ABUSE TRACKER

A digest of links to media coverage of clergy abuse. For recent coverage listed in this blog, read the full article in the newspaper or other media source by clicking “Read original article.” For earlier coverage, click the title to read the original article.

February 4, 2015

Rabbi Moshe Gutnick tells Royal Commission into child sex abuse that ‘Jews must report sex abu

AUSTRALIA
The Age

February 5, 2015

Jane Lee

One of Australia’s most senior Orthodox rabbis says Jewish people have an obligation to report sexual abuse, and that the prohibition against informing against other Jews to secular authorities does not apply to child sexual abuse.

Rabbi Moshe Gutnick spoke out against the ultra Orthodox Chabad community’s treatment of victims and cover-up of past crimes at the royal commission into child sexual abuse on Wednesday.

“I believe it is an absolute religious obligation to report any allegations of child sexual abuse as quickly as possible to the appropriate authorities and to suggest there is some religious obligation not to do so is an abomination,” he said.

Victims of former Yeshivah Centre employees David Cyprys, Daniel Hayman and David Kramer have told the commission that senior rabbis have labelled them “mosars”, or informers, for breaching the prohibition of mersirah, which they said prevented other victims coming forward.

Rabbi Gutnick called the treatment – which has led to some, including Manny Waks and his father Zephaniah, feeling forced to leave Australia – a “tragedy”.

“I believe the cover-ups and bullying and intimidation that has gone on … represents the antithesis of the teachings of Chabad and Judaism and orthodoxy,” he said.

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.

Jewish community in shock over rabbi’s condemnation of child abuse cover-up

AUSTRALIA
The Guardian

Melissa Davey
@MelissaLDavey
Wednesday 4 February 2015

The testimony of a senior orthodox Jewish rabbi condemning the response of orthodox Yeshivah centres to child sexual abuse has sent shockwaves through the community, victims say.

On Wednesday Rabbi Moshe Gutnick, a senior judge of the Sydney Beth Din rabbinical court, told the royal commission into institutional responses to child sexual abuse a “culture of cover-up, often couched in religious terms” had pervaded the thinking of the centres in Sydney and Melbourne.

Manny Waks, who was abused by staff at the Melbourne Yeshivah Centre, told Guardian Australia he was left “speechless” by Gutnick’s statement to the commission that a senior religious figure, Rabbi Boruch Lesches, knew about abuse but did not report it.

Gutnick told the commission: “I’m prepared to say that Rabbi Lesches lied when he said that he didn’t know about the abuse by convicted child abuser Daniel ‘Gug’ Hayman.”

Waks said Gutnick’s testimony was “empowering and profound” and had deeply affected victims.

“I don’t think people quite understand the impact of Gutnick’s statement within the orthodox Jewish community, and even the broader Jewish community,” Waks said.

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.

Home secretary faces backlash over Kincora

NORTHERN IRELAND
News Letter

Home Secretary Theresa May has faced a backlash after announcing that the Kincora child sex abuse scandal will not be probed as part of a UK-wide inquiry.

Ms May told the House of Commons on Wednesday that the Westminster-led inquiry will be confined to England and Wales and will not probe the east Belfast home where three staff were jailed in 1981 for child abuse.

Northern Ireland politicians and campaigners have repeatedly called for Kincora to be included in the Westminster probe.

“But Mrs May responded yesterday that Kincora was already being probed by the Historical Institutional Abuse (HIA) inquiry in Banbridge, which is examining abuse in Northern Ireland institutions from 1922 to 1995.

The home secretary told the Commons that there were “good reasons for confining the inquiry’s scope to England and Wales”.

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.

Bishop Cook indicted on vehicular homicide, drunken driving, other charges

MARYLAND
The Baltimore Sun

By Colin Campbell
The Baltimore Sun

Episcopal Bishop Heather Elizabeth Cook was indicted on 13 charges Wednesday in the death December of cyclist Thomas Palermo in North Roland Park, the Baltimore state’s attorney’s office announced.

Cook, 58, the second-ranking official in the Episcopal Diocese of Maryland, is accused of striking Palermo on Dec. 27 with her car as she was texting and driving drunk. The charges include automobile manslaughter, driving under the influence of alcohol and leaving the scene of an accident.

The indictment came nearly a month after State’s Attorney Marilyn J. Mosby announced charges against Cook. Cook has been free on bail while awaiting trial; she is scheduled for arraignment March 5.

Authorities say Palermo, 41, was riding in the bicycle lane on Roland Avenue when he was struck. Witnesses said Cook initially left the scene before returning. Police said she registered a 0.22 percent blood-alcohol content level.

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.

Office of the Bishop

CONNECTICUT
Roman Catholic Diocese of Bridgeport

January 31, 2015

Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ,

It is my very sad duty to inform you that I have put Father Stephen DeLuca on administrative leave and have removed his faculties to exercise any and all forms of public ministry as a priest.

My decision was made after I determined, with the assistance of the Diocesan Review Board for Sexual Misconduct, that there is credible evidence of an incident of child abuse on the part of Father DeLuca more than 30 years ago.

