ABUSE TRACKER

MINNESOTA
Star Tribune

Article by: JENNIFER BJORHUS , Star Tribune Updated: January 16, 2015

Q: What is a Chapter 11 bankruptcy?

A: It’s a form of bankruptcy protection in which the organization does not liquidate but reorganizes while continuing to operate under the court’s supervision.

Q: Why did it file?

A: The Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis faces more than 20 lawsuits and says the total claims would likely outstrip the $5.3 million it has set aside to compensate victims.

Q: How many dioceses have filed for bankruptcy?

A: At least 11 Catholic dioceses in the United States have filed for bankruptcy since 2004.

Q: How long have they stayed in bankruptcy?

A: From one to about five years.

Q: How does an archdiocese bankruptcy differ from a business bankruptcy?

A: They are very similar. Secured creditors, such as mortgage holders on the diocese’s real estate, will be paid first. Priority creditors, such as the IRS, come next. Victims, who are unsecured creditors, are paid next and would be likely be divided into classes. The plan can treat each class differently.

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MINNESOTA
Star Tribune

Article by: JEAN HOPFENSPERGER , Star Tribune Updated: January 16, 2015

The Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection Friday, saying it cannot meet its financial obligations from an unprecedented wave of clergy sex abuse lawsuits.

The move freezes lawsuits against the church, protecting the archdiocese from creditors while allowing it to develop a reorganization plan.

“We’re doing the right thing,” the vicar general Rev. Charles Lachowitzer told the Associated Press. “This decision reflects the end of a process of putting victims first.”

Archdiocese officials have said such a move was a financial necessity, as it faced more than 25 lawsuits from people who charge they were sexually abused by priests. Another 100 lawsuits were pending.

But victim’s advocates say it’s one more example of the archdiocese shirking its responsibility to abuse victims.

“Why is it that when all the dioceses file bankruptcy, they do it on the eve of a trial?” asked Bob Schwiderski, longtime advocate for abuse survivors. “Is it because they can’t put their hand on the Bible and swear to tell the truth?”

Schwiderski was referring to three clergy abuse trials slated for Jan. 26, that will now be halted.

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Martin Moylan St. Paul, Minn. Jan 16, 2015

With three clergy abuse lawsuits nearing trial and worries mounting over the cost of future claims, the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis on Friday filed for bankruptcy protection.

• Documents: Explore the filing

The archdiocese in its filing listed assets of between $10 million and $50 million and liabilities of $50 million to $100 million.

The documents appear to indicate the archdiocese has limited financial resources, said Jeff Anderson, a St. Paul attorney who’s represented many alleged victims of clergy sex abuse. He added, however, that he believes the archdiocese insurance coverage is sound.

However, he said, he believes the archdiocese insurance coverage is sound.

The Chapter 11 filing immediately buys the archdiocese time to try to reorganize its troubled finances as it faces huge potential costs tied to clergy abuse. Instead of handling claims through civil suits, alleged victims will likely need to file claims in federal court as creditors of the archdiocese. The bankruptcy filing will also halt the coming civil court trials, which were set to begin Jan. 26.

• Explained: The archdiocese has filed for bankruptcy. Now what?

The archdiocese did not immediately respond to requests for comment. Church officials, however, are expected to hold a news conference on the matter later today.

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MINNESOTA
Wall Street Journal

By TOM CORRIGAN
Jan. 16, 2015

The Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis, Minn., became the 12th U.S. Roman Catholic diocese to seek bankruptcy protection in the face of sexual-abuse claims against its clergy.

The archdiocese, home to 187 parishes and 825,000 parishioners, filed for Chapter 11 protection Friday in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in St. Paul, Minn.

Catholic dioceses have used the breathing room offered by Chapter 11 to negotiate settlements with alleged victims of sexual abuse by Roman Catholic clergy and others, deals that can total many millions of dollars and include nonmonetary forms of compensation such as the release of long-shielded church documents detailing the alleged abuse and subsequent coverup.

The Twin Cities archdiocese’s chief financial officer, Thomas Mertens, has previously disclosed that all options, including a bankruptcy reorganization, are on the table to address the “numerous” sexual abuse lawsuits already filed or expected to be brought against the archdiocese.

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MINNESOTA
ABC News

ST. PAUL, Minn. — Jan 16, 2015, 10:58 AM ET

By AMY FORLITI Associated Press

The Roman Catholic Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis filed for bankruptcy protection on Friday, saying it’s the best way for the church to get as many resources as possible to victims of clergy sexual abuse.

“We’re doing the right thing,” the Rev. Charles Lachowitzer told The Associated Press in an interview in advance of Friday’s filing in U.S. Bankruptcy Court. “This decision reflects the end of a process of putting victims first.”

The archdiocese is the 12th U.S. diocese to seek bankruptcy protection in the face of sex abuse claims. Church leaders have said for months that bankruptcy was an option, as the archdiocese faces the potential for dozens of lawsuits by victims of clergy sex abuse. Those lawsuits would be put on hold while the bankruptcy case is pending.

The filing estimated the archdiocese’s assets between $10 million and $50 million, with liabilities between $50 million and $100 million. It estimated 200 and 300 creditors.

Minnesota lawmakers created a three-year window in 2013 for victims of past sexual abuse to file claims that otherwise would have been barred by the statute of limitations.

Since then, the archdiocese has been sued roughly two dozen times, and it has received more than 100 notices of potential claims, according to Joe Kueppers, the archdiocese’s chancellor for civil affairs. It’s unknown how many of those notices will develop into lawsuits before the window expires in May 2016.

Charlie Rogers, an attorney working for the archdiocese, said the mission of the church and its day-to-day operations will continue through bankruptcy. Parishes and schools, which are incorporated separately from the archdiocese’s central office, should not be affected.

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MINNESOTA
Jeff Anderson & Associates

Application by Debtor to Employ Chapter 11 Counsel
Archdiocese Chapter 11 Petition
Archdiocese Signature Declaration
Debtor’s Verified Application for Order
Notice of Intention to Seek Expedited Hearing

Media Advisory
January 16, 2015

Archdiocese of Saint Paul and Minneapolis Files for Chapter 11 Bankruptcy

WHAT: At a news conference today in St. Paul, attorneys Jeff Anderson and Mike Finnegan will discuss today’s Chapter 11 bankruptcy filing by the Archdiocese of Saint Paul and Minneapolis.

WHEN: Today, January 16, 2015 at 11:00 AM CST

WHERE: Jeff Anderson & Associates
366 Jackson Street, Suite 100
St. Paul, MN 55101

NOTES: We will live stream the press event online from our website www.andersonadvocates.com.

Contact Jeff Anderson: Office/651.538.5049 Cell/612.817.8665
Contact Mike Finnegan: Office/651.538.5049 Cell/612.205.5531

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UNITED STATES
National Catholic Reporter

Thomas Reese | Jan. 16, 2015 Faith and Justice

Anyone who reads this column knows that I am a big fan of Pope Francis. I never thought I would see a pope like him in my lifetime. His simplicity, compassion, and commitment to the poor are genuine reflections of the Gospel message of Jesus. His support for openness and honest discussion and debate in the church are marks of his trust in the Spirit. His stress on justice, peace, and care for the environment show his focus on issues that are critical to the 21st century.

That said, I wish he knew how to talk about women in a way that would be more acceptable to educated women. I wish he would ask for the resignations of bishops who have lost credibility with their people by not following the church’s rules on dealing with abusive priests.

I also get nervous when people place all of their hopes and dreams about the church on the shoulders of Francis. The pope is not the Catholic church. He has a very important role in the church, but the church is much bigger than him. It includes all of us.

For example, many journalists have asked me about the “Francis effect.” Is Francis bringing people back to church?

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PHILIPPINES
Crux

By John L. Allen Jr.
Associate editor January 16, 2015

In points he’s made before in other settings, Pope Francis on Friday criticized what he called the “ideological colonization of the family,” language that many took as a reference to gay marriage, and also defended a previous pope who upheld the Church’s ban on contraception.

“The family is threatened by growing efforts on the part of some to redefine the very institution of marriage, by relativism, by the culture of the ephemeral, by a lack of openness to life,” Francis said.

A Vatican spokesman confirmed Friday evening that, at least in part, the pope had gay marriage in mind.

The remarks came in a session Francis held with more than 1,000 families in a downtown Manila arena, amid the pontiff’s Jan. 12-19 trip to Sri Lanka and the Philippines.

The pope also issued a strong defense of Pope Paul VI’s controversial 1968 encyclical Humanae Vitae, which upheld the Church’s traditional ban on birth control.

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CANADA
Washington Post

The bizarre ESP experiments conducted on aboriginal children without parental consent

By Abby Phillip January 16

Canada’s residential schools for aboriginal children were places of hunger, isolation and misery. Children as young as 3 were separated from their families and became wards of the state.

In the 1940s, the children were also, as more and more evidence is revealing, the unwitting subjects of bizarre, cruel and unethical experimentation.

A recently uncovered experiment reveals the depths of the access given to so-called researchers seeking to find evidence that aboriginal children, by dint of their race, had extrasensory perception, also known as ESP, or a “sixth sense.”

Fifty children at the Indian Residential School in Brandon, Manitoba, became the subjects of a series of tests that sought to establish a new measure for identifying ESP and also to find evidence of supernatural abilities of “primitive” people.

As was typical for the time, there was no parental consent. But the children, ranging from ages 6 to 20, likely participated “willingly,” as the study claims, eager for candy that might stave off their persistent hunger.

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UNITED KINGDOM
Daily Mail

Former children’s home boss, 77, accused of historic sex abuse of boys as young as nine is found dead at home weeks before he was due to stand trial

By MARTIN ROBINSON FOR MAILONLINE
16 January 2015

A suspected paedophile children’s home boss has been found dead – just weeks before he was due to stand trial for allegedly abusing boys as young as nine.

John Stingemore, 72, was set to face a string of historic sex abuse charges relating to his time as manager of Grafton Close children’s home in West London in the 1970s and 1980s.

Stingemore, who was charged in September 2013 with multiple counts of indecent assault, taking indecent images of a child and one count of conspiracy to commit buggery, was found dead by police.

A spokeswoman from the coroner’s office in Hastings, near where he lived in St Leonard’s on Sea, East Sussex, said: ‘He has passed away.’

A source said that a post-mortem examination would be needed to find the exact cause of death.
Stingemore was set to appear for trial at Southwark Crown Court on February 2 alongside Catholic priest Father Anthony McSweeney.

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MARYLAND
ABC 2

[with video]

Catherine Hawley

LUTHERVILLE, Md. – About 150 people came out to the Church of the Holy Comforter in Lutherville to ask questions and hopefully get some answers from the Episcopal Diocese of Maryland about the tragic crash on Dec. 27 that killed Tom Palermo.

“Our lord God, we have no idea where we are going.”

They started with prayer, then the head of the state diocese turned the focus to the pain of its congregations.

“It breaks my heart,” said Pat Ash. “It breaks my heart for the Palermo family, and the fact that, my goodness, she was that drunk at 2:30 in the afternoon, how incredibly sad.”

“Certainly has cast a little bit of negative light on the church just in light of the seriousness of the event,” Dave Zidek said.

“I think it’s also a way of healing,” said Steffy Sabino. “Just listening to other people, what they have to say and how they’re hurting and how they’re frustrated and angry.”

For an hour and half, that’s exactly what happened. People shared stories about their personal battles with addiction, but a lot of the discussion focused on the churches very own who is causing the pain, Bishop Heather Cook.

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MARYLAND
The Baltimore Brew

Mark Reutter and Fern Shen January 15, 2015

Bishop Heather Cook was bailed out today by a person she has described as her “steady companion,” Mark H. Hansen, a former Episcopal priest who was defrocked in 2005 for his opposition to the ordination of a gay bishop in New Hampshire.

Hansen posted $35,000 of collateral and signed a $215,000 promissory note to meet the 10% requirement of the $2.5 million bail for Bishop Cook, who was jailed last Friday on manslaughter and drunk driving charges stemming from a car crash that killed bicyclist Thomas Palermo.

Reached this afternoon, Hansen said, “I’m not talking to the press, OK? We have an attorney.”

Only one condition is required of Bishop Cook under the terms of today’s bail: “Do not drive while pending trial.”

Arinze Ifekauche, spokesman for State’s Attorney Marilyn Mosby, confirmed that Cook “is not on pretrial supervision.”

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IRELAND
Irish Central

Nick Bramhill @irishcentral January 16,2015

A founding member of a group representing over 1,000 Catholic priests has said the time is not right for the Pope to visit Ireland, as there are too existing many problems in the Irish Church.

Speculation has been growing that a historic papal visit could take place in the near future, following recent comments from the Papal Nuncio, Archbishop Charles Brown.

But a spokesman for the Association of Catholic Priests said he believes a high-profile visit by Pope Francis would hamper their efforts to bring about reforms and changes in the Church.

Fr. Brendan Hoban, a founding member of the group, said: “A papal visit is exactly what the Irish Church doesn’t need at the moment, because it would distract us from tackling the issues which we need to put right.

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DEUTSCHLAND
Nord Bayern

NEUMARKT – Bei der Aufarbeitung des sexuellen Missbrauchs von Mitgliedern des Knabenchores Regensburger Domspatzen haben jetzt Recherchen der Neumarkter Nachrichten dazu geführt, dass ein alter Fall vom Bistum neu aufgerollt wird. Zuvor war die Stadt Neumarkt zum Schauplatz des Themas geworden — durch einen ARD-Fernsehbeitrag über ein Treffen von Opfer und mutmaßlichem Täter.

In der Sendung „Sünden an den Sängerknaben“ am 7. Januar im „Ersten“ sah ein Millionenpublikum den 63-jährigen Georg Auer aus Südbayern vor dem Pfarrhof von St. Johannes in Neumarkt. In den Räumen der katholischen Kirche hatte sich der ehemalige Domspatz nach Recherchen der Neumarkter Nachrichten im Oktober 2010 mit seinem mutmaßlichen Peiniger aus der Schulzeit getroffen – ohne dass einer der Beteiligten einen Neumarkter Bezug hat. Zeugin des Gesprächs, das das Fernsehteam später für die Dokumentation nachspielen ließ: die damalige Missbrauchsbeauftragte des Bistums Regensburg, Birgit Böhm.

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DEUTSCHLAND
RP

[Five years ago, the public looked with stunned horror into the abyss of sexual abuse at the Odenwald School. For five years, the Catholic Church trying now to get out of the whirlpool of suspicion, generalizations and true descriptions.]

