details are gradually oozing their way across newsprint and the airwaves. Whatever we subsequently learn about this squalid story, it can’t be denied that the Catholic Church has had another bad week. (That organisation doesn’t have too many good ones these days.)

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KENTUCKY
Courier & Press

By Beth Smith
Posted June 6, 2014

A Colorado jury has convicted a former Henderson youth minister of sexual abuse related charges.

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KENTUCKY
Tristate Homepage

A former Henderson youth pastor is convicted of 16 sexual abuse related charges in Colorado while still facing similar charges in the tristate.

44 year-old John Brothers is a former youth minister at Hyland Baptist Church. He could face life in prison.

Now this is just the beginning of Brothers’ days in a courtroom.

He is still awaiting trial in Henderson.

Brothers was first arrested in 2011 for the alleged sexual-abuse of two members of Hyland Baptist’s Youth Group.

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NEW JERSEY
News 12

[with video]

MORRISTOWN – A victim of sexual abuse by a priest is speaking publicly after Delbarton School has agreed to lift a confidentiality order going back 30 years.

For the first time, Bill Wolfe can speak publicly about the horrors that happened to him at the elite Delbarton School in Morristown. “It feels literally like a weight has been lifted off my shoulders,” he says.

Wolfe turned to a Delbarton priest for guidance when he was 14 years old, and says he was abused. “He asked me to expose myself, and then he asked me to relieve myself, to masturbate.”

The victim revealed the abuse to his family and successfully sued Delbarton, but under a 1988 court settlement, Wolfe had to remain silent until Thursday.

After suing Delbarton again, the Catholic boys high school run by the monks of St. Mary’s Abbey agreed to lift the gag order.

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AUSTRALIA
Dubbo Photo News

Fact, fiction and a fight far from over: Special Commission Enquiry report backs Grant

Saturday, 07 June 2014 12:48 Written by Jen Cowley

It’s a rare politician who doesn’t like to be proved right, but on at least this occasion, vindication is bittersweet for Troy Grant – former policeman turned politician and, recently, state government minister.

This week, a report from the Special Commission of Enquiry – set up to examine claims by former detective Peter Fox about the conduct of police in investigating child sexual abuse in the Catholic Diocese of Maitland-Newcastle – found that Grant, who led those investigations as a young detective during the 90s, was “an impressive and credible witness”, while rejecting Fox’s assertions that Grant had referred to “Catholic mafia” and complained of police hierarchy hindering his investigation.

Grant has always denied Fox’s version of their conversation, and has expressed his disappointment, on many occasions, over what he saw as a cruel distraction from the issue at hand – finding justice for the victims of child sexual abuse at the hands of the clergy.

The report is weighty – and Grant is glowing in his praise of Commissioner Margaret Cunneen in getting to the bottom of allegations made by Fox who, it’s now widely agreed, lost perspective on an otherwise admirable crusade for justice.

According to the commission, Grant’s evidence into the investigation of priest Father Vincent Ryan (who was subsequently found guilty of offences against 31 victims and sentences to lengthy gaol terms) was “persuasive”.

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TEXAS
Fox 2

[with video]

This civil lawsuit follows a similar criminal indictment for charges of continuous sexual abuse of a child that Ronaldo Mitchell Chavez is facing.

A statement released by the Salinas-Flores law firm accuses the diocese of Brownsville of negligence in the case of sexual assault of a minor.

The civil suit points to the alleged abuser Ronaldo Mitchell Chavez who was a deacon at the San Cristobal Magallanes parish in mission during the alleged assault.

The victim referred to as ‘John Doe 1′ to protect his identity, claimed to have suffered a continued sexual assault when the teenager was between 14 and 16 years-old from 2010 to 2012. Two years later the plaintiff decided to file a criminal complaint in December which led to the consequent arrest of Chavez by mission police in January.

The prosecution attorneys believe other victims are still out there, they realize fear is a factor, especially if it seems to go against their own faith.

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IRELAND
Irish Times

Sharon Foley

Fri, Jun 6, 2014

It is hard not to be horrified, sickened and shocked at the heartbreaking revelations that 796 babies died and may have been buried in a mass grave in the grounds of a home run by the Sisters of the Bon Secours in Tuam, Co Galway, between 1925 and 1961.

As a mother, I am mourning to my core the loss of these precious lives. It is nearly beyond my capacity to understand how helpless, tiny human beings could have been apparently discarded and treated in this way.

The full facts surrounding the deaths will probably never be established. But the question on all our minds is what happened these babies? Did they die when the mother was in childbirth? Did they die from malnutrition and neglect? Did they die from an illness that is now easily treatable? Did they die alone?

These infants died in a mother and baby home at a disgraceful period in Ireland when unmarried mothers were banished and hidden away and cruelly forced to give up their infants for adoption on birth.

As founding chief executive of the government-funded Crisis Pregnancy Agency, I understand the trauma of a crisis pregnancy and our shameful history in failing to support Irish girls and women who were pregnant and unmarried.

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IRELAND
Irish Times

Even the story of Philomena Lee, as recounted in the film starring Judi Dench and Steve Coogan, did not stir the national conscience to action

Sat, Jun 7, 2014

Eighteen years ago, on May 11th, 1996, Padraig O’Morain wrote in this newspaper about a woman he called Eileen, whose baby was taken from her in a mother-and-baby home and sent to the US for adoption.

It followed an announcement the previous month by Dick Spring, who was at the time the tánaiste and minister for foreign affairs, that files on the adoption of Irish babies in the US had been found. It was said this offered hope that birth mothers and children taken from them for adoption could meet again.

We’ve had four statutory reports since then on the abuses of children, and the McAleese report on the Magdalene laundries, but no investigation into mother-and-baby homes.

Even the deeply moving story of Philomena Lee, as recounted in the film ‘Philomena’ last year, did not stir the national conscience to action.

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IRELAND
Irish Times

Rosita Boland

Sat, Jun 7, 2014

‘I never used that word ‘dumped’,” Catherine Corless, a local historian in Co Galway, tells The Irish Times. “I never said to anyone that 800 bodies were dumped in a septic tank. That did not come from me at any point. They are not my words.”

The story that emerged from her work was reported this week in dramatic headlines around the world.
“Tell us the truth about the children dumped in Galway’s mass graves” – The Guardian.

The Sean Ross Abbey in Roscrea, which was a home from 1930 to 1970. Photograph: Niall Carson/PA WireThis time, the issue of mother and baby homes must be addressed

“Bodies of 800 babies, long-dead, found in septic tank at former Irish home for unwed mothers” – The Washington Post.

“Nearly 800 dead babies found in septic tank in Ireland” – Al Jazeera.

“800 skeletons of babies found inside tank at former Irish home for unwed mothers” – New York Daily News.

“Almost 800 ‘forgotten’ Irish children dumped in septic tank mass grave at Catholic home” – ABC News, Australia.

Corless, who lives outside Tuam, has been working for several years on records associated with the former St Mary’s mother-and-baby home in the town. Her research has revealed that 796 children, most of them infants, died between 1925 and 1961, the 36 years that the home, run by Bon Secours, existed.

Between 2011 and 2013 Corless paid €4 each time to get the children’s publicly available death certificates. She says the total cost was €3,184. “If I didn’t do it, nobody else would have done it. I had them all by last September.”

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IRELAND
Irish Examiner

By Shaun Connolly

AS horrific as it is, the dumping ground for hundreds of dead babies at the Bon Secours home in Tuam should not be the focal point of our concern, but rather how they ended up there, and why no one cared for so long.

The grim revelations that have been forcing themselves slowly to the surface of public consciousness for decades once again show our politicians only act with speed when it is in their interest to do so.

Even calling the Tuam establishment a “home” feels wrong, as Independent TD Catherine Murphy demanded the grave be labelled a crime scene.

“We are hearing references to ‘burials’, when, in fact we are talking about bodies being disposed of in a septic tank. Clearly, these were not respectful burials — they were disposals, as though these children were subhuman. It is stomach-churning. If this septic tank was discovered anywhere else in the country other than beside a religious institution, it would already have been declared a crime scene. It begs the question of why, in fact, it has not been declared as such, which it should and must be,” Ms Murphy told the Dáil.

And in response we got the usual platitudes of pity and pious shock from the Government front bench, but precious little else.

In his first test as Children’s Minister Charlie Flanagan flailed around badly, getting off to a poor start with group think, jargon-speak about looking at creating an “inter-departmental process” to deal with the situation which should see a response within a month, so the Government can decide what to do next. Justice Minister Frances Fitzgerald has also been extraordinarily slow in intervening.

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CALIFORNIA
Merced Sun-Star

BY DARRELL SMITH
dvsmith@sacbee.comJune 6, 2014

The Davis priest arrested in May on suspicion of having sex with a 17-year-old girl faces three felony charges tied to the allegations.

In a complaint released Friday, Yolo County prosecutors filed three felony counts of unlawful sexual intercourse and a misdemeanor charge of oral copulation with a person younger than 18 years old against Hector Coria Gonzales.

A priest at St. James’ Parish since July 2012, Gonzales is scheduled to be arraigned Tuesday in Yolo Superior Court in Woodland.