I want to be entirely clear that the diocese did not learn of this allegation until recently, well after Father DeLuca retired on June 30, 2014. In accordance with both state reporting mandates and the Charter for the Protection of Children and Young People, we notified both the police and the Connecticut Department of Children and Families (DCF) immediately. Given the information a vailable and the significant time which had passed, neither the police nor DCF took further action. As required by the Charter, the Diocese immediately initiated its own investigation into the allegation. As a result of this extensive and deliberative inquiry, which included the use of outside investigative resources, the allegation was ultimately judged to be credible. Please be assured that all available measures to fairly and thoroughly investigate the allegations were taken while protecting the privacy of the victim.

As a result and in accordance with the Charter, Father DeLuca will no longer reside at St. Catherine and is prohibited from any future ministry. Parish leadership where Father DeLuca served was notified of my action in advance of this letter. We have taken steps to work with Father DeLuca in this transition, and the services of our diocesan clergy counselor have been made available to him.

Diocesan personnel will also be on hand as a resource to the parishes in which he served in the coming days.

It is important to note that, other than this reported incident, we are not aware of any other victim that has come forward with an allegation of misconduct by Father DeLuca in any of his previous assignments.

In order to protect the privacy of the victim, we cannot provide further details other than to say the diocese has reached out to the victim and the victim’s family and offered assistance to promote healing. I realize that this is distressing news for you and it further wounds the diocese and our Church as a family of faith. I can only reassure you that we remain committed to a zero tolerance policy for child abuse and total transparency in the handling of cases. It is for that reason that you are hearing of this news directly from me.

As you may know, on November 30, 2014, I re-promulgated all diocesan Safe Environments policies and practices that are integral to our work as a Church. These policies improve on the good work one over the past decade by redoubling our effort to protect our children and incorporate best practices from across the country.

I ask your prayers for all involved and pledge that the diocese will continue to do everything in its power to fulfill the sacred obligation we share to protect children, youth and vulnerable adults in our community.

Sincerely yours in Christ,
Most Reverend Frank J. Caggiano,
Bishop of Bridgeport

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.

Former St. Agnes Pastor Suspended from Bridgeport Diocese …

CONNECTICUT
Greenwich Free Press

Former St. Agnes Pastor Suspended from Bridgeport Diocese after “Credible” Child Abuse Evidence

A letter penned by Reverend Frank Caggiano, Bishop of Bridgeport, dated Jan. 31, 2015, advised diocese members that Father DeLuca, formerly a priest at St. Agnes Church at 247 Stanwich Road, has been put on administrative leave following “credible evidence of an incident of child abuse on the part of Father DeLuca more than 30 years ago.”

Father DeLuca was appointed pastor of St. Agnes Parish in August, 1984, a position he held until June 2006. St. Agnes Parish was founded in September 1963 from the established parishes of St. Catherine’s and St. Mary’s.

In the letter from the office of the Bishop at 238 Jewett Ave in Bridgeport, Caggiano said that the diocese did not learn of the allegation until recently, well after Father DeLuca retired on June 30, 2014. The letter states that the diocese was contacted by police and DCF, but that, given the “significant time which had passed,” neither the police nor DCF took action.

The letter further goes on to state that after extensive and deliberative inquiry which included use of outside investigative resources, the allegation was ultimately judged credible and as a result, Father DeLuca will no longer reside at St. Catherine and is prohibited from any future ministry.

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.

Priest with strong Greenwich ties suspended for sexual abuse

CONNECTICUT
Greenwich Time

Ken Borsuk
Updated 9:40 pm, Wednesday, February 4, 2015

The Bridgeport Diocese has suspended a priest with longstanding ties to Greenwich for an alleged incident of child abuse.

Bishop Frank Caggiano released a letter late Wednesday afternoon informing diocese members that there was “credible evidence” that Stephen DeLuca committed one incident of child abuse more than 30 years ago.

DeLuca had been serving as priest in residence at St. Catherine of Siena Church in Riverside and was currently the chaplain at Greenwich Hospital. Before that he had served as pastor of St. Agnes Church in Cos Cob for many years.

The bishop placed DeLuca on administrative leave and ruled that he was no longer allowed to live at St. Catherine or work as a priest. Details about the incident were not released but a diocese spokesman said it did not take place in Greenwich.

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.

VATICAN ENTANGLED IN WOMEN’S ISSUES

UNITED STATES
Religion Dispatches

Patricia Miller

Pope Francis has promised to lift up women’s voices and create more meaningful roles for women in the church, but if the Vatican’s latest bumbling effort to do so is any indication, it might be better for the pope to just say something else cute about puppies or bunnies.

At its three-day annual meeting beginning today the Vatican’s Pontifical Council for Culture will be discussing “Women’s Culture: Equality and Difference.” As the title suggests, the meeting is less an attempt to advance the status of women in the church by giving them access to any real authority—which would necessitate admitting women to the priesthood—and more an effort to burnish the church’s tarnished reputation with women while holding fast to its “complementarian” views.