Gregor Mayntz

Vor fünf Jahren blickte die Öffentlichkeit mit fassungslosem Entsetzen in die Abgründe sexuellen Missbrauchs an der Odenwaldschule. Seit fünf Jahren bemüht sich die katholische Kirche nun, aus dem Strudel von Verdächtigungen, Pauschalisierungen und wahren Beschreibungen herauszukommen. Der seit Jahrzehnten immer wieder aufgekommene Vertuschungsverdacht schien sich zu bestätigen, als die Bischöfe die von ihnen bestellte externe Aufarbeitung durch den bekannten Kriminologie-Professor Christian Pfeiffer stoppten und dieser das Scheitern mit Zensur- und Kontrollwünschen der Kirche begründete.

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MINNESOTA
Star Tribune

Article by: JEAN HOPFENSPERGER , Star Tribune Updated: January 16, 2015

The Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis is likely on the verge of filing for bankruptcy as it faces the prospect of three clergy sex abuse lawsuits heading to court in 10 days.

While the archdiocese wouldn’t comment Thursday, it acknowledged last month that it was considering bankruptcy after its 2014 financial reports showed a $9 million deficit.

Pending trials typically have triggered bankruptcy filings in dioceses and archdioceses facing a large number of cases, said Charles Zech, director of the Center for the Study of Church Management at Villanova University in Pennsylvania.

“I can’t think of a single case where bankruptcy wasn’t filed as a trial loomed,” said Zech, referring to the 11 other dioceses and archdioceses that sought court protection from lawsuits and judgments.

The Twin Cities archdiocese previously indicated that it had just $5.3 million set aside for clergy abuse victims, even as it faced 25 current lawsuits with dozens more pending.

Charles Soper, a bankruptcy attorney and a University of Minnesota law professor, agreed that pending trial dates “are typical pressure points” for bankruptcy filings, whether for corporations or a church.

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MONTANA
KBZK

MISSOULA – A federal bankruptcy judge has approved a reorganization plan for the Roman Catholic Diocese of Helena that includes a $16 million settlement for hundreds of people who sued the diocese over clergy sex abuse.

The plan, approved by U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Terry Myers in Missoula, includes another $4.45 million payment from the Ursuline Sisters of the Western Province to settle a lawsuit filed by 45 Native Americans who alleged abuse and sex abuse at the Ursuline Academy in St. Ignatius over the same time period.

The plan will now go to a vote of creditors, the 362 plaintiffs in two lawsuits against the Diocese, and the plaintiffs in the Ursuline lawsuit.

The settlement calls for the Diocese to post on its website the names of all known past and present perpetrators who are identified in sexual abuse claims or in the lawsuits.

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AUSTRALIA
Broken Rites

By a Broken Rites researcher (article updated 16 January 2015)

Many years ago, Broken Rites began researching “Brother Gabriel Mount”, who had worked in Catholic children’s homes conducted by the St John of God Brothers in New South Wales and Victoria. We discovered that he eventually became a priest (“Father Roger Mount”), working in Papua New Guinea. In October 2014 he was brought back to Australia, where Victorian police charged him with multiple child-sex offences, involving seven Victorian victims. He is in custody in Victoria, where he has made two brief appearances in court (by video link from prison), the most recent being on 16 January 2015. New South Wales police, also, are investigating Father Mount concerning incidents that are alleged to have occurred in NSW.

Broken Rites research ascertained that, early in his church career (in the 1960s and 1970s), Roger Mount was listed in the annual editions of the Australian Catholic Directory as Brother “Gabriel” Mount, a member of a Catholic religious order called the St John of God Brothers. (When men joined this religious order, they normally adopted an ancient “saintly” name – hence Brother “Gabriel”.)

Later, Brother “Gabriel” Mount transferred to Papua New Guinea, where he left the St John of God order and became a diocesan priest. He reverted to his birth name, becoming Father Roger Mount, and was attached to the Diocese of Port Moresby. He reached a senior rank in this diocese. His most recent parish, Sogeri, is on the southern end of PNG’s famous Kokoda Track.

In October 2014, Father Roger Melville Mount (now aged 72) was deported from Papua New Guinea to Australia. On arrival in Cairns (Queensland), he was arrested by police, who then obtained a court order for Mount to be extradited to Victoria. He was taken to Victoria by detectives from the Sano Taskforce in the Victoria Police sex crime squad. This taskforce was established to investigate allegations regarding religious organisations.

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UNITED STATES
Christian Catholicism

Jerry Slevin

* Pope Francis appears to be a master of modern media. He wisely often leaves the Vatican’s scandalous space swamped by child abuse cover-ups and financial corruption charges for potentially more media friendly outposts, like Manila. The pope’s media managers then seek to present the Catholic Church in nations like the Philippines as a flourishing institution, even a national treasure. While the Catholic faith is likely a personal treasure for many Filipinos, is it a national treasure? Is the Church flourishing in the Philippines? If not, what if anything can Pope Francis do to change that? Media masters can create mirages, but these fade fairly quickly under pressure from hard facts. Facts, like Dorothy’s dog, Toto, tend to push open the curtains of wizards, even papal ones if necessary.

* The Catholic Church is declining, not flourishing, in the Philippines, it appears. A fair measure of a religion’s spiritual and financial health is weekly attendance statistics. If Catholics do not show up, worship and contribute regularly, counting them as Catholics seems like a hollow bad habit. An April 2013 survey found that weekly church attendance among Filipino Catholic adults dropped more than 42 percent to 37 percent in 2013 from a reported high of 64% percent in 1991.

* The survey also showed that while only 37% of Catholics attend church weekly. in comparison, there are percentage wise nearly twice as many of other Christians who are weekly churchgoers: 64% among Protestants, 70% among Iglesia ni Cristos and 62% among other Christians. Seventy-five percent of Muslims attend a mosque at least weekly. This indicates that the Catholic Church in the Philippines is declining sharply, rather than flourishing, no? It also appears to have some flourishing competitors. Of course, 37 % still can currently generate millions of Catholics who can be expected to come out and participate in a once in a generation papal mass, as is now happening. But by attending a well hyped papal mass, a “good Catholic” one does not necessarily make, no?

* Moreover, the Catholic hierarchy hardly seems to be a national treasure in the Philippines or anywhere else, it seems. The nation has one of the highest birthrates in Asia and a population of almost 100 million. By 2080, demographers predict that population could swell to 200 million. Right now, more than a quarter of Philippine people live on the equivalent of 62 cents a day, according to government data. According to the United National Population Fund, half of the 3.4 million pregnancies in the Philippines each year are unintended.

* The slums of the Philippines are reportedly already overcrowded. Families stand in line for more than 12 hours for a government assistance check. Some soup kitchens are forced to limit their guests to street children, the elderly and homeless people with severe disabilities.UNICEF estimates there are as many as 500,000 “street children” in the Philippines.

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AUSTRALIA
The Age

January 16, 2015

Mark Russell

A Catholic priest deported from Papua New Guinea who is accused of abusing seven children in Victoria more than 40 years ago has appeared briefly in court.

Father Roger ‘Gabriel’ Mount, 72, appeared in the Melbourne Magistrates Court on Friday via videolink from Port Phillip prison where he has been held since his deportation and arrest in October.

The case was delayed for several minutes as prison staff had to wheel the elderly, frail and wheelchair-bound priest into the videolink room.

When magistrate Amanda Chambers asked if the grey-haired, bespectacled priest could see and hear her, Father Mount replied: “I can see you but I can’t hear very well.”

Ms Chambers said she would speak up so he could follow the proceedings.

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UNITED KINGDOM
BBC News

A preacher found guilty of indecently assaulting two girls aged between nine and 16 has been jailed for four-and-a-half years.

Allan Cundick, 78, of Woking, assaulted the girls between 1970 and 1992.

One of his victims, Lina Barnes, from Corby in Northamptonshire, said she was urged by his church not to report the abuse.

The Gospel Hall Brethren preacher was found guilty following a trial at Guildford Crown Court.

Ms Barnes, who has waived her right to anonymity, was aged between 10 and 13 at the time of the abuse.

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MISSOURI
St. Louis Post-Dispatch

Settlement reached in sexual-abuse lawsuit involving AME church in St. Louis

By Lilly Fowler

A female minister has settled a sexual abuse lawsuit involving a local African Methodist Episcopal Church.

Brenda Jones had sued Wayman African Methodist Episcopal Church in St. Louis Circuit Court on Jan. 29, 2014. The suit named the African Methodist Episcopal Church, the Fifth Episcopal District of the African Methodist Episcopal Church, which encompasses churches in Missouri, and Bishop Larry T. Kirkland, the presiding prelate of that district, as defendants.

Now, nearly a year later, that lawsuit has settled, although Jones’ case against Frederick McCullough, the former pastor of Wayman African Methodist Episcopal Church who she claims sexually abused her, is still pending.

“I’m just glad that I had the courage to stand up,” Jones said. “This was the hardest thing I had to do in my life.”

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MISSOURI
Belleville News-Democrat

The Associated Press
January 15, 2015

ST. LOUIS — A female minister who sued her St. Louis church for sexual harassment has settled part of the case, her lawyers said Thursday.

Brenda Jones sued Wayman African Methodist Episcopal Church, along with church officials in California and Pennsylvania, in January 2014. She alleged another minister made sexually explicit remarks, forced her to see a photo of his genitals and inappropriately touched her on several occasions.

The case was scheduled to go to trial next month. But attorney Ken Chackes said claims against the church and church officials were settled this week for an undisclosed amount. An attorney for the church declined comment, citing a confidentiality agreement. Jones’ case against the former pastor is still pending. He has denied wrongdoing.

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TEXAS
Dallas Voice

Prestonwood Baptist Church has become the center of activity when it comes to collecting signatures to repeal the new Plano nondiscrimination ordinance and capture the title of most homophobic church in the Metroplex from First Baptist Church of Dallas.

That defender of religious freedom may also be remembered as the church where a pastor had to resign in 2008 because he was caught soliciting sex from a minor.

Sr. Pastor Jack Graham, who is spearheading the signature collection effort for the Plano recall, accepted the resignation of Pastor Joe Barron after a 2008 sex sting.

“Barron was charged … with online solicitation of a minor,” according to an AP story from the time. “Undercover officers posing as a 13-year-old girl communicated with the 52-year-old minister for about two weeks. The online conversations were sexual in nature, police said.”

After connecting with “her” online, the Prestonwood minister drove 200 miles to meet her in Bryan. He was arrested and released on $7,000 bail.

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ILLINOIS
Peoria Journal-Star

By Michael Smothers of GateHouse Media Illinois
Posted Jan. 15, 2015

PEKIN — A former Pekin church youth minister used the church to commit sexual acts with a preteen girl who considered him her “spiritual mentor,” according to charges revealed in court Thursday.

Nicholas Lawrence, 27, already faces charges involving the same girl in Peoria County, where he led children in Bible classes at two Peoria Heights churches before he began his Pekin ministry.

He pleaded not guilty Thursday in Tazewell County Circuit Court to four Class X felony charges that allege he carried on a four-year sexual relationship into last spring with the girl, whom he met when she was about 8.

Lawrence, of 200 Matilda St., Apt. 4, was ordered held on $500,000 bond on the four Tazewell County charges of predatory criminal sexual assault of a child. The crime is punishable by up to 30 years in prison.

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UNITED KINGDOM
Lexology

Bolt Burdon Kemp
Virginia Sardeli
United Kingdom
January 14 2015

The Minister and Clergy Sexual Abuse Survivors (MACSAS) support group have released a recording of a discussion between Phil Johnson, one of the group’s Panel members and Lady Butler-Sloss. The discussion took place in March 2011 in the Baroness’ House of Lords office during her Historic Cases Review concerning the handling of clergy abuse cases by the Diocese of Chichester.

Mr Johnson had sustained abuse at the hands of priests Roy Cotton and Colin Pritchard, whose cases were being reviewed by Lady Butler-Sloss. Although Mr Johnson had also reported being abused by Bishop Peter Ball, he alleges that Lady Butler-Sloss kept the Bishop’s name out of the report in order to protect the image of the church. Bishop Peter Ball has since been arrested and charged with assaulting males and committing misconduct in public office by using his position to prevail upon others for his own sexual gratification.

Mr Johnson was one of the voices calling for Lady Butler-Sloss to resign as Chair of the Independent Panel Inquiry into Sexual Abuse in July 2014. At the time, he said that while Lady Butler-Sloss had purportedly consulted with him regarding the exclusion of the Bishop’s name from her report, he felt he had little choice in the matter. He was prompted to release the recording of this discussion following a Radio Four Interview on 31 December 2014 when Lady Butler-Sloss said that she had asked him whether the name of the Bishop should be included in the report, that he had agreed to its exclusion and that he was now changing his story.

Mr Johnson has released part of the recording in order to allow listeners to make their own judgment as to what happened. He believes it supports his own version of events.

Bishop abuse discussion

In the recording, which is available on Youtube, Lady Butler-Sloss can be heard stating:

“What I do need to know is whether you want me to put Bishop [redacted] in it. And I tell you why I raise the question…..the press would love a Bishop…and if they get a Bishop…. they are going to concentrate on him. They are not going to concentrate on either Cotton or Pritchard. And since the Bishop didn’t do very much to you…”

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

MINNESOTA
Canonical Consultation

01/15/2015

Jennifer Haselberger

With many observers anticipating a bankruptcy filing by the Archdiocese of Saint Paul and Minneapolis sometime tomorrow or early next week, I thought it worthwhile to dust off some comments that I posted back in November regarding the Archdiocese’s precarious financial situation.

I have no doubt, no doubt, that when the Archdiocese officially declares that it does not have sufficient resources to meet its obligations we will see a press release attributing the decision to the volume of claims filed or expected to be filed under the Minnesota Child Victims Act, as well as to the Archdiocese’s oft stated but frankly implausible aim of wanting to find ‘a fair solution to all victim claims’.

When, in the late fall of 2014, the Archdiocese released audited financial reports showing a more than $9 million operating deficit for the fiscal year that ended June 30, 2014, the precarious financial position of the Archdiocese was already being linked to the so-called ‘civil window’ for the introduction of ‘old’ cases involving acts of sexual abuse of minors. I disagreed, and instead attributed the financial crisis to poor management and a fundamental failure of Archdiocesan leadership to govern the diocese in accord with its mission. I maintain that position.