Prosecutors say Gonzales, 46, engaged in sexual relations with the teenager over an eight-month span starting in September 2013, including alleged intercourse at a home, in a vehicle and at the church’s rectory, located on the Davis parish campus.

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UNITED STATES
PopeCrimes& Vatican Evils.

Paris Arrow

June 6, 2014 – the 70th anniversary of D-Day in Normandy and the discovery of Irish Holocaust of 800 little babies skeleton in a septic tank dumped by stupid Roman Catholic Nuns obedient to Roman Catholic Evil Popes obsessed with the doctrines of the Virginity of Mary and superiority of the Vow of Chastity of nuns and priests over lay men and lay women. See the popes below who reigned from 1927 – 1961 during this Irish Holocaust of Irish babies born of unwed mothers in the horrific hands of evil nuns.

TOP 10 inspirations of Christ impelled on D-Day

If The Hague will not condemn the Vatican for its priests and nuns’ crimes against humanity and if the United Nations will not remove the Vatican as a “country” member of the UN, God will take matters into His own hands soon – because He has been asking us to tell the world: (1) that Pope Francis is the ultimate evil con-artist the CON-Christ and the biggest thief in mankind’s history, and that he is a Jesuit Master of Deceits and the Opus Dei Beast Pretender and Impostor of Jesus read our related article, Hidden Heist in the Holy See. The SECRET biggest heist in the history of mankind!

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MEXICO
Proceso

[Summary: Alberto Athie, a former priest and one of the leading activists in Mexico who are fighting pedophilia, said today he is sending a letter to Pope Francis asking him to once and for all “stop this slaughter of sex abuse against thousands of children worldwide.]

-MÉXICO, D.F. (apro).- El exsacerdote Alberto Athié, uno de los principales activistas contra la pederastia clerical, anunció hoy que en los próximos días enviará una carta al Papa Francisco para pedirle que de una vez por todas “paren esta masacre de abusos sexuales en contra de miles de niños en el mundo”.

En declaraciones a MVS Noticias, alabó la decisión del Vaticano de expulsar al sacerdote pederasta Eduardo Córdova Bautista, aunque lamentó la forma como la arquidiócesis potosina manejó el asunto, cuidando siempre la imagen de la iglesia y de sus representantes, en lugar de proceder a castigarlo.

Athié fue la primera persona que sacó a la luz pública el caso del padre Córdova, a quien definió como una persona con liderazgo, carisma y una inteligencia brillante que supo codearse con el poder, “aunque no más perverso que Maciel” .

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CANADA
The Chronicle-Herald

BRIAN MEDEL YARMOUTH BUREAU
Published June 6, 2014

Author’s book Deliver Us From Evil details allegations against now-deceased priest

YARMOUTH — The book’s pages chronicle Del Boudreau’s memories, allegations of sexual abuse at the hands of “the most evil” man he says he has ever known, now-dead Catholic priest Adolphe LeBlanc.

Boudreau first came forward five years ago to talk about what was done to him and now, at 70, he has penned Deliver Us From Evil, a memoir he published this week.

Fr. LeBlanc died in the 1970s, after allegedly assaulting dozens of boys.

And although the abuse has not been proven in court, Boudreau was one of six victims who received part of the $1.5-million settlement from the Diocese of Yarmouth in 2011.

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TEXAS
The Monitor

Ildefonso Ortiz | The Monitor

McALLEN — Attorneys representing a Mission teenager have sued the Catholic Diocese of Brownsville alleging negligence after the teen had been a victim of sexual assault by a deacon.

The victim who is only identified as John Doe and is now 18-years old claims that from 2010 to 2012 when he was an altar server at the San Cristobal Magallanes parish in Mission, Deacon Ronaldo Mitchell Chavez sexually assaulted him, records show.

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TEXAS
Valley Morning Star

Posted: Friday, June 6, 2014

By Ildefonso Ortiz, The Monitor

McALLEN — Attorneys representing a Mission teenager have sued the Catholic Diocese of Brownsville alleging negligence after the teen had been a victim of sexual assault by a deacon.

The victim, who is only identified as John Doe and is now 18-years old, claims that from 2010 to 2012 when he was an altar server at the San Cristobal Magallanes parish in Mission, Deacon Ronaldo Mitchell Chavez sexually assaulted him, records show.

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TEXAS
Valley Central

A former altar boy has filed a sexual abuse lawsuit against the Diocese of Brownsville.

The now 18-year-old victim filed the lawsuit at the Hidalgo County Courthouse on Thursday morning.

According to the lawsuit, the teen claims he was sexually abused by Ronaldo Mitchell Chavez.

The teen claims Chavez sexually abused him several times between 2010 and 2012 while serving as an altar boy.

Chavez worked as a deacon at at the San Cristobal Magallanes Catholic Church in Mission where he befriended and later sexually abused the boy.

Mission police arrested Chavez on a continuous sexual abuse of a child charge back in January.

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IRELAND
RTE News

A private engineering company has carried out a subsurface radar examination of the site at the former Bons Secours mother-and-baby home in Tuam, Co Galway.

The examination follows reports of an unmarked mass grave at the former Catholic church-run home, where almost 800 children died between 1925 and 1961.

TST Engineering was commissioned to do the work by the Irish Mail on Sunday.

The examination has been completed and a company spokesperson told RTÉ the results will be known within a few days.

In a statement, the Irish Mail on Sunday confirmed the Ground Penetrating Radar analysis was conducted by TST Engineering.

“Following consultation and ongoing co-operation with local historian Catherine Corless and the Children’s Home Graveyard Committee, the Irish Mail on Sunday commissioned a survey of the site of the alleged mass grave at the site of the former Tuam mother and baby home at the Dublin Road housing estate.

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IRELAND
Washington Post

BY MARTIN SIXSMITH June 6

Martin Sixsmith’s book, Philomena, published by Penguin Books, was adapted for the screen last year.

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 the Second World War, 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. In the home where Philomena gave birth, an unkempt plot bears the names of babies and mothers, some as young as 15. There are undoubtedly many more there who have no memorial. …

That sense of guilt and shame remained with the girls for life. One woman whose child was born in Tuam told me she felt it was wrong of her to talk to me even now. At first it was hard to persuade Philomena to tell me her story, too. But when my book was published, she received letters from other “fallen women” saying how grateful they were that someone had had the courage to break the Omertà.

The warped code of honour behind the decades of silence had been inculcated by an all-powerful Catholic Church. For much of the late 20th century, the Irish civil authorities were in thrall to the hierarchy; Archbishop John Charles McQuaid threatened pulpit denunciations if the government contradicted his policies. So the state connived in the mother and baby homes, paying the nuns at Tuam and all the other homes a per capita rate for every inmate.

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IRELAND
Irish Mirror

Jun 05, 2014 By David Coleman, Adelina Campos

John Rodgers tells how disease was rife and kids would vanish overnight at the hellish home where mass unmarked grave was found

A survivor of the mother and baby home at the centre of the graves scandal last night revealed the hellish conditions kids were forced to live in.

John Rodgers, 68, described it as the home in Tuam, Co Galway as a “rabid playground where you couldn’t get too attached” because kids would simply disappear.

John, who spent five years there, believes the terrible conditions they were forced to live in were responsible for the high mortality rate.

He explained: “We’d all been separated from our mothers early on. And I remember the place being overrun with children, maybe 200 or 300.

“Many of them were ill, including me. It was like a rabid playground.

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IRELAND
Irish Mirror

Jun 06, 2014 By Sarah Bardon

He said a full inquiry is needed to provide answers to the Irish public

President Michael D Higgins has said he is appalled at the discovery of a mass unmarked grave at a mother and baby home in Galway.

He said: “I was appalled as I know so many in Ireland were at what has been reported and what has been found.

“My first reaction was of enormous sadness. These are children who while they were alive had rights, the rights to protection and who if dead had the right to be looked after with dignity. Time doesn’t remove any of those rights.

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PARAGUAY
GlobalPost

MONTEVIDEO, Uruguay — It’s been a weird week in Paraguay.

Early on Tuesday, GlobalPost published this story about rogue priest Carlos Urrutigoity, an Argentine national long accused of abusing young men who was recently promoted to second-in-command of the diocese of Ciudad del Este.

By Thursday evening, the story had caused a deep schism in Paraguay’s Catholic Church, with the country’s two most powerful bishops trading jabs and insults over the controversial priest. In Asuncion, the country’s capital, the archbishop was defending claims of homosexuality from the bishop of Ciudad del Este while simultaneously calling on the Vatican to fully investigate Urrutigoity.

Meanwhile, after Pope Francis announced a “zero tolerance” policy on sexual abuse last week, Paraguayan activists involved in the Urrutigoity scandal question how long the problem priest will remain in service and in contact with young people.

Let’s break down the week’s events:

Tuesday, June 3: GlobalPost publishes investigation at 1:19 a.m.*

GlobalPost publishes this story, the result of an investigation into Carlos Urrutigoity, who was accused in a 2002 lawsuit of abusing at least two young men in the diocese of Scranton, Penn.

Urrutigoity, who resurfaced in 2008 in rural Paraguay, was promoted last year to the position of Vicar General of the diocese of Ciudad Del Este.

Among the most shocking elements of the story: a March 15 statement from the bishop of Scranton calling Urrutigoity a “serious threat to young people.”