The effort started off disastrously when the Vatican created a widely derided video featuring a sexy blonde Italian actress rather vampishly soliciting short videos from women to be part of a “great meeting of cardinals and bishops in Rome” to discuss their lives—without them.

While the Vatican notes that a panel of women had a hand in drafting the conference document, the actual discussions about the lives of women will be held by the all-male Pontifical Council for Culture, who will in all their manly wisdom ponder such questions as why “women had so little impact on the Church’s structures.”

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.

Romano: Impending freedom for priest in abuse scandal stuns victims

FLORIDA
Tampa Bay Times

John Romano, Times Columnist

After all these years, the lie had begun to seem real. Chris McCafferty had convinced himself the past had been put to rest, and distant memories could no longer touch him.

This, of course, was never quite true. And all it took was a single phone call to plunge him back into a world of doubt, fear, shame and anger.

The former Catholic priest who McCafferty said sexually abused him as a child in Pinellas Park is scheduled to be released from prison in nine days.

McCafferty was stunned to discover Robert Schaeufele will have only served about 12 years of the concurrent 30-year sentences he received in Pinellas and Pasco counties.

In a conversation Tuesday evening, McCafferty sounded frustrated and perplexed. Hours later, he called back with a sharper perspective.

“Do you want to know the real answer? Do you want to know the truth?” he asked. “It feels like he just (assaulted) me again.”

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

New Zealand judge Lowell Goddard: ‘I come with no agendas’

UNITED KINGDOM
BBC News

[with video]

A New Zealand High Court judge who has been named as the head of an inquiry into historical child sex abuse in England and Wales says she comes to the role “with no agendas”.

Justice Lowell Goddard was appointed after two previous chairwomen resigned over concerns with their links to the establishment.

“I can come, I suppose, as a fresh face and someone with no involvement,” she said.

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.

Lawsuit: Chicago archdiocese hid sex abuse, created nuisance

CHICAGO (IL)
WXOW

CHICAGO (AP) – A man who says he was sexually abused by a former priest is suing the Archdiocese of Chicago, claiming it created a public nuisance by shielding pedophile priests and allowing them to live freely in the community.

The claim filed Wednesday in Cook County Circuit Court comes on top of other legal action taken in recent years by plaintiffs and their attorneys.

Last year, the archdiocese released thousands of files on dozens of priests that it identified as abusers.

But Chicago attorney Marc Pearlman says a nuisance claim allows victims to seek evidence of sexual abuse across the archdiocese, rather than focus on allegations against one individual. The lawsuit seeks disclosure of the names and documents for all abusive clergy dating to 1950.

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.

Dejaeger Sentenced for Sex Crimes Against Children

CANADA
Digital Journal

IQALUIT, NUNAVUT–(Marketwired – Feb. 4, 2015) – Eric Dejaeger, 67, was sentenced today in the Nunavut Court of Justice to 19 years in prison for sex crimes against children. With credit for time served on remand, the remainder to be served is 11 years.

He was found guilty on September 12, 2014, of 31 counts of sexual offences against children and one count of bestiality. Most of the crimes were committed in the Hamlet of Igloolik in what was then the Northwest Territories, where he was one of the local priests, between 1978 and 1982. He was found not guilty of 48 other charges.

He was arrested on January 20, 2011, when he was returned to Canada after spending 15 years in Belgium. He has been in custody since.

Both parties have 30 days to decide whether to appeal this decision.

The Public Prosecution Service of Canada is responsible for prosecuting offences under federal jurisdiction in a manner that is free of any improper influence and that respects the public interest. The PPSC is also responsible for providing prosecution-related advice to law enforcement agencies across Canada.

(Version française disponible)

Sujata Raisinghani
PPSC Communications
613-957-8680
www.ppsc-sppc.gc.ca

Media Relations
613-954-7803
media@ppsc.g.ca

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.

Nunavut pedophile ex-priest sentenced to 19 years

CANADA
Toronto Sun

A pedophile ex-priest has been sentenced to 19 years in prison for sex offences committed in Nunavut between 1976 and 1982.

Eric Dejaeger, 67, was found guilty last year of 24 counts of sexually abusing Inuit children.

The convictions include unlawful confinement, indecent assault, unlawful sexual intercourse and one count of bestiality and involved both boys and girls.

He had previously pleaded guilty to eight charges of indecent assault against boys.

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.

Former Youth Minister Facing Corruption Charges

PENNSYLVANIA
WNEP

BY JACKIE DE TORE AND SUZANNE GOLDKLANG

WHITE HAVEN — A former youth pastor in Luzerne County is facing charges after a teenage girl said they had a relationship.

Adam D’Albero, 34, of Drums is charged with corruption of minors and sexual contact with a minor for an alleged relationship with a 13-year-old girl. He faced a magistrate Tuesday afternoon for the first time.

D’Albero was arraigned around 2:30 p.m. at a magistrate’s office outside Hazleton.

White Haven police said D’Albero had a relationship with a teenage girl. They said it started in 2011 and went on for about a year.

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.

Ex-pastor arrested for alleged contact with child

PENNSYLVANIA
Standard Speaker

BY AMANDA CHRISTMAN
Published: February 4, 2015

A former pastor and youth group director has been charged with unlawful contact with a child.