For, it is important to remember that the passage of the Child Victims Act did not create the financial distress that is pushing the Archdiocese to bankruptcy. All the Child Victims Act did was create a window during which victims of sexual abuse could present civil cases that otherwise would have been barred by the statute of limitations. Permitting someone to introduce a case is not the same as guaranteeing that person a positive verdict, or even a monetary one.

The ‘number of cases’ the Archdiocese is facing is also not the result of the Child Victims Act, it is the result of decades of abuse perpetrated by clergy, often under circumstances in which the Archdiocese knew of or could have reasonably assumed the likelihood of such abuse occurring. For proof of this statement, I need only refer you to the Archdiocese’s own website and its growing list of ‘Individuals with substantiated claims against them of sexual abuse of a minor within the Archdiocese of Saint Paul and Minneapolis’.

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MILWAUKEE (WI)
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

By Annysa Johnson of the Journal Sentinel Updated: 6:19 p.m.

The Archdiocese of Milwaukee won a victory in its bankruptcy on Thursday in a dispute that turned on the promise of confidentially granted victims of childhood sex abuse when they brought allegations forward.

U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Susan V. Kelley refused to compel the archdiocese to provide attorneys for one group of abuse survivors with unredacted documents that could potentially identify other survivors who had an expectation of anonymity.

Instead, Kelley agreed to review dozens of abuse claims to see if there was evidence that would warrant a limited — and still not public — release of the documents, with names of victims and or witnesses.

“I’m denying the motion,” Kelley told attorneys for five abuse survivors.

“I’m sorry,” Kelley said, “but I have to weigh what I think is the fairness… and the rights of these people.”

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NORTHERN IRELAND
UTV

Victims of child sex abuse at Kincora are launching a legal challenge over the Secretary of State’s decision not to include the former children’s home in the Westminster abuse inquiry, UTV Live Tonight can reveal.

The case is going to court on Friday, after Theresa Villiers ruled what was one of Northern Ireland’s biggest sex scandals out of the government investigation.

It had been hoped the inquiry would look into what happened inside the former boys’ home and into claims of a cover-up at the highest levels within the security services and government.

But instead the Secretary of State said that Kincora would be investigated by the Historical Institutional Abuse Inquiry in Northern Ireland.

Ms Villiers insisted there would be full co-operation and full disclosure from government, the Ministry of Defence and MI5.

Victims and senior politicians do not believe that is the best way to get the truth.

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UNITED KINGDOM
Mancunian Matters

15 Jan 2015 | By Samar Maguire

Britain has a ‘victim blaming culture’ and a judge’s claims that a schoolgirl ‘groomed’ her teacher into having sex only makes it worse, says a leading child sex abuse charity chief.

Former religious studies teacher Stuart Kerner, 44, received an 18-month suspended prison sentence for having an affair with an under-age pupil but dodged jail as the judge said he had been ‘manipulated’ by the victim.

While sentencing Kerner, Judge Joanna Greenberg QC described the circumstances of the crime as a ‘tragedy’ and said there was no evidence the teacher had sought the affair.

Peter Saunders, chief executive of the National Association for People Abused in Childhood (NAPAC), believes the Kerner case is ‘yet another example of blaming the victim for a crime.’

Mr Saunders, also an ex-North West teacher, told MM: “This is another case of blaming the victim for the crime. We’re talking about a 16-year-old child – and no matter what they look like they are children – and a 44-year-old experienced qualified deputy head teacher.

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UNITED STATES
Christian Catholicism

Jerry Slevin

* Pope Francis must now in Manila endorse a contraception family planning option for parents of street children in the Philippines and for similarly situated couples worldwide. Pope Francis preaches piously before cameras that his top priority is a “preferential option for the poor”. Yet behind closed doors, his subordinate bishops in the Philippines still push to deny couples a family planning option that could really help poor families there. This contradiction in practice has been vividly brought to the forefront by the this recent article [Daily Mail] about Manila’s street children and their prophetic advocate and Nobel Prize nominated Irish missionary priest, Fr. Shay Cullen. Many of these children have been locked up in poor conditions for at least the duration of the pope’s visit.

* Pope Francis’ contradictory, if not hypocritical, statements relating to family planning has surprisingly been well highlighted recently by an informative article in papal supporter, Rupert Murdoch’s influenced Wall Street Journal (WSJ) here

* [Wall Street Journal]

* In the WSJ article, it has been suggested that some Filipino Catholics just dismiss the Catholic Church’s teachings on sex and birth control as unscientific and outdated for couples living in modern societies.

* The WSJ article indicates that outside the birth control clinic in Tondo, a slum area in Manila, children combed through stinking piles of trash, and ran through heavy traffic to clamber onto the backs of moving garbage trucks. For a 2008 video showing some of the harsh conditions in the Tondo/Manila slum, please see:

* [YouTube]

* The Philippine birthrate is quite high by regional standards. In deprived areas like Tondo/Manila, women still typically have six or seven children, according to the NGO. According to the WSJ report, the NGO regularly welcomes 13-year-old mothers, or 16-year-olds with two or three babies, health workers said.

* Pope Francis must stop preaching and act. He must promptly demand (1) that officials release these children from detention immediately, (2) that Manila’s showpiece Cardinal Tagle try to make sure that Manila street children are not abused by officials and others this way again, (3) that Church, government and business leaders help these children more and soon, and (4) that his bishops stop pumping the high Filipino birthrate by opposing access to affordable and effective contraception options from poor couples that seek it.

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UNITED KINGDOM
The Guardian

Sandra Laville
Thursday 15 January 2015

The panel appointed by Theresa May to carry out the child abuse inquiry has cancelled a listening event with survivors on Friday after complaints the meetings were being held with no support in place for victims who attend.

The cancellation of the meeting in Birmingham comes as Theresa May seeks to reconstitute the inquiry to meet the demands of some victims for it to be statutory, and after complaints about the make up of the independent panel.

But the delays over the start of the inquiry’s work, the controversy over the choice of chair and statements made in the media by some panel members raising doubt over the inquiry’s future have all put huge pressure on vulnerable survivors of child abuse, according to groups who represent them.

Some victims have been hospitalised as a result of self harming over anxieties that the inquiry will not happen and they will lose their chance to disclose abuse that took place in an institution, according to survivor groups.

Lucy Duckworth, who works with the Survivors’ Alliance, an umbrella group for some 200 organisations representing adult victims of child abuse, said the last minute cancellation of the panel listening event in Birmingham would only add to the distress of survivors. She said her organisation has complained about the lack of professional support put in place for these meetings. In its statement the inquiry panel said the meeting was being postponed because of the uncertainty over the future shape of the inquiry. The listening events are initial meetings designed to seek views from those attending particularly victims and their representatives, on how they would like the inquiry to engage with them.

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MARYLAND
CBS Baltimore

Rick Ritter

BALTIMORE (WJZ) — The Maryland bishop charged in the death of a cyclist has made bail.
Bishop Heather Cook has been jailed since Friday. Bail was set at $2.5 million.

Cook is charged in the death of Tom Palermo, a father of two, who was riding his bike in Roland Park when he was struck by Cook’s car.

According to the charges, Cook was drunk and texting when she struck Palermo.
She was charged in the fatal hit-and-run last week.

A condition of her release is that she cannot drive.

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MARYLAND
The Baltimore Sun

By Justin Fenton
The Baltimore Sun

The Episcopal bishop accused of killing a cyclist while drunk and texting was to be released Thursday from Central Booking after posting $2.5 million bail — an amount her attorney said earlier this week she would not be able to meet.

Court records show Bishop Heather Elizabeth Cook posted the bail Thursday through a bondsman with Fred Frank Bail Bonds.

Her attorney, David Irwin, said Cook was headed to an inpatient treatment facility and as a condition of her release was not permitted to drive. He declined to comment on how she was able to post the bail.

Cook was charged last week with manslaughter and related charges related to the Dec. 27 crash that killed Thomas Palermo on Roland Avenue. Authorities said Cook left the scene of the crash before returning about 30 minutes later. A breath test showed a blood-alcohol level of .22, police said.

At Cook’s bail review Monday, Assistant State’s Attorney Kurt Bjorklund asked District Court Judge Nicole Pastore Klein to revoke bail, while one of Cook’s defense attorneys, Jose A. Molina, asked that it be lowered to $500,000.

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MARYLAND
Charlotte Observer

By JULIET LINDERMAN
Associated Press
Posted: Thursday, Jan. 15, 2015

BALTIMORE An Episcopal bishop facing manslaughter charges after authorities say she struck a cyclist while driving drunk in Baltimore has been released from jail.

Documents show Heather Cook posted a $2.5 million bond on Thursday. Cook was charged with manslaughter, drunken driving and other related charges after striking and killing Tom Palermo while he was riding his bicycle. Cook registered 0.22 blood-alcohol content during a breath test shortly after the wreck. The legal limit in Maryland is 0.08.

An attorney representing Cook says she is returning to an inpatient alcohol treatment facility. Cook is not permitted to drive.

Earlier this week, a judge upheld the $2.5 million bond.

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MARYLAND
The Baltimore Brew

A Brew Exclusive

Mark Reutter January 15, 2015

Heather Elizabeth Cook, the Episcopal bishop charged with manslaughter and drunk driving, has posted $2.5 million in bail and is in the process of being released from the Baltimore City Detention Center.

On-line court documents show that Aaron Mossman, of the local bail-bond surety company Lexington National, has guaranteed the full bail amount for Cook, 58, who has been held in jail since Friday.

At Cook’s Monday bail review, attorney Jose A. Molina said the cleric could not post bail and asked a district court judge to lower the amount to $500,000.

Judge Nicole Pastore Klein refused and said she was a flight risk, citing her leaving the scene after her car crashed into and killed bicyclist Thomas Palermo.

Molina said that, if she made bail, his client would return to Father Martin’s Ashley, the Havre de Grace alcohol treatment center she had checked into shortly after the car crash on December 27.

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MISSOURI
St. Louis Post-Dispatch

By Lilly Fowler

A female minister has settled a sexual-abuse lawsuit involving a local African Methodist Episcopal Church.

Brenda Jones had filed a lawsuit against Wayman African Methodist Episcopal Church in St. Louis Circuit Court on Jan. 29, 2014.

The lawsuit named the African Methodist Episcopal Church, the Fifth Episcopal District of the African Methodist Episcopal Church, which encompasses churches in Missouri, and Bishop Larry T. Kirkland, the presiding prelate of that district, as defendants.

Now, nearly a year later, that lawsuit has settled, although Jones’ case against Frederick McCullough, the former pastor of Wayman African Methodist Episcopal Church who she claims sexually abused her, is still pending.

“I’m just glad that I had the courage to stand up,” Jones said. “This was the hardest thing I had to do in my life.”

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NEW JERSEY
NorthJersey.com

JANUARY 15, 2015

BY KELLY NICHOLAIDES
STAFF WRITER | SOUTH BERGENITE

He was adopted through Catholic Charities in Nova Scotia, Canada, but ironically, Stephen Marlowe alleges he grew up to suffer sexual abuse at the hands of a priest at St. Mary Church in Rutherford, where he was a middle school-aged altar boy in the 1970s.

Marlowe, who filed an amended civil lawsuit in Bergen County Superior Court, naming the Rutherford church, the Archdiocese of Newark, Father David A. Ernst and two archbishops, says that the church is making untrue claims in its bulletin regarding sex abuse claims and financial settlements.

The bulletin states that “Although the archdiocese, parishes and schools pay premiums to purchase insurance, no parish or school assets, archdiocesan assets or annual appeal or other fundraising collections are used to pay civil claims related to abuse cases.”

Marlowe is skeptical.

“When I was in mediation [with the Archdiocese], their lawyer told me all settlements are divided between insurance company money and the Archdiocese, 60/40 split, so where is the Archdiocese getting the money from? It’s not falling from the sky. I believe it comes from parishioner donations,” Marlowe said.

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MONTANA
KPAX

[with video]

MISSOULA – Now that a federal bankruptcy judge has approved a multi-million dollar agreement, parties in the suit accusing the Roman Catholic clergy of sex abuse in Montana will have several weeks to finalize the details of the settlement.

U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Terry Myers approved the 16-million dollar settlement in a court hearing in Missoula this week, the latest development in a case that first started in 2011.

The victims, most of whom are Native American, had complained the church’s personnel were involved in hundreds of cases of sexual abuse, some dating back more than 50-years. Most of the dispute centered over operations at the Ursuline Academy in St. Ignatius.

The Diocese of Helena had filed for a Chapter 11 bankruptcy proceeding early last year to clear the way for resolving the case through the settlement.

Under the plan approved by Judge Myers this week, a timeline has been set out for the parties to enact the settlement.

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PHILIPPINEN
kath.net

[The Philippine government has denied it has incarcerated children in Manila.”We do not hide these children,” said Secretary Corazon Juliano-Soliman on Thursday in Manila. The opposite is the case. The Pope will meet street children.]

Die philippinische Regierung weist Vorwürfe zurück, Straßenkinder seien für die Zeit des Besuches von Papst Franziskus in Manila in Käfige gesperrt worden.

Manila (kath.net/KNA) Die philippinische Regierung weist Vorwürfe zurück, Straßenkinder seien für die Zeit des Besuches von Papst Franziskus in Manila in Käfige gesperrt worden. «Wir verstecken diese Kinder nicht», erklärte Ministerin Corazon Juliano-Soliman am Donnerstag in Manila. Das Gegenteil sei der Fall; der Papst werde während seines Besuches auch Straßenkinder treffen.

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MASSACHUSETTS
Daily Item

Thursday, January 15, 2015

Cyrus Moulton

REVERE — Three members of the Immaculate Conception School community have resigned after failing to report “in a timely manner” allegations that a worker exposed himself while using a student bathroom.

“Schools and parishes have strict guidelines and policies to follow when such matters are brought to their attention,” Archdiocese of Boston spokesperson Terrence Donilon said in a statement. “With regards to Immaculate Conception in Revere, the pastor, principal and a teacher have resigned their positions due to their failure to report these possible incidents in a timely manner.”

Revere Police detectives and the Suffolk district attorney’s office have begun an investigation, but there are no charges at this time, according to the DA’s office.

Donilon said the archdiocese learned within the past week of a potential indecent exposure that allegedly occurred while a worker was using the boys’ bathroom. Donilon said the bathroom is intended to be used only by students. The archdiocese said it was told of three potential incidents over the past month and a half.

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ZIMBABWE
allAfrica

The Herald

By Prosper Dembedza

A Guruve-based former Roman Catholic priest who sired a child while he was still serving was yesterday ordered to pay US$80 per month towards the upkeep of the minor. Roman Catholic priests pledge to celibacy, but Mathew Jonga (pictured right) broke the cardinal rule and sired a child with Emmah Mutaka. Harare Civil Court magistrate Mr Trevor Nyatsanza last week ordered Mutaka to bring proof that Jonga was still a Roman Catholic priest and receipts to show that she was responsible for paying school fees for the child.

Mutaka told the court that she went to the Roman Catholic offices in Chinhoyi where she was told that Jonga had resigned from the church.

Mutaka claimed that she was single-handedly taking care of the child since Jonga had been refusing to contribute anything.

“I have my receipts which show that I am the one who has been paying school fees for the child single-handedly,” said Mutaka.

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PHILIPPINES
International Business Times

By Mangala Dilip January 15, 2015

Homeless children as young as five are being caged by Philippines’ authorities to keep the streets of Manila “presentable” for Pope Francis’ visit.

The children are being held in detention centres alongside adult criminals so as to ensure that the city’s poverty-ridden status is hidden from the pontiff during the first papal visit to the country in two decades.

Hundreds of boys were rounded up from doorways and roadsides by police and officials in anticipation of the papal visit, reported South China Morning Post. Completely disregarding Philippines’ child protection laws, terrified children were locked up in filthy detention centres, where they were forced to sleep on concrete floors.

It is also understood that the helpless children were beaten and abused by older inmates and some of them have even starved and chained to pillars since last month. They are made to go to the toilet in buckets and fed leftovers, which they eat from the floor.

Father Shay Cullen, Nobel Peace Prize-nominated Irish missionary priest, went on a mission to save the children locked up in the prison, ironically named “House of Hope”, notorious for brutality, abuse and neglect.

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NEW MEXICO
Gallup Independent

Published in the Gallup Independent, Gallup, NM, Jan. 14, 2015

By Elizabeth Hardin-Burrola
Independent correspondent
religion@gallupindependent.com

GALLUP – As the Diocese of Gallup begins a year-long celebration of its 75th anniversary, local Catholics are left to wonder what the future will hold once the diocese finally emerges from bankruptcy.

One question that probably few have considered was hinted at in a startling motion filed in bankruptcy court last week.

Could the Gallup Diocese operate in Gallup without its chancery office, its scenic retreat center and its 100-year-old Catholic school?

Although that seems like an unlikely scenario, diocesan attorneys filed a motion Wednesday, asking U.S. Bankruptcy Judge David T. Thuma for authorization to hire Estate Valuation Consultants, Inc. of Albuquerque to appraise five key properties in Gallup and Thoreau.

The Gallup properties include the diocese’s chancery office, located at 711 S. Puerco Dr., the Sacred Heart Retreat Center, located about two miles south of the city, and Sacred Heart Catholic School, 515 Park Ave., which diocesan attorneys continue to call by its former name of Gallup Catholic School.

These three properties were listed as part of the Diocese of Gallup’s estate when diocesan officials filed their Chapter 11 petition on Nov. 12, 2013. But would the diocese actually sell such landmark properties?

As is their usual practice, diocesan attorneys did not answer questions about the appraisal plans. Susan G. Boswell, the diocese’s lead bankruptcy attorney, did not respond to an emailed request for comment. Neither did her colleagues Elizabeth S. Fella and Lori L. Winkelman, fellow attorneys at Quarles & Brady.

Possible scenarios

According to the diocese’s motion, it needs to discover “the value of the assets that might, as part of a plan of reorganization, be liened, liquidated, orotherwise used” to pay for clergy sex abuse claims as well as other claims.

It is hard to imagine the Gallup Diocese actually liquidating such property to pay for sex abuse claims when it has nearly 100 pieces of real property in Arizona and New Mexico, many of which do not play a role in the diocese’s religious mission. A more likely scenario would seem to involve the diocese borrowing funds on the property’s value.

Another possible option might involve one of the diocese’s nonprofit organizations buying the properties and letting the diocese continue to use them. Although the Catholic People’s Foundation and the Southwest Indian Foundation were originally founded by chancery officials, the Gallup Diocese has claimed those organizations are separate from the diocese. Either organization could possibly purchase some or all of the properties.

For example, the Catholic People’s Foundation now owns Gallup property that houses the bishop’s private residence, his private chapel and his “House of Discernment.” The property was once owned by the Franciscan Missionary Sisters of Our Lady of Sorrow of Oregon and was supposed to revert to diocese ownership. Instead, it was transferred to the Catholic People’s Foundation. According to bankruptcy documents and testimony, the diocese is renting the property from its own nonprofit organization.

Thoreau dispute

Appraising the Thoreau properties poses another thorny situation. The listed properties include St. Bonaventure Mission and School and the “Smith Lake Property,” which is not described in further detail other than being located in Thoreau.

However, St. Bonaventure has already been at the center of a brief dispute in the bankruptcy case. Last January, Albuquerque attorney Charles R. Hughson, legal counsel for St. Bonaventure, filed an adversary proceeding arguing that property listed as belonging to the diocese actually belongs to the mission school. Hughson also claimed a former chief executive of the school transferred St. Bonaventure property to the diocese without authorization.

Less than three weeks later, Hughson voluntarily dismissed his adversary proceeding. The dismissal, however, was without prejudice, meaning it could be filed again.

Hughson’s law firm, Rodey, Dickason, Sloan, Akin & Robb, is a previous client of Estate Valuation Consultants, Inc. or its affiliate American Property Consultants & Appraisers, Inc., according to information provided by Shane LeMon, owner of the appraisal company.

Pinnacle Bank, which loaned the Gallup Diocese $200,000 in 2011, is also a previous client of the appraisal firm. John Dowling, president of Pinnacle Bank in Gallup, also happens to be the vice president and a director of the Southwest Indian Foundation, according to records with the New Mexico Office of the Secretary of State.

In its motion, the Gallup Diocese proposes that Estate Valuation Consultants, Inc. will be retained for a “flat fee of $22,100.00, inclusive of expenses and New Mexico gross receipts tax” for producing appraisal reports in a summary format for all five properties.

Any party who objects to the diocese’s plan to hire the appraisal company must file an objection with U.S. Bankruptcy Court by Feb. 2.
—
Diocese of Gallup sidebar: Published Jan. 14, 2015

Property owned by the Diocese of Gallup

Soon after the Diocese of Gallup filed its Chapter 11 petition on Nov. 12, 2013, diocesan attorneys submitted financial information to U.S. Bankruptcy Court that included lists of the diocese’s nearly 200 property holdings in Arizona and New Mexico.

The properties are divided between the Gallup Diocese’s two separate corporations: the Bishop of the Roman Catholic Church of the Diocese of Gallup, an Arizona corporation sole, and the Roman Catholic Church of the Diocese of Gallup, a New Mexico corporation sole.

Some of the property is classified as trust property, or property that the diocese claims it is holding for other entities, such as its parishes. The other is classified as real property, or property in which the diocese holds legal interest. Some properties include just one parcel of land, while others include multiple or even dozens of land parcels.

Arizona Trust Property:

■Apache County: 27 pieces of property
■ Coconino County: 4 pieces of property
■ Mohave County: 1 piece of property
■ Navajo County: 17 pieces of property

NM Trust Property:

■ Catron County: 4 pieces of property
■ Cibola County: 8 pieces of property
■ Cibola or McKinley: 2 pieces of property
■ McKinley County: 16 pieces of property
■ Rio Arriba County: 2 pieces of property
■ Sandoval County: 1 piece of property
■ San Juan County: 24 pieces of property

Arizona Real Property:

■ Apache County: 5 pieces of property
■ Navajo County: 8 pieces of property
■ Valencia County: 2 pieces of property

New Mexico Real Property:

■ Catron County: 6 pieces of property
■ Cibola County: 15 pieces of property
■ Luna County: 2 pieces of property
■ McKinley County: 33 pieces of property
■ Rio Arriba County: 1 piece of property
■ Sandoval County: 6 pieces of property
■ San Juan County: 9 pieces of property
■ Socorro County: 1 piece of property
■ Taos County: 2 pieces of property

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PHILIPPINES
Manila Standard Today

By Manila Standard Today | Jan. 05, 2015

PASAY City says it plans to hide away unsightly street children during the visit of Pope Francis this month, highlighting the hypocrisy, myopia and the wrong headedness that characterize our urban policies.

The ostensive reason for the campaign, says Pasay Social Welfare Department head Rosalinda Orobia, is to prevent syndicates that employ these children as beggars and street vendors, from taking advantage of the Pope’s compassion for the poor.

The notion insults our intelligence and suggests that the Pope is somehow too naïve to understand how criminal syndicates in major cities around the world shamelessly use destitute children to turn an illegal and immoral profit.

We all understand the natural tendency to put one’s best foot forward when guests come calling, but hiding away poor street children completely misses the point of the Pope’s apostolic exhortation to “hear the cry of the poor.”

“Seeing their poverty, hearing their cries and knowing their sufferings,” the Pope said, “we are scandalized because we know that there is enough food for everyone and that hunger is the result of a poor distribution of goods and income.”

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NORTHERN IRELAND
Belfast Telegraph

BY STAFF REPORTER – 15 JANUARY 2015

Amnesty International has welcomed the news that witnesses will be able to give evidence to the Historical Abuse Inquiry into alleged abuse at Kincora Boys’ Home without fear of prosecution under the Official Secrets Act.

The Belfast Telegraph revealed yesterday that the Government assurance came in a letter to Sir Anthony Hart, chairman of the Northern Ireland inquiry, which has been tasked to investigate child abuse at the east Belfast boys’ home in the 1970s.

Allegations have persisted since then that a paedophile ring at Kincora was allowed to operate in order for the intelligence services to blackmail leading politicians and establishment figures.

Two former military intelligence officers, Colin Wallace and Brian Gemmell, have alleged that they raised concerns about Kincora, but the security services blocked investigations into the child abuse in the 1970s. It continued until 1980.

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DEUTSCHLAND
Saarbruecker-Zeitung

[A priest who underwent a criminal investigation by police is now suing police. He wants cancellation of his photographs and fingerprints. He was alleged he attempted to abuse a boy.]

Von Michael Jungmann, 08.01.2015

Ein Priester, gegen den ein Ermittlungsverfahren wegen versuchten Missbrauchs eines Jungen gegen Zahlung von 6000 Euro eingestellt wurde, klagt nun gegen die Polizei. Er fordert die Löschung seiner Fotos und Fingerabdrücke.

Der Fall hatte im Juli 2012 über die Grenzen des Saarlandes hinaus für Aufsehen gesorgt. Die Staatsanwaltschaft Saarbrücken ermittelte wegen versuchten sexuellen Missbrauchs eines 15-Jährigen gegen den damaligen Pastor der katholischen Pfarrgemeinde Lebach. Der Seelsorger soll dem Minderjährigen Geld für Sex geboten haben. Der Priester bestritt diese Vorwürfe. Nach früheren Angaben der Ermittler hatte der Junge das Geld angenommen. Zu den vereinbarten sexuellen Handlungen sei es aber nicht gekommen. Der Trierer Bischof Stephan Ackermann beurlaubte den Pastor daraufhin. Zudem wurde ein kirchenrechtliches Verfahren eingeleitet. Während der laufenden Ermittlungen erklärte der 68-jährige Pfarrer den Verzicht auf sein Amt. Damit machte er im Sommer 2013 den Weg für eine Neubesetzung der Stelle in der Lebacher Pfarreiengemeinschaft frei. Ein Jahr später stellte die Staatsanwaltschaft die Ermittlungen gegen den Pastor gegen Zahlung einer Geldauflage von 6000 Euro ein.

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DEUTSCHLAND
Katholisch

[The disclosure of the abuse scandal has rocked the Catholic Church. Stephan Ackermann, abuse Commissioner of DBK tells where the church stands five years later.]

Die Aufdeckung des Missbrauchsskandals hat die katholische Kirche erschüttert. Stephan Ackermann, Missbrauchsbeauftragter der DBK, erzählt, wo die Kirche fünf Jahre später steht.

Mit einem Brief machte der Jesuit Klaus Mertes, Rektor des Canisius-Kolleg in Berlin, sexuellen Missbrauch an der Elite-Schule während der 70er und 80er Jahre publik. Was folgte waren unzählige Medienberichte über weitere Fälle – der Skandal erschütterte die katholische Kirche in Deutschland zutiefst. Als eine Reaktion ernannte die Deutsche Bischofskonferenz den Trierer Bischof Stephan Ackermann zum Missbrauchsbeauftragten, um so die Aufklärung der Fälle voranzutreiben. Im Interview erinnert sich Ackermann an die erste Zeit nach der Aufdeckung der Fälleund erklärt, was die Kirche aus ihren Versäumnissen gelernt hat.

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UNITED STATES
Frum Follies

Levi Moscowitz took a plea bargain and got a 1-day jail sentence for arranging to pay a father to allow him to have sex with his two children. The supposed father was a cop. After his conviction Jewish Community Watch (JCW) posted information about his crime including a police transcript of his arrangements for the rendezvous. Within a week he committed suicide, hanging himself in a park.

Now the recriminations have started. Some are blaming JCW for the suicide which they say was precipitated by the “Wall of Shame” posting. Others are talking about the fact that he wanted to rehabilitate himself and was just despairing over his ability to control his behavior and get help. Some are saying, “but he did not actually molest children. After all” they say, “he was arrested before he did anything.”

I think people are confusing the tragedy of a suicide with the question of how to properly respond when we discover people committing sex crimes. Yes, every suicide is a tragedy. Yes, it is quite possible that the public exposure pushed him over the edge. Yes, perhaps he was at the point where he was ready to enter treatment, stick with the treatment, and change his behavior.

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MASSACHUSETTS
Boston Globe

By Laura Crimaldi
GLOBE STAFF JANUARY 15, 2015

REVERE — The Archdiocese of Boston named a temporary administrator Wednesday for a Revere parish where a Catholic school worker was placed on leave after a report of three possible indecent exposure incidents. The parish pastor and two school employees, including the principal, have resigned.

The Rev. Charles Bourke has been tapped by Cardinal Sean P. O’Malley to lead the church and school at Immaculate Conception in Revere on an interim basis, an archdiocesan spokesman said in an e-mail. Bourke is pastor at St. John the Evangelist in Winthrop, said the spokesman, Terrence C. Donilon. An interim school principal has not been named yet, Donilon said.

The shakeup came as school officials from the Archdiocese of Boston met Wednesday morning with parents at the school, which serves students in prekindergarten through Grade 8. A second meeting with parents was scheduled for Wednesday evening.

The archdiocese revealed Tuesday that it had received reports of three incidents of “potential indecent exposure” by the worker in a boy’s bathroom at the school over the last six weeks. The bathroom is intended to be only used by students, the archdiocese said.

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GUAM
KUAM

by Isa Baza

Guam – The president of the Concerned Catholics of Guam, Greg Perez, spoke before Rotarians this afternoon. The organization was formed in response to unanswered questions regarding removals of priests and financial mismanagement in the archdiocese.

The CCOG met with the Vatican last week to share their concerns. “What they had mentioned to us is that they were going to present our questions or concerns to the saintly investigating authority or another authority in Rome,” he said.

Perez said he hopes guidance from the Vatican will help bring resolution to the recent schism in the church.

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PHILIPPINES
South China Morning Post

To ensure Manila is presentable for Pope Francis’ visit, street children as young as five have been detained next to convicts in centres notorious for brutality, abuse and neglect. Simon Parry goes on a rescue mission with Father Shay Cullen

A seven-year-old boy stares nervously through the bars of the detention centre in Manila. Then, as charity workers gently explain to him that he is being taken to a children’s home in the countryside, his face breaks out into a broad grin.

“Will there be toys there?” he asks.

Mak-Mak is among the few lucky ones. Put behind bars last month as part of a campaign to clear street children from the part of the Philippine capital to be visited by Pope Francis, Mak-Mak’s nightmare is over, although it may take a long time to rid himself of the demons the nightmare brought with it.

With dozens of other children, he spent Christmas and New Year locked up in a concrete pen next to one holding convicted adult criminals in the grotesquely named House of Hope, where many children are brutalised and abused.

In recent weeks, hundreds of children have been rounded up from shop door-ways and roadsides by police and officials and put behind bars to make the city more presentable during Pope Francis’ five-day visit, which begins today. In a blatant violation of the country’s child-protection laws, the terrified youngsters are locked up in filthy detention centres, where they sleep on concrete floors and where many are beaten or abused by older or adult prisoners and, in some cases, starved.

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AUSTRALIA
Pro Bono Australia

The Royal Commission into Child Abuse is about to enter its third year with private and public hearings due to resume next week.

The Commission is also set to hold public hearings in regional Australia for the first time.

In September 2014 the Federal Government agreed to an extension for the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse for a further two years.

The Federal Government was asked to provide another $104 million and a further two years to complete the Royal Commission investigations into how institutions across Australia have responded to allegations of child sexual abuse.

The time extension would see the Commission complete its final report by December 15 2017.

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AUSTRALIA
ABC News

By Dan Conifer

The Royal Commission into Institutional Child Sexual Abuse is set to hold public hearings in regional Australia for the first time.

The commission was established in 2013 and has held public sessions in every capital city.

Commissioners have privately interviewed victims outside metropolitan areas, but survivors and lawyers have called for the commission to hold hearings in regional Australia.

The commission has announced it will hold public hearings in country areas this year and is likely to visit multiple regional centres.

Ballarat abuse survivor Andrew Collins said it was fantastic news.

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TEXAS
Houston Chronicle

By Rebecca Elliott, Jayme Fraser | January 14, 2015

A Katy man who prosecutors say sexually assaulted two teenage males while serving as a volunteer at a church several years ago turned himself in Wednesday, Waller County authorities said.

Nilson Daniel Vargas, 39, was volunteering at the Christian City Fellowship, a church in Sealy, when he allegedly engaged in a sexual act with a 16-year-old boy in the child’s home in Waller County in December 2008, according to an arrest warrant issued last week. The alleged victim told authorities that Vargas had also sexually molested him at the church, among other locations, and that the incidents began when he was 13, the warrant states.

The warrant states that another church member recently alleged “sexual assault of a child by this defendant while the defendant was back at the same church.” A press release from the Waller County district attorney identifies the second alleged victim as a young male.

“We believe that there are other victims out there,” said First Assistant District Attorney Warren Diepraam, adding that the alleged victims told Waller County authorities that incidents also occurred in neighboring counties. “We hope that this public appeal will get some of those folks to come forward.”

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OREGON
The Raw Story

DAVID EDWARDS
14 JAN 2015

An Oregon pastor is set to stand trial 18 years after women first brought allegations of rape and sexual abuse to authorities.

The Oregonian reported on Wednesday that prosecutors had reexamined complaints that Mike Sperou raped seven women as children in the 1990s, and that he would be charged based on new allegations by one of the women.

The women said that Sperou turned Southeast Bible Church, which may have started with good intentions, into a cult that broke down bonds within families. Sperou, who claimed to have emotional scars from childhood and the Vietnam war, engaged in heavy drinking, used drugs, and sexually abused children in the church, the women said.

Sperou admitted to police in 1997 that he encouraged the women, who were all under the age of 12 at the time, to stay with him in his bed at his private residence. While he denied raping the women, he said that he could have put his hands on their underwear or under their shirts. He denied that he had sexually penetrated one girl with his finger while she was sleeping.

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MONTANA
Missoulian

Associated Press

A federal bankruptcy judge on Tuesday approved a reorganization plan for the Roman Catholic Diocese of Helena that includes a $16.4 million settlement for hundreds of people who sued the diocese over clergy sex abuse from the 1940s to the 1970s.

The plan, approved by U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Terry Myers in Missoula, includes another $4.45 million payment from the Ursuline Sisters of the Western Province to settle a lawsuit filed by 45 Native Americans who alleged abuse and sex abuse at the Ursuline Academy in St. Ignatius over the same time period.

The plan will now go to a vote of creditors, the 362 plaintiffs in two lawsuits against the Diocese, and the plaintiffs in the Ursuline lawsuit.

Neither side is allowed to comment while the vote is pending.

The settlement calls for the diocese to post on its website the names of all known past and present perpetrators who are identified in sexual abuse claims or in the lawsuits. A disclosure statement filed Monday lists 22 people by their full names and another 20 whose first or last names aren’t known.

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SCOTLAND
Daily Record

Jan 15, 2015 By Fraser N Wilson

But the Church have defended their decision to rent out the massive space to welcome Father William Nolan as Bishop of the Diocese of Galloway

The Catholic Church have defended their decision to rent out Kilmarnock’s Grand Hall to celebrate a job promotion – despite concerns raised by parishioners it was “too lavish”.

The hall has been hired by the church to recognise Father William Nolan as he officially becomes Bishop of the Diocese of Galloway, with the church saying it was a “celebration of the gift of leadership”.

But some church goers believe this goes against the ethos of helping the less fortunate.

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MINNESOTA
Minnesota Public Radio

Martin Moylan Jan 15, 2015

File bankruptcy? It’s the big money question facing the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis.

With more than a dozen alleged victims of clergy sex abuse suing the archdiocese, three suits set for trial in a few weeks and worries about the cost of future, unknown claims, Chapter 11 could be a logical, if painful, next step — an orderly process to decide payments for current and future claims. It would also halt the coming trials.

Church leaders have said they’re weighing bankruptcy as they face huge potential costs tied to clergy abuse. They won’t say if any decision is imminent, though in November archdiocese chief financial officer Thomas Mertens called bankruptcy protection “a way to respond to all victims/survivors by allowing the available funds to be equitably distributed to all who have made claims…”

The best case, arguably, for the archdiocese would be a pre-negotiated bankruptcy, where key players agree on critical issues in advance. Church leaders, abuse victims, insurers and an army of attorneys would have to settle on how much money is on the table and who’s going to get it.

History, though, suggests that’s unlikely. A bankruptcy here is likely to resemble most church bankruptcies: bitter, contentious, costly and dragging on for at least two to three years.

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ITALY
Salon

WEDNESDAY, JAN 14, 2015

LAURA MILLER

In the summer of 1859, a desperate nun in the Roman convent of Sant’Ambrogio sent a letter to her kinsman, a bishop in the Vatican. She pleaded with him to rescue her, claiming that she had been the target of several poisonings and was in mortal danger. When her cousin the bishop answered her call and arrived at Sant’Ambrogio, he promised to rescue her and soon delivered on that promise. From his estate in Tivoli, the relieved but traumatized Katharina von Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen began to draft a denunciation of her one-time sisters back in Rome. It was an accusation more lurid than any popular anti-clerical satire, full of sexual transgressions, heretical practices and homicidal schemes. Furthermore, the case against the convent of Sant’Ambrogio had tendrils that climbed up to the highest reaches of the Church and entwined around the great Catholic controversies of the day.

Hubert Wolf’s “The Nuns of Sant’Ambrogio” offers a learned yet fascinating account of this incident — little known because the Vatican kept most of the embarrassing details in-house, a policy it would employ when handling sexual-abuse scandals a century later. In fact, the Sant’Ambrogio case was itself a sex-abuse scandal, although that aspect, however sensational, was not necessarily the Church’s primary concern.

Katharina, a Hohenzollern princess, belonged to one of the great royal Germanic dynasties, which include the Hapsburgs. (Her granddaughter was the queen of Portugal.) Twice widowed and sickly, she entered the convent in her late 30s, seeking a “a place of cloistered peace and holy order” in which to live a contemplative life, although she also nurtured the dream of establishing an order of her own. Sant’Ambrogio was “enclosed,” meaning that the nuns were sequestered from all contact with the outside world apart from rare interviews conducted through metal bars and visits from priestly confessors or doctors. Only in emergencies were men, even priests, allowed within the clausura, or convent interior.

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NORTHERN IRELAND
The Guardian

Henry McDonald, Ireland correspondent
Wednesday 14 January 2015

Intelligence officers and police with knowledge of the Kincora child abuse scandal in Northern Ireland will not be prosecuted under the Official Secrets Act for giving evidence to the historical abuse inquiry, the attorney general for England and Wales has said.

Two former army intelligence officers, Colin Wallace and Brian Gemmel, have claimed they reported abuse at the east Belfast home, which was controlled by a prominent Orangeman and state agent, but were ignored by the authorities. They allege that instead of moving against paedophiles running the home, the security forces blackmailed the Orangeman William McGrath and others to spy on other hardline Ulster loyalists from the 1970s onwards.

In a letter to the inquiry chairman, the attorney general Jeremy Wright QC advises: “No evidence a person may give before the inquiry will be used in evidence against that person in any criminal proceedings or relied upon for the purpose of deciding whether to bring such proceedings against that person … For the avoidance of doubt, I can confirm that the undertakings cover any allegation of an offence arising under the Official Secrets Act.”

Amnesty International welcomed the move. Patrick Corrigan, Amnesty’s Northern Ireland programme director, said: “The allegations surrounding Kincora could scarcely be more disturbing – that MI5 turned a blind eye to child abuse and actively blocked a police investigation, instead using the paedophile ring for its own intelligence-gathering purposes.

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MASSACHUSETTS
Fox 25

REVERE, Mass. (MyFoxBoston.com) — Parents of students at the Immaculate Conception School in Revere are set to attend a second meeting with the Archdiocese of Boston about allegations of misconduct against a school worker.

As of Tuesday, the worker has been placed on leave and the school’spastor, principal and a teacher were out of a job, though some parents believe this was an overreaction.

Some parents think the accusations are overblown. Others say you can’t be too cautious when it comes to protecting children. Regardless, many question how the school handled the allegations.

Parent Camelia Leone said they were “just allegations for now, and I tend to reserve judgement until they do investigate and find out what’s going on.”

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UNITED KINGDOM
The Guardian

Sandra Laville
Wednesday 14 January 2015

Theresa May is under intense pressure to save the independent inquiry into child abuse after survivors groups condemned it as a mess and demanded she rip up the process and start again.

Seven months after the announcement by May of an inquiry to examine institutional culpability for decades of abuse of children, victims met in the House of Commons to voice their demands for reform of the process.

The inquiry has been beset with problems. Two chairs, Dame Elizabeth Butler Sloss and Fiona Woolf, were forced to stand down after complaints from victims that they were too connected to the establishment, and the appointed panel faces being disbanded after some survivors raised objections to its composition. No new chair has been appointed, and some victims are now pursuing a judicial review to challenge the way the home secretary set up the process.

Phil Frampton, a survivor and spokesman for the victims and campaigners who gathered in the Commons on Wednesday said: “There were more than 300 people gathered today and what was so clear was it was a demonstration of our will. We want the inquiry to go forward. At the moment it is a complete mess. What we want is for Theresa May to rip it up and start it again to put it on a sound footing, to make it fully transparent and to make sure survivors can be proud to engage in the process.

“At the moment it doesn’t have a clear purpose, the focus must be narrowed towards getting justice. When you look at MPs’ expenses, the MPs met, people were taken to court and perpetrators were jailed. That is what we want.”

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UNITED KINGDOM
Channel 4

FATIMA MANJI
Reporter

Abuse survivors and their supporters lobby MPs and hold a public meeting to demand action on the government-appointed inquiry into child sexual abuse.

There was an unusually emotionally charged atmosphere inside parliament’s committee room 14 on Wednesday. It began with the failure of the microphones. “It’s a cover-up!” someone immediately yelled to the sound of much laughter from the packed room. A joke, but one that reflected the sentiments of many in this group who have understandably high levels of mistrust in the establishment.

For years, victims of child abuse have felt silenced, ignored and failed by institutions which should have protected them. There is a particular anger towards MPs and parliament – one campaigner reminded the audience: “We are not in the house of friends”. Another pointed out: “We’ve been labelled publicity seekers and conspiracy theorists.”

The WhiteFlowers Campaign Group – a loose body of abuse survivors and their supporters – had come to parliament to lobby MPs and hold a public meeting demanding action on the government-appointed inquiry into child sexual abuse.

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PHILIPPINES
Newsmax

Wednesday, 14 Jan 2015

By John Blosser

When Pope Francis arrives in the Philippines tomorrow for a five-day visit, one thing he will be guaranteed not to see are the poor orphaned and homeless children of the Manila streets.

That’s because hundreds of street kids have been rounded up by police and confined in cages, chained to poles and exposed to beatings and abuse by adult prison inmates, all without any recourse to the legal system, so Pope Francis won’t be bothered by the ragged, hungry children as he drives by, the London Daily Mail reports.

Father Shay Cullen, who operates the Preda Foundation which works to rescue street children, termed the childrens’ brutal incarceration “a shame on the nation” and told the Daily Mail, “This is completely beneath human dignity and the rights of all the children here are being violated.

“They have no basic rights. There is no education. There is no entertainment. There is no proper human development. There is nowhere to eat and they sleep on a concrete floor. There is no proper judicial process.

“These kids are totally without protection. They have no legal representation. They are just put in jail and left to fend for themselves.”

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PHILIPPINES
Catholic Online

By Abigail James (NEWS CONSORTIUM)

1/14/2015

Catholic Online (www.catholic.org)

Filipino children are being ‘rescued’ from the streets only to be forced into cold, cemented, jail cells. With Pope Francis’ visit to the Philippines happening this week, police have started to round up homeless orphans in an effort to make the poverty-stricken city appear more presentable.

LOS ANGELES, CA (Catholic Online) – “Street children as young as five are being caged in brutal detention centers alongside adult criminals in a cynical drive to smarten up the Philippines capital,” explained Daily Mail.

Disregarding their own Filipino child protection laws, the locked-up children are placed in filthy detention centers, where they sleep on the cold concrete floors, use buckets as toilets, get physically abused by older inmates, are nearly starved and in some cases, chained up to the pillars.

Adult inmates are kept in a pen directly next to the cell holding boys and girls; they freely pass back and forth through the compounds during certain times of the day and abuse the children.

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PHILIPPINES
Daily Mail (UK)

EXCLUSIVE – Children CAGED to keep the streets clean for the Pope: Police round up orphans and chain them in filth during pontiff’s visit to Philippines

By SIMON PARRY IN MANILA, THE PHILIPPINES, FOR MAILONLINE
14 January 2015

Street children as young as five are being caged in brutal detention centres alongside adult criminals in a cynical drive to smarten up the Philippines capital ahead of a visit by Pope Francis this week.

Hundreds of boys and girls have been rounded up from doorways and roadsides by police and officials and put behind bars in recent weeks to make the poverty-racked city more presentable when Pope Francis arrives tomorrow, a MailOnline investigation has found.

In a blatant abuse of the country’s own child protection laws, the terrified children are locked up in filthy detention centres where they sleep on concrete floors and where many of them are beaten or abused by older inmates and adult prisoners and, in some cases, starved and chained to pillars.

Six million people are expected to attend an open air mass conducted by Pope Francis in Manila’s Rizal Park on Sunday, which will watched by a global TV audience and officials appear determined to ensure that urchins are hidden from view.

MailOnline found dozens of street children locked up in appalling conditions alongside adult criminals in Manila, where a senior official admitted there had been an intensive round-up by police and government workers to make sure they are not seen by Pope Francis.

We gained rare access to a detention centre by accompanying Nobel Peace Prize-nominated Irish missionary Father Shay Cullen, 71, as he freed a boy aged around seven and took him to his Preda Foundation shelter for children 100 miles away in Subic Bay.

Mak-Mak, whose legs and body were riddled with scabies, was picked up three weeks ago and spent Christmas and the New Year in a concrete pen at the centre hidden away in the slums of Manila’s Paranaque district which –with grotesque irony – is named House of Hope.

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UNITED STATES
Christian Catholicism

Jerry Slevin

* A UK newspaper, with some help from Nobel Prize nominated Irish priest, Fr. Shay Cullen, an advocate for Manila’s many “street kids”, has shockingly reported, with graphic pictures, that hundreds of boys and girls have been rounded up from doorways and roadsides by officials and put behind bars in recent weeks to make the poverty-racked city more presentable when Pope Francis arrives. Please see the must read article at:

* [Daily Mail]

* The UK article’s “bulletin points” are quite shocking, see:

* “Street children in Manila are being rounded up before the Pope’s arrival”
* “Officials claim it is to stop gangs of beggars targeting the Pope”
* “But critics say it is a cynical move breaching the children’s human rights”
* “MailOnline investigation finds horrendous conditions at the centres”
* “Children forced to sleep on floors and kept with adults who beat them”
* “Some children have been starved and chained to pillars in the centres”
* “One child rounded up 59 times – yet he is still living on the streets”

* The UK article reports that: “Rosalinda Orobia, head of Social Welfare Department in Manila’s central Pasay district, confirmed her officials had for weeks been detaining street children in the areas the Pope will visit and had taken in children as young as five.”

* “Bizarrely, she claimed the operations were aimed at stopping begging syndicates targeting the Pope rather than tidying up the city. ‘They (the syndicates) know the Pope cares about poor kids, and they will take advantage of that,’ she told the Manila Standard newspaper”.

* In an editorial, the Manila newspaper reportedly slammed the official’s remarks, saying: “We should all be scandalized by the government’s artificial campaign to keep the streets free of poor children only for the duration of the papal visit.”

* This is outrageous. The ex-bouncer pope, who knows well the slums of Buenos Aires, does not need to be shielded from the sights of Manila’s “street kids”.

* Pope Francis must promptly demand (1) that officials release these children from jails immediately, (2) that Church, government and business leaders help these children more, and (3) that his bishops stop pumping the high Filipino birthrate by opposing access to affordable and effective contraception options from poor couples that seek it. Otherwise, Pope Francis’ preferential option for the poor is just another pious papal platitude, no?

* Pope Francis has considerable clout in the Philippines, which is over 80% Catholic, unlike the smaller minority Catholic populations in Sri Lanka and South Korea where he recently visited. The Philippines is both the main Vatican outpost in Asia, and a rising regional economic factor, according to colleagues of Francis’ key adviser, Peter Sutherland of Goldman Sachs.

* Asia appears to be Pope Francis’ new frontier and likely also where much of the world’s power and money are heading in the next few decades. Vatican spokesman, the Rev. Federico Lombardi, reportedly recently said, “Asia is one of Francis’ priorities.”

* The Philippine’s wealth, however, is increasingly very unevenly distributed. This is a growing political and social problem that has been exacerbated by the Philippines’ comparatively high birth rate, especially among Catholics, which helps explain the large population of “street kids”.

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MARYLAND
The Baltimore Brew

Bishop Sutton reports colleague’s comforting words about Cook’s fatal hit-and-run crash: “It’s not your fault”

Fern Shen January 13, 2015

With Bishop Heather Cook in a Baltimore jail cell on charges of manslaughter, drunk driving and leaving the scene of an accident, the man who presided during her hiring says he didn’t realize how burdened he was by the incident until “a bishop colleague” spoke with him.

Bishop Eugene Taylor Sutton – Cook’s Episcopal Diocese of Maryland boss, who has acknowledged diocesan officials knew about Cook’s 2010 drunk driving and drug arrest but did not disclose it to the people who elected her – recounted the colleague’s words of solace in a “pastoral letter” published today.

“Eugene, I am the child of an alcoholic and I’ve spent many years dealing with that and coming to understand the hold that alcohol has on someone who is addicted to it,” the colleague said, according to Sutton’s account.

“I want to tell you that the Diocese of Maryland is not responsible for the terrible accident that killed that bicyclist,” the colleague said, according to Sutton’s letter. “You are not responsible for that; Heather Cook is. It’s not your fault.”

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MARYLAND
CBS DC

BALTIMORE — The Episcopal Diocese of Maryland’s top bishop says the church is filled with anger, bitterness and pain after a fatal hit-and-run crash involving the diocese’s No. 2 leader.

In a letter posted online Tuesday, the Right Rev. Eugene Taylor Sutton says “there are still too many questions for which there are no easy answers.”

Sutton says he and diocese leaders will explore what they could have done better and learn to accept what they couldn’t have done better. He says they’ll explore ways to address addiction in the church and how to support the cycling community.

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MARYLAND
The Baltimore Sun

By Jonathan Pitts
The Baltimore Sun

An inquiry by the Episcopal Diocese of Maryland into a fatal hit-and-run crash involving its second highest-ranking official, Bishop Suffragan Heather Elizabeth Cook, will include a reassessment of the process by which Cook was elected to the post last May, according to a letter the church’s No. 1 bishop posted online Tuesday.

The diocese is praying for the family of Thomas Palermo, the 41-year-old bicyclist killed in the Dec. 27 accident, Archbishop Eugene Taylor Sutton wrote, “and we continue to pray for our sister Heather in this time of her tremendous grief and sorrow.” He added that a “disciplinary process is underway to consider consequences for her actions as well as review the process that resulted in her election.”

Sutton wrote that the church is in such pain that “words barely express the depth of [its] shock and despair” and cited Scripture and theologians in an effort to encourage fellow Episcopalians.

Cook, 58, who became the Maryland archdiocese’s first female bishop last May 2, is in jail in lieu of $2.5 million bail. She faces charges of manslaughter, driving under the influence, leaving an accident scene and texting while driving.

A District Court judge, Nicole Pastore Klein, on Monday rejected a request from Cook’s attorneys to lower her bail to $500,000, saying she couldn’t trust Cook’s judgment.

The allegations against Cook show a “reckless and careless indifference to life,” Klein said.

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MARYLAND
The Episcopal Church of Maryland

The Rt. Rev. Eugene Taylor Sutton
January 13, 2015

Dear Brothers and Sisters,

The Diocese of Maryland is in deep pain. Words barely express the depth of our shock and despair over the events and revelations of the past two weeks in the aftermath of the tragic collision involving Bishop Suffragan Heather Cook, which resulted in the death of a cyclist, Thomas Palermo, on Saturday, December 27. She is now in jail, facing charges of manslaughter, leaving the scene of an accident resulting in a death, driving under the influence of alcohol, and texting while driving.

There are still too many questions for which there are no easy answers, and we are filled with anger, bitterness, pain and tears. Our thoughts and prayers remain with the Palermo family in their bereavement and for ourselves as a diocese in mourning. And we continue to pray for our sister Heather in this time of her tremendous grief and sorrow, knowing the Episcopal Church’s “Title IV” disciplinary process is underway to consider consequences for her actions as well as review the process that resulted in her election.

But what now? What do we do with our grief?

I want to share with you five important learnings that are helping me through this time. They became clear to me after recently consulting a spiritual guide and trusted bishop colleagues:

1. We make wiser decisions after a dedicated time of prayer and solitude. Thoughts take time to develop. In a time of great upheaval, things said, decided upon, and done in haste are rarely the most helpful over the long run.

2. Being vulnerable is better than being defensive. In a supportive and eucharistically-grounded community, we can speak the truth in love to one another, confess that we don’t have all the answers, and hear what the Spirit is saying through all of us. We learn not to judge one another (in the sense of “condemnation”). The diocese is the Body of Christ in community and in action. As one spiritual writer has said “Divine closeness is the secret of human vulnerability. We are not vulnerable simply because we are childlike adults in an imperfect world. We are vulnerable because we carry in us a deep strain of God’s caring.”1

3. Trust that the Spirit will provide everything that we need. God has not abandoned us; we are not alone in this moment. The Holy Spirit is the Holy Comforter.

4. Spend some time with French Jesuit priest and philosopher Pierre Teilhard de Chardin’s meditation “Trust in the Slow Work of God” (see below). It reminds us to have patience and not feel that we can simply fix problems on our own.

5. After discussing this tragedy with some of my bishop colleagues for over an hour and being held up in prayer by them, one said, “Eugene, I am the child of an alcoholic and I’ve spent many years dealing with that and coming to understand the hold that alcohol has on someone who is addicted to it. I want to tell you that the Diocese of Maryland is not responsible for the terrible accident that killed that bicyclist. You are not responsible for that; Heather Cook is. It’s not your fault.” I burst into tears. I hadn’t realized how much I had internalized the weight of responsibility for the tragedy, the sense of shame, and the desperate need to make it all better. Later, praying before the Icon of Christ the Pantocrater, I gazed into those piercing eyes of our Lord, asking: What is Christ wanting to say to me? And what did I want to say to him? After what seemed like an eternity, I was finally able to gaze into his eyes and say: “Lord, it’s not your fault.”

My sisters and brothers, we will get through this. We will shed tears, suffer together, explore what we could have done better and learn to accept what we couldn’t have done better. We will pick ourselves up and go on with our ministries in our churches and our mission in the world, including finding ways to support the cycling community and address the problem of addiction in our culture and in our Church.

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MINNESOTA
Canonical Consultation

01/14/2015

Jennifer Haselberger

When I first started working as a canon lawyer for Catholic dioceses, a priest told me that for years bishops and religious superiors had sent letters of introduction (the precursor to Testimonials of Suitability) for offending priests that were typed using double spacing- an indication to the receiving bishop that he should ‘read between the lines’. I was never able to verify if this was true, but the idea has always intrigued me. Indeed, the ability to understand what is not contained in the documentation belonging to a particular priest is, at times, more important than identifying what is. This is an important fact to keep in mind as we anticipate the release of additional files of priests of the Archdiocese of Saint Paul and Minneapolis, and perhaps in particular with the release of the file of Father Joseph Gallatin.

In June of 2014, the Archdiocese of Saint Paul and Minneapolis announced that it would be restricting Father Gallatin’s ministry so that he would not have ‘any role in a parish setting or any other setting in which he will have vocational responsibilities that involve minors’. This decision was the result, according to the Archdiocese, of a ‘1998 action and recent evaluations of Rev. Gallatin’ that the Review Board determined were ‘concerning enough’ to warrant such restrictions.

When and if the Gallatin file is released, we are unlikely to see any of the psychological evaluations of Father Gallatin, and we are also unlikely to see any firsthand reports of what occurred in 1998. The former is, perhaps, appropriate. Father Gallatin, who has not been convicted of any crime, has the same rights as anyone else, including the right to have his private medical information remain confidential. The latter is likely, once again, attributable to negligence on the part of the Archdiocese. I may be wrong about this but I honestly can’t remember seeing a firsthand account of what had transpired in 1998 from the point of view of the victim, or even his name.

If released, what the file will most likely contain are descriptions of what occurred, written in the form of memos, that change both over time and depending on the person writing the report. We may also see some summaries of psychological evaluations and reports, but these again will have been compiled by various individuals and reflect the authors’ interests and biases, rather than being an accurate summation of the conclusions of the person who conducted the evaluation. By now, I hope everyone can agree that such summaries, especially when written by Father Kevin McDonough, are basically worthless. The only value in reading them in this case, as I see it, is for amusement. The extent to which so many adults seem confused about basic human anatomy (shoulder? chest? abdomen?) should at least cause you to chuckle.

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SCHWEIZ
SRF

[One victim told Bishop Charles Morerod of sexual assault and abuse in a former orphanage and boarding school in the Fribourg Broye District. Morerod has ordered an investigation.]

Ein Opfer erzählte Bischof Charles Morerod von sexuellen Übergriffen und Misshandlungen in einem ehemaligen Waisenhaus und Pensionat im freiburgischen Broyebezirk. Morerod hat eine Untersuchung angeordnet.

Zwei externe Experten werden Opfer befragen und die Vorkommnisse historisch aufarbeiten. Es geht um die Zeit zwischen 1930 und 1950 und um das Waisenhaus und Pensionat Marini im Freiburger Broyebezirk. Das Institut ist seit 1979 geschlossen.

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DEUTSCHLAND
idowa

[Detlev Zander is seeking damages for sexual abuse he suffered in a Protestant home.]

Die spektakuläre Klage auf 1,1 Millionen Euro Schmerzensgeld wegen sexuellen Missbrauchs in einem evangelischen Kinderheim wird weiter vorangetrieben. Dies hat Detlev Zander in einem Gespräch mit der Deutschen Presseagentur bestätigt.

Der 53-Jährige, der jetzt in Plattling lebt, ist nach seiner Darstellung als Kind in einem Heim der evangelischen Brüdergemeinde Korntal (Kreis Ludwigsburg) sexuell missbraucht, misshandelt und gedemütigt worden.

In den nächsten Tagen soll es ein Treffen mit Beauftragten der Brüdergemeinde geben. Diese hofft, dass die Klage noch zurückgezogen wird. “Das wäre ein Aderlass, der nicht zu verkraften wäre”, sagt der Sprecher der Brüdergemeinde, Manuel Liesenfeld, über die Summe. Die Vorwürfe Zanders weist er grundsätzlich nicht zurück.

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SLOVAKIA
Heute

[Indignation because of mild sentence for pedophile priest]

Der Fall, der die römisch-katholische Kirche erschütterte, war 2013 aufgeflogen, nachdem die Mutter des Opfers ein Tagebuch gefunden hatte, in dem die Schülerin detailliert beschrieb, wie sie vom Pfarrer der Kleingemeinde Nevidzany missbraucht worden war. Demnach hatte der Geistliche die damals Elfjährige zwischen November 2011 und August 2012 mit verliebten SMS-Nachrichten wiederholt in die Kirche oder ins Pfarrhaus gelockt und dort geküsst und im Intimbereich gestreichelt. Vor Gericht versicherte der 49-Jährige wiederholt, er sei unschuldig, die Richterin sah aber anhand von Expertengutachten und Zeugenaussagen seine Schuld als eindeutig erwiesen.

Das milde Urteil sei ein äußerst schlechtes Signal an die Öffentlichkeit, zitierte die linksliberale Tageszeitung Pravda am Mittwoch die Rechtsexpertin Janka Debreceniova. Das Gericht habe trotz des minderjährigen Opfers zu einer absoluten Minimalstrafe gegriffen, obwohl es sich bei dem Täter um eine Person handelte, die ihre Macht ausnutzte und zudem eine Institution repräsentierte, die in der Gesellschaft als moralische Autorität gesehen werde. Das würde ein Gefühl der Kränkung des Opfers und seiner Familie nur noch stärken, erklärte die Rechtsexpertin.

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SOUTH DAKOTA
KDLT

by Associated Press
January 09, 2015

A new homeless shelter opens Monday in Sioux falls.

The Bishop Dudley Hospitality House will provide overnight emergency shelter for men, women and families and daytime services currently provided at the Good Shepherd Center. It will also offer other services from existing service providers using a hub of offices at the new facility.

More than $4.8 million has been raised for construction and the initial operating support for the ministry.

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SOUTH DAKOTA
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests

For immediate release: Wednesday, Jan. 14

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

Monday, in an act of stunning insensitivity, a South Dakota bishop dedicated a building to his predecessor who was accused of molesting three children.

Sioux Falls Bishop Paul J. Swain led a public ceremony to name dedicated a homeless shelter after the now-deceased Bishop Paul V. Dudley, who alleged sexually abused in the St. Paul archdiocese.

[KDLT]

[sfcatholic.org]

In 1999, a woman accused Dudley of having molested her in the 1970s. In 2002, a man accused Dudley of having fondled him as a boy in the 1950s. And later in 2002, a second woman charged Dudley with behaving inapropriately toward her in the 1960s.

Church officials claim a so-called church “investigation” could not substantiate any of the accusations

Because of archaic, predator-friendly statutes of limitations and deeply wounded, shame-filled victims, it’s likely no one will ever know the full truth of the allegations against Bishop Dudley. Even so, here’s what matters now:

It usually takes victims of childhood horror decades to find the courage and strength to speak up. So it’s very possible that in the months and years ahead, more who say they were assaulted by Bishop Dudley may speak up.

And often, so-called “church investigations” that purportedly “exonerate” accused clerics end up being reversed when other victims, witnesses or whistleblowers come forward later.

So why take the risk of hurting even more those who are already in pain, or of discouraging other child sex abuse victims from reporting child molesting clerics who may still be molesting kids now?

Adults have a simple choice: We can act in ways that make it harder or easier for victims to protect children by exposing predators. Sioux Falls Catholic officials are making it harder.

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NEBRASKA
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests

For immediate release: Wednesday, Jan. 14

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

Soon the Vatican will appoint a new bishop for the Grand Island diocese in Nebraska.

[Omaha.com]

Children’s safety should be his top priority. We urge him to disclose the names, whereabouts and work histories of any cleric who is a proven, admitted or credibly accused predator and to permanently and prominently post this information on his diocesan and parish websites.

In the past, Western Nebraska Catholic officials have claimed there have been no predator priests in their diocese. We find that extremely hard to believe. We strongly urge anyone who may have seen, suspected or suffered clergy sex crimes or misdeeds – as an adult or a child – to get help, call police, expose wrongdoers, protect others, deter cover-ups and start healing.

Look at other dioceses in the area. There are three publicly accused Lincoln diocese predator priests (Fr. Robert C. Hrdlicka, Fr. Paul Margand and Fr. Jerome C. Murray) and 13 such clerics in the Omaha Archdiocese (Fr. Robert Allgaier, Fr. Richard Colbert, Fr. Franklin “Frank” A. Dvorak, Fr. John M. Fiala, Fr. Daniel P. Herek, Fr. Jay L. Kruse, Fr. Duane W. Lukes (Lucas), Fr. Anthony Palmese, Fr. Charles Potocki, Fr. Anthony Petrusic, Fr. Alfred J. Salanitro, Fr. Thomas P. Sellentin, and Fr. John C. Starostka). Two of them – Fr. Palmese and Fr. Potocki – were just “outed” for the first time in November. http://www.snapnetwork.org/ne_advisory

Neighboring dioceses include Denver (with 16 publicly accused priests), Cheyenne (with two) and Rapid City South Dakota (with eight).

We strongly suspect that at least a few of these clerics spent time in Grand Island diocese, even if just “filling in” briefly for a brother priest who was sick or on vacation. And if so, the new Grand Island bishop should use his resources – parish bulletins, church websites, pulpit announcements and personal visits – to beg anyone with information or suspicions about him or them to step forward. It takes just seconds for a child molester to shove his tongue in a girl’s mouth or down a boy’s pants. So why not err on the side of caution and aggressively seek out anyone who might have been sexually assaulted by a priest, nun, brother, seminarian or other church employee and who may still be suffering in shame, silence and self-blame?

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OREGON
Oregonian

By Rick Bella | The Oregonian/OregonLive
on January 14, 2015

In February, a Happy Valley pastor goes to trial in a criminal case more than 18 years in the making.

That’s how long seven women have lived in frustration and anger that the pastor wasn’t charged after they told police that he sexually abused them in the 1990s.

But now, prosecutors have taken a second look at the complaints. And based on new allegations by one of the women, they are bringing felony sexual-abuse charges against Mike Sperou, charismatic pastor of a small, under-the-radar church community that lives and worships together in a network of rented homes in Portland and Happy Valley.

The seven women – who ranged in age from 11 to 16 at the time of the alleged abuse – and other former church members said Sperou claims deep emotional scars from childhood traumas and the Vietnam War. They said the church, originally called the Southeast Bible Church, seemed to start with good intentions. But they said the church evolved into a cult-like organization that dissolved family bonds as Sperou sank into heavy drinking, drug use, adultery and sexual abuse of children.

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NEW YORK
The Jewish Week

Wed, 01/14/2015
Rabbi Chaim Gruber
Special To The Jewish Week

On the third night of this past Chanukah, attorney Kevin Mulhearn sent a draft of a complaint against Yeshiva University High School for Boys to a group of plaintiffs who say they had been sexually abused as students.

The complaint will be filed in Manhattan Supreme Court. Mulhearn is attempting to find some legal remedy at the state level after legal action at the federal level did not succeed for these plaintiffs. (I am not one of the plaintiffs, although I left the school after one year due to alleged physical abuse.)

But, is it in the best interest of the Jewish world and all those personally involved in this case that more mass media reports come forward over the next number of years about this scandal? Wouldn’t the best remedy be an expedient out-of-court settlement so to finally lay this matter to rest? (That Yeshiva University should settle out of court was also the advice of Jewish Week editor Gary Rosenblatt, a graduate of YU, in his column “The YU Impasse,” Between The Lines, July 17, 2013.)

In the much publicized Twersky, et al., vs. Yeshiva University, et al. sexual abuse case that was in the federal courts for the past year and a half (also pleaded by Mulhearn), while YU has publicly admitted its guilt, the court ruled that the plaintiffs were past their maximum allowable time to file a legal suit according to the statute of limitations. However, it is important to recognize that according to the Jewish system of law that YU is meant to promote, the statute of limitations had not passed because there is no statute of limitations in Jewish law. One reason why there is no statute of limitations is because Jewish law is meant to reflect non-arbitrary divine law, which, as will be explained, has no statute of limitations.

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UNITED KINGDOM
Yorkshire Post

Flowers have been laid in Westminster to commemorate the victims of child abuse – described by one survivor as the “forgotten people”.

The WhiteFlowers Campaign is calling on the Home Office to declare a statutory inquiry focusing on organised and institutional child abuse from 1945, linking with other inquiries across the UK. Among those laying flowers at Old Palace Yard, next to the Houses of Parliament, were survivors and MPs.

The group of about 40 people laid a variety of flowers among pictures of victims before a meeting in Parliament to discuss the inquiry and to call for more to be done to help survivors achieve justice.

MPs John Mann, Simon Danczuk and Sarah Champion joined the victims, including 58-year-old Jenny Tomlin, mother of former Eastenders star Martine McCutcheon.

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UNITED KINGDOM
The Guardian

Sandra Laville
Wednesday 14 January 2015

Samantha Morton, the actor who has spoken of being abused, has sent a message of support to hundreds of abuse survivors meeting on Wednesday.

Morton said: “We will not forget, we will not be forgotten. The abuse we suffered is happening right now to a child desperately in need of rescuing.

“We come together to stop abuse so the perpetrators of this horrific crime can be brought to justice. I keep peace in my heart which I will share with you all.”

Hundreds of survivors of child abuse crowded into a Commons committee room to debate how the government’s child abuse inquiry should be conducted.

John Mann, MP for Bassetlaw, called on survivors of child abuse to speak with one voice as they demand changes to an inquiry set up by Theresa May, or risk the collapse of the whole process.

The home secretary has said three options are being considered for a new statutory inquiry, only one of which involves maintaining the original panel. Mann, a Labour MP, said that unless there was unity, there was a risk that the inquiry would not take place.

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NEDERLAND
KerkNet

[The total income of 895 parishes in the Netheralands fell in 2013 compared to the previous year. ]

HILVERSUM (KerkNet/RKK.nl) – De totale inkomsten van 895 rooms-katholieke parochies in Nederland daalden in 2013 ten opzichte van het jaar daarvoor met 3,2%. Dat is vandaag bekendgemaakt bij het begin van de jaarlijkse interkerkelijke geldinzamelingsactie ‘Kerkbalans’. Inkomsten van Nederlandse parochies bestaan voor 63% uit inkomsten ‘levend geld’, met een optelling van de bijdragen aan Kerkbalans, de collecten en vergoedingen voor kerkelijke diensten. De overige inkomsten (37 procent) zijn afkomstig uit bezittingen en beleggingen.

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MINNESOTA
Jeff Anderson & Associates

The files of six priests with allegations of sexually abusing minors or inappropriate behavior with minors in the Archdiocese of Saint Paul and Minneapolis were publicly released on January 14, 2015.

This disclosure of files was agreed upon as part of the settlement of the Doe 1 civil lawsuit in October 2014.

The list of files released today includes the following priests: Joseph Gallatin; James Murphy; Thaddeus Posey; Raymond Prybis; William Stolzman; and Mark Wehmann.

James Murphy File
James Murphy Timeline
James Murphy Key Documents

Joseph Gallatin File
Joseph Gallatin Timeline
Joseph Gallatin Key Documents

Mark Wehmann File
Mark Wehmann Timeline
Mark Wehmann Key Documents

Raymond Prybis File
Raymond Prybis Timeline

Thaddeus Posey File
Thaddeus Posey Timeline

William Stolzman File
William Stolzman Timeline

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NORTHERN IRELAND
Belfast Telegraph

BY LIAM CLARKE – 14 JANUARY 2015

Security witnesses who give evidence to the Historical Institutional Abuse Inquiry will not face prosecution, it can be revealed.

The inquiry said it had received a letter of assurance from the Attorney General in London after yesterday’s Belfast Telegraph revealed Sir Anthony Hart’s probe into abuse had not contacted three potentially key witnesses.

They include former Army officer Colin Wallace, who was involved in black propaganda during the Troubles.

But after he raised concerns with his superiors about the sexual abuse of boys at the notorious east Belfast home, Kincora, he was convicted of the manslaughter of a friend, before later being cleared and compensated.

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News Release
January 13, 2015

Doe 29 Lawsuit Names Boy Scouts of America, Northern Star Council, River Hills United Methodist Church and Scoutmaster Peter Stibal

Systemic Failure of Boy Scouts, Council and Church to Act on Red Flags Regarding Stibal’s Danger to Boys; Perversion Files Demonstrate Their Knowledge of Risk

(St. Paul, MN) – A civil lawsuit was filed today in Ramsey County by a former Boy Scout who was sexually abused by his Scoutmaster, Peter Stibal. The lawsuit names Boy Scouts of America (BSA), Northern Star Council, River Hills United Methodist Church – the troop’s chartering organization – and Stibal.

BSA has a longstanding pattern of knowledge of the risk of sexual abuse by its scoutmasters, as BSA keeps ineligible volunteer files specific to sexual abuse, labeled as “perversion files” by BSA. An earlier case brought against the same defendants involving Stibal in Ramsey County was settled in May 2014 right before trial. Stibal’s dangerous tendencies around scouts were made known to the scout leaders up the line, including violations of existing rules and policies designed to keep scouts safe. “There is evidence of systemic failure by BSA to deny and minimize red flags that were received by those up the line at BSA regarding the danger Stibal posed to Scouts,” said Jeff Anderson, attorney for Doe 29. “For decades, BSA has kept its perversion files, which provide countless examples of sexual misconduct and red flags by adult leaders, yet they have continued to ignore these red flags. Doe 29 and many other Boy Scouts have been damaged as a result.”

The perversion files were released to the public for the first time in a landmark case in Oregon in October 2012. In that case, more than 1,200 perversion files from 1965-1985 were made public by order of the Oregon Supreme Court. In the case settled in Ramsey County in May 2014, the Court ordered the production of perversion files for the years 1998-2008. Most recently, in a case set for trial in Santa Barbara, California, the Court ordered production of BSA’s perversion files from 1991-2007: http://www.latimes.com/local/california/la-me-boy-scouts-20150110-story.html “The existence of thousands of perversion files demonstrates BSA’s longstanding practice of shrouding sexual abuse by its adult leaders in secrecy,” Anderson said.

Doe 29 Amended Complaint

Contact: Jeff Anderson: Office/651.583.7633 Cell/612.817.8665
Sarah Odegaard: Office/651.583.7633 Cell/612.616.4218

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CITTA’ DEL VATICANO
Bolletino

Il Santo Padre Francesco ha accettato la rinuncia al governo pastorale della diocesi di Grand Island (U.S.A.), presentata da S.E. Mons. William J. Dendinger, in conformità al can. 401 § 1 del Codice di Diritto Canonico.

Il Papa ha nominato Vescovo di Grand Island (U.S.A.) Mons. Joseph G. Hanefeldt, del clero dell’arcidiocesi di Omaha, finora Parroco della “Christ the King Parish” ad Omaha.

Mons. Joseph G. Hanefeldt

Mons. Joseph G. Hanefeldt è nato il 25 aprile 1958 a Creighton (Nebraska), nell’arcidiocesi di Omaha. Dopo aver frequentato la scuola elementare “Saint Ludgar” e la “Creighton Community High School”, ha svolto gli studi filosofici presso il “Saint John Vianney Seminary” e la “University of Saint Thomas” a Saint Paul (Minnesota) (1976-1980). Successivamente, ha frequentato il Pontificio Collegio Americano del Nord a Roma (1980-1984), ottenendo il Baccalaureato in Teologia presso la Pontificia Università Gregoriana (1983) e il Diploma in Teologia Sacramentale presso il Pontificio Ateneo di Sant’Anselmo (1984).

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NEBRASKA
Omaha World-Herald

SATURDAY, JANUARY 10, 2015

By Harold Reutter / World-Herald News Service

GRAND ISLAND, Neb. — A new bishop will be named next week to replace Bishop William J. Dendinger, 75, the seventh bishop of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Grand Island.

The bishop’s name will be announced during a press conference at 10 a.m. Wednesday at St. Mary’s Cathedral Square.

Dendinger has served as bishop of the Grand Island Diocese since Oct. 14, 2004. Church law requires bishops to submit a letter of retirement at age 75.

Dendinger, a native of Coleridge, was ordained a priest on May 29, 1965, for the Archdiocese of Omaha. He then taught at high schools in Petersburg and Elgin from 1965 to 1970.

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UNITED KINGDOM
Western Morning News

A former press chief for the Bishop of Truro has been charged with sexual offences against children.

Jeremy Dowling, 76, of Church Path, Bude, is due to appear before Bodmin magistrates on January 22.

He faces 15 charges of sexual assault against children aged under 16.

Mr Dowling retired as communications officer for the Truro Diocese in 2009, having worked for several bishops over the previous 25 years.

He was also a governor at Budehaven School for 18 years, before stepping down in 2013.

The Diocese of Truro said it was “deeply concerned” about the charges, which are thought to predate Mr Dowling’s time working for the Church of England.

“Clearly this is now a matter for the courts and the diocese will not comment on the case until legal proceedings are concluded,” a spokesman said.

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SCOTLAND
Catholic News Agency

By Matt Hadro

Edinburgh, Scotland, Jan 13, 2015 / 05:18 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- Following the 2013 resignation of Cardinal Keith O’Brien as Archbishop of St. Andrews and Edinburgh, his successor acknowledges the healing process for the diocese is continuing by God’s grace, but will take time.

“Time is a great healer, and that is certainly helping us. But there is also the grace of God assisting us in moving on from any difficulties we might have had in the past,” Archbishop Leo Cushley of St. Andrews and Edinburgh told CNA in an interview on Monday.

His predecessor resigned shortly before the 2013 conclave that elected Pope Francis, amid allegations that he made inappropriate sexual advances toward three priests in the 1980s. The cardinal later admitted the allegations to be true.

The new archbishop had a heavy burden ahead of him but promised “reconciliation and healing” for the archdiocese, and acknowledged the healing process is a “delicate” one.

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MASSACHUSETTS
Boston Globe

By Travis Andersen
GLOBE STAFF JANUARY 14, 2015

A worker at a Catholic school in Revere has been placed on leave, and the parish pastor and two school employees have resigned after failing to promptly report possible indecent exposure by the worker in a boys bathroom, the Archdiocese of Boston said.

The archdiocese said in a statement on Tuesday that three incidents of “potential indecent exposure” occurred in a bathroom intended for the exclusive use of students at the Immaculate Conception School over the last month and a half, during regular school hours.

The pastor, principal, and one teacher at the school, which serves students in prekindergarten through Grade 8, have resigned their positions for failing to “report these possible incidents in a timely manner,” church officials said.

Terrence C. Donilon, a spokesman for the archdiocese, declined to identify the suspended worker or the employees who resigned. He also would not say what job the suspended employee performs.

The pastor and principal are identified on the parish and school websites as the Rev. George Szal and Alison Kelly. They could not be reached for comment.

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UNITED KINGDOM
East Grinstead Courier

A WOMAN claiming to be a victim of an ex-vicar convicted of child sex offences says she is shocked he is still able to attend church in East Grinstead and use the title “Reverend”.

Guy Bennett was jailed in 1999 for indecently assaulting three young girls in his care.

The offences involved 11-year-old victims between 1976 and 1988 while he was a teacher at St Mary’s School in Oxted.

But the Archbishop of Canterbury has admitted in a letter he is powerless to prevent him from referring to himself as “Reverend” or wearing a clerical collar.

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INDIA
Daijiworld

From Our Special Correspondent
Daijiworld Media Network

Bengaluru, Jan 14: The suspension of the Bangalore Archdiocesan priest Simon Bartholomeo by Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF) in barring the priest from exercising “the priestly ministry in public,’’ turns to be a far grave Canonical offence as the girl, whom he was accused of raping and impregnating and helped in her getting an abortion, was a minor when the alleged offence took place.

The priest was acquitted by Tumkur’s Second Additional District and Sessions Court, as all the seven prosecution witnesses including the victim, her parents and grandmother had turned“hostile’’ and the prosecution was unable to “prove beyond a reasonable doubt’’ that accused had “intercourse with (the victim) forcibly’’ and had “intercourse from time to time by (falsely) promising to marry her’’ and had “committed criminal intimidation of murdering (the victim) if she tells about him and asking her to put the blame on somebody else.’’

Thus, in the eyes of the civil court, which tried the case under Sections 376, 507 and 417 of Indian Penal Code and delivered the judgement on June 17, 2010, the accused was acquitted of the charge brought against him. The court held that the prosecution had failed to establish following the seven witnesses, including the victim and her parents, turning hostile that the “accused had committed rape forcibly and against her consent and continued to have intercourse with her, with a promise to marrying her and the consequent pregnancy and the prosecution has failed to prove even the criminal intimidation alleged.’’

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AUSTRALIA
Broken Rites

By a Broken Rites researcher (article posted 14 January 2015)

A member of the Marist Brothers in Australia (Brother Donald Gabriel Brodie NEWTON) has died, in an apparent suicide, just after New South Wales police received child-sex allegations against him from a former schoolboy. Therefore, now that he is dead, Brother Newton will not have to face any police investigation (or any court case) arising from the ex-pupil’s allegations.

* In August 2014, a man from the Hunter region (around Maitland and Newcastle, north of Sydney) made a statement to detectives in the New South Wales police, alleging that while he was a student at Maitland Marist Brothers school in the late 1970s he was sexually abused by Marist Brother Don Newton during a camping trip. These allegations were also notified to Marist Brothers headquarters in Sydney and to the office of the Maitland-Newcastle Catholic diocese. The allegations were also put to Brother Newton.

* On 5 October 2014, Brother Don Newton, 74, died suddenly in violent circumstances on a suburban railway track in Sydney.

The NSW Coroner’s Office confirmed Brother Newton’s death, but said that a formal cause of death would not be determined until investigations had been finalised.

Donald Newton had spent 56 years as a Marist Brother, working in various Marist schools in New South Wales, Queensland and Canberra.

He first met the Marist Brothers when he was a primary-school pupil. For secondary schooling, he was a boarder with the Marists at St Joseph’s College Hunteres Hill, Sydney. During his secondary schooling, he was recruited by the Marists as a future Brother. He officially became a Marist Brother at the age of 18.

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AUSTRALIA
Newcastle Herald

By Joanne McCarthy Jan. 14, 2015

AUSTRALIA’S leading child abuse organisation has supported a Hunter group’s push for an investigation into possible links between convicted and alleged child sex offenders and the suicides of more than 30 Hunter boys, teenagers and men.

Adults Surviving Child Abuse (ASCA) president Dr Cathy Kezelman said it was vital because ‘‘when you’re looking at including the voices of people impacted by child sexual abuse the voices of those who have not survived are harder to hear, but they’re very significant voices’’.

‘‘What is a more profound repercussion of the crime than someone losing their life?’’ Dr Kezelman said.

ASCA supported the Hunter group’s submission to the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse, for the families of those who had already died, and to help prevent further suicides.

She agreed with Hunter group spokesman Bob O’Toole, who said many devastated families had been silenced in the past because of the sudden, shocking and unexplained deaths of family members, often after troubling behaviour.

‘‘The link between child sexual abuse and the risk of suicide is well established with a 2008 Australian study showing the rate of suicide for child sexual abuse survivors was 18 times higher than that of people who have not experienced child sexual assault,” Dr Kezelman said.

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FLORIDA
News-Journal

By Frank Fernandez
frank.fernandez@news-jrnl.com
Published: Monday, January 12, 2015
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A mother learned her son was being sexually molested and exploited by the former summer camp director at Warner Christian Academy when FBI agents visited her home with pictures of the abuse, according to a lawsuit filed in circuit court in Volusia County.

The lawsuit is the most recent of three filed so far by parents of boys against White Chapel Church of God, which runs Warner Christian Academy in South Daytona, following former teacher and summer camp director Matthew Graziotti’s guilty pleas to federal child- porn charges.

The sexual exploitation and molestation of the boy began in the summer of 2012 and continued through the summer of 2014, according to the lawsuit filed by attorney Kevin Bledsoe. Warner Christian failed to adequately check Graziotti’s background and failed “to investigate unusual and suspicious activities of Matthew Graziotti which were red flags that he was grooming children for potential sexual abuse,” according to the lawsuit. The suit does not detail the red flags and identifies the boy and his mother only by the pseudonyms of Richard Roe and Robin Roe.

The school had no indication there was a problem, Mark Tress, the superintendent of Warner Christian Academy, said in a phone interview. Tress said no parent ever complained of any inappropriate behavior on the part of Graziotti.

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UNITED STATES
National Catholic Register

by JOAN FRAWLEY DESMOND 01/13/2015

CHICAGO — Last November, a Boston Globe story examined the Society of Jesus’ past failure to restrict the activities of a high-profile Jesuit with a string of complaints about his contact with boys.

According to papers filed in legal proceedings and cited by the Globe, Jesuit Father Donald McGuire repeatedly violated his superior’s order that he avoid traveling with minors and was ultimately convicted in federal court of sexually abusing two boys. He is now serving a 25-year sentence.

Much has changed since McGuire was convicted and laicized almost a decade ago. In the wake of the 2002 clergy-abuse crisis and the U.S. bishops’ approval of the “Charter for the Protection of Children and Young People,” religious orders have also implemented zero-tolerance policies for members with substantiated accusations of child sexual abuse, and they have established safe-environment training and lay review boards.

But unlike U.S. dioceses, religious orders allow some members with substantiated allegations to remain in community, with restrictions — known as “safety plans” — based on the seriousness of the offense and on related evaluations.

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MISSOURI
St. Louis Post-Dispatch

By Nicholas J.C. Pistor

ST. LOUIS • The man whose voice has thundered across City Hall from Room 200 for more than a decade soon will leave his post.

Operating out of an office next to Mayor Francis Slay, Jeff Rainford has battled adversaries, cajoled business leaders, debated reporters, enforced Slay’s agenda and fundamentally changed city government. Early next month, he will officially resign the chief of staff position he has held since 2001, he said.

Rainford, a former television reporter, leaves a legacy as one of the city’s most effective staff leaders. Along the way, he became known as a fierce, unflinching defender of Slay, always ready to go to the mat to keep the administration’s policies on track. His brash personality has drawn praise and criticism. …

In 1993, Rainford drew controversy when he and another reporter worked on a story that involved using a male prostitute to secretly record a Belleville-area priest with hopes of getting him to reveal details about sexual misconduct. At the time, the Belleville Diocese was rocked by a child sex abuse scandal.

The story never aired. Rainford left KMOV later that year when his contract with the station expired.

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UNITED KINGDOM
Mirror

Jan 13, 2015 By Becky, abuse survivor

Dear Home Secretary

I am one of the 70 survivors who met the panel for your inquiry into historic child sex abuse.

I was sceptical about whether they would be able to help victims like me, but after spending time with them, for the first time since I was abused more than 30 years ago, I started to feel real hope that our voices would be heard.

Now it seems certain that you will disband the panel, possibly as soon as this week – and the betrayal is devastating.

I was molested from the age of three or four by my biological father.

On my sixth birthday I became a “big girl” and was raped by him for the first time. By the end of that year I had been introduced to what I now am aware was a faith-related paedophile ring. On Christmas Eve, still at the age of six, I was subjected to the first of many multiple rapes.

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