Urrutigoity denies ever molesting anyone, maintaining that he’s the victim of a smear campaign.

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KENTUCKY
The Courier-Journal

Claire Galofaro, The Courier-Journal June 6, 2014

The Catholic priest sentenced last week to 15 years in prison for molesting an altar boy in the 1970s will have a shot at parole after less than two years.

The Rev. James Schook, 66, will be eligible for parole in April 2016, according to Department of Corrections records.

Schook, who is dying of cancer, was assigned to serve his time at the Kentucky State Reformatory in Oldham County, which has a nursing care facility and a hospice unit, capable of caring for terminally ill inmates.

There he will join another convicted pedophile priest. Louis Miller, 83, is serving a 30-year prison sentence for abusing 29 boys in Jefferson and Oldham counties over three decades. He was convicted in 2003, and became eligible for parole in 2009.

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IRELAND
Friendly Atheist

Irish Archdiocese Official Reacts to 800 Children’s Skeletons in a Sewage Tank: “We Can’t Judge the Past”

June 6, 2014 By Terry Firma

I just learned that in Ireland, Father Fintan Monaghan, a Catholic Church official in whose archdiocese the skeletal remains of almost 800 children were found in a septic tank, weighed in with an opinion on the matter.

The bones, if you’ll recall, are those of babies who were born to unwed mothers, and who died under the awful neglect of Bon Secours nuns between 1925 and 1961. The child mortality rate in Irish Catholic institutions for “fallen women” was reportedly as high as fifty percent.

Regarding the remains of the 800 children found in that sewage tank, Monaghan told a TV crew:

“I suppose we can’t really judge the past from our point of view, from our lens. All we can do is mark it appropriately and make sure there is a suitable place here where people can come and remember the babies that died.”

Got that? We can’t judge the past. Pray tell, father — just how recently should acts of such crassness and cruelty have taken place so that we are allowed, in your divinely-inspired opinion, to judge the perpetrators?

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IRELAND
Breaking News

06/06/2014

The Pro Life Campaign group says it is too early to say whether a criminal investigation should be carried out in relation to the Tuam babies scandal.

The bodies of hundreds of dead babies were discovered in a septic tank on the grounds of a former Mother and Baby Home in Co Galway.

Last night, the Sisters of Bon Secours, who ran the home, said its members would co-operate fully with any Government inquiry.

Some TDs have claimed the mass grave should be treated as a crime scene and a Garda investigation should be launched.

But the Childrens’ Minister said it is not up to him to tell the Gardaí what they should or should not be investigating.

Cora Sherlock of Pro Life Campaign says the full facts of what happened should be established first, before deciding whether a criminal investigation is warranted.

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IRELAND
Truthout

Friday, 06 June 2014
By William Rivers Pitt, Truthout | Op-Ed

In 1995, several young boys in western Ireland came across something buried beneath a cracked piece of concrete. It turned out to be the septic tank for an old building, demolished decades earlier, that had been known as The Home. Run by the Bon Secours nuns, a Catholic sect, The Home had been, from 1925 to 1961, a place where unwed pregnant Irish women could hide themselves from an astonishingly judgmental society to carry their babies to term, and then flee into whatever new life they could manage to find.

Being unmarried and pregnant in Ireland during this time, you see, was utterly unforgiveable, and dangerous. A fair portion of the reason for this was the fact that Ireland – riven and torn asunder by disputed British rule, IRA warfare and all attendant chaos therein – saw fit to leave a vast swath of social concerns like schooling, orphanages and hospitals in the hands of the Catholic Church…and while the newly-minted Pope Francis has put a broadly-grinning happy face on Catholic doctrine, the fact of the matter is that women took the brunt of the consequences when they were raped and got pregnant, or had sex and got pregnant, because of the Church’s ironclad teachings.

The children, also. The nuns charged to care for the children of The Home deliberately ostracized them from the other children in the community, starved them, neglected them, disdained them, because they were the offspring of “fallen” women who had dared to get pregnant outside of the bonds of holy Catholic matrimony. The so-called “sins” of the mother were visited brutally and harshly upon their children.

You see, that septic tank those boys found in 1995 was filled with the bones of some 800 children who had been delivered in The Home. Malnutrition and neglect, measles and tuberculosis and pneumonia, compounded by disgust for the mothers who bore them, laid waste to these children. Their remains were not buried, or burned, or even thrown in a trash heap. They were dropped into a vat of feces and urine, and at the time of this printing, their bones remain there still.

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NEW JERSEY
Religion Dispatches

Post by PATRICIA MILLER

A central contention of the Catholic bishops’ “religious liberty” argument is that Catholics shouldn’t have to “check their faith at the door” when it comes to religious objections to contraception or same-sex marriage in public life. In other words, Catholics are always on duty, whether at church or at home or at work at Hobby Lobby or baking a wedding cake.

But the same thing doesn’t hold true for priests who molest children. They, apparently, are “off duty,” or so argues the Diocese of Trenton, NJ. A lawyer for the diocese told the Delaware Supreme Court that Rev. Terence McAlinden wasn’t “serving in his capacity as a priest” when he molested a New Jersey teenager he took on trips to Delaware.

When one of the justices asked how you could tell if a priest was on duty, the lawyer argued:

“Well, you can determine a priest is not on duty when he is molesting a child, for example. … A priest abusing a child is absolutely contrary to the pursuit of his master’s business, to the work of a diocese.”

And the court bought it, ruling that Naples didn’t have a case because he couldn’t prove the trips were “church sanctioned.”

So I guess by that definition none of the 850 priests who have been defrocked by the Vatican for molesting minors were “on duty.” Problem solved.

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UNITED KINGDOM
Get Reading

Jun 06, 2014 By Natasha Adkins

A jury at Reading Crown Court returned their final verdicts on nine counts of indecent assault shortly after 1pm today.

Brian Spence, of Nursery Close, Hook, stood trial for nine indecent assault charges involving four girls aged between 10 and 15.

The jury of nine men and three women returned unanimous guilty verdicts on four counts shortly before 2.20pm yesterday afternoon, before delivering three majority guilty verdicts today.

On the final two counts the jury were not able to reach a decision. The Crown Prosecution Service said they did not want a retrial but asked that the charges lie on file.

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IRELAND
The Independent (UK)

DAVID MCKITTRICK Author Biography Friday 06 June 2014

The “Irish Holocaust” saw hundreds of babies left to die – and the practice may have been more common than first thought

The first glimpse of the horror came in the 1970s when two boys prised up some cracked concrete slabs in the grounds of a home run by the Sisters of the Bon Secours in Tuam, County Galway. One of them, Barry Sweeney, then 12 years old, vividly recalls the moment: “There it was,” he says, “skulls piled on top of each other. It was just bones and bits of rags and whatever, just a jumble.”

He and his friend took to their heels. “We just ran,” he recalls. The adults they ran to were also shocked, but at the time it was not regarded as a sensational discovery, for Ireland holds many unmarked graves, often containing the remains of victims of the 19th-century famine.

The bodies of the infants had been stacked – buried is too formal a word – in a disused septic tank. The scene was sealed, a priest gave a blessing and locals erected a grotto.

Only now is the realisation dawning that for decades the Galway earth has held the skeletons of 800 babies and toddlers in “a jumble” that is one of the country’s most unthinkable secrets.

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PARAGUAY
Wochenblatt

von Jan Päßler

Ciudad del Este: Der argentinische Pfarrer, Carlos Urrutigoity, der vor Jahren wegen Anschuldigungen des sexuellen Missbrauchs an Jungen wie Mädchen beschuldigt und später suspendiert wurde, tauchte schon vor geraumer Zeit wieder in Ciudad del Este auf. Unter dem Schutz von Bischof Rogelio Livieres Plano versieht er seinen Dienst, trotz riesigem Medienrummel. Urrutigoity wurde nach den Anschuldigungen, die teilweise mit Geld durch die Kirche ein Ende fanden, in eine Einrichtung eingewiesen, die ihm attestierte nicht wieder in den religiösen Dienst zurückzukehren. Nach Ansicht von Bischof Livieres Plano jedoch ist der Fall geschlossen und an seiner Arbeit ist nichts auszusetzen. Der Erzbischof von Asunción, Pastor Cuquejo, ist jedoch dafür eine erneute Untersuchung einzuleiten.

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ITALIA
Il Fatto Quotidiano

[Summary: A priest of the Ferrarese has been sentenced to one year and four months is prison for sexual assault on a child.]

di Marco Zavagli | 5 giugno 2014

Un sacerdote del Ferrarese è stato condannato a un anno e quattro mesi per violenza sessuale su un bambino di pochi anni. È il verdetto di primo grado che esce dal tribunale di Ferrara, dove si è tenuto in rito abbreviato un processo per atti durante una festa di compleanno. La vittima è il figlio minore di una coppia di origine serba che il prete ospitava nella propria abitazione. Il fatto contestato risale al 2010, quando la famiglia arriva in un paese della provincia ferrarese e viene ospitata dal don, 60 anni, che offre loro vitto e alloggio. Ben presto la convivenza inizia a stare stretta e il prete invita la famiglia ad andarsene. Il padre di famiglia, 35 anni, non la vede allo stesso modo e ne nasce una causa civile che darà ragione al sacerdote. La famiglia però non trasloca nemmeno dopo la sentenza di occupazione abusiva dell’appartamento. Intanto parte la denuncia per violenza sessuale ai danni del bambino della coppia, che si costituisce parte civile attraverso l’avvocato Giovanni Montalto. Si parla di particolari attenzioni ricevute dal minore durante una festa di compleanno.