White Haven police charged Adam D’Albero, 34, Beech Mountain Lakes, Drums, with corruption of minors and unlawful contact with a minor, both third-degree felonies. He was also charged with indecent assault of a person younger than 16, a second-degree misdemeanor.

D’Albero once served as director of an inter-congregational youth group at Mountainview Community Free Methodist Church in White Haven. Youth group members followed him when he later formed his own congregation, Wellspring Life Center, which is now closed, White Haven Police Chief Tom Szoke said.

The alleged offenses took place between May 2011 and May 2012 when the victim, who was a youth group member, was 12 to 13 years old, Szoke said.

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.

Racist, sexist and in denial…

UNITED KINGDOM
Daily Mail

Racist, sexist and in denial: Now police will investigate Rotherham Council over child sex abuse at hands of Asian gangs as entire cabinet resigns

By Martin Robinson and Steph Cockroft for MailOnline

A criminal investigation has been launched today after a damning new report found Rotherham Council is ‘not fit for purpose’ and still ‘in denial’ about the 1,400 young girls who were abused in the town over 16 years.

Investigators concluded girls as young as 11 were left to be abused by mainly Asian men between 1997 and 2013 because the council’s staff and politicians feared being labelled racist.

The council also had a ‘deep-rooted’ culture of sexism and bullying where it would ‘shoot the messenger’ and sought to force whistleblowers into silence or pay them off, it was said.

Inspectors also found the council ‘goes to some lengths to cover up information’ and said that children in the town were still at risk of abuse.

The report said South Yorkshire Police also failed in their role to protect victims, turning a blind eye to their plight and in many cases holding them responsible.

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.

Survivors’ Alliance ‘delighted’ at inquiry’s new powers

UNITED KINGDOM
BBC News

[with video]

Lucy Duckworth, of the Survivors’ Alliance, set up to represent victims engaging with a national inquiry into historical child sex abuse, has said many are delighted the inquiry will have new powers.

She said the new chair, Justice Lowell Goddard, had proved herself in New Zealand and they were looking forward to working with her.

Since the inquiry was announced last July, two chairmen have stepped down.

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.

British Inquiry Faults Rotherham City Council in Child Abuse Scandal

UNITED KINGDOM
The New York Times

By STEVEN ERLANGER
FEB. 4, 2015

LONDON — The British government on Wednesday severely criticized legislators in the northern English town of Rotherham for a culture of “complete denial” that led to a long-running sexual abuse ring involving the abuse of up to 1,400 children from 1997 to 2013.

A report into the scandal by a senior official at Britain’s Department for Communities and Local Government found a deep-rooted culture of cover-ups and bullying, and grounds for possible criminal indictments.

The Rotherham Metropolitan Borough Council leader, Paul Lakin, has resigned and the council’s cabinet is also set to resign. Earlier, Shaun Wright, the police and crime commissioner of South Yorkshire, stepped down over the scandal.

The work of the council will be given to five commissioners appointed by the British government, which will call early elections in Rotherham next year to choose a new council.

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.

Lowell Goddard promises fresh approach to child sex abuse inquiry

UNITED KINGDOM
ITV

The chair of the new child sex abuse inquiry has been named as New Zealand High Court judge Justice Lowell Goddard.

In her first interview since the announcement, Justice Goddard said she can bring an “independent and fresh approach” to the child sex abuse inquiry.

She will head up a new panel after Home Secretary Theresa May dissolved the existing inquiry, following a series of criticisms and the resignation of two previous chairs.

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.

MT–Victims blast Montana Catholic settlement

MONTANA
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests

For immediate release: Wednesday, Feb. 4

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 )

We are grateful to the hundreds of Montana men and women who have bravely reported being sexually assaulted as kids by Catholic nuns, priests and other clerics. We commend them for their courage. But we deplore the legal maneuvers by Catholic officials who are finally agreeing to compensate these deeply wounded individuals with the paltry amount of less than $20,000 each.

[NBC Montana]

These nuns no doubt say they’re ‘poor’ but frankly we doubt that claim. When it suits them, Catholic officials say they’re part of a huge global church. But when it benefits them, like in clergy sex abuse and cover up cases, they claim each diocese or religious order is autonomous.

Did these nuns even try to borrow money from other Catholic institutions (like Boston’s disgraced Cardinal Bernard Law did) or raise more money in any way, so they could do justice by these hundreds of still-suffering victims? We doubt it. Shame on them.

Still, we hope this settlement brings some measure of closure to these hundreds who were smart and strong enough to seek justice in the courts rather than beg for crumbs from callous Catholic officials. Kids in Montana are safer now because of these brave victims. We are proud of them and wish them well. And we encourage them to stay in therapy, self-help groups and other recovery programs, because no one event can magically reverse years of painful results that stem from horrific childhood betrayal.

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.

Baptist pastor charged with sexually assaulting and defrauding woman during exorcism

CANADA
The Raw Story

DAVID EDWARDS
04 FEB 2015

A Canadian pastor has been charged after authorities said that he sexually assaulted a women while performing exorcisms.

Toronto police said that United Spiritual Baptist Church Pastor Wayne Marlon Jones, 53, assaulted the women during “spiritual guidance” sessions between May 2011 and May 2013, The Hamilton Spectator reported.

The sessions included exorcisms, when the alleged assault took place.

Jones was also accused of defrauding the woman of more than $5,000 in money and property. He was charged with sexual assault and three counts of fraud.

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.

Pastor charged after woman allegedly sexually assaulted during exorcism sessions

CANADA
Our Windsor

Scarborough Mirror

A Scarborough pastor has been charged after a woman was allegedly sexually assaulted during exorcism sessions.

Police allege a pastor at the United Spiritual Baptist Church at 787 Midland Ave. offered spiritual guidance to a woman and performed exorcisms between May 2011 and May 2013. During the sessions, the woman was sexually assaulted.

Police also allege a suspect convinced the woman to give him money and property.

On Aug. 31, Wayne Marlon Jones, 53, of Ajax was arrested and charged with sexual assault and three counts of fraud.

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.

Man charged after police say woman sexually assaulted, defrauded by pastor

CANADA
Daily Courier

TORONTO – A man is facing several charges after police say a woman was sexually assaulted and defrauded by a pastor at a Toronto church.

Police say a pastor at the United Spiritual Baptist Church (in the area of Midland Avenue and Eglinton Avenue East) offered spiritual guidance to a woman — including performing exorcisms — between May 2011 and May 2013.

It’s alleged that during these sessions, the man sexually assaulted the woman.

It’s also alleged that the man convinced the woman to give him money and property.

Wayne Marlon Jones, 53, of Ajax, is charged with sexual assault and three counts of fraud over $5,000.

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.

TX–Victims prod Ft. Worth & Subiaco officials about abuse

TEXAS
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests

Wednesday, Feb. 4, 2015

Statement by Amy Smith, SNAP Dallas Director 281 748 4050, watchkeepamy@gmail.com,

We are here today to prod Ft. Worth Catholic officials to do more to protect the vulnerable and heal the wounded. Specifically, we urge Bishop Michael Olson to

1. make public the personnel files of Fr. Bede Mitchel, a recently-outed predator priest,

2. post at least three more names of credibly accused child molesting clerics on his website, and

3. send a letter rebuking an Arkansas church staffer who made harsh remarks that hurt a victim, and

4. aggressively reach out to others who may have been hurt by Fr. Mitchel and other predator priests.

Let’s take these one at a time.

First, last week a settlement was announced in a clergy sex abuse and cover up lawsuit involving Fr. Mitchel and two Catholic institutions: the Ft. Worth diocese and an Arkansas abbey. The victim is a Ft. Worth woman and the crimes took place in Cooke County at Sacred Heart Catholic Church in Muenster. The alleged predator is a now-deceased priest, Fr. Bede Mitchel, who taught at Corpus Christi Academy and Laneri High School in Ft. Worth, worked at six local parishes and traveled extensively leading retreats and missions.

[Star-Telegram]

We urge Ft. Worth’s bishop to make public every piece of paper in his files about Fr. Mitchel. Since Fr. Mitchel’s colleague in Arkansas claims Fr. Mitchel is innocent, the Ft. Worth bishop should let parishioners, police, prosecutors, parents and the public see and judge for themselves about the allegations against Fr. Mitchel. (Besides, Ft. Worth’s bishop has repeatedly pledged to be “open” about clergy sex cases and the US bishops national abuse policy mandates such openness.)

Second, in 2013, the Ft. Worth diocese posted some names of predator priests on its website. About 30 US bishops have done this. We’re glad Ft. Worth’s bishop did. But his list is incomplete.

It makes no mention of three credibly accused child molesting clerics who spent time in the Ft. Worth diocese: Fr. Mitchel, Fr. Tony Pistone and Fr. Hugh John Sutton. It’s wrong and reckless to help these predator priests exploiting technicalities by keeping them off the diocesan website. For the safety of kids and the healing of victims, we urge Ft. Worth’s bishop to come clean now and add these three predator priests’ names – and any other child molesting clerics’ names – immediately.

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.

IL- Ground-breaking new clergy abuse suit filed in Chicago

CHICAGO (IL)
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests

For immediate release: Wednesday, Feb. 4, 2015

Statement by Barbara Blaine of Chicago, president of SNAP, the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests ( 312 399 4747, SNAPblaine@gmail.com )

We applaud the first-ever clergy sex abuse and cover-up lawsuit, just filed in Chicago, that accuses Catholic officials of perpetuating a “public nuisance.”

[Jeff Anderson & Associates]

These “nuisance” suits have helped to disclose more deeply-held and embarrassing church secrets in Minnesota. We hope this suit will do so in Illinois.

Many assume that the public knows all about the Fr. Daniel McCormack case. It does not. We are convinced there is crucial information about how Chicago Catholic officials dealt with this notorious predator that church figures are still hiding. Just as important, we believe, is information about other clerics who committed and concealed awful crimes against kids that is similarly still being hidden.

Archdiocesan officials have put out a very sanitized version of how they handled pedophile priests. Parents, police, parishioners, prosecutors and the public deserve more. We hope this new, ground-breaking suit will pry that helpful information out of the files, hands and mouths of current and former top Catholic officials here.

Kids are still being assaulted by Catholic clergy. Bishops are still hiding predator priests. So something more and new must be tried so that more of the truth can be revealed, more of the wrongdoers can be exposed, and more of the vulnerable can be protected.

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.

Magdalene Laundry survivors to have access to a GP of their choice under government scheme

IRELAND
Irish Independent

Mark O’Regan Twitter

04/02/2015

HUNDREDS of Magdalene Laundry survivors will have access to a GP of their choice under the government’s redress scheme.

It has been agreed that women will have the option of using a private GP, or one who has a contract with the HSE.

Minister for Justice and Reform Frances Fitzgerald also said the legislation will now allow for chiropody and physiotherapy services which were not originally provided for in the Act.

Addressing the Dail Justice Committee this afternoon, she stressed it was never her intention to restrict the choice of general practitioner for the women concerned.

“I’m aware many of the women have a medical card and they may wish to stay with their GP,” she said.

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.

Canon Law Petition To Pope By Holocaust Survivors

VATICAN CITY
InSerbia

VATICAN CITY – Today an unprecedented canon law petition was dispatched to the Vatican by Serbian Orthodox Christian, Jewish, and Roma Holocaust survivors and their families imploring Pope Francis to settle the long standing dispute about gold looted during the Second World War and deposited at the Vatican Bank. Under canon law, non-Catholics may petition the Pope.

The petition filed by Dr. Jonathan Levy on behalf of thousands of Holocaust survivors and their families is aimed not only at the Vatican Bank but the two watch dog organizations at the Vatican with authority over the scandal plagued bank. The petition coincides with new and serious allegations of financial misdeeds at the Vatican in the just released book God’s Bankers by Gerald Posner.

The Vatican Financial Authority and the Vatican Secretariat for the Economy are accused of shirking their duties to investigate money laundering and in the case of the Vatican Financial Authority, misleading the European Commission which made inquiries on the Holocaust survivors’ behalf.

The Vatican Financial Authority falsely claimed the Vatican Bank was not part of Vatican City therefore did not fall under European Union anti money laundering rules. Dr. Jonathan Levy, who represents several thousand Holocaust victims, their heirs, and organizations has long criticized the Vatican’s handling of Holocaust related claims.

According to Dr. Levy, “Ever since the US government uncovered evidence of Holocaust loot deposited at the Vatican in 1998; the Vatican has been in cover up mode, alternately denying and claiming immunity, it is my hope that Pope Francis truly means what he says about a new era of transparency at the Vatican and sends that same message to his subordinates.”

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Defrocked priest DeJaeger sentenced to 19 years for horrific sex-crimes, leaves ‘dark legacy’ in Nunavut

CANADA
APTN

Kent Driscoll
APTN National News

IQALUIT– Eric DeJaeger, the priest convicted of 32 counts of abusing Inuit children in the Nunavut community of Igloolik, was sentenced Wednesday to 19 years in prison.

DeJaeger received 8 years credit for time served, so the maximum amount of time he will spend in jail is 11 years. There are no limits on parole, and the parole will have to consider both age and health. DeJaeger is 67 and is in poor health.

The Crown was seeking a 25-year sentence and the defense was looking for 12 years.

In his written ruling, Justice Robert Kilpatrick had comments for both the victims and DeJaeger. For the victims, Justice Kilpatrick had sympathy and advice.

“This Court is powerless to undo the past. No sentence can ever compensate you for what has been taken. No sentence can ever compensate you for the pain and anguish that you have suffered. No sentence can ever return the quality of life that has been missing these past many years. For many of you, no sentence will ever be long enough, or hard enough,” wrote Kilpatrick. “Your anger must be put aside. Your trust in others must be restored. You must learn to rely on the good around you, in your family, in your neighbors, and in your community. Despite what has happened to you, there is still much good in people. It is all around you. You will find that by sharing your burden with others, the burden will eventually become easier to carry.”

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Ex-priest gets prison in Canada for sexual assaults of children

CANADA
Expatica Belgium

A defrocked Catholic priest was sentenced Wednesday to 19 years in prison for sexual assault of dozens of children in the Canadian Arctic, where he worked as a missionary for decades.

Belgian-born Eric Dejaeger, 67, was convicted in September of 31 counts of sexual offenses against Inuit children and one count of bestiality with a sled dog.

With credit for time served while awaiting trial, he is expected to spend the next 11 years in jail.

Dejaeger had originally faced 80 charges, but the judge ruled the evidence had been weakened by the passage of time, and whittled down the number in the indictment.

During the emotionally-charged trial, more than 20 victims testified that Dejaeger used his position as a missionary to lure them into sex, threatening them with hellfire and separation from their families if they exposed him.

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Anonymous Call UK Protest Against ‘Paedophiles in the Establishment’

UNITED KINGDOM
Newsweek

By Lucy Draper 2/4/15

Infamous hacker group Anonymous have called for several demonstrations in the UK to protest against what they believe is a huge coverup of paedophile networks by “those who are meant to protect”.

Anonymous have recently turned their attention to international and institutional paedophiles, including those connected to the Westminster child sex abuse scandal currently unfolding in the UK. The group are now calling for people to ‘take to the streets’ next Friday in London’s Trafalgar Square, Glasgow and Essex.

Heather Marsh, speaking on behalf of the group, explained that “Operation Death Eaters”, as the project is referred to, is not only seeking to expose those responsible for the historic crimes, but also those who enabled the sexual abuse to continue.

On the Facebook page for the march, the OpDeathEaters write that the protests will take place “in the street, on social media, in your communities everywhere” and the aim is to inform the public of “the high level complicity and impunity in the paedosadism and child trafficking industry and the need for independent inquiries [sic]”.

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Timeline of inquiry into historical child abuse

UNITED KINGDOM
Yorkshire Post

THE Government’s inquiry into historical child abuse has been plagued with controversy since it was established last year. Here are the key events:

* July 7, 2014: Home Secretary Theresa May announces she will establish an independent inquiry to examine the handling of allegations of paedophilia by state institutions as well as bodies such as the BBC, churches and political parties.

* July 8, 2014: Baroness Butler-Sloss is named as the chairwoman. Eyebrows are immediately raised by the choice. Home Affairs Select Committee chairman Keith Vaz questions the choice of a member of the House of Lords, ‘’no matter how distinguished’’, to investigate the establishment – pointing out that her brother was Lord Chancellor during the era being probed.

* July 9, 2014: Calls for the appointment to be abandoned intensify over reports that Baroness Butler-Sloss’s brother, Sir Michael – later Lord – Havers, tried to prevent former West Yorkshire MP Geoffrey Dickens airing claims about a diplomat in Parliament in the 1980s.

* July 14, 2014: Downing Street announces that Baroness Butler-Sloss is stepping aside by her own choice.

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Third child sex probe chairman is finally named

UNITED KINGDOM
Yorkshire Post

The long-delayed inquiry into historic child sex abuse is to be reconstituted under a new chair with tough new powers to compel witnesses to attend and provide evidence.

Home Secretary Theresa May named New Zealand High Court judge Lowell Goddard to head the inquiry, which lost its first two chairs after questions were raised over their links with establishment figures.

Justice Goddard promised to hold a “robust and independent inquiry” which would hold to account those responsible for failing abused children.

Announcing her appointment to the House of Commons, Mrs May said that Justice Goddard had been selected after a search that involved more than 150 candidates, “due diligence” on potential conflicts of interest and consultation with victim groups.

The existing panel is being dissolved, with members able to reapply for positions.

The terms of reference are also being revisited, meaning that investigations could go back beyond 1970, though Mrs May indicated they were unlikely to be extended – as some have demanded – beyond England and Wales.

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New Zealand Judge to Head U.K. Child-Abuse Probe

UNITED KINGDOM
Wall Street Journal

By ALEXIS FLYNN
Feb. 4, 2015

LONDON—The British government on Wednesday named a New Zealand judge to lead a high-profile inquiry into child abuse by prominent figures, including lawmakers, to put back on track an effort that had faced some setbacks.

The government pledged to set up the broad-ranging inquiry last summer in the wake of a series of child-abuse scandals, including investigations that revealed widespread abuse in children’s care homes and allegations of abuse dating back decades by lawmakers and well-known individuals in the entertainment industry.

The inquiry was established to investigate whether public bodies and other nonstate institutions have neglected, or even covered-up, decades of child abuse. Home Secretary Theresa May named Lowell Goddard, a New Zealand high court judge who oversaw a similar probe in her native country in 2009 to lead the U.K. investigation.

Ms. Goddard will face a pre-appointment hearing on Feb. 11 before a panel of lawmakers, Ms. May said in an address to parliament.

Ms. Goddard, 66 years old, will be expected to interview more than a hundred abuse victims and other witnesses as well as parse reams of classified documents. She will have the power to compel witnesses to give evidence and any allegations of criminal activity will be passed to the relevant authorities, Ms. May said.

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Child Abuse Survivor: We Must Expose Horrors

UNITED KINGDOM
Yahoo! News

Laurence Wheeler, a 61-year-old survivor of sexual abuse from Kent, explains what the inquiry into historical child abuse within the British Establishment means to him:

As an adult survivor of childhood abuse, I am pleased that an inquiry into historical child abuse allegations has at last been set up.

With a background of cover-ups and deception, it is essential to have an open and independent panel and chair, to fully publish their findings with complete clarity.

For this to happen it is essential that the inquiry has statutory powers to compel witnesses to give evidence, and that exemption from the Official Secrets Act and other impediments are removed.

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The Guardian view on child sex abuse: this time it really must be never again

UNITED KINGDOM
The Guardian

Editorial

It is more than two years since the infamous revelation that BBC Newsnight had dropped a report exposing Jimmy Savile as a serial sexual abuser. It is seven months and two false starts since Theresa May promised an inquiry into allegations of an establishment cover-up of abuse in Whitehall and Westminster, and it is six months since Alexis Jay uncovered the extent of abuse in Rotherham. At last it feels as if the end of the beginning has been reached.

There have been never-again moments many times before in the history of abused children, but the Savile affair has been a watershed. It has triggered an extraordinary moment of national catharsis. Now the home secretary has finally grasped the scale of the challenge and, by setting up a new inquiry on a statutory footing, has set in motion what promises to be an investigation into institutional failure that will carry the confidence of all those involved. At the same time, the report of the Whitehall official in charge of the troubled families programme, Louise Casey, into the catastrophic failings of Rotherham council has prompted the communities secretary Eric Pickles to send in the commissioners to run the council’s key services. Its cabinet is resigning and the whole council will have to stand for re-election next year. There is, at last, action on a broad front and at the highest level.

Events in Rotherham since the publication of Professor Jay’s report in October show how deeply entrenched self-deception can become. Most observers thought the report left no doubt about the council’s inadequacies. Yet Louise Casey found a jaw-dropping refusal to face up to failure. More than two-thirds of councillors were refusing to accept Professor Jay’s findings. Casey described deep-seated poor governance, a pervading culture of bullying and sexism, and a misplaced political correctness that only cemented failure. She reported that whistleblowers were silenced and that there was an unhealthy climate where people feared to speak out. There was not even a permanent chief executive in place to start the process of turning the council around. “Both today and in the past, Rotherham has at times taken more care of its reputation than it has of its most needy,” she concluded.

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Vatican Bank may be too corrupt for Pope Francis to save: Posner

UNITED STATES
Yahoo! Finance

By Nicole Goodkind

The Vatican Bank is one of the most mysterious institutions in the world. The completely independent financial institution is run by the Catholic Church, and until 2013, had never released so much as a financial report.

Pope Francis is finally attempting to shed some light on the fabled bank. Under his watch, investigators have closed more than 3,000 suspect accounts, long-standing bank officials have been fired and the institution now serves only Catholic institutions, clergymen and diplomats within the Vatican. The pope even reportedly considered closing the bank after a scandal in January of 2014 where Msgr. Nunzio Scarano, then-accountant for the Vatican’s real estate holdings, was arrested for attempting to use the bank to smuggle and launder millions of Euros.

In his book, “God’s Bankers: A History of Money and Power at the Vatican,” investigative journalist Gerald Posner, who was raised Catholic, dives deep into the shrouded history of the Vatican Bank. That history includes sordid stories of financial alliances with Germany during World War II, and Italian mobsters in the 1980s.

Prior to 1942, the Vatican handled its money elsewhere but during WWII decided it needed its own bank. “Why did the Vatican need a central bank all of a sudden?” Posner asks. “It needed it because the Americans and British were trying to stop money going to Nazi Germany, and the Vatican knew that. It wanted to play both sides of the game by making money with the West and making money with the Italian and Germans, and the only way to do that was to have its own bank.” He alleges that the Vatican Bank would knowingly invest in companies through Italian proxies that would steal money from Holocaust victims.

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‘God’s Bankers’ Author Gerald Posner Explains The Vatican Bank’s Secret History Of Hiding Mafia Money

UNITED STATES
Huffington Post

By Ryan Buxton

Gerald Posner’s book God’s Bankers: A History of Money and Power at the Vatican chronicles the secret side of the Vatican Bank, the Catholic Church’s completely independent financial institution. Part of that history is how the bank became a haven for the loot of mobsters, mafia men and money launderers, which Posner explained to HuffPost Live’s Caroline Modarressy-Tehrani in a Tuesday interview.

The Vatican Bank appealed to the mob, Posner explained, because it was totally free from the oversight of Italian authorities thanks to Vatican City’s status as its own nation. Once the mafia realized it could hide cash there, suspicious characters with well-lined pockets turned the Vatican Bank into “one of the largest banks for money launderers and mobsters,” Posner said.

Knowledge of that system did not reach the top of the church hierarchy, however, which Posner argues is evidence for the corruption within the bank.

“The Vatican Bank was used by mobsters both in America and in Italy as a repository for some of its accounts — without the knowledge of the popes at the time, I’m convinced of that. Maybe without even the knowledge of the head of the Vatican Bank. But it goes to show you how bad the controls were there at the time, that [the mob] was able to use it so well,” he said.

But it seems the church is making an effort to clean up the bank. Posner said more than 200 “dodgy” accounts were closed last year, and several years previously the bank shuttered a shady account that belonged to Giulio Andreotti, a seven-time Italian prime minister.

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First Public Nuisance Lawsuit Filed Against the Archdiocese of Chicago Involving Fr. Daniel McCormack

CHICAGO (IL)
Jeff Anderson & Associates

The lawsuit seeks disclosure of the identities and secret documents of all clergy offenders since 1950

(Chicago, IL) – The law firm of Jeff Anderson & Associates, in conjunction with Kerns, