ABUSE TRACKER

VIRGINIA
Fredericksburg.com

CORRECTION: Villacres was the head of the Stafford Education Foundation in 2008. An earlier version of this story had the incorrect name for the group.

By KEITH EPPS

A former chairman of the Stafford County School Board has been indicted by a Stafford grand jury on 111 felony charges involving child molestation.

Thomas Francis Villacres, 53, of Rockledge, Fla., is charged with 48 counts of aggravated sexual battery, 48 counts of indecent liberties with a minor and 15 counts of object sexual penetration.

Villacres, who was indicted Monday, is being held in Florida pending extradition to Virginia.

Stafford Sheriff’s Office spokesman Bill Kennedy said the charges involved four children who were between the ages of 6 and 10 when the alleged offenses took place over an eight-year span in the 1990s. The victims are now in their 20s, Kennedy said. …

Villacres served on the Stafford School Board as the Garrisonville representative and was the chairman his last year. He was the head of the Stafford Education Foundation in 2008 and was involved with a number of other organizations, including St. William of York Catholic Church.

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PARAGUAY
ABC Color

[Summary: Nelson Zapata, director of the Diario Vanguardia of Ciudad del Este, has closely followed the case of Carlos Urrutigoity. He said there were so many complaints of sexual abuse against him they did not know where to put him so he ended up in Ciudad del Este. The priest has the support of Rogelio Livieres Plana, bishop of the Ciudad del Este diocese.]

Tras ser acusado de varios casos de pedofilia, el cura argentino Carlos Urrutigoity quedó en Ciudad del Este “porque no sabían dónde ponerlo”, según Nelson Zapata, director del Diario Vanguardia de dicha localidad.

Las denuncias por “conductas homosexuales” y pedofilia contra el cura argentino Carlos Urrutigoity fueron reflotadas en una publicación realizada por la NBC News, donde se muestran más pruebas que evidencian el abuso en jóvenes por parte del religioso.

Nelson Zapata, director del Diario Vanguardia de Ciudad del Este, quien siguió de cerca el caso a través de las publicaciones sobre el tema, dijo en conversación con la 780 AM que por la cantidad de denuncias que pesaban en su contra “no sabían dónde ponerlo y terminó en Ciudad del Este”.

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PARAGUAY
Entorno Inteligente

Abc / El sacerdote argentino Carlos Urrutigoity, segundo en el mando de la diócesis de Ciudad del Este, fue calificado por el obispo de Scranton, EE.UU., como “una seria amenaza para los jóvenes”. El religioso con nefastos antecedentes por abusos sexuales no solo fue acogido en la diócesis de esta ciudad, sino es defendido a capa y espada por el titular diocesano, Rogelio Livieres Plano.

CIUDAD DEL ESTE (De nuestra redacción regional).- El periodista de la Global Post, EE.UU., Will Carless, recopiló todos los antecedentes de Urrutigoity en una extensa nota que fue publicada ayer en su portal. Uno de los datos que menciona es que en marzo pasado, una organización sin fines de lucro de los Estados Unidos, que se especializa en el seguimiento de los sacerdotes denunciados por abusos sexuales en menores, anunció en su sitio web que Urrutigoity no solo volvió a activar en la Iglesia Católica en Paraguay, sino que fue promovido al cargo de vicario general, el segundo puesto en la diócesis de Ciudad del Este.

Esto causó un revuelo en dicho país e incluso el obispo de Scranton, Joseph C. Bambera, informó mediante un comunicado su preocupación “por este clérigo de apropiarse de funciones de la Iglesia”.

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PARAGUAY
ABC Color

La norteamericana NBC News publicó este martes un extenso reportaje sobre un cura argentino acusado de abusos sexuales a menores “desde Suiza hasta Estados Unidos”. Se trata de Carlos Urrutigoity, actualmente en la diócesis de Ciudad del Este.

El caso del cura Urrutigoity no es nuevo. Ya había sido denunciado en publicaciones hechas por ABC Color en 2008. El sacerdote es uno de los protegidos del Mons. Rogelio Livieres Plano, obispo de Ciudad del Este. Sin embargo, el material publicado hoy ofrece más documentaciones.

La publicación dada a conocer hoy por el portal de la NBC y firmada por el periodista Will Carless, afirma que a pesar de la denuncia del obispo de Scranton, Pensilvania, Estados Unidos, Urrutigoity sigue en funciones dentro de grupo juveniles católicos en Ciudad del Este.

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PARAGUAY
Paraguay.com

[After U.S. sex abuse scandals, an accused priest rises again in Paraguay]

De acuerdo a lo que publica la NBC el hombre que ha sido descrito por los obispos de Suiza a Pennsylvania como ” peligroso”, “anormal “, y ” una grave amenaza para los jóvenes”. El sacerdote ha tenido varios antecedentes de pedofilia en las diferentes diócesis en las que ha servido.

Puntualmente en Pennsylvania en 2002 fue denunciado por abusar de un adolescente y de haber dormido y tocado a otros.

Urrutigoity, argentino, niega haber abusado de nadie y afirma que ha sido víctima de una campaña de desprestigio, de acuerdo a la publicación. Los primeros incidentes sexuales del sacerdote datan de 1999 en Suiza.

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AUSTRALIA
Illawarra Mercury

By Kate McIlwain
June 4, 2014

The high profile royal commission into child sexual abuse will soon turn its attention to Wollongong Catholic Diocese, as a public hearing examines allegations against a local priest stemming back to the 1990s.

On Wednesday, the commission announced it would look into the diocese’s response to allegations of sexual assault against then Father John Gerard Nestor, a priest cleared of indecently assaulting a 15-year-old altar boy but later defrocked by the Vatican.

The hearing, starting on June 24, will investigate the relationship between the Wollongong diocese and the Vatican concerning preventative and disciplinary actions taken in response to the allegations as well as ‘‘any other related matters’’.

Fr Nestor was a priest in the Wollongong diocese in 1991 when he was charged with the indecent assault of a teenage altar boy.

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AUSTRALIA
The Australian

DAN BOX THE AUSTRALIAN JUNE 05, 2014

THE Vatican’s influence on local cases of alleged child sex abuse will be scrutinised later this month when the Archbishop of Adelaide, Philip Wilson, gives evidence about his handling of allegations against a former priest.

In a public hearing in Sydney, the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse will investigate the relationship between the Vatican and Archbishop Wilson, during his previous role as the Bishop of Wollongong, south of Sydney.

Shortly after his appointment to the diocese, in 1997, local priest John Gerard Nestor was convicted of indecently assaulting a 15-year-old boy several years earlier.

Mr Nestor denied the charge and subsequently won an appeal to have the court’s decision overturned later the same year.

During the initial court case, Tony Abbott gave character evidence in support of Mr Nestor, with whom he had studied at Sydney’s St Patrick’s Seminary during the 1980s.

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DEUTSCHLAND
kathweb

[Summary: The religious orders in Germany have drawn up guidelines for dealing with sexual abuse. The decision was made at the general meeting of the German Superiors Conference which was attended by 200 superiors and other key people.]

Bonn, 04.06.2014 (KAP) Die Ordensgemeinschaften Deutschlands haben am Mittwoch in Vallendar aktualisierte “Leitlinien für den Umgang mit sexuellem Missbrauch” sowie eine “Rahmenordnung Prävention gegen sexualisierte Gewalt” beschlossen. Bei der Mitgliederversammlung der Deutschen Ordensoberenkonferenz (DOK), an der rund 200 Ordensoberinnen und -obere teilnahmen, wurden auch Personalentscheidungen getroffen. Prämonstratenser-Abt Hermann-Josef Kugler (Abtei Windberg) wurde für weitere vier Jahre zum Vorsitzenden der Deutschen Ordensoberenkonferenz (DOK) gewählt, bestätigt wurde bei der Tagung in Vallendar die stellvertretende Vorsitzende, Schwester M. Regina Pröls. Sie ist Generaloberin der Franziskusschwestern in Vierzehnheiligen.

Zur neuen Generalsekretärin der Ordensoberenkonferenz wählten die Mitglieder Schwester Agnesita Dobler (53) aus der Gemeinschaft der Franziskanerinnen von Reute. Die diplomierte Betriebswirtin war viele Jahre lang in der Leitung von sozial-caritativen Einrichtungen ihrer Gemeinschaft tätig. Daneben war sie von 1996 bis 2001 Mitglied der Generalleitung ihrer Ordensgemeinschaft. Seit 2008 arbeitete sie als Referentin der Diözese Rottenburg-Stuttgart für die Flughafenseelsorge. Schwester Agnesita übernimmt die Aufgabe am 1. August von Schwester M. Walburga Scheibel, die nach sechs Jahren im Amt nicht erneut kandidierte.

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IERLAND
Krapuul (Nederland)

Die kerk is de Katholieke kerk en de moraal is dat kinderen die niet geboren zijn in een huwelijk tussen man en vrouw maar buitenechtelijk…die zijn ‘illegaal’ en zo zullen ze behandeld worden ook. (Beetje vergelijkbaar met hoe Schreibtischmörder Teeven en zijn bende omspringen met mensen die denken dat Nederland beschaafd is en daarom hier hun heil – weg van oorlog en ellende – zoeken zeg maar).

Zo ging het toe in Galway county in het katholieke Ierland waar naar schatting 800 stoffelijke overschotten van kinderen zijn gevonden in een septic tank bij een door nonnen destijds bestierd tehuis voor ongehuwde moeders en hun kinderen.

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OSTERREICH
Kurier

[Summary: A former student of Kalksburg College, once operated by the Jesuits, is suing the techer and the Jesuit order for damages. The 44-year-old former students alleges sexual abuse by the former teacher identified as Mag S. The accused is now a secondary school teacher in Vienna.]

Meist sind es Missbrauchsopfer, die von der Möglichkeit, die Öffentlichkeit aus einem Gerichtsverfahren auszuschließen, Gebrauch machen. In dem Fall eines ehemaligen Erziehers und nunmehrigen Lehrers, dem sexueller Missbrauch vorgeworfen wird, ist es anders.

Nicht öffentlich?
Mag. S., der an einem Gymnasium in Wien beschäftigt ist, beantragte am Montag, das Zivilverfahren, das gegen ihn angestrengt wurde, nicht-öffentlich durchzuführen. Der Prozess findet heute im Wiener Landesgericht für Zivilrechtssachen statt.

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AUSTRALIA
ABC News

A Hunter Valley Catholic priest has been charged with child sexual assault offences dating back to the 80s.

Vince Ryan, 76, is accused of a string of offences that allegedly occurred between 1985 and 1986.

He faces charges including sexual assault, committing an act of indecency and attempting homosexual intercourse with a male aged between 10 and 18.

Investigators from the police Strike Force Georgiana received information about the alleged indecent and sexual assault of a boy in May last year.

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TEXAS
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests

For immediate release: Wednesday, June 4, 2014

For more information: David Clohessy of St. Louis, SNAP Director (314) 566-9790 cell, SNAPclohessy@aol.com

Sex abuse victims blast Baptist pastor
He “changes his tune” in child abuse case
Group thinks he should be investigated & charged
Preacher “clearly filed false police report,” SNAP says

Three years after he reported suspected child sex crimes by a church volunteer to police, a Jackson minister went back and tried to “water down” his formal report in an unusual move to apparently try to protect himself and his congregation from civil liability. A civil abuse and cover up case was filed against him and his church last month.

[Jackson Sun]

And now a support group for clergy sex abuse victims is urging prosecutors to investigate the two very different accounts and possibly charge the minister for making a false police report.

(Read the police report here.)

In 2006, Pastor Mark McSwain of First Church in Bemis reported to police that a church volunteer, Chad Lutrell, was inappropriately touching young girls and kissing one on the mouth. He also said that Lutrell was stalking and harassing adult women.