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SURINAME
Werkgroep Caraibisch

[Summary: In an open letter to the Surinamese bishops, the justice ministry and police, National Assembly and Inter-American Court of Human Rights and the Organization for Justice and Peace, it is said there is a potential criminal judicial investigation into allegations of child sexual abuse by Catholic priests in Suriname.]

door Roy Frits Lansdo

Paramaribo – Dit is een open brief aan de Surinaamse bisschoppen, het Ministerie van Justitie en Politie, De Nationale Assemblee, het Inter-Amerikaanse Hof voor Mensenrechten en de Organisatie voor Gerechtigheid en Vrede, aangaande een potentieel strafrechtelijk justitieel onderzoek naar potentieel seksueel (kinder)misbruik door rooms-katholieke geestelijken in de Republiek Suriname.

Bisschop W de B., hoe staat het met het potentieel seksueel molest van onschuldige (minderjarige) gelovigen of de waarheid over het potentiële kindermisbruik binnen de rooms-katholieke kerk in de republiek Suriname?

Room-katholieke bisschoppen van de republiek Suriname moeten geen slapende honden wakker maken om zich te mengen in Surinaamse binnenlandse democratische politieke aangelegenheden! De democratie en rechtstaat van Suriname staat niet onder curatele van de rooms-katholiek kerk. De rooms-katholieke kerk moet zich bezig houden met theologische aangelegenheden. De scheiding der machten, de trias politica met name van kerk en staat.

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DEUTSCHLAND
Aktuell

[Summary: Canonist Thomas Schuller anticipated that Bishop Emeritus Franz-Peter van Elst Tebartz must use a portion of his retirement salary for redress. A corresponding action for damages for being prepared and was expected from the Vatican courts, Schuller said in an interview with SWR magazine. The bishop was forced to resign after it became known that he spent more than 40 million euros renovating the bishop’s house.]

Der Kirchenrechtler Thomas Schüller rechnet damit, dass der emeritierte Bischof Franz-Peter Tebartz-van Elst einen Teil seines Ruhestandsgehaltes für Wiedergutmachung verwenden muss. Eine entsprechende Klage auf Schadensersatz sei in Vorbereitung und werde von den vatikanischen Gerichten erwartet, sagte Schüller in einem Interview dem SWR-Magazin “zur Sache Rheinland-Pfalz!”.

Ein Bischof könne nur beim höchsten römischen Gericht, der Sacra Rota, auf Schadensersatz verklagt werden, erläuterte der Direktor des Instituts für Kanonisches Recht der Universität Münster.

Papst Franziskus hatte im März den Rücktritt von Tebartz-van Elst angenommen und den Paderborner Weihbischof Manfred Grothe als Apostolischen Administrator der Diözese eingesetzt. Zuvor war Tebartz-van Elst nach heftiger öffentlicher Kritik an den explodierenden Baukosten für seine Residenz und an seinem autoritären Führungsstil vom Papst beurlaubt worden.

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WORCESTER (MA)
MassLIve

WORCESTER, Mass. (AP) — A lawyer for the Roman Catholic Worcester Diocese has asked a judge to dismiss a lawsuit filed against the church by two gay men who say they were denied the right to buy diocesan property because church officials were concerned they would host gay weddings there.

James Fairbanks and Alain Beret filed suit two years ago for loss of civil rights and dignity and for emotional distress.

They planned to buy Oakhurst, a former Catholic retreat in Northbridge, and turn it into a venue for special events.

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MINNESOTA
Pioneer Press

By Joe Soucheray
jsoucheray@pioneerpress.com
POSTED: 06/06/2014

The average parish priest is a working stiff who is on call 24 hours a day. They hear confessions, celebrate Mass, visit the sick, write sermons, lead prayer groups, organize fall festivals, collect money to stoke the boiler, and, generally speaking, don’t have two nickels to rub together for a golf game.

Some of these working stiffs go off the rails and commit sins against humanity, but certainly not the majority of them. Why, given the weakness of their leaders, their bosses, it is a miracle of the church that these working stiffs even still have a ship to run.

Archbishop John Nienstedt has been absolutely worthless in meeting the crimes against humanity — the abuse of children — square in the face. He thought everything had been taken care of by his predecessor, Harry Flynn, who was a gregarious guy out in public, to the point where you could feel comfortable calling him “Arch,” because maybe you saw him at the next table at The Lexington and you picked up his check.

Now, Flynn’s testimony has been made public and it is sad to realize that he is just as worthless as Nienstedt in facing up to the priests who have gone off the rails, the priests who are giving the average parish working stiff a bad name.

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UNITED STATES/PARAGUAY
Jeff Anderson & Associates

JEFFREY R. ANDERSON

In what has become a tragically routine turn of events, another credibly accused priest has been sheltered from justice by Catholic hierarchs. Indeed, an accused priest, Father Carlos Urrutigoity, was promoted to vicar general of the Diocese of Eastern Paraguay’s Ciudad del Este following accusations of sex abuse in three other locations. One of these was the Diocese of Winona in Minnesota.

Urrutigoity was ordained as a member of the rigidly traditionalist Society of St. Pius X in the Diocese of Winona in 1989. But far from having a promising start to his career as a priest, Urrutigoity had already been accused of molesting a seminarian at Our Lady of Co-Redemptrix in La Reja, Argentina, where he was obtaining his religious education. Rather than investigating Urrutigoity’s record and proceeding with caution, however, the Diocese of Winona afforded him a second chance. It was this second chance that gave Urrutigoity the opportunity to abuse his second seminarian, a young man at the Diocese of Winona.

If two accusations of abuse weren’t enough, Urrutigoity was sent to the Diocese of Scranton, Pennsylvania, in 1997 and was allowed to continue in ministry. Espousing radical beliefs and creating a Tridentine Rite group called the Society of St. John in 1998, Urrutigoity counseled young males where he resided at St. Gregory’s Academy in Moscow, Pennsylvania. There, Urrutigoity provided cigars and wine to boys, also urging them to sleep in the same bed as him. With elaborate plans to create a separate town to insulate the Society of St. John,

Urrutigoity plotted to continue his pattern of abuse in Pennsylvania. These plans were stymied by a 2002 lawsuit filed in Pennsylvania alleging sexual abuse of at least two children, however, and Urrutigoity fled to Ciudad del Este in Paraguay.

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UNITED STATES
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests

Not once.

Over a span of 18 years, that’s how often the one-time head of the US bishops child sex abuse panel called police about admitted, proven or credibly accused predator priests.

Not once.

That’s also how often he told others on his staff to call police about admitted, proven or credibly accused predator priests.

How do we know this?

Because these are admissions made under oath by the prelate himself – the now-retired Twin Cities Archbishop Harry Flynn.

[Minnesota Public Radio]

“Well, maybe Flynn never called the cops – or told others to do so – because there were no pedophile priests in his archdiocese?” one might wonder.

Hardly. There are 53 publicly accused child molesting clerics in his archdiocese. (The number of actual child molesting clerics is, of course, no doubt much higher. And that doesn’t count the predators who technically belong to a religious order or another diocese that were working in the St. Paul archdiocese and molested kids.)

And let’s look closely at what years those were: 1995-2008. So part of Flynn’s tenure heading the Twin Cities church (2002-2008) were after 2002, the year when Flynn and his brother bishops emphatically and repeatedly pledged – in a formal and allegedly binding new church policy – to call police about known and suspected child sex crimes by clergy.

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IRELAND
Bock the Robber

[with news clippings from that era]

The Ireland of 1924 was a bleak place for anyone who didn’t subscribe to a narrow, rigidly Catholic view of the world, as the following newspaper extract shows.

The most conservative revolutionaries ever, as Kevin O’Higgins described himself and his colleagues, wasted no time in getting down to ultra-orthodox business, stamping out everything that didn’t fit in with their emotionally-dysfunctional outlook on life, and that included books. Barely eight years later, of course, in another European country, book-burning would assume an even more sinister place in history, but the ignorance was the same.

The overbearing intolerance behind the acts of intellectual vandalism was no greater in Germany than it had been in Ireland, only two years after achieving freedom for a small elite and selling it to the masses as a great act of liberation.

Just read this, from the proceedings of Galway County Council in 1925, in case you doubted what sort of country the freedom fighters carved out for the weak, the poor or those with the temerity to think for themselves. Is this any different to behaviour we’d expect from the Taliban, or any of the other ignorant, oppressive religious extremist groups we like to condemn these days?

Context: this book-burning took place in an Ireland where unmarried mothers were classified as offenders. It happened the same year the Tuam mothers and babies home was set up, where the Bon Secours nuns used the young women as slaves and penitents, and where 800 children died of malnutrition and neglect in the name of Christianity, because the Irish people were so ashamed of themselves, of their humanity and of their very survival that they treated their own daughters as pariahs and criminals.

The boldfaced text in this extract is mine, for emphasis. The italics are from the original.

Personally, I find the arrogance, the ignorance and the sheer hypocrisy of this mindset staggering, but unless we face up to the fact that this is the State our freedom fighters carved out for themselves and their cronies, we have no future as a mature independent nation.

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IRELAND
Herald

CAROLINE CRAWFORD AND NIALL O’CONNOR – 06 JUNE 2014

The man who unearthed the remains of hundred of babies when he was just 12 years old said he will never forget the sight as long as he lives.

Frannie Hopkins was playing with a friend at the Tuam site back in 1975 when the pair noticed that one of the slabs covering an old septic tank had come loose.

It’s now believed that the bodies of almost 796 babies were dumped there after dying at a nearby mother and baby home run by nuns.

The babies are thought to have died from neglect and malnutrition.

“At the time we found a concrete slab over what I described at the time as a tank I now see it was a tomb,” Mr Hopkins told The

“We removed the lid and we found that it was full of skeletons, they appeared to be that of children. They were tiny skeletons, there just seemed to be an awful lot for one small little grave.

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AUSTRALIA
The Australian

Dan Box
Crime Reporter
Sydney

OUTSIDE the office of the Catholic bishop of Maitland-Newcastle, in NSW’s Hunter Valley, hangs a sepia portrait of his predecessor, Leo Clarke, the bishop who protected a pedophile priest.

The late, bespectacled bishop’s repeated failure to report his knowledge of child abuse to police over several decades from 1976 was “inexcusable”, according to the final report of an 18-month state inquiry, handed down last week. Yet the portrait will remain.

“I would strongly oppose removing Bishop Clarke’s portrait, because you are almost then trying to censor history. He is part of this story,” says Sean Tynan, manager of the diocese’s child protection service.

This small but significant decision is just one part of the reckoning forced on the diocese by the findings of the NSW special commission of inquiry. Nor is the church alone; the local police force and others associated with the “whistleblower” detective who provoked the inquiry are only now beginning to count the cost.

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AUSTRALIA
SNAP Australia

Issues Paper 6
Redress Schemes
Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse …

Abuse of Power/Power Imbalance

Despite being sexual crimes, the core of child sexual abuse is an abuse of power by adults in positions of authority over children. Children are targeted because of their vulnerability, powerlessness, lack of credibility, and ease of manipulation and coercion.

Which particular child is chosen as prey is often more closely related to special vulnerability than any other factor, even availability. Many predators go to great lengths, and expense, to groom a particular child.

Once successful in manipulating the child into a position where the child feels unable to avoid or stop the attacks, the abuse can continue for years, with little fear of the child being able to understand they have a right to complain, far less of actually making a complaint.

A particularly poignant example of this is the US case of Father Lawrence Murphy, who sexually abused at least 200 deaf boys, particularly targeting those unable to speak, and thus even less able than most child victims to ask for help to stop their abuse.

Once the sexual contact has ended, often after years of torture, the abuse of power, inflicted by the institution protecting and enabling the sexual predator, continues. Additional harm is inflicted through minimisation, disbelief, community ostracisation, threats, blaming and shaming, and denial of access to justice or assistance to recover.

The significant additional damage inflicted by this campaign of often deliberate re-abuse is traditionally ignored or underestimated.

When the few victims who manage to speak out about our abuse demand justice or redress, our needs are once again subjugated by manipulative, authoritative, well funded attempts to evade financial, moral and criminal responsibility, and publicity and public scrutiny, by the abusive institution.

All of these additional abuses of power push victims ever further along the path of self destruction that the sexual abuse set us upon. Far too many reach the ultimate destination of suicide.

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NEW JERSEY
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests

For immediate release: Friday, June 06, 2014

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

A New Jersey clergy sex abuse victim has essentially won his lawsuit which frees him from a church-imposed gag order. He is to be commended. We are grateful for this brave victim who has tirelessly worked to expose the truth and protect children.

And Catholic officials at Delbarton School should be ashamed of themselves.

[The Star-Ledger]

William P. Wolfe was sexually abused by Fr. Timothy Brennan at Delbarton school. Brennan later plead guilty to child sexual abuse. Wolfe signed a confidentially agreement with the school, which prevented him from healing, exposing the truth and helping to prevent future abuse.

Confidentially agreements put children at risk. Victims are often manipulated into signing them when they are at one of their most vulnerable moments. We are glad Wolfe was released from his. And we are grateful Wolfe has reached out to other victims through his newspaper interview. We hope others gain courage from him and work to expose the truth and start healing, especially those who are suffering because of child sexual violence, officials’ betrayals and awful gag orders.

Finally, we hope Delbarton officials withdraw their mean-spirited lawsuit against Wolfe’s attorney Greg Gianforcaro.

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VATICAN CITY
The Age

Cardinal George Pell’s power to clean up the Catholic Church’s finances has received a boost with Pope Francis’ sacking of the five-man board of the Vatican’s financial watchdog – all Italians.

In the latest move to break with an old guard associated with a murky past under his predecessor, the Vatican said the pope named four experts from Switzerland, Singapore, the United States and Italy to replace them on the board of the Financial Information Authority (AIF). The new board includes a woman for the first time.

All five outgoing members were Italians who had been expected to serve five-year terms ending in 2016 and were laymen associated with the Vatican’s discredited financial old guard.

Reformers inside the Vatican had been pushing for the pope, who already has taken a series of steps to clean up Vatican finances, to appoint professionals with an international background to work with Rene Bruelhart, a Swiss lawyer who heads the AIF and who has been pushing for change.

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IRELAND
Irish Independent

Caroline Crawford
Published 06/06/2014

The man who discovered the remains of hundreds of babies in a septic tank has recalled the “tiny skeletons” he encountered when he unearthed the grave when he was just 12 years old.

Frannie Hopkins was playing with a friend at the site in Tuam, Co Galway, back in 1975 when the pair noticed that one of the slabs covering an old septic tank had come loose.

“At the time we found a concrete slab over what I described at the time as a tank, I now see it was a tomb,” he said.

While Taoiseach Enda Kenny has confirmed that a review of the extent of these mass graves around the country will be carried out, there is extensive evidence that officials knew of the high number of infant deaths in these homes decades ago.

Records show that of 120 babies born in a home in Roscrea, Co Tipperary, in one year, 60 died.

In 1930, 42 babies died in the Tuam home at the centre of the emerging scandal.

Inspectors found that malnutrition was common and certain infections spread quickly.

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IRELAND
Irish Independent

Published 06/06/2014

Colette Browne

It is too late to help the 800 children whose bodies were dumped in a septic tank in Co Galway, but there are thousands of children living in poverty and suffering from neglect today who can be saved.

Speaking about the shocking discovery of hundreds of tiny corpses in a mass grave in Tuam, Children’s Minister Charlie Flanagan said it was “a reminder of a darker past in Ireland”.

The notion that back then, in a dim and distant past, Ireland didn’t cherish all of its children equally is both distressing and reassuring.

We grieve for the long-dead children of unmarried mothers, who were condemned to a life of torment for the crime of being born, but salve our consciences with the knowledge that today things are better.

We tell ourselves that the callousness and cruelty of the past are interred with the remains of those children in their tomb.

But for many, the suffocating gloom of that dark past never lifted. We just choose to ignore it.

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IRELAND
Irish Independent

Published 06/06/2014

David Quinn

Other countries are able to be nostalgic about their past. Britain can have the ‘Darling Buds of May’, which romanticises rural life in England in the 1950s. ‘Call the Midwife’ is also set in the 1950s, this time in east London, but it is still fairly nostalgic about the past.

America has lot of films and TV shows that romanticise the 1950s. I don’t think we have any. Instead we have lots of films that do the opposite and I think a huge part of the reason is that we are still haunted by the fact that we put so many people into mostly church-run institutions that were often inhuman and dehumanising.

Britain also had its institutions and they were also terrible places. But we seemed to have more of them, we put proportionately more people into them and we kept them open until closer to the present day.

Another example of the awfulness of many of our institutions has just come to light, namely the fact that almost 800 children and babies may have died at a Tuam mother and baby home run by an order of nuns between 1925 and 1961.

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IRELAND
Irish Independent

Geraldine Gittens
Published 05/06/2014

An Taoiseach Enda Kenny yesterday admitted that more mass baby graves – other than the one found at Tuam, Co Galway – could possibly exist throughout Ireland.

Dublin woman Martina Keogh holds this very suspicion.

Martina was sent to St Joseph’s industrial school in Clifden, Co Galway by the courts, for the crime of stealing an apple and a swimming suit.

She spent almost two years at the school in the 1960s – and during this time she claims that some babies disappeared.

She believes that the case of the Clifden school warrants a full analysis by the Government, in relation to whether babies died while in the care of the Sisters of Mercy and if so, where they were buried.

Martina, from Dublin’s north inner city, entered the home for orphans aged nine.

As one of the older children, she remembers a grim situation where babies were malnourished.

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DEUTSCHLAND
SR Online

Das Bistum Trier hat den Pfarrer der Pfarreiengemeinschaft Weiskirchen mit sofortiger Wirkung beurlaubt. Gegen den Pfarrer wird ein Vorwurf des sexuellen Missbrauchs einer 16-jährigen Jugendlichen erhoben. Der Fall soll sich in den 80er Jahren ereignet haben.

(06.06.2014) Nach einer Pressemitteilung des Bistums bezieht sich der Vorwurf auf einen Vorfall, der sich bereits Anfang der 80er, also vor rund 30 Jahren, im Raum Koblenz abgespielt haben soll. Das Bistum hat jetzt offenbar die dortige Staatsanwaltschaft informiert. Strafrechtlich könnte der Fall also bereits verjährt sein.

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DEUTSCHLAND
Volksfreund

[Summary: Bishop Stephan Ackermann of Trier said a priest has been placed on leave for alleged sexual abuse of a minor. The priest, assigned to the parish community of Saarland Weiskirchen, is said to have abused a 16-year-old in the early 1980s. According to the diocese, the prosecutor has been informed.]

(Trier) Der Trierer Bischof Stephan Ackermann hat einen katholischen Priester der saarländischen Pfarreiengemeinschaft Weiskirchen wegen Missbrauchsvorwürfen beurlaubt. Der Geistliche soll Anfang der 80er Jahre eine 16-Jährige im Raum Koblenz missbraucht haben.

Nach Angaben des Bistums wurde die Staatsanwaltschaft informiert. Dem Priester wurde zunächst untersagt, öffentlich Gottesdienste zu feiern. Weitere Angaben zu dem Vorfall machte Bistumssprecherin Judith Rupp auf Anfrage von volksfreund.de nicht. Mehr zum Thema später auf volksfreund.de und in der TV-Wochenendausgabe.

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ARIZONA
Courthouse News Service

By TIM HULL

TUCSON (CN) – A Catholic priest who also taught high school took a mentally disabled parishioner to a hotel room, gave him alcohol and sexually assaulted him, the alleged victim claims in court.

Father Richard Zamorano, a former teacher at Salpointe Catholic High School in Tucson, has been suspended from the Diocese of Tucson since the allegations arose in 2012, a spokeswoman for the diocese said.

“He is currently a priest whose ministries are suspended – he is not able to practice any priestly ministries,” said Steff Koeneman, director of communications for the Diocese of Tucson.

“It was reported to civic authorities, they were aware of it, they did conduct a criminal investigation, and as far as we know that case was closed,” Koeneman added. “But that doesn’t determine what the church does. He is still on suspension as far as the church is concerned.”

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IRELAND
Irish Independent

[with videos]

Caroline Crawford
Published 06/06/2014

A survivor of the Tuam Mothers-and-Babies home has said it was a “miracle” he survived – describing it as akin to a “rabbit colony” with hundreds of children living in an environment with overflowing toilets and little care.

JP Rodgers was born in the home in 1947. Just 13 months after his birth, he was separated from his mother who was moved to the Magdalene Laundry in Galway city while he remained in the home until he was fostered at the age of five.

“It wouldn’t be very fond memories I have of it,” he said.

Speaking of the large numbers of children growing up in the harshest of conditions, Mr Rodgers, pictured right at the site of the grave, said it was nothing short of a miracle that he survived.

“I can’t say for sure but in my mind’s eye there were probably about 200 children. The place was just alive with children. I remember being in the playground, standing there alone, maybe not very well as I do remember a period where I was very, very ill. Thankfully I came out of it but I was probably no different from anybody else in the place,” he added.

Speaking about the conditions growing up, Mr Rodgers recollects clearly the shed with sinks to wash at and open-air toilets.

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OKLAHOMA
News On 6

[with video]

Lori Fullbright, News On 6

TULSA, Oklahoma – A third victim has come forward to accuse a Tulsa pastor of molestation.
Galilee Baptist Pastor Damien Bonner now faces eight charges of lewd molestation.

You might remember in January, police arrested Jermaine Clemons for beating up a youth minister from that same church. Clemons said he did it because the youth minister was sending inappropriate texts to Jermaine’s teenage daughter.

Clemons said he begged Bonner, the pastor, to investigate the youth minister, but his pleas were ignored.

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AUSTRALIA
ABC News

The Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse has appointed Philip Reed as its new chief executive.

Mr Reed is a former director-general of the Queensland Department of Justice and Attorney-General and has worked at senior government levels in Victoria and New South Wales.

He takes up his new position with the royal commission next week, replacing Janette Dines who resigned last month.

Janette Dines was appointed to the commission in late 2012 and was previously the director-general of Emergency Management Australia.

While the circumstances surrounding her departure remain unclear, the ABC understands Ms Dines will be returning to a previous role.

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AUSTRALIA
The Age

David Ellery
Reporter for The Canberra Times.

The prosecution of Canberra Marist Brother John William Chute (aka Brother Kostka) in 2008 and subsequent six-figure civil compensation payouts were crucial in exposing the Catholic Church’s sex abuse scandal nationwide, ACT lawyer Jason Parkinson says.

“The Marist Brothers cases [in the ACT] were pivotal in Australian history [in relation to abuse within the Catholic system],” he said.

“Because they were dealt with in open court, it exposed how the Catholic Church acted in private and people did not like what they saw. This led to the groundswell of disgust that contributed to the decision to establish the royal commission.”

Mr Parkinson, of Porters Lawyers, represented more than 20 alleged victims whose claims were settled between 2008 and December 2009.

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VIRGINIA
Times-Dispatch

Posted: Thursday, June 5, 2014

The Roanoke Times

ROANOKE — A youth pastor at a church in Hopewell has been charged in Montgomery County with soliciting a 12-year-old girl online.

Deric Wallace Peacock, 30, of Chesterfield County was arraigned Wednesday morning in Montgomery County Juvenile and Domestic Relations District Court on five counts of using a communication system to facilitate certain offenses involving children, Assistant Commonwealth’s Attorney Nael Abouzaki said.

Abouzaki said Peacock is charged under a subsection of that code, which states that the offender exposed himself to the child and/or proposed an act to the child.

At the time of his arrest, Peacock was the youth pastor at South Hopewell Church of God. The incidents are alleged to have occurred between May 15 and 22, Abouzaki said.

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IRELAND
Breaking News

Well-known cleric Fr Brian Darcy has said the discovery of almost 800 babies’ bodies next to a Galway mother-and-baby home is as bad as anything that happened in Nazi Germany.

The Government has today confirmed that a “scoping exercise” is underway to determine whether other mass graves such as that found in Tuam exist in other parts of the country.

Fr Brian Darcy said he thought previous scandals involving the Church had left him “unshockable”, but that this was a shocking as something that happened in Germany during World War II.

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IRELAND
Sunday World

By Karl Doyle

Sunday World columnist, Fr Brian D’Arcy, has reacted with shock and disbelief to the discovery of the bodies of almost 800 babies near a ‘mother and baby’ home in Tuam, Co Galway.

Speaking on Newstalk’s Lunchtime programme, the curate told interviewer John Keogh that the grim find was akin to something that would have happened in Nazi Germany during WWII.

He has also demanded that those responsible should be brought to justice for what he called “an atrocity”.

Speaking about his outrage on hearing of the mass grave, he told the programme: “When I heard it first I began to think that this was some atrocity that had happened in a foreign country – the remnants of a famine in some other country, or a bad regime, because that’s what it sounded like to me.

“It’s just a dreadful, horrible thing. I simply couldn’t believe it was in my own lifetime and in the same religion to which I belonged to and have professed to all my life.

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IRELAND
Irish Independent

Fr Brian D’Arcy has said the mass baby grave discovered in Tuam is “an incredible, awful, unchristian and unsocial thing”.

Speaking to John Keogh on Newstalk Lunchtime earlier today, he said it was unbelievable that such a thing could have happened in his own lifetime.

“When I heard it first I really began to think that this was some atrocity that had happened in a foreign country, or remnants of a famine in some other country, or a bad regime, because that’s what it sounded like.

“It’s just a dreadful, horrible thing, and I simply couldn’t believe it was in my own lifetime and in the same kind of religion to which I belonged to and have professed all my life. I just simply doesn’t bear thinking about it.

“It’s just a kind of hypocrisy that keeps popping up from that era.

“Political hypocrisy, religious hypocrisy, and it’s the kind of thing which says some children were very valuable while at the same time it seems to have been this massive thing that children from unmarried mothers were not valuable, and when you look at it there can be no other conclusion drawn from it.”

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IRELAND
Belfast Telegraph

Mass baby grave in Tuam, Galway: ‘The priest said Mass, then the grave was covered up again’

BY CAROLINE CRAWFORD – 06 JUNE 2014

The person who discovered the remains of hundreds of babies in a septic tank has recalled the “tiny skeletons” he encountered when he unearthed the grave when he was just 12 years old.

Frannie Hopkins was playing with a friend at the site back in 1975 when the pair noticed that one of the slabs covering an old septic tank had come loose.

“At the time we found a concrete slab over what I described at the time as a tank, I now see it was a tomb,” he said.

“We removed the lid and we found that it was full of skeletons; they appeared to be that of children. They were tiny skeletons, there just seemed to be an awful lot for one small little grave.

“A few days later, our parents told us not to go there, that the priest had been there and had said Mass and prayers and that the grave had been covered up again.”

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IRELAND
Amnesty International

05 June 2014

Disturbing revelations about an unmarked “mass grave” of up to 800 babies and children found in Tuam, County Galway, must prompt urgent answers from the Irish Government about the wider issue of past child abuse in state-run and sponsored institutions, said Amnesty International today.

“This shocking case needs immediate attention and answers from the Irish Government. A thorough investigation must be carried out into how these children died and if ill-treatment, neglect or other human rights abuses factored into their deaths. We also need to know why these children were not afforded the respect of a proper and dignified burial,” said John Dalhuisen, Europe and Central Asia Programme Director at Amnesty International.

Irish and international media have reported that the remains of 796 babies and children were found in a septic tank in Tuam. The site, on the grounds of an institution run by a religious order of nuns, was operated as a ‘home’ for unmarried mothers, reportedly between 1925 and 1961, at a time when bearing a child outside marriage carried significant social stigma. Reports suggest that a local historian compiled information on the remains, and it was brought it to the attention of the Irish Government last year.

“The Irish Government must not view this and other cases as merely historic and beyond its human rights obligations,” said John Dalhuisen.

The international human rights framework of law emerged during the period in which these children lived and died. If the home closed in 1961, it is possible that some of the deaths occurred at a time when the European Convention on Human Rights was in force. Even before then, Ireland was aware of the internationally agreed norms expected of it in the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

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IRELAND
Daily Mail (UK)

More mass baby graves in Ireland? Prime Minister Enda Kenny orders an investigation as memorial for 800 dead babies is planned

By HARRIET ARKELL and FERGHAL BLANEY
PUBLISHED: 03:17 EST, 6 June 2014 |

Irish officials are to investigate whether there are more mass baby graves after the discovery of 800 infants buried in a septic tank outside an old mother and baby home in Co. Galway.

Taoiseach Enda Kenny intervened from the United States yesterday to say that he had ordered his officials to ‘see what the scale is, what’s involved here, and whether this is isolated or if there are others around the country that need to be looked at.’

He spoke as human rights group Amnesty called for an urgent formal investigation into the evidence that suggested 796 children, from newborns to eight-year-olds, were secretly buried without coffins in a tank outside the former home in Tuam.

Historian Catherine Corless, whose discovery was revealed by the Mail earlier this week, said her study of death records for the St Mary’s home run by Catholic Bon Secours nuns from 1925-1961 pointed to the existence of the mass grave.

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IRELAND
Washington Post

BY TERRENCE MCCOY
June 6

International and Irish rage mounted on Thursday as officials in Ireland scrambled to respond to the recent discovery of the bodies of nearly 800 babies, long dead, stored in a septic tank at a Catholic institution for unwed mothers in western Ireland.

Officials will now investigate whether there are additional mass graves near other homes for unmarried mothers, Agence France-Presse reported Prime Minister Enda Kenny saying Thursday.

Kenny said Irish authorities will “draw together a number of senior officials from across the departments until we see what the scale is, what’s involved here, and whether this is isolated or if there are others around the country that need to be looked at.” He said Dublin must decide what the “best thing to do in the interest of dealing with yet another element of our country’s past.”

Another leading Irish politician, Brendan Howlin, said a criminal investigation may be in the future. “The government is ruling out nothing,” he said, according to the Daily Mail. “The sense of revulsion almost all of the people of Ireland have at the callous disregard for the most innocent of our young people has to be met with openness and with clarity, and that’s what the Government will do.”

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IRELAND
Belfast Telegraph

Mass baby grave in Tuam, Galway: Laid to rest in septic tank, shameful fate of 800 little children

BY ADRIAN RUTHERFORD – 05 JUNE 2014

For more than half-a-century it has hidden a terrible secret, a horrifying and sinister reminder of a shameful chapter in Irish history.

At the site of a former home run by the Catholic Church in Tuam, a small town west of the Irish midlands, lies a mass grave filled with the bodies of almost 800 children.

Locals have known about it since 1975, when two boys broke apart a concrete slab and discovered a tomb filled with small skeletons. The remains, interred in a concrete septic tank, were initially thought to be from the Great Famine era of the 1840s.

A parish priest said prayers and the site was sealed once more, the number of bodies below unknown, their names forgotten.

Little more was thought about the grave until about 10 years ago when a historian, Catherine Corless, began investigating children’s deaths at the home. What she discovered has shocked her, appalled the Irish State and made headlines around the world.

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AUSTRALIA
ABC News

By Giselle Wakatama

Mental health concerns have been raised about Newcastle police officers wrongly accused of covering up child sex crimes by Catholic priests.

A Special Commission of Inquiry into two Hunter Valley paedophile priests Dennis McAlinden and James Fletcher was sparked by allegations by detective Chief inspector Peter Fox.

He alleged cover-ups by both police and Catholic Church officials.

The Inquiry highlighted serious failings in the church but the commission found no evidence of a police cover-up.

The inquiry also found Peter Fox was not a credible witness.

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AUSTRALIA
Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse

6 June, 2014

The Royal Commission will hold a roundtable in Canberra to discuss Working with Children Checks.

The roundtable discussion, the second by the Royal Commission, will be convened by the Chair of the Royal Commission Justice Peter McClellan AM and Commissioner Robert Fitzgerald AM and will be held at University House, Australian National University on Monday 16 June 2014.

Participants will include state and territory government representatives, Children’s Commissioners, advocates for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people and non-government organisations.

The roundtable discussion will help the Royal Commission to better understand Working with Children Checks and their implementation across jurisdictions.

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AUSTRALIA
Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse

The Royal Commission has annouced that Philip Reed will commence as Chief Executive Officer from Tuesday 10 June 2014.

Philip Reed was most recently Director-General at the Department of Science, Information Technology, Innovation and the Arts in Queensland, and prior to that, Director-General of the Queensland Department of Justice and Attorney-General. He brings significant levels of experience in senior levels of government in Queensland, Victoria and New South Wales.

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WORCESTER (MA)
Telegram & Gazette

By Gary V. Murray TELEGRAM & GAZETTE STAFF
gmurray@telegram.com

WORCESTER — A lawyer for the Diocese of Worcester asked a judge Thursday to dismiss a lawsuit filed against church officials by a gay couple alleging the two men were denied the right to buy diocesan property in Northbridge because of their sexual orientation.

The request was made during a Worcester Superior Court hearing at which the couple’s lawyer asked Judge Richard T. Tucker to find, as a matter of law and without the necessity of a trial, that they were the victims of unlawful discrimination.

Judge Tucker took both motions under advisement.

The civil lawsuit alleges the diocese backed out of the real estate deal in 2012 because the men were gay and church officials feared they might hold same-sex weddings on the property.

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PENNSYLVANIA
PennLive

By Jeremy Arias | jarias@pennlive.com
on June 05, 2014

A former church youth leader accused of sexually abusing children pleaded guilty Thursday in Dauphin County to molesting two children over several years.

Joshua M. Markelwitz, 28, was a youth leader at the Charlton United Methodist Church in Lower Paxton Township where he met his first victim, according to police. Markelwitz pleaded guilty to involuntary deviate sexual intercourse, aggravated indecent assault, indecent assault, indecent exposure, sexual abuse of children, unlawful contact with minors, corruption of minors and giving alcohol to minors, according to the Dauphin County District Attorney’s Office.

While Judge Richard A. Lewis was not scheduled to sentence Markelwitz until September, the district attorney’s office expected Markelwitz to receive 12 to 24 years in prison.

Ari Daniel Weitzman, listed as Markelwitz’s defense attorney, was not available for comment Thursday afternoon.

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PENNSYLVANIA
WGAL

CUMBERLAND COUNTY, Pa. —A former youth leader was in court on Thursday and pleaded guilty to several sex charges, including involuntary deviate sexual intercourse.

Joshua Markelwitz, of Enola, Cumberland County admitted to sexually molesting a girl when she was about 11-years-old.

Police say he met her through his Lower Paxton Township church.

Police say the molestation happened over a three year period.

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CANADA
Turtle Island News

By Steve Rennie

THE CANADIAN PRESS

OTTAWA – The Metis National Council enlisted a convicted sex offender in 2011 to work with survivors of residential schools, the church-run institutions where children endured physical, emotional and sexual abuse.

The Canadian Press obtained a copy of the council’s contract with Norman Hansen of the northern Saskatchewan village of Buffalo Narrows, as well as provincial court records showing his prior sexual assault convictions.

Contacted by phone, Hansen, now 70, declined to talk about his work for the council or his sexual assault convictions. He hung up when asked if the council was aware of his criminal record when it offered him a contract.

Court records show Hansen was convicted of two separate sexual assaults against two women in or around Saskatoon. The first assault took place in February or March of 2003, while the second assault occurred on April 2, 2003.

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OHIO
Cleveland.com

By Patrick Cooley, Northeast Ohio Media Group
on June 05, 2014

WESTLAKE, Ohio – An official at Church on the Rise on Crocker Road publicly addressed sex-crime charges levied against a senior church leader and his son during a Wednesday evening service.

Paul Endrei, 53, faces multiple charges of sexual battery and gross sexual imposition, while his son, Jordan Endrei, 26, faces a charge of unlawful sexual contact with a minor. Both are accused of abusing the same girl, who was 14 years old at the time of the suspected abuse.

Both men spoke to the congregation Wednesday night, but didn’t directly address the criminal charges.

The official told church members that both men adamantly deny the charges and expect to plead not guilty. He promised the church would be forthcoming with its members about the criminal cases as they proceed.

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VATICAN CITY
Commonweal

Massimo Faggioli

A few weeks after Benedict XVI announced his resignation, the political philosopher Giorgio Agamben published a short book called The Mystery of Evil: Benedict XVI and the End of Times. In that volume, Agamben calls the pope’s resignation a prophetic moment, and argues that it highlights the crisis of institutional legitimacy. His conclusions may be farfetched—an eschatological showdown between church and political power probably isn’t in the offing—but he does bring into focus the sense of crisis that shook the Vatican in the months leading to Benedict’s departure. A series of scandals—from Vatileaks to the Vatican bank—raised questions about Benedict’s administrative capacities, questions he himself seemed to answer when he chose to resign in February 2013. As the cardinals assembled in Rome to elect a new pope, curial reform became the conclave’s watchword. That is Francis’s mandate. It is also one of his greatest challenges. Whether he is able to rouse the church from its institutional coma depends entirely on his ability to manage his opposition.

Francis’s first year has been characterized by a carefully coded fight for the ground between the old guard and the new. An abstract debate about the “continuity or discontinuity” of Vatican II has been replaced by a conversation about concrete issues such as poverty and inequality. Francis has shown a willingness to discontinue old practices—for example, the Vatican officially prohibits priests from washing women’s feet on Holy Thursday, but that’s exactly what he did just weeks after his election. Francis’s new language and style have not been universally welcomed by the bishops, especially those in his backyard. Some of them silently resist these changes.

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AUSTRALIA
Armidale Express

By VICTORIA NUGENT June 6, 2014

A MAGISTRATE has vented her anger over the 14th delay in the case of a defrocked priest charged with historic child sex offences.

The former priest, who cannot be named for legal reasons, first faced Armidale Local Court on October 18, 2012.

On Wednesday, his case was adjourned again because the prosecutors were not prepared. Magistrate Karen Stafford criticised the Director of Public Prosecutions for failing to comply with her orders, saying it was “completely unacceptable”.

She had previously set down a hearing for April 9 to determine whether alleged victims needed to attend committal proceedings.

The Director of Public Prosecutions wasn’t ready and asked for an adjournment until this week.

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IRELAND
Irish Examiner

By Conall Ó Fátharta
Irish Examiner Reporter

Once again, it has taken international press headlines to make the Government address a dirty little secret the State has been aware of decades.

The horrific discovery of hundreds of children buried in a septic tank at a former home for unmarried mothers in Tuam in Galway merely lit the fuse on a scandal that was hiding in plain sight.

We have heard Government and opposition TDs alike express their horror at these “shocking revelations” and the need to fully investigate the circumstances surrounding the Tuam discovery.

Taoiseach Enda Kenny said he wanted to know if there are any other baby graves at mother-and-baby homes in other parts of the country.

Had politicians not heard of ‘angel plots’ dotted around the country? Had they not heard of mother-and-baby homes and the unspeakable abuses that occurred in them?

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IRELAND
Irish Examiner

By Shaun Connolly, Political Correspondent

The Galway site where bodies of hundreds of babies and children were disposed off should be treated as a crime scene, opposition TDs demanded.

As the outpouring of shock and anger triggered by revelations surrounding events at a Tuam Bon Secours mothers and babies home dominated the political agenda, the Government was again accused of not acting with enough urgency.

Children’s Minister Charlie Flanagan said the Government would decide on what lines of investigation to mount before the end of the month, as he indicated that the probe would not be confined to Tuam.

Independent TD Catherine Murphy said “sanitised” language was being used to describe what had really happened at the Tuam mass grave containing the remains of 796 babies and children, put there between 1925-1961.

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NEW JERSEY
The Star-Ledger

By Ben Horowitz/The Star-Ledger
on June 05, 2014

MORRISTOWN — William P. Wolfe — who was sexually abused by a priest at the Delbarton School when he was a 14-year-old student there — had waited 30 years to tell his story.

Today the Morris Township prep school settled a lawsuit filed by the 44-year-old Wolfe, and released him from a confidentiality agreement he signed in 1988.

“I’m exceedingly happy,” Wolfe said. “I feel like a weight has been lifted from my shoulders.”

The agreement, announced in Superior Court in Morristown, means Wolfe, who filed the suit as “John Doe,” can use his own name and speak about the abuse at the hands of the Rev. Timothy Brennan. The cleric pleaded guilty to criminal sexual contact in 1987.

The agreement still bars Wolfe from discussing the amount of the settlement, and a lawsuit filed by Delbarton against his lawyer is remains unresolved. The school sued the lawyer, Gregory Gianforcaro, for violating the confidentiality agreement in 2012, after he said publicly the settlement was in the seven figures.

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IRELAND
Vox

Updated by Dylan Matthews on June 5, 2014

Researcher Catherine Corless has uncovered records suggesting that the bodies of 796 infants were buried in a septic tank in Tuam, Ireland. The tank — previously believed to have held victims of the Irish famine of the 1840s — was on the property of a “mother and baby home” run by the Bon Secours nuns between 1925 and 1961; while the cause of death is unknown, the unsanitary conditions of the homes was likely a major factor.

The mother and baby homes, along with the Magdalene laundries for “fallen women” and other institutions erected by the Catholic Church in Ireland (often with state participation), have seen renewed scrutiny since the 1990s as abuses committed against the women condemned to live in the institutions have come to light. The mother and baby homes sometimes forced mothers to put their children up for adoption, often to the US, while Magdalene laundries subjected women to forced labor (usually, as the name implies, washing clothes and linens) and physical abuse. One mother and baby home, Sean Ross Abbey, was featured in last year’s film Philomena. Last year, the Irish government agreed to compensate survivors of the Magdalene laundries, while those abused in mother and baby homes have yet to be compensated, and children of mothers in the homes say they have been denied access to records.

Mari Steed is the cofounder of the group Justice for Magdalenes and US coordinator for the Adoption Rights Alliance, Ireland. She was one of more than 2,000 children born in Ireland and put up for adoption in the United States without their mothers’ consent. We spoke on the phone Wednesday, June 4, about the history of the Magdalene laundries and mother and baby homes, what we know about the conditions that led to the tragedy in Tuam, and what reforms still need to be made. The interview has been edited and condensed for clarity. …

DM: How did they relate to the mother and baby homes, which the current revelations concern?

MS: [Boston College professor and activist] James Smith refers to it as Ireland’s “architecture of containment,” and that’s exactly what it was. You had these industrial schools, the Magdalene laundries, the mother and baby homes, all with different remits, but the basic model was to contain and segregate anything that was deemed morally inferior by society, whether that’s children, unwed mothers, the women in the Magdalenes, etc. They were all cross connecting at various points. Children were sent to laundries, women came out of laundries or went into laundries from mother and baby homes.

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IRELAND
The Nationalist

THURSDAY, JUNE 05, 2014

The Sisters of Bon Secours have said they are shocked and deeply saddened by the discovery of hundreds of dead babies in a septic tank on the grounds of a former mother and baby home in Tuam, Co Galway.

The home was in operation from 1925 to 1961.

In a statement issued this evening, the sisters welcomed the recent Government announcement to initiate an investigation in an effort to establish the full truth of what happened.

The statement reads: “In 1961 the Home was closed. All records were returned to the local authority, and would now be within the Health Service Executive, Co Galway.

“The Bon Secours Sisters are committed to engaging with Catherine Corless, the Graveyard Committee and the local residents as constructively as they can on the graves initiative connected with the site.

“The Sisters welcome the recent Government announcement to initiate an investigation, in an effort to establish the full truth of what happened.”

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IRELAND
Irish Independent

[with video]

A leading consultant forensic scientist says an examination of the skeletal remains of almost 800 babies found in Tuam could determine how they died.

The bodies of the infants were located in a sceptic tank on the site of a former Mother and Babies home in Tuam, Co Galway.

The site was first located in 1972.

In recent days, a local historian has suggested the babies’ bodies were placed there between 1921 to 1965.

Speaking on RTE’s Morning Ireland programme earlier today, Geoff Knuper, who works in major crime in Ireland and the UK as well cases of The Disappeared, said cause of death could be determined despite the passing of more than four decades.

“It’s clearly very disturbing,” he said.

“I think in the first instance this should, or could, be a matter for the Garda Siochana, the coroner and of course the State Pathologist would play a key role in any such investigation.”

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IRELAND
The Independent (UK)

ED CARTY Thursday 05 June 2014

Nuns in charge of an institute for single mothers where hundreds of babies were buried in a septic tank have said they no longer hold records from the home.

The Mother and Baby Home in Tuam was one of 10 similar homes across Ireland believed to hold the remains of another 3,200 babies and infants.

Archbishop of Dublin Diarmuid Martin has called for the religious orders which ran these institutes to release full details of all the people they took in.

But the Sisters of Bon Secours, which operated the institute in Tuam, Co Galway, said it handed its records to the state after it closed.

They added in a statement that they were shocked and deeply saddened by reports of the burial of 798 dead infants from 1925 to 1961.

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