Three years later, however, in 2009, McSwain backtracked from his original statement. McSwain approached police again, this time telling an officer that Lutrell kissed a child on the cheek, not on the mouth. McSwain also denied that Lutrell had inappropriately touched children, and claimed that Lutrell only sent one adult woman an inappropriate email and follower her home.

“It is very suspicious that the pastor changed his tune so much, especially after three years, and in such self-serving ways” said Barbara Dorris, outreach director of SNAP, the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests. “We hope prosecutors will consider filing charges against McSwain for making a false police report.”

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UNITED KINGDOM
Breitbart

MPs have called on Home Secretary Theresa May to set up an inquiry into historical cases of child sex abuse. Former Children’s Minister Tim Loughton and fellow Conservative Zac Goldsmith are among the names calling for a national investigation into repeated failings by police in dealing with a wide variety of cases.

Other MPs calling for an inquiry are Labour’s Tom Watson and Simon Danczuk, Liberal Democrats Tessa Munt and John Hemming and the Green Party’s Caroline Lucas.

Exaronews reports that the MPs want an inquiry similar to that set up to investigate the Hillborough football stadium disaster of 1989, which uncovered the truth about an episode that involved police failure.

Although several inquiries have been set up in the wake of the Jimmy Savile sex abuse scandals, in which the deceased BBC TV star was unmasked as a prolific sex offender and paedophile, critics have said they are too disparate and need to be united into one.

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IRELAND
The Nationalist

The Catholic Church is facing fresh accusations of child neglect after a researcher found records for 796 youngsters believed to be buried in a mass grave beside a former orphanage for the children of unwed mothers.

Catherine Corless says her discovery of child death records at the Catholic nun-run home in Tuam, Co Galway, suggests that a former septic tank filled with bones is the final resting place for most, if not all, of the children.

Church leaders in Galway said they had no idea so many children who died at the orphanage had been buried there and they would support local efforts to mark the spot with a plaque listing all 796 children.

Galway death records showed that the children, mostly babies and toddlers, died often of sickness or disease in the orphanage during the 35 years it operated from 1926 to 1961. The building, which had previously been a workhouse for homeless adults, was torn down decades ago to make way for new houses.

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IRELAND
The Washington Times

By Jennifer Pompi-The Washington Times
Wednesday, June 4, 2014

The Catholic Church in Ireland has come under fire after a researcher discovered a mass grave filled with the bodies of 796 babies near a former orphanage and home for unwed mothers.

The home, run by the Bon Secours nuns from 1925-1961 in County Galway, saw the hundreds of children dying of malnourishment and neglect, as well as contagious diseases like measles, tuberculosis and pneumonia, reported The Daily Mail.

The babies were put in what was once a septic tank, with a simple shroud and no coffins, said researcher Catherine Corless, who discovered the death records, according to reports.

A health board report in 1944 revealed the conditions of the home, The Daily Mail reports. A 13-month-old boy was described as “miserable, emaciated child with voracious appetite and no control over bodily functions and probably mentally defective,” and 31 other children in the same room were described as “poor babies, emaciated and not thriving.”

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OHIO
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests

For immediate release: Wednesday, June 4, 2014

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

We applaud the brave girl who reported being abused by Rev. Paul Endrei of Church on the Rise in Westlake. But we’re troubled that it took almost a year for law enforcement officials to arrest the accused clergyman.

[Cleveland.com]

We know child sex cases can be tough and that cases against popular or powerful figures even tougher. But we hope police and prosecutors will explain to parents and the public why it took so long to file charges. And we hope that over those 11 months that Rev. Endrei did not hurt any more kids.

Finally, we beg current and former members of Church on the Rise to aggressively seek out others who may have seen, suspected or suffered the clergyman’s crimes and prod them to call police too.

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AUSTRALIA
Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse

4 June, 2014

The Royal Commission will hold a public hearing in Sydney commencing on Tuesday 24 June 2014 into the response of the Catholic Diocese of Wollongong to allegations of child sexual abuse against John Gerard Nestor.

It is anticipated that the hearing will look at the relationship between the Diocesan Bishop (and, in his absence, the Diocesan Administrator) and the Holy See (Vatican) in matters concerning preventative and disciplinary action taken in response to allegations of child sexual abuse against John Gerard Nestor.

The scope and purpose of the public hearing is to inquire into:

1. The response of the Catholic Diocese of Wollongong to allegations of child sexual abuse, and related criminal proceedings, against John Gerard Nestor.
2. Any other related matters.

Any person or institution who believes that they have a direct and substantial interest in the scope and purpose of the public hearing is invited to lodge a written application for leave to appear at the public hearing by 13 June 2014.

For more information on lodging your submission email
solicitor@childabuseroyalcommission.gov.au.

The public hearing will be streamed live to the public via webcast. Interested individuals and organisations are encouraged to view the proceedings via the webcast.

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AUSTRALIA
Broken Rites

Australia’s national Royal Commission into child abuse will examine the case of a former Catholic priest, John Gerard Nestor, who was convicted by a magistrate in 1997 for the alleged indecent assault of an altar boy. In a higher court, Nestor successfully appealed against this conviction. But the church authorities possessed certain “additional information” about Nestor (not regarding this boy), which they did not provide to the police. Perhaps the Royal Commission might be able to uncover this “additional information”.

During his twenties, John Nestor worked in secular jobs as an administrator. In his early thirties, he
became a student in a Catholic seminary, aspiring to become a priest. He was ordained as a priest in 1989 (in his late thirties) and was accepted into the Wollongong Diocese, south of Sydney.

A relative of his was Bishop William Murray, head of the Wollongong Diocese.

When police charged Nestor in the 1997 court case, Father Nestor (then aged 45) admitted he had slept on mattresses on a floor with a boy (aged about 14) and his younger brother in July 1991, but denied assaulting the boy.

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IRELAND
Aljazeera America

June 3, 2014

The Catholic Church in Ireland is facing fresh accusations of child abuse after a researcher found records for 796 young children allegedly buried in a mass grave beside a former orphanage for the children of unwed mothers.

The researcher, Catherine Corless, says her discovery of child death records at the Catholic nun-run home in Tuam, County Galway, suggests that the former septic tank filled with bones is the final resting place for most, if not all, of the children.

Church leaders in Galway, western Ireland, said they had no idea so many children who died at the orphanage had been buried there, and said they would support local efforts to mark the spot with a plaque listing all 796 children.

Archbishop of Dublin Diarmuid Martin said that “if a public or state inquiry is not established into outstanding issues of concern surrounding the mother-and-baby homes, then it is important that a social history project be undertaken to get an accurate picture of these homes in our country’s history,” the Irish Times reported.

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IRELAND
Irish Mirror

Aine Hegarty

But much have things really changed when you see how many vulnerable kids in state care are dying every year

Good Catholic Ireland really was a sick and brutal place.

Revelations that the bodies of 800 vulnerable children were dumped into a septic tank at a home run by nuns in Tuam, Co Galway, are stomach-churning.

The remains of innocent youngsters ranging in age from newborns to nine-year-olds were found stacked in the mass unmarked grave.

The full extent of the horror was uncovered by local historian Catherine Corless who was researching the history of the home run by the Bon Secours order of nuns from 1925 until 1961.

The mass grave was found by two boys who were playing in a field in 1995. They found a broken concrete slab and when they lifted it up discovered it was filled to the top with human bones and skulls.

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IRELAND
The Journal

DESPITE THE GOVERNMENT not yet making an official statement on the alleged mass child grave in Tuam, the story has already been reported worldwide.

Outlets across the United States were among the first cover the story outside of Ireland. Within the last 24 hours Al Jazeera, BBC, CBS and outlets in Australia have all reported the horrific revelations that up to 796 infants may have been buried in an unmarked grave that was later used as a septic tank.

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OHIO
Toledo Blade

BY JENNIFER FEEHAN
BLADE STAFF WRITER

A Toledo attorney has asked Gov. John Kasich to allow a Toledo priest convicted of killing a Catholic nun to go home to die.

Gerald Robinson, 76, is terminally ill and has been moved to the hospice unit of Franklin Medical Center in Columbus, a hospital run by the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction. He has a heart condition, his attorney, Rick Kerger, said.

Mr. Kerger, who planned to visit Robinson today “to say good-bye,” said he did not expect Mr. Kasich to release Robinson as Ohio law prohibits it.

“I’ve been trying to find a way to get him a compassionate release, but that’s not allowed for people who have been convicted of murder,” he said.

Robinson was found guilty in 2006 in Lucas County Common Pleas Court of murder for the 1980 slaying of Sister Margaret Ann Pahl in the sacristy of the former Mercy Hospital chapel. He was sentenced to life in prison with parole eligibility after 15 years.

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AUSTRALIA
New South Wales Police Force

Wednesday, 04 June 2014

Police have charged a Catholic Priest in relation to alleged historical sexual and indecent assaults of a child in the state’s Hunter region.

In May 2013, investigators from Strike Force Georgiana received information about alleged indecent and sexual assault matters involving a child and commenced and investigation.

On Wednesday 7 May 2014, detectives spoke with a 76-year-old man about the alleged offences against a boy.

Officers will allege the offences occurred between 1985 and 1986.

On Saturday 17 May 2014, the 76-year-old man attended Ryde Police Station.

He was served a future court attendance notice for sexual assault, commit act of indecency (x6) and attempt homosexual intercourse with male between 10-18 years.

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PORTUGAL
Christian Today

Following the news that 26 women, each of whom declared herself in love with a Catholic priest, signed a letter to Pope Francis begging him to relax rules on celibacy, it transpires that Portuguese clergy are taking matters into their own hands.

According to the BBC more than 400 practising priests in Portugal have recently left their vocation in the Church, many because they want to get married, which is currently against Catholic teaching.

Fernando Felix Ferreira, a former priest, told Portuguese TVI 24 that “the number of priests requesting exemption has been increasing”.

Ferreira himself applied for dispensation from the Church in 2000; a lengthy process that took a year and a half to complete. Many priests, “some young, and some not-so-young” according to Ferreira, however, are now refusing to adhere to this formality and are instead choosing to “simply abandon the ministry”.

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IRELAND
The Guardian (UK)

Forget prayers. Only full disclosure by Ireland’s Catholic church can begin to atone for the children who died in its care

Emer O’Toole
theguardian.com, Wednesday 4 June 2014

The bodies of 796 children, between the ages of two days and nine years old, have been found in a disused sewage tank in Tuam, County Galway. They died between 1925 and 1961 in a mother and baby home under the care of the Bon Secours nuns.

Locals have known about the grave since 1975, when two little boys, playing, broke apart the concrete slab covering it and discovered a tomb filled with small skeletons. A parish priest said prayers at the site, and it was sealed once more, the number of bodies below unknown, their names forgotten.

The Tuam historian Catherine Corless discovered the extent of the mass grave when she requested records of children’s deaths in the home. The registrar in Galway gave her almost 800. Shocked, she checked 100 of these against graveyard burials, and found only one little boy who had been returned to a family plot. The vast majority of the children’s remains, it seemed, were in the septic tank. Corless and a committee have been working tirelessly to raise money for a memorial that includes a plaque bearing each child’s name.

For those of you unfamiliar with how, until the 1990s, Ireland dealt with unmarried mothers and their children, here it is: the women were incarcerated in state-funded, church-run institutions called mother and baby homes or Magdalene asylums, where they worked to atone for their sins. Their children were taken from them.

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BELGIUM
West

by Ivano Abbadessa

After the child sex abuse scandals in Belgium, the Catholic Church has taken a zero-tolerance line on paedophilia, which was recently reiterated by Pope Francis. Atonement, compensation and prevention are the guidelines of this new strategy that, according to the data, appears to be working. According to the report from the Belgian inter-diocesan Commission, 621 victims have reported the abuse to the Centre of Arbitration, which was active until 31 October 2012. A further 323 reports have been received in the past two years at 10 ‘contact points’, operational since January 2012, which the Catholic Church set up in the provinces of Belgium. Although 8% of these reports have not yet been fully processed, 125 victims of abuse by priests have already received financial compensation totalling about €1m. The document shows that 92% of victims were under 18 at the time of the abuse and 25% were under 10.

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AUSTRALIA
The Age

June 4, 2014

Paul Osborne, AAP Senior Political Writer

The royal commission into child abuse will examine the case of a former Catholic priest who once received a court reference from Tony Abbott.

John Gerard Nestor, 50, was a priest in the Wollongong diocese in NSW when he was charged with the indecent assault of a teenage altar boy.

In his 1997 court case, the priest admitted he had slept on mattresses on a floor with the boy and his younger brother in July 1991, but denied assaulting the boy.

The prime minister, then a federal parliamentary secretary to the employment minister, told the court Nestor was an upright and virtuous man whom he had known since 1984 while studying at Sydney’s St Patrick’s Seminary to become a priest.

“He was … a beacon of humanity at the seminary,” Mr Abbott said.

The magistrate found Nestor guilty and sentenced him to jail.

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AUSTRALIA
news.com.au

A CATHOLIC priest has been charged with sexually and indecently assaulting a child in the NSW Hunter region almost 30 years ago.

The priest, 76, will face court this month over the allegations, which police say took place between 1985 and 1986.

He was charged with sexual assault, six counts of committing an act of indecency and attempted intercourse with a male under 10 years of age.

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NEW YORK
Wall Street Journal

By SOPHIA HOLLANDER
June 4, 2014

A charismatic teacher was accused of sexually abusing female students as young as 12 years old during the late 1960s and early 1970s. Decades later, the women found one another and confronted the man they called their abuser.

That could describe recent situations in both New York and Virginia. In each state, a group of women in their 50s accused a former teacher of molesting or raping them as children.

But differences in the states’ statute-of-limitations laws has meant the outcomes diverge sharply. In Virginia, which has no limit on bringing felony charges, former teacher Christopher Kloman was sentenced to 43 years in prison last October, after pleading guilty to four counts of indecent liberties with a child younger than 14 and one count of abduction with intent to defile.

Mr. Rusch’s accusers include, right to left, former Woodward students Sara Smahl, her sister Nancy, Lisa Young, Jane Bedell and Wendy Hooker Erin Patrice O’Brien for The Wall Street Journal
In New York, former teacher Bob Rusch cannot be prosecuted in a criminal or civil trial because the state’s statute of limitations expired decades ago. For civil cases, New York requires people who allege they were abused as minors to come forward by age 23.

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TEXAS
KETK

Newton, Texas (U.S. Attorney John M. Bales) — A 23-year-old former youth pastor has pleaded guilty to child pornography violations in the Eastern District of Texas, announced U.S. Attorney John M. Bales today.

Trevion Lechay Ethridge, of Newton, Texas, pleaded guilty to production of child pornography today before U.S. District Judge Ron Clark.

According to information presented in court, from November 2012 to March 2013, while Ethridge was the youth pastor at a Newton County church, he persuaded a minor to video and photograph pornographic images and to send the pornography to Ethridge via smart phone. Ethridge was indicted by a federal grand jury on Oct. 3, 2013. Trial began in this case on May 12, 2014 and was recessed after two days. Trial resumed on June 3, 2014, at which time Ethridge changed his plea to guilty and under oath, admitted to sending the minor pornographic images and videos of himself and enticing the minor to send pornographic images and videos in return.

This case was brought as part of Project Safe Childhood, a nationwide initiative to combat the growing epidemic of child sexual exploitation and abuse launched in May 2006 by the Department of Justice. Led by United States Attorneys’ Offices and the Criminal Division’s Child Exploitation and Obscenity Section (CEOS), Project Safe Childhood marshals federal, state and local resources to better locate, apprehend and prosecute individuals who exploit children via the Internet, as well as to identify and rescue victims. For more information about Project Safe Childhood, please visit www.projectsafechildhood.gov.

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TEXAS
12 News Now

Posted: Jun 03, 2014

A 23-year-old former youth pastor Tuesday pleaded guilty to production of child pornography.

According to a news release from the office of U.S. Attorney John M. Bales, Trevion Lechay Ethridge, of Newton, entered the guilty plea before U.S. District Judge Ron Clark.

The news release says information presented in court, from November 2012 to March 2013, shows that while Ethridge was the youth pastor at a Newton County church, he persuaded a minor to video and photograph pornographic images and to send the pornography to Ethridge via smart phone.

Ethridge was indicted by a federal grand jury on Oct. 3, 2013. Trial began in this case on May 12, 2014 and was recessed after two days. Trial resumed on June 3, 2014, at which time Ethridge changed his plea to guilty and under oath, admitted to sending the minor pornographic images and videos of himself and enticing the minor to send pornographic images and videos in return.

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MISSOURI
Kansas City Business Journal

Staff
Kansas City Business Journal

An insurance company for the Catholic Diocese of Kansas City-St. Joseph that provided liability insurance to diocese in the 1970s says it should not have to pay damages for sexual abuse cases, KCUR reports.

In a federal court filing Friday, U.S. Fidelity and Guaranty Co. said the policies only cover injuries that were the result of accidents. According to KCUR, the company said that injuries that the diocese expected or intended were not covered.

In July 2013, Chicago Insurance Co. filed a similar federal lawsuit that it claimed it had no obligation to pay a $2.25 million settlement the diocese reached in a priest abuse settlement.

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AUSTRALIA
Daily Telegraph

MIRANDA DEVINE THE DAILY TELEGRAPH JUNE 04, 2014

PETER Fox, the wannabe whistleblower cop who claimed a “Catholic police mafia” in the Hunter Valley was protecting paedophiles, was revealed last week as a self-aggrandising zealot unfairly smearing his colleagues.

But the special commission of inquiry he triggered may yet prove valuable.

Not only did it clear the names of innocent police officers smeared by Fox’s wild accusations, but it highlighted the failure of senior clergy within the Catholic diocese of Maitland-Newcastle to protect children from two paedophile priests from the 1970s to the early 1990s.

Commissioner Margaret Cunneen SC’s final report offers an insight into how such evil could exist, undetected, within the church for so long.

What she found was that victims came forward to complain of being sexually abused, but their accusations were not reported to police.

She notes that Father Brian Lucas, now the general secretary of the Australian Catholic Bishops Conference, and a lawyer, had a “general practice of deliberately not taking notes of his meetings with priests accused of child sexual abuse’’.

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AUSTRALIA
ABC News

Hunter Valley clergy abuse survivors say the local Diocese will ‘continue to bleed’ unless tougher action is taken against two senior priests criticised by a Special Commission of Inquiry.

Monsignor Allan Hart and Father William Burston have been stood down from advisory roles in the wake of the Commission’s findings.

But the two priests are still performing their parish roles.

The report into cover-ups was scathing of the church’s handling of the now dead paedophile priests Denis McAlinden and James Fletcher.

Monsignor Hart and Father Burston was asked to say what they knew.

The Commission described their evidence as unimpressive.

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FLORIDA
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests

For immediate release: Tuesday, June 3

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

In an unusual ruling, a judge is letting alleged child sex abuse victims see secret government records about a disturbing plea deal between prosecutors and a prominent Florida millionaire, Jeffrey Epstein.

We applaud the brave and determined women who have won this unprecedented legal victory.

[MSN News]

All too often, powerful predators exploit their influence and win special treatment and consideration from governmental officials. Such favoritism endangers kids. It also makes adults cynical about the justice system and deters them from reporting known and suspected child sex crimes in the future.

We hope these women will be able to persuade a judge to make these secret records public and let more charges be filed against Epstein. Secrecy is a child predator’s best weapon.

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UNITED STATES
Christian Post

Following Colleague’s Admission of Sex Abuse Cover-Up, Pastor of Former Sovereign Grace Ministries Church Denied Leave of Absence

BY MORGAN LEE , CHRISTIAN POST REPORTER
June 3, 2014

Following Covenant Life Church Lead Pastor Josh Harris’ announcement two weeks ago that he had asked for a leave of absence, a church leader announced on Sunday that Harris would remain on staff.

Harris’ first told the congregation he was considering stepping down on May 18, following former CLC pastor Grant Layman’s confession that he (Layman) had withheld allegations from police that church volunteer Nathaniel Morales had been sexually abusing children. The former pastor’s confession came while he was under oath and testifying at Morales’ court case, where the volunteer was later convicted of sexually abusing three young boys between 1983 and 1991.

Layman stepped down from his position as a pastor at CLC in March 2014.

According to a Washington Post story, a church leader on Sunday “speaking on behalf of two church groups said each had weighed whether Harris and other ministers should be placed on leaves of absence — and decided such action was not warranted.” The Christian Post reached out to CLC to learn the identity of the speaker and requested comment but did not hear back by press time.

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MASSACHUSETTS
Sun Chronicle

Former Attleboro church school principal indicted on child molestation charges

BY DAVID LINTON SUN CHRONICLE STAFF

ATTLEBORO — The former assistant pastor of Grace Baptist Church and principal of the Grace Baptist Christian Academy, who was arrested in January for allegedly molesting one of his female students, has been indicted by a Bristol County Grand Jury, lawyers said today.

The Rev. Jeffrey A. Nichols, 47, faces charges in Fall River Superior Court of indecent assault and battery, accosting a person of the opposite sex and open and gross conduct.

He pleaded not guilty at his arraignment last Tuesday in Fall River Superior Court, where the case will now be prosecuted. He has been held in jail on bail since his arrest.

After his arrest, a prosecutor said Nicholas violated a position of trust by molesting one of his seventh-grade students beginning in 2008 when she was 13, and continuing until the end of the school year in June 2013.

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PERU
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests

For immediate release: Tuesday, June 3, 2014

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

Apparently, Vatican officials have quickly and quietly defrocked a child molesting Peruvian bishop. Defenders of the Catholic hierarchy will no doubt claim that this shows Vatican officials are making progress on abuse. We disagree.

[National Catholic Reporter]

First, a Peruvian prosecutor is complaining that church officials aren’t giving him the information he is seeking so that criminal charges might be filed against Bishop Gabino Miranda of Ayacucho.

That’s NOT progress. This kind of selfish and reckless secrecy is how most Catholic officials have dealt and are dealing with cases of child sex crimes, whether the predator is a priest, nun, seminarian, teacher or bishop. That is one of the MOST irresponsible steps a Catholic official can take – interfering, directly or indirectly, with a police investigation into a possible predator.

Second, helping police and prosecutors charge and convict child molesting clerics should be church officials’ highest priority. Once a church predator is behind bars and away from kids, then church officials can start discussing whether he should be defrocked.

Third, Catholic officials have long taken action (albeit secretively, slowly and inadequately) against those who commit child sex crimes. But they refuse to take virtually any action against those who conceal child sex crimes. That’s why this crisis continues – because the prelates who could prevent child sex crimes but don’t are never punished. So that’s where Catholic officials should focus.

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IRELAND
Irish Independent

BRIAN MCDONALD – PUBLISHED 02 JUNE 2014

THE hierarchy in the Catholic Church is to meet to discuss potentially erecting a memorial at a mass grave of up to 800 children at a former home for unmarried mothers.

The meeting comes as the junior minister for education and skills, Ciaran Cannon, spoke yesterday of the “horrific details” emerging of the discovery in Tuam, Co Galway.

Mr Cannon said an inquiry was needed to determine the facts surrounding the unmarked burial site.

He warned that any investigation would have to be conducted very sensitively, as people who are still alive may have disturbing memories of their own or their family’s connections with the institution which was run by the Bon Secours Sisters.

It emerged yesterday that the head of the Bon Secours Sisters in Ireland had sought a meeting with the Archbishop of Tuam, Dr Michael Neary, to discuss how best to respond to the efforts to honour all those who died.

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IRELAND
Irish Central

Patrick Counihan @irishcentral June 03,2014

An Irish government minister has revealed the “horrific details” of the mass burial site housing up to 800 children and babies at a former religious-run home for unmarried mothers in Galway.

Ciaran Cannon, Minister of State for Education and Skills, spoke out as the Catholic Church began discussions on plans to erect a memorial at the mass grave in Tuam.

The Tuam burial site, much of it in a former septic tank, is located at what was a home for unmarried mothers and their babies run by the Bon Secours Sisters from the 1920s until the 1960s.

Local historian Catherine Corless discovered death records for 796 children from the home, ranging from infants to children up to the age of nine, but there is no record of their burial. Corless then set up a committee to erect a memorial.

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IRELAND
Newstalk

Eimear O’Shea

Tuesday 3 June 2014

Last week Fianna Fail Galway TD Colm Keaveney told this programme he has tabled a parliamentary question with an Taoiseach.

It’s believed almost 800 babies were buried in a mass grave next to the Tuam Mother and Baby home in Co Galway between 1925 and 1961.

The home was run by the Bons Secours nuns in Galway.

Minister for State Ciaran Cannon told this programme that a “state inquiry” and a “garda investigation” is needed.

Toni Maguire is an independent consultant archaeologist and anthropologist – she has worked extensively on ‘cillini’ graves or children’s burial grounds in Northern Ireland – particularly Milltown cemetery in Belfast.

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IRELAND
Huffington Post

In a disturbing discovery revealed this week, nearly 800 children were found in a mass grave near a former home for unwed mothers and their children.

The children are believed to have been buried in a septic tank on the grounds of the home in Tuam, Ireland, between 1925 and 1961, BBC News reports. Many appear to have perished from infectious diseases or malnutrition.

The gruesome discovery was made by two boys who stumbled across the unmarked grave when they were playing near the site of St. Mary’s Mother and Baby Home, which has since been converted into a housing estate.

Now, officials in Ireland are scrambling to determine how to proceed. While leaders in the Catholic Church are meeting to discuss plans for a memorial for the 796 children, Ciaran Cannon, minister of state in Ireland’s Department of Education, is calling for an inquiry into the mass grave.

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IRELAND
CBS News

The history of unwed mothers forced into hard labor is a well-documented dark chapter in Irish history. For nearly four decades, thousands of these “fallen women” toiled at a place called “the Home” in Galway to atone for having out-of-wedlock children.

While many of the women eventually left “the Home” after serving their time, some of their children apparently were not so fortunate. The Irish Mail on Sunday reports that almost 800 babies were piled onto a mass grave at the structure, which was closed in 1961. According to the Washington Post, a septic tank served as the gravesite, which had no markers or coffins.

The Post reports that historian Catherine Corless made the discovery after tracking down never-before-released documents.

“The bones are still there,” Corless told the newspaper. “The children who died in ‘the Home,’ this was them.”

The Post reports that police are investigating the grim findings.

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IRELAND
Christian Post

Horror House: Skeletons of 800 Babies Found in Mass Septic Tank Grave Near Former Home of Unwed Mothers in Ireland

BY LEONARDO BLAIR , CP REPORTER
June 3, 2014

An old septic tank located next to a former home for unwed mothers run by Catholic nuns in Ireland from 1925 to 1961, was revealed this week to be a massive grave containing the skeletons of nearly 800 infants and children.

The Home, as the former refuge for “fallen women” is known, was run by the Bon Secours nuns in Tuam, according to The Washington Post. The mothers, according to that report, would pay penance for their shame with indentured labor then leave but many of their children never left with them.

An Irish Central report revealed that the children were secretly buried “without coffins or headstones on unconsecrated ground.”

The revelation was made by Catherine Corless, a local historian and genealogist who went to Catholic school with some of the children from the home as a child.

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IRELAND
The Journal

Updated 8.15pm

THE CABINET DID not discuss allegations that a mass grave containing the bodies of almost 800 infants has been found on the grounds of a former children’s home in Galway, despite an assertion by the Minister for Children that it would.

Minister for Children Charlie Flanagan said he was shocked by the “appalling revelations” about the home. ”The full facts surrounding the matter must be established,” he said.

He had confirmed to TheJournal.ie that he expected the matter to come up at today’s ministerial meeting. However this evening, a spokesperson for the minister said that it was not specifically discussed..

They said the minister has been in touch with the Department of Justice and the Taoiseach on the matter and it is being considered at senior levels in the coalition.

“The matter is being taken very, very seriously. The full facts need to be established,” the spokesperson said.

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IRELAND
New York Daily News

BY CAROL KURUVILLA
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS Tuesday, June 3, 2014

Rejected in life, these children were forgotten in death.

An Irish historian claims a septic tank in her town contains the skeletons of nearly 800 babies who had the misfortune of being born to single moms during a time when out-of-wedlock pregnancy was tantamount to a crime.

Residents of Tuam, County Galway, have long suspected that the illegitimate children who died at the former home for “fallen women” were secretly buried nearby. But it wasn’t until Catherine Corless did some historical digging that she realized the sheer size of this mass grave.

After looking through local death registries, she now suspects 796 children were wrapped in plain shrouds and dropped into the concrete septic tank. There were no coffins to hold their little bodies, and their final resting place was unmarked and unconsecrated for decades.

“I could not believe it. I was dumbfounded and deeply upset,” Corless told Irish Central. “There’s nothing to say it’s a massive children’s graveyard.”

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IRELAND
NPR – the two-way

by CAMILA DOMONOSKE
June 03, 2014

An Irish community recently discovered the bodies of hundreds of children in a septic tank behind a former home for unmarried mothers. The home, located in the town of Tuam near Galway city, had been run by the Bon Secours nuns between 1925 and 1961.

The Irish Mail, drawing on documents provided to it by local historian Catherine Corless, reported Sunday that as many as 796 children may be interred in the mass grave. The newspaper continues:

“Inspection reports unearthed from files of the local health board show that the home housed hundreds of children many of whom suffered deformities, malnutrition and neglect. Causes of death included malnutrition, measles, convulsions, tuberculosis, gastroenteritis and pneumonia.

“The babies were usually buried in a plain shroud without a coffin … no memorial was erected to the dead children and the grave was left unmarked. The site is now surrounded by a housing estate.”

In 1944, according to the newspaper, a local health inspection report listed 333 occupants in a home built to house 243. Thirty-one infants were living in a sunroom and balcony; they were described as “fragile, pot-bellied and emaciated.” A 9-month-old in a different room was “emaciated with flesh hanging loosely on limbs.”

The death rate was high — 300 children perished in the span of three years, according to the report cited in the newspaper.

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IRELAND
Irish Times

Patsy McGarry

Tue, Jun 3, 2014

The Tuam mother-and-baby home scandal has led to a call for “an urgent inquiry, including a Garda investigation, into the circumstances surrounding the unexplained deaths of a large number of children” there.

Making the call, Minister of State at the Department of Education, East Galway TD Ciaran Cannon, said he had spoken to Minister for Justice Frances FitzGerald and Minister for Children Charlie Flanagan on the matter.

“They have both indicated that they will be meeting with their officials this week and have suggested that a cross-departmental approach will be required to determine what is the best way to move forward on this issue. Doing nothing is simply not an option for us in Government when presented with details of this nature,” he said.

Archbishop of Dublin Diarmuid Martin said that “if a public or state inquiry is not established into outstanding issues of concern surrounding the mother-and-baby homes, then it is important that a social history project be undertaken to get an accurate picture of these homes in our country’s history”.

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IRELAND
Waterford Whispers News

June 3, 2014

THE Catholic Church has responded to the grim discovery of the remains of up to 800 unidentified children buried in an unmarked plot beside a notorious “Mother and Baby Home” in Galway, claiming that the mass grave was a temporary solution and the infants remains are “just resting” there.

The Tuam workhouse for unmarried mothers and their babies was run by the Sisters of Bon Secours (French for “safe harbour”) between the years 1925 and 1961, during which time the bodies of at least 796 children aged from 2 days to 9 years were placed one by one in an unused septic tank, following deaths from TB, malnourishment, pneumonia, and good old-fashioned neglect.

Meanwhile the entire nation has reacted with shock and an unquantifiable disgust at the discovery made by Catherine Corless, a local historian and private citizen, as she carried out research about a church run institution known locally as ‘The Home’. The events that transpired there are a lesson in abject misery and unending sorrow that would even make a Nazi war criminal blush and this was reflected in the word on the street from many Irish people.

“Well, I’m 55 so a bit before my time but when we used to visit my aunt up in Donegal, she would tell us to stay away from the fields down the road because there were babies buried there but if only someone knew about it,” John Drummond, a Dublin native explained, “It’s all changed now though in fairness,” John said of a country that saw 196 children in state care die between the years 2000 and 2010.

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IRELAND
Irish Times

Patsy McGarry

Tue, Jun 3, 2014

Towards Peace, a new spiritual support service for people whose faith has been damaged by clerical abuse and its handling by church authorities, was launched in Knock, Co Mayo, tonight by the west’s Catholic bishops.

The service was launched in Cork on May 25th by the Bishop of Cork and Ross, John Buckley, and is to be launched in the north and east of the country at later dates.

Towards Peace is one of three Catholic Church agencies in Ireland set up to help survivors of abuse.

The others are the National Board for Safeguarding Children (NBSC), which monitors child protection in Catholic institutions across the island, and Towards Healing, the telephone counselling referral service. All are sponsored by the Catholic Church in Ireland.

Bishop William Crean of Cloyne prepares to speak on the review of child safeguarding in the diocese by the National Board for the Safeguarding of Children in the Catholic Church in Ireland. Photograph: Michael Mac Sweeney/Provision Divine Word missionaries severely criticised by child protection watchdog

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PENNSYLVANIA
WNEP

JUNE 3, 2014, BY STACY LANGE

SCRANTON — A priest will spend up to 23 months in jail after he was caught sexually abusing a 15-year-old boy in Dunmore last year.

Fr. Jeffrey Paulish was sentenced at the Lackawanna County Courthouse to between eight and 23 months in jail.

He pleaded guilty back in January to corrupting a minor.

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UNITED STATES
The American Conservative

By ROD DREHER • June 3, 2014

… thrown into the sewer, by Catholic nuns. From the Washington Post:

In a town in western Ireland, where castle ruins pepper green landscapes, there’s a six-foot stone wall that once surrounded a place called the Home. Between 1925 and 1961, thousands of “fallen women” and their “illegitimate” children passed through the Home, run by the Bon Secours nuns in Tuam.

Many of the women, after paying a penance of indentured servitude for their out-of-wedlock pregnancy, left the Home for work and lives in other parts of Ireland and beyond. Some of their children were not so fortunate.

More than five decades after the Home was closed and destroyed — where a housing development and children’s playground now stands — what happened to nearly 800 of those abandoned children has now emerged: Their bodies were piled into a massive septic tank sitting in the back of the structure and forgotten, with neither gravestones nor coffins. …

These poor children were treated as subhumans by nuns, and by the Church, and the State that didn’t dare speak up for them, all because those babies came into the world outside of wedlock.

Look, this revolting monument to ecclesial and social evil does not obviate the importance of marriage, nor does it obviate the truth of Christianity. It does not make unwed childbearing good or desirable. But it does condemn a Catholic Ireland that saw sexual purity as more important than human life, or common decency. To children. Children seen by Christ’s own consecrated brides as so filthy they deserved burial in a septic tank.

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MINNESOTA
National Catholic Reporter

Brian Roewe | Jun. 3, 2014

A former top official on two separate occasions advised St. Paul-Minneapolis Archbishop John Nienstedt to resign in response to accusations of mishandled clergy sex abuse allegations. While Nienstedt has not done so, Fr. Peter Laird heeded his own counsel.

In a deposition made public May 28, the former vicar general explained he met for about five minutes with Nienstedt Sept. 23 following a Minnesota Public Radio report that alleged the archdiocese mishandled child abuse claims. Laird intended to outline possible options to take in response to the situation.

He suggested having an outside review of archdiocesan files and appointing an external task force to examine existing policies — both steps taken in the months that followed.

Laird, vicar general from November 2009 until October 2013, also suggested the archbishop’s resignation.

It’s the responsibility of any leader in any organization, he explained to attorney Jeff Anderson, “to be accountable for the work that they’ve done, whether they — it happened under their tenure or not.”

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UNITED KINGDOM
ABC (Australia)

[with video trailer]

By BBC Panorama

Monday 2 June 2014

His first public utterance as the newly elected Pope was the simple greeting, “Buona sera – good evening”. He refused to live in the luxurious quarters used by his predecessors, he washed the feet of young wrongdoers including two Muslim women and he wouldn’t denounce homosexuality. But can Pope Francis move beyond words and symbolism to reform the Catholic Church in a meaningful way?

When Jorge Bergoglio was elected Pope on 13th March last year he took the leadership of the world’s largest religion. He also inherited an organisation wracked by scandal and controversy.

Weighed down by widespread allegations of child sexual abuse; divided by issues including gay rights and the place of women in the Church; tormented by allegations of corruption in its highest echelons, the Catholic Church was fast losing its moral authority in the developed world.

Next on Four Corners the BBC’s Jane Corbin goes in search of the man we now know as Pope Francis. She looks at the reasons behind his election and his track record as a religious leader in the country of his birth. She travels to Argentina to speak with his family, his friends and his critics. Ultimately she wants to know if he has the stamina and the steel to reform the troubled organisation he now leads.

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VATICAN CITY
Gazzetta del Sud

Rome, June 3 – Pope Francis is not “letting go” of the Institute of Religious Works (IOR) and is monitoring personally the institution better known as the Vatican bank. After wrapping up his demanding and fruitful visit to the Holy Land, in fact, Bergoglio has plunged back into domestic “affairs”, first and foremost IOR which he has kept as a “bank” while renewing its mission so it is more closely connected to its specific objectives. In particular, ANSA has learned, two high officials recently appointed to their posts who were already working at the bank when Angelo Caloia was president, have been sent into early retirement. Caloia’s successors were Ettore Gotti Tedeschi and currently Ernst Von Freyberg. The early retirements made a big stir behind Vatican walls because they were perceived as a new acceleration into the institute’s reform with the old IOR management being laid off without much warning.

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CHICAGO (IL)
National Catholic Reporter

Marie Rohde | Jun. 3, 2014

CHICAGO
The issue of whether the Catholic faith of a federal judge was the basis for a key decision he made in the bankruptcy of the Milwaukee archdiocese came under intense scrutiny Monday as a three-judge panel of the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals heard arguments.

Lawyers for claimants, most of them survivors of sexual abuse by priests, have asked the appellate panel to remove U.S. District Judge Rudolph Randa from the bankruptcy case and void his decision supporting the archdiocese’s transfer of more than $55 million to a fund for the perpetual care of cemeteries. They want the court to order that another federal judge in Milwaukee consider whether that money is fair game in the compensation of the survivors and other claimants.

“It has nothing to do with being a Catholic,” said lawyer Marci Hamilton of the request that Randa be replaced, adding that the concern was for “his endorsement of the religious faith.”

After Randa issued his ruling in late July 2013, lawyers for the bankruptcy claimants raised the question of whether he had a bias.

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AUSTRALIA
The Australian

DAN BOX THE AUSTRALIAN JUNE 04, 2014

THE Catholic diocese at the centre of a state inquiry into church child sex abuse has spent more than $22 million reaching settlements with victims, with further negotiations about compensation payments continuing as recently as last week.

The Bishop of Maitland-Newcastle, in the NSW Hunter Valley, said yesterday that five priests were known to have abused 162 children over several decades: the ­earliest recorded case was in 1949 and the most recent in 1995.

Bishop Bill Wright also said he was considering whether three senior priests, including a retired bishop and former vicar general, should be withdrawn from ministry after being criticised in the ­report of the NSW Special Commission of Inquiry, released last Friday.

Both parishioners and priests of the diocese had been hard hit by the long-running abuse scandal, Bishop Wright said. Attendances at mass were now among the lowest in the country.

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PORTUGAL
BBC News

In Portugal, more and more priests are quitting their vocation – often without applying for official dispensation – apparently because they want to marry.

More than 400 men have recently left the priesthood to get married or simply to live as ordinary citizens, one former priest tells Portuguese TVI 24. Of particular concern is the rise in the number of priests who ignore the complex legal process of leaving the church and simply walk off the job, says Fernando Felix Pereira. He heads Fraternitas, a group advocating for the Church to let priests marry.

“Young priests – and some not so young, too – are just leaving, and refusing to go through the procedure of applying for a dispensation,” Pereira says, recalling that the process took him 18 months in 2000. Though he was unable to give exact figures, Pereira says six priests recently abandoned their vocation in one day in the diocese of Santarem.

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NEW JERSEY
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests

For immediate release: Tuesday, June 03, 2014

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

A former New Jersey priest has been denied insurance coverage from the Catholic church in a lawsuit against him. The ex-priest is being sued for having an affair with a parishioner and counseling the woman’s husband.

[New Jersey Law Journal]

This is another sad example of church officials focusing on legal technicalities instead of wounded and betrayed victims. Henry Drew was a monk at St. Mary’s Abbey in Morristown, and the weekend assistant priest at Our Lady of the Mount Roman Catholic Church in Warren when he began to sexually exploit a married parishioner. The woman’s husband sought counseling from Drew, who told him to get a divorce. This is a gross misuse of power.

Drew violated his sacred duty twice. First, he sexually exploited a member of his church. Then he violating the trust of the man he was counseling and using his position to influence a divorce.

We also want to point out that relationships can never be equal between and priest and a parishioner. In 17 states, it’s illegal for a clergyman to have any sexual contact with a congregant.

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PENNSYLVANIA
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests

For immediate release: Tuesday, June 03, 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 Pennsylvania priest has been sentenced to 21 month in jail for sexually abusing a teenager. We are grateful to police and prosecutors for working to get this dangerous man away from kids, but are disappointed by the short sentence.

[Times-Tribune]

Fr. William Jeffrey Paulish is a Scranton diocesan priest.

We urge Scranton Bishop Joseph Bambera to aggressively seek out anyone else who may have seen, suspects or suffered child sex crimes by Fr. Paulish. He should visit every parish Fr. Paulish worked and post his name, photo and work history on parish bulletin boards and the diocese website.

We hope others who saw, suspected or suffered Fr. Paulish’s crimes will step forward, get help, call police, protect others and start healing.

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UNITED STATES
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests

6/3/14

Dear Fr. Solma

We look forward to the arrival of Fr. Charles H. Miller back in the US.

You haven’t told anyone that you’re insisting that Fr. Miller return here. But we presume you’ve doing that because last week a top Vatican official (Archbishop Silvano Tomasi) said the days of Catholic officials moving predator priests are “in the past.”

[Reuters]

Fr. Miller, as you know, is accused of molesting a St. Louis teenager (according to BishopAccountability.org). Marianist officials “found a claim that he sexually abused a teen in 1980 to be credible” (according to the San Antonio Express News).

[BishopAccountability.org]

Still, Fr. Miller was sent to work at a Marianist facility in Rome in 2007 (five years after U.S. Catholic officials pledged “zero tolerance” and “one strike and you’re out” regarding clergy sex offenders).

Fr. Miller, as best we can tell, is still in Rome today, living and working around unsuspecting families in the literal and figurative center of Catholicism, where millions of devout Catholics visit every year, none of whom know about Fr. Miller.

[BishopAccountability.org]

At least back in St. Louis, he’ll potentially be around less vulnerable families. He’ll be near people who will hopefully recall that he is a credibly accused abuser.

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NEDERLAND
HLN

[Summary: The Catholic Church has paid more than 2.4 million euros to sexual abuse victims in which their cases were time-barred from legal action.]

De kerk heeft een schadevergoeding betaald aan 125 slachtoffers van seksueel misbruik waarvan de misdaad verjaard was, goed voor in totaal 2.419.851 euro. Eén slachtoffer kreeg zelfs meer dan 25.000 euro. Dat bleek vandaag uit de voorstelling van het jaarverslag van de kerkelijke opvangpunten.

Tijdens de werkingsjaren 2012, het jaar waarin de kerkelijke opvangpunten zijn opgericht, en 2013 hebben 323 mensen zich aangemeld bij een van de tien opvangpunten, waarvan 37 het tweede jaar. Daarnaast dienden 621 mensen een dossier in bij het Centrum voor Arbitrage dat eind oktober 2012 werd opgedoekt. Het rapport van dit tweede werkingsjaar wordt binnen enkele weken voorgesteld.

Uit de 323 meldingen blijkt dat 84 procent van de gemelde feiten dateren van meer dan 30 jaar geleden. Door de verjaring van de feiten maakten de opvangpunten slechts 33 meldingen aan het gerecht over en werden er 19 dossiers doorverwezen naar justitie.

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NEDERLAND
Omroep Brabant

Melden seksueel misbruik binnen kerk kan nog deze maand: ‘Laatste kans om een klacht in te dienen’

[Summary: Victims of abuse in the Catholic Church have until July 1 to file a complaint.]

UTRECHT – Onlangs deed het meldpunt rond het seksueel misbruik van minderjarigen in de katholieke kerk de oproep aan slachtoffers om zich te melden. “Het is de laatste kans om van een melding een klacht te maken”, vertelt een woordvoerder. Vanaf 1 juli kunnen er geen verjaarde klachten meer worden ingediend.

De oproep leidde niet tot een stortvloed aan meldingen, vertelt Ben Spekman. HIj is woordvoerder van het Meldpunt Seksueel Misbruik RKK. “In het zicht van 1 juli komen er wel iets meer meldingen binnen, maar het is geen tsunami. Je moet denken aan tien tot vijftien meldingen die nu per week bij het meldpunt binnenkomen.”

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UNITED STATES
Yale News

By Karen N. Peart

By the time they reach age 18, about 12% of American children experience a confirmed case of maltreatment in the form of neglect, physical, sexual, or emotional abuse, according to a new study by researchers at Yale University.

The numbers are even more sobering for black and Native American children, with one in five black children and one in seven Native American children experiencing maltreatment during the time period studied. The results are published in the June 2 issue of the journal JAMA Pediatrics.

The authors estimated the cumulative prevalence of confirmed childhood maltreatment by age 18 using the National Child Abuse and Neglect Data System Child File, which includes information on all U.S. children with a confirmed report of maltreatment. Analysis of data between 2004 and 2011 showed that over 5.6 million children had experienced maltreatment during this time period.

“Confirmed child maltreatment is dramatically underestimated in this country. Our findings show that it is far more prevalent than the 1 in 100 that is currently reported,” said first author Christopher Wildeman, associate professor of sociology and faculty fellow at the Institution for Social and Policy Studies at Yale.

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PENNSYLVANIA
Times-Tribune

BY DAVID SINGLETON
Published: June 3, 2014

A Lackawanna County judge sentenced a suspended Diocese of Scranton priest to eight to 23 months in jail and two years probation for a tryst with a teenage boy.

The Rev. William Jeffrey Paulish, 57, of Blakely, was sentenced today by Judge Michael Barrasse after pleading guilty in January to felony corruption of minors.

Father Paulish was arrested in September after police found him and the 15-year-old in the priest’s car in a parking lot at the Penn State Worthington Scranton campus.

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OHIO
Toledo Blade

COLUMBUS — A Toledo priest who was convicted of killing a Catholic nun at the former Mercy Hospital has been transferred to the hospice unit of a prison hospital, according to his attorney.

Gerald Robinson, 76, was moved from the Hocking unit of Southeastern Correctional Institution to the Franklin Medical Center, which has a unit “for inmates suffering from advanced terminal illness,” according to the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction Web site.

ODRC Spokesman JoEllen Smith confirmed today that Robinson was “being treated at an outside medical facility,” but could not provide any other details.

Toledo attorney Rick Kerger, who is representing Robinson in his appeal, said Monday that his client was taken to Franklin Medical Center in Columbus Friday and transferred to Ohio State University Medical Center, where physicians concluded he was “terminal.” He was then moved back to the Franklin Medical Center, which is operated by the ODRC.

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PENNSYLVANIA
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests

For immediate release: Tuesday, June 3, 2014

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

A lengthy and troubling new investigative report on a former Scranton priest, accused repeatedly of child sexual abuse and adult sexual misconduct, shows that he is still around young people now, plus being second-in-command of a Catholic diocese in Paraguay. Bishops in dioceses where this predator priest worked – Switzerland, Argentina, Scranton, and Winona – must do more to stop him from hurting others.

The cleric, Fr. Carlos Urrutigoity, now “leads a starry-eyed cadre of young male seminarians,” according to the Global Post, despite a $400,000 settlement with at least one victim and “warnings from the bishop of Scranton, where in 2002 Urrutigoity was accused of molesting a teenage boy and sleeping with and touching other young men.”

The long article says that Fr. Urrutigoity “is a man who’s been described by bishops from Switzerland to Pennsylvania as ‘dangerous,’ ‘abnormal,’ and ‘a serious threat to young people.’”

We call on Scranton Bishop Joseph Bambera to take more steps to protect vulnerable parishioners from Fr. Urrutigoity by:

–publicly disclosing the letter he alleged wrote recently to the Vatican about the priest,

–visiting every parish or church facility in Pennsylvania where he worked, urging victims, witnesses and whistleblowers to call the police, and

–write again to his colleague, the Paraguay bishop, and beg him to suspend the priest.

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AUSTRALIA
Maitland Mercury

By EMMA SWAIN June 3, 2014

Details of a special commission of inquiry report into child sex abuse in the Catholic church tell an appalling story of terribly tragic events, Maitland-Newcastle Catholic Bishop Bill Wright has said.

The diocesan head this morning broke his silence on the report (released on Friday) saying it was a ‘bitter experience’ to read the final analysis.

The inquiry found evidence for a senior clergyman to be prosecuted and made adverse findings against six other members of the diocese.

“For me, and others in this diocese, it is a bitter experience to read the report,” Bishop Wright said during this morning’s media conference.

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AUSTRALIA
Maitland Mercury

The past three years have weighed heavily on the shoulders of Bishop Bill Wright.

Since his arrival to the Maitland-Newcastle Diocese in 2011, the diocesan head has often been forced into the spotlight as the Catholic Church dealt with allegations of historical child sex abuse within its ranks.

With the intense investigations clearly taking their toll, the bishop delivered his own personal statement on the results of the NSW Special Commission of Inquiry yesterday.

“No one could have told the entire story,” Bishop Wright said.

“It is spread over 50 odd years and at different times people have known parts of it so it’s a great benefit to us all that the commission has relentlessly tracked down all of the leads, documents and been able to tell the whole story that needed to be told, and it’s an appalling story.”

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AUSTRALIA
Newcastle Herald

By JASON GORDON June 3, 2014

THE Hunter’s most senior Catholic has spoken of the shame and ‘‘tremendous regret’’ created by some of his predecessors, but the Church is yet to take any disciplinary action against any of those still alive.

Maitland-Newcastle Bishop Bill Wright became a willing but heavily burdened face of the Church on Tuesday when he issued a public response to the special commission of inquiry’s findings that during their time in the diocese, at least seven senior clergy had played a role in covering up the abuse by paedophile priests Denis McAlinden and James Fletcher.

Bishop Wright, who assumed his role only three years ago, acknowledged that his diocese carried a dark history, a ‘‘sad and sorry story of which we can only be ashamed’’.

The commission found that Monsignor Allan Hart and Father William Burston were ‘‘unsatisfactory’’ witnesses and provided ‘‘inconsistent’’ evidence. It also found that Bishop Leo Clarke (now deceased), Monsignor Patrick Cotter, Father Brian Lucas and most recent bishop Michael Malone knew of McAlinden and Fletcher’s offending but failed to notify police and, in some cases, covered up the crimes.

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AUSTRALIA
Newcastle Herald

By JASON GORDON June 3, 2014

FORMER Maitland-Newcastle bishop Michael Malone says the inquiry into the Catholic Church’s handling of sexual abuse cases had misinterpreted some of his evidence.

Bishop Malone, who served as the Hunter’s most senior Catholic figure from 1995 to 2011, was one of those criticised by Commissioner Margaret Cunneen, who handed down her findings on Friday.

In his evidence to the inquiry, Bishop Malone said that in 2002 the diocese had a file on paedophile priest Denis McAlinden ‘‘so big you couldn’t jump over it’’.

Ms Cunneen ruled that Bishop Malone failed to report McAlinden to police at any stage between 1995 and August 1999. When he handed information to police about allegations made by two victims that year, he withheld similar allegations from another two victims. He was also found to have altered a diary entry ‘‘with the intention of creating a false record to support his version of events’’.

In a statement yesterday, Bishop Malone said he was standing by his evidence and was ‘‘disappointed that the commission has chosen to interpret some matters differently from myself’’.

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OHIO
Toledo Faith & Values

David Yonke Jun 2, 2014

Gerald Robinson, the Toledo Catholic priest who was convicted in 2006 of murdering a nun 26 years earlier, suffered a severe heart attack and has been moved to a prison hospice in Columbus, according to his attorney.

Rick Kerger, who has represented Robinson in a series of appeals since 2010, said the 76-year-old priest suffered the heart attack over the weekend and is not expected to recover. He is seeking to have Robinson moved to Toledo so that he can “die at home.”

Robinson was convicted in Lucas County Common Pleas Court on May 11, 2006, for the brutal murder of Sister Margaret Ann Pahl, a 71-year-old nun who was attacked in the sacristy of the former Mercy Hospital near downtown Toledo on Holy Saturday, 1980. The petite, elderly nun had been choked nearly to death and then stabbed 32 times in the neck, chest, and face. The killer left Sister Pahl lying on the floor of the sacristy, adjacent to the hospital chapel, partly naked, where her body was discovered by another nun.

Detectives who investigated the murder in 1980 said that within a week Robinson was their sole suspect. But he was not arrested until April, 2004, after another Toledo nun testified before the diocesan review board that she had been abused as a child by members of a cult that included Robinson. Her testimony reached the Ohio Attorney General’s office, which ordered the Lucas County Cold Case Squad to look into her allegations.

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OHIO
NBC 24

by Angi Gonzalez

According to the Toledo faith & values website, a priest convicted of murdering a nun more than 30 years ago has suffered a debilitating heart attack.

The website cites Robinson’s attorney as the source who confirmed, Monday, that the 76-year-old suffered the medical event over the weekend.

Robinson, according to the article, was then moved to a prison hospice in Columbus.

The story’s author goes on to say that Robinson’s lawyer is seeking to have the former Catholic priest moved to Toledo so that he can “die at home.”

In 2013, a state appeals court in Toledo upheld Robinson’s 2006 conviction and rejected his request for a new trial.

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IRELAND
Washington Post

Bodies of 800 babies, long-dead, found in septic tank at former Irish home for unwed mothers

BY TERRENCE MCCOY
June 3

In a town in western Ireland, where castle ruins pepper green landscapes, there’s a six-foot stone wall that once surrounded a place called the Home. Between 1925 and 1961, thousands of “fallen women” and their “illegitimate” children passed through the Home, run by the Bon Secours nuns in Tuam.

Many of the women, after paying a penance of indentured servitude for their out-of-wedlock pregnancy, left the Home for work and lives in other parts of Ireland and beyond. Some of their children we not so fortunate.

More than five decades after the Home was closed and destroyed — where a housing development and children’s playground now stands — what happened to nearly 800 of those abandoned children has now emerged: Their bodies were piled into a massive septic tank sitting in the back of the structure and forgotten, with neither gravestones nor coffins.

“The bones are still there,” local historian Catherine Corless, who uncovered the origins of the mass grave in a batch of never-before-released documents, told The Washington Post in a phone interview. “The children who died in the Home, this was them.”

The grim findings, which are being investigated by police, provide a glimpse into a particularly dark time for unmarried pregnant women in Ireland, where societal and religious mores stigmatized them. Without means to support themselves, women by the hundreds wound up at the Home. “When daughters became pregnant they were ostracized completely,” Corless said. “Families would be afraid of neighbors finding out because to get pregnant out of marriage was the worst thing on Earth. It was the worst crime a woman could commit, even though a lot of the time it had been because of a rape.”

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NEW JERSEY
Road to Recovery

MEDIA RELEASE

JUNE 2, 2014

Trenton, NJ, diocesan lawyer inaccurately claims predator priest was “off-duty” when he sexually abused an innocent boy in many locations in New Jersey, several other states, and a foreign territory

The Catholic Church is getting more irresponsible in its treatment of clergy sexual abuse allegations

What: A press conference and demonstration calling for Bishop David O’Connell of Trenton, NJ to do the right thing and treat clergy sexual abuse victims with the respect they deserve or resign effective immediately.

When: Tuesday, June 3, 2014 at 11:00 AM

Where: On the sidewalk outside the headquarters of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Trenton, 701 Lawrenceville Road, Trenton, NJ 08648 – 609-406-7400

Who: Robert M. Hoatson, Ph.D., advocate for clergy sexual abuse victims Chris Naples, Pat Newcombe, and Bob Markulic, all of whom were sexually abused by Fr. Terence Mc Alinden of the Trenton Diocese; other clergy sexual abuse survivors, and supporters.

Why: The Trenton Diocese appears not to be complying with recent statements made by Pope Francis regarding clergy sexual abuse. Fr. Terence Mc Alinden is a serial pedophile and the Trenton Diocese has paid out settlement monies to at least two of his victims. Chris Naples of New Gretna, NJ, a courageous Mc Alinden survivor, told a Delaware court about Mc Alinden’s sexual abuse of him in that State. Lawyers for the Trenton Diocese told the court that Fr. Terence Mc Alinden was “off-duty” while he sexually molested Chris Naples in the State of Delaware. How outrageous, demeaning, and arrogant can the Church get? Evidently, more than we know. Road to Recovery and its supporters will call on Bishop David O’Connell of the Trenton, NJ, Diocese to do the right thing and abandon efforts to claim that priests are not “on-duty” when they sexually abuse children, despite the fact that priests encounter innocent children primarily in their role as priests. It is absurd that the Trenton Diocese has gone to the depths of “defense” to re-victimize Chris Naples. Bishop O’Connell should reverse the Trenton diocesan position or resign effective immediately.

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

[The Star-Ledger]

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

By Lilly Fowler lfowler@post-dispatch.com 314-340-8221

Jiang indictment

A Roman Catholic priest said to have close ties to St. Louis Archbishop Robert J. Carlson has pleaded not guilty to sexual molestation charges.

The Rev. Xiu Hui “Joseph” Jiang pleaded not guilty on Monday morning to charges that he sexually abused a young boy at St. Louis the King School, the elementary school at the St. Louis Cathedral Basilica. Jiang faces two counts of statutory sodomy.

A grand jury, however, indicted Jiang last month, according to court records, meaning a grand jury found probable cause that a felony had been committed and a judge and trial date will be assigned to the case.

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ST. LOUIS (MO)
Berger’s Beat

Twice-accused priest Fr. Joseph Jiang was in and out of court this morning in record time accompanied by eight supporters. Though scheduled to appear before Judge Theresa Counts Burke at 9:01 a.m., the priest and his lawyer entered a “not guilty” plea at 8:58 a.m. and quickly brushed by Channel 2 reporter Anthony Kiekow and cameraman with a “no comment”. .

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OHIO
Opposing Views

By Michael Allen, Mon, June 02, 2014

Some Catholic school teachers are quitting because the Cincinnati Archdiocese has issued a new teachers’ contract that forbids teachers from expressing public support of homosexuality.

The teacher’s contact also prohibits the homosexual “lifestyle,” living together without marriage, sex without marriage, abortions, using a surrogate mother, in-vitro fertilization and wrongful use of social media.

This past week, 12 billboards opposing the contract went up in the Cincinnati area. The billboards were paid for by the group Cincinnati Voice of the Faithful.

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VATICAN CITY
Chiesa

Around ten dicasteries are hanging in the balance. And so are their current heads. Including cardinals Burke, Cañizares, Versaldi, Coccopalmerio. And archbishops Paglia, Celli, Fisichella

by Sandro Magister

VATICAN CITY, June 3, 2014 – “Combine the dicasteries, for example, to streamline the organization a bit.”

This is what Pope Francis said he wanted to do in the Roman curia, responding to journalists on the return flight from his pilgrimage to the Holy Land.

The fact that the merger of dicasteries was one of the changes studied by the council of eight cardinals – the “C8,” selected by the pontiff to assist him in the reform of the curia and in the governance of the universal Church – was not a secret.

But for the first time Francis himself has expressly indicated this objective. The pope added that the C8 will discuss it not only at the scheduled four-day meeting at the beginning of July, but also at a subsequent meeting on the calendar for September.

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UNITED STATES
UPI

By Alex Cukan | June 2, 2014

NEW HAVEN, Conn., June 2 (UPI) –One in 8 U.S. children will experience maltreatment in the form of neglect, physical, sexual or emotional abuse by the time they reach age 18, researchers said.

The study, published in JAMA Pediatrics, also found 1 in 5 black children and 1 in 7 Native American children experienced maltreatment by age 18.

Author Christopher Wildeman, an associate professor of sociology and faculty fellow at the Institution for Social and Policy Studies at Yale University, and colleagues used data from the National Child Abuse and Neglect Data System Child File.

The database included information on all U.S. children with a confirmed report of maltreatment. From 2004 to 2011, the database indicated more than 5.6 million children experienced maltreatment.

“Confirmed child maltreatment is dramatically underestimated in this country. Our findings show that it is far more prevalent than the 1 in 100 that is currently reported,” Wildeman said in a statement.

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ZIMBABWE
allAfrica

The Herald

BY RUTH BUTAUMOCHO, 3 JUNE 2014

ANALYSIS

The statement, “Religion is the opium of the people”, is one of the most frequently paraphrased part of a speech made by the German economist and philosopher, Karl Marx.

He was giving his own critique of the Hegel’s Philosophy of Right that talks about the relations between civil society and politics.

While it is one statement that has been interpreted differently, with some saying Karl Marx meant that the function of religion was to drug the masses and dull the mind, the general understanding of the statement by a lot of scholars — interpreted from German -simply means that religion consoles and gives comfort to those facing impossible circumstances.

However, last week’s events in Budiriro where members of an apostolic sect, who stand accused of abusing women in the name of religion, clashed with police, made me rethink, if Karl Marx’s statement could have been a diplomatic way of saying that religion indeed does dull the mind.

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UNITED STATES
National Catholic Reporter

Jason Berry | Jun. 2, 2014

On the flight back to Rome May 26 after his visit to Israel, Pope Francis gave another impromptu press conference. Responding to a question on the clergy abuse crisis, he said, “At the moment there are three bishops under investigation: one has already been found guilty and we are now considering the penalty to be imposed. There are no privileges.”

The pope offered no names, but according to the transcript, added a sonic boom analogy: “A priest who does this betrays the body of the Lord. This is very serious. It is like a satanic Mass.”

Francis’s escalating rhetoric came three weeks after a United Nations Committee on Torture report, citing extensive international legal findings, was critical of the Holy See for bishops’ negligence in sheltering sexual predators. “States bear international responsibility for the acts and omissions of their officials and others acting in an official capacity or acting on behalf of the state,” said the U.N. report issued May 23.

“A zero tolerance approach must be adopted,” Francis said on the airplane. He announced he would meet with a group of abuse victims.

Nevertheless, in a sign of internal divisions over transparency, the Vatican, as of June 2, had yet to identify the three bishops.

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AUSTRALIA
ABC – The World Today

ELEANOR HALL: The Catholic Church has responded publicly for the first time to the special commission of inquiry which handed down its findings into two paedophile priests last week.

The inquiry found that senior officials within the Catholic Church knew about sexual abuse allegations against the priests for decades, but failed to act to protect vulnerable children in their care.

The Bishop of the Maitland-Newcastle Catholic Diocese, Bill Wright, today expressed his “deep and abiding regret”.

As Thomas Oriti reports.

THOMAS ORITI: Australia now has a royal commission examining child sexual abuse at institutions across the country.

But before it was established, a special commission of inquiry in New South Wales spent months examining sexual abuse at the hands of two priests in the Maitland-Newcastle Diocese – James Fletcher and Denis McAlinden.

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AUSTRALIA
ABC News

By Giselle Wakatama

A senior Catholic church official singled out by a New South Wales Commission of Inquiry has had his case referred to the NSW Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP).

The Special Commission of Inquiry looked at the Catholic Church and police in relation to their handling of the cases of Hunter Valley paedophile priests Dennis McAlinden and James Fletcher, who are now dead.

The Commission focused on cover-ups and the concealment of matters, and one confidential volume contains findings that may lead to criminal charges being laid.

In releasing her findings last week, Commissioner Margaret Cunneen SC recommended the case of at least one unnamed senior Catholic Church official be referred to the DPP.

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PARAGUAY
GlobalPost

Will Carless
June 3, 2014

Bishops from Switzerland to Scranton warn that he’s a threat to youths. GlobalPost finds Carlos Urrutigoity leading Mass in a remote South American church, where young seminarians are enthralled and critics are alarmed.

CIUDAD DEL ESTE, Paraguay — A hush falls across the church, broken only by the rhythmic swish of the censer as it bestows acrid incense across the faces of the congregation.

A gaggle of monks in brown habits, their heads tonsured in repentant horseshoes, rises and begins to chant. They are joined by seminarians — priests in training — in floor-length, black soutanes, and Latin liturgy pulses over the pews. The words rise to a massive floor-to-ceiling mural that casts dozens of saintly eyes across the room.

Father Carlos Urrutigoity glides into the sanctuary, his ivory and scarlet robes swishing between the pews. Revered by his flock in the unruly diocese of eastern Paraguay’s Ciudad del Este, the priest will deliver his sermon to hundreds of worshippers. They will later clamor outside the church to meet the man, to receive his benediction.

This is a man who’s been described by bishops from Switzerland to Pennsylvania as “dangerous,” “abnormal,” and “a serious threat to young people.”

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IRELAND
Catholic Herald (UK)

By SUSAN GATELY on Tuesday, 3 June 2014

Young people are helping lead a rebirth of the Catholic Church in Ireland, according to the country’s papal nuncio.

Archbishop Charles Brown described the rebirth as the spring after 20 years of winter, saying he sees “green shoots”.

“You see a renewed enthusiasm among young Catholics in Ireland now,” said Archbishop Brown, who was appointed as papal ambassador in November 2011.

He said the new generation of Catholics, some of whom are studying for the priesthood at St Patrick’s College, the national seminary in Maynooth, or the Pontifical Irish College in Rome, will “lead the Church forward into the next decade”.

Young Catholics represent what is best in the tradition of Vatican II, “the idea of communicating the ancient unchanging faith in a new, vibrant and attractive way”, he told the American Catholic News Service.

Archbishop Brown, the oldest of six children, was born in New York and studied history at the University of Notre Dame. He was ordained a priest for the Archdiocese of New York in 1989 and was assigned for two years to St Brendan Parish in the Bronx, before studying sacramental theology in Rome and then being recruited to the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.

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UNITED STATES
National Catholic Reporter

NCR Editorial Staff | Jun. 1, 2014

EDITORIAL

The directness and urgency with which Pope Francis addressed the problem of sexual abuse of minors by clergy during his May 26 talk with journalists is encouraging. His decision to meet with victims of clergy sex abuse is also a clear signal that Francis understands the gravity of this issue in a way that was not clear earlier. While we understand, and to some extent share, the concerns of victims’ groups that the meeting and Mass with victims could be little more than media theater, we have more hope for the gathering. Francis has given us reason to believe that his pastoral instincts will guide him and that the outcome of this encounter will bring the church to a new place in this decades-long tragedy.

Bolstering our hopefulness is Francis’ acknowledgement that he must act against bishops who are complicit in failing to protect children. From his own mouth, we know that three bishops are under investigation. While he did not say whether those bishops are abusers themselves or negligent supervisors, we have the words of the Vatican’s lead prosecutor of sex abuse, Fr. Robert Oliver, that the Vatican is working on a process for punishing bishops who fail to protect children.

Furthermore, Oliver said, “Pope Francis is the kind of leader who makes it possible for those who assist him to bring forward ideas. Then he takes hold of these ideas … [then] the Catholic faithful, and indeed all people, will see that he will act quickly.”

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AUSTRALIA
ABC News

Newcastle’s head policeman says the findings of the Special Commission of Inquiry into child sexual abuse in the Maitland-Newcastle Catholic Diocese highlight the good work done by local officers.

Detective Chief Inspector Peter Fox, whose concerns sparked the inquiry, not only pointed the finger at the Church but also at his police colleagues for covering up paedophilia within the diocese.

Commissioner Margaret Cunneen was damning of Detective Chief Inspector Fox and found no evidence of wrong doing by police officers involved in the investigation.

Newcastle Local Area Commander, Superintendent John Gralton says police have been vindicated by the inquiry.

“I’m actually very, very proud of the efforts that police went to in strike force Lantle,” he said.

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NEW JERSEY
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests

For immediate release: Monday, June 2, 2014

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

New Jersey Catholic officials and Delbarton school officials are trying to protect their reputations by silencing a credible child sex abuse victim.

Shame on them.

To insist on secrecy at this point is re-victimizing this already wounded victim. And it’s designed to deter other victims of child molesting clerics from speaking up.

Catholic and Delbarton officials want to pay child sex crime victims to shut up and go away, refusing to admit that church-imposed secrecy is incredibly hurtful to those victims.

Dozens and dozens of clergy sex abuse victims have signed these callous gag orders only to realize later they were further betrayed and manipulated. We know of no case in which one of them was penalized for speaking out.

These gag orders endanger kids, hurt victims and protect wrongdoers. Catholic officials should stop insisting on them and should, for the safety of kids, release all victims who have signed them.

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CHICAGO (IL)
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

By Annysa Johnson of the Journal Sentinel

Chicago — Judges at the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals on Monday appeared to challenge a key argument in the Archdiocese of Milwaukee’s efforts to protect $60 million it holds in a trust for the care of cemeteries from being used to pay creditors in its bankruptcy.

The three-judge panel questioned whether the archdiocese needs that entire $60 million to maintain its cemeteries. And one of the jurists, 7th Circuit Judge Claire Ann Williams, said she found issues related to U.S. District Judge Rudolph T. Randa’s decision not to recuse himself from the lawsuit over those funds “troubling.”

The panel — Appellate Judges Williams and Joel Flaum, along with U.S. District Judge Robert Dow of the Northern District of Illinois — heard oral arguments Monday on several issues related to the bankruptcy, including First Amendment questions that could be of national significance as religious liberty cases make their way through courts around the country.

In that lawsuit, filed by Archbishop Jerome Listecki as sole trustee of the cemetery trust, the church maintains that forcing it to turn over even $1 in cemetery funds to the bankruptcy estate would substantially burden its free exercise of religion under the First Amendment and the federal Religious Freedom Restoration Act. Proceeds from the estate would go to finance a settlement with sex abuse victims and the archdiocese’s reorganization.

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CHICAGO (IL)
Law360

By Lance Duroni

Law360, Chicago (June 02, 2014, 4:02 PM ET) — Lawyers for priest abuse victims in the Archdiocese of Milwaukee’s bankruptcy told the Seventh Circuit on Monday that a federal judge who barred them from going after a $60 million trust set up for Catholic cemeteries had a conflict of interest and should have recused himself.

U.S. District Judge Rudolph T. Randa — who ruled last year that the cemetery trust was off-limits to archdiocese creditors — has nine close relatives, including his parents, buried in the cemeteries, presenting a conflict in a case that could…

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CHICAGO (IL)
Pioneer Press

By M.L. Johnson
Associated Press

CHICAGO — Federal appeals court judges on Monday questioned the bankrupt Archdiocese of Milwaukee’s claim that it needs all the money in a $55 million trust fund to maintain its cemeteries and asked whether some could be used to compensate victims of clergy sexual abuse without violating the Catholic faith.

The three judges grilled attorneys in a dispute over a cemetery trust fund created by New York Cardinal Timothy Dolan when he was archbishop of Milwaukee. A federal judge in Milwaukee previously ruled the money was off-limits to the hundreds of sexual abuse victims who have filed claims against the archdiocese in bankruptcy court.

The lawsuit has potentially far-reaching consequences because many Catholic dioceses hold money in trust. A victory for victims in Milwaukee could pave the way for others elsewhere. The appeal also has generated interest in legal circles because the federal law cited by the lower court judge has been an issue in gay marriage, birth control and other cases involving religion.

Attorneys came to the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Chicago expecting to talk about the 1993 Religious Freedom Restoration Act, which protects religious organizations from government interference. Trust fund attorneys claim the court-appointed committee that represents sexual assault victims and others owed money by the archdiocese is an arm of the government. The committee’s lawyers dispute this, saying the committee acts independently from the bankruptcy court and the U.S. bankruptcy trustee who appointed it.

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NEW JERSEY
Daily Mail (UK)

Catholic diocese claims priest was ‘off duty’ when he molested boy as they attempt to deflect responsibility for sex crimes

By ASHLEY COLLMAN
PUBLISHED: 15:48 EST, 2 June 2014

The Catholic diocese of Trenton, New Jersey says it wasn’t responsible for a teenage boy’s molestation because the priest was ‘off duty’ at the time of the abuse.

Victim Chris Naples claims Reverend Terence McAlinden, now 73, sexually assaulted him hundreds of times over the course of a decade, starting when he was just 13 years old.

Now 42, Naples is suing the diocese in Mercer County since other church leaders knew about the abuse and did nothing.

Naples previously lost a suit against the diocese in Delaware, where some of the abuse allegedly took place. It was during that case that attorneys for the diocese used the controversial argument that they couldn’t be held responsible for Rev McAlinden’s actions, because abusing a child is not part of a priest’s ‘duties’.

‘How do we determine when a priest is and is not on duty?’ one of the justices asked.

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

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DEUTSCHLAND
Rhein-Zeitung

[Summary: After almost 60 years Johan Heibel was a member of the Catholic Church. He grew up in a devout home and was an altar boy for seven years. Now he and his wife Monika sit in a registry office to leave the church. One reason is the way the church has handled sexual abuse cases. More people are following the same path.]

Siershahn/Wirges – Fast 60 Jahre lang war Johannes Heibel Mitglied der Römisch-Katholischen Kirche. Getauft 1955 in Siershahn, aufgewachsen in einem streng gläubigen Elternhaus, jahrelang selbst Messdiener. Nun sitzen er und seine Frau Monika im Wirgeser Standesamt, um aus der Kirche auszutreten.

In wenigen Minuten soll alles vorbei sein. “Ich hoffe, der da oben versteht meine Gründe”, sagt der Siershahner nachdenklich. “Es ging einfach nicht mehr.”

Auch im Westerwald beschreiten immer mehr Menschen diesen Weg. Seit im vergangenen Jahr das Finanzgebaren des ehemaligen Limburger Bischofs Tebartz-van Elst bekannt wurde, stiegen die Austrittszahlen aus beiden christlichen Kirchen sprunghaft an. “Bis dahin waren es etwa 60 bis 70 Fälle in der Verbandsgemeinde Wirges pro Jahr”, rechnet der Standesbeamte beispielhaft vor. 2013 kletterte die Zahl auf 120 Personen. 2014 waren es im Mai schon um die 80 Austritte.

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BELGIEN
Grenzecho

[Summary: The Catholic church now wants prevention instead of cover-up.]

Jahrzehntelang hatte die katholische Kirche in Belgien die Fälle von sexuellem Missbrauch durch Kleriker unter den Teppich gekehrt. Heute fährt sie einen anderen Kurs, und der führt über die Schienen Transparenz und Vorbeugung.

Im Zuge der Missbrauchsvorwürfe gegen den Brügger Bischof Roger Vangheluwe im Jahr 2010 richtete die katholische Kirche in den Bistümern Kontaktstellen für Opfer von sexuellem Missbrauch durch Geistliche ein. In zwei Jahren gingen 323 Meldungen ein, wie aus dem Jahresbericht der Kommission für den Schutz von Kindern und Jugendlichen zu entnehmen ist. Die meisten Taten ereigneten sich in den 50er, 60er und 70er Jahren. Jedes vierte Opfer war jünger als zehn Jahre.

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Victims Mission Charity

composed by Gerald Spitzner

Part 1/6 (Die Messe besteht aus 6 Teilen) CLICK TO LISTEN / Klicken um Anzuhören: http://www.mixcloud.com/Gerald_Spitzner/athanasius-mess-of-the-persecuted-victims-of-child-abuse-composed-by-gerald-spitzner/

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AUSTRIA
Pressetext

Vienna/Austria (pts008/26.05.2014/10:00) – Information of Committee Against Torture (Report on Holy See)

Statement by David d’Bonnabel: Victims in Austria are grateful that the Committee expressed concern about Concordats and other agreements negotiated by the Holy See that “may prevent prosecution of alleged perpetrators by limiting the ability of civil authorities to question, compel the production of documentation by, or prosecute individuals associated with the Catholic Church. The Committee Against Torture Report on Holy See (Vatican) (CAT) urges that the agreement should not be used to shield criminals. It is time for Austrian officials to ensure that Austrian children are protected and that those who are sexually violated by priests or others in the church have redress and justice. These unhealthy, archaic concordats endanger kids and protect criminals. For the safety of children, they should be abolished.

Here are facts from the UN CAT report (attached) as well as the actual Concordat in force today between Austria and the Vatican:

https://www.ris.bka.gv.at/GeltendeFassung.wxe?Abfrage=Bundesnormen&Gesetzesnummer=10009196
http://www.concordatwatch.eu/showtopic.php?org_id=921&kb_header_id=1811

Section 15 of the report makes clear: The Committee is concerned at allegations that concordats and other agreements negotiated by the Holy See with other States may effectively prevent prosecution of alleged perpetrators by limiting the ability of civil authorities to question, compel the production of documentation by, or prosecute individuals associated with the Catholic Church (arts. 2, 12, 13 and 16).

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BELGIE
KerkNet

[Jaarverslag 2012 – 2013 van de kerkelijke opvangpunten voor seksueel misbruik van minderjarigen in een pastorale relatie]

[Summary: The Inter-Diocesan Center in Guimard in Brussels this afternoon in the presence of the bishops Johan Bonny and Guy Harpigny gave the 2012-2012 report on operation of the 10 contact points for victims of sexual abuse in the Catholic church. At the same time, the newly published brochure will list policies to prevent sexual abuse and erratic behavior in pastoral relationships with children and young people ]

BRUSSEL (KerkNet) – Op een persconferentie in het Interdiocesaan Centrum in de Guimardstraat in Brussel, is vanmiddag in aanwezigheid van de bisschoppen referent mgr. Johan Bonny en mgr. Guy Harpigny het rapport 2012-2013 over de werking van de tien contactpunten voor slachtoffers van seksueel misbruik in de Kerk voorgesteld. Tegelijk werd de pas verschenen brochure ‘Van taboe naar preventie. Beleidslijnen ter preventie van seksueel misbruik en grensoverschrijdend gedrag in pastorale relaties met kinderen en jongeren’ toegelicht.

Vorig jaar, in mei 2013, bracht de Interdiocesane Commissie voor de Bescherming van Kinderen & Jongeren een eerste rapport uit over de werking van de kerkelijke opvangpunten voor slachtoffers van seksueel misbruik of seksueel grensoverschrijdend gedrag. Die tien opvangpunten zijn een van de initiatieven van de bisschoppen en de hogere oversten om daadwerkelijk iets te doen aan het onrecht dat minderjarigen werd aangedaan door kerkmensen. Slachtoffers kunnen er in eerste instantie juridisch verjaarde feiten melden. Daarnaast is er de weg van de arbitrage, uitgewerkt op vraag van de parlementaire commissie, met volwaardige medewerking van de Kerk. In het totaal hebben 621 mensen een dossier ingediend bij het Centrum voor Arbitrage. Bij de kerkelijke opvangpunten hebben zich in 2012 en 2013 323 mensen gemeld.

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MISSOURI
KCUR

By ELLE MOXLEY

The company that provided the Catholic Diocese of Kansas City-St. Joseph its liability insurance in the 1970s says it shouldn’t have to defend the church or pay damages in a litany of sexual abuse cases.

The U.S. Fidelity and Guaranty Co. filed suit in federal court Friday against the diocese, which has been sued by more than a dozen plaintiffs who say they were victims of sexual abuse in the ’60s and ’70s. In the majority of those cases, the court has dismissed all claims against the diocese except the intentional failure to supervise clergy.

The insurance company says the policies it underwrote only cover injuries that were the result of accidents, not injuries that were expected or intended on the part of the diocese.

“The issue is, did the supervising bishop or supervising personnel know or should have known that the priest or clergyman was abusing children?” says Peter Swisher, a law professor at the University of Richmond (Va.) who has written extensively about liability insurance in the wake of church abuse scandals.

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OHIO
Cleveland.com

By Patrick Cooley, Northeast Ohio Media Group
on June 02, 2014

WESTLAKE, Ohio – An investigation into suspected sexual abuse by a prominent Westlake pastor began nearly 11 months ago, police said Monday.

The Avon police department investigated allegations of abuse by Paul Endrei, 53, founder and senior pastor of Church on the Rise in Westlake, but the department released little information this week. Endrei lives in Avon.

The department only provided a report that said officers were called to Endrei’s Doral Drive home July 14 to assist Lorain County Children’s Services in gathering information.

July 14 is the only specific date mentioned in a six count indictment handed up by a Lorain County grand jury Wednesday.

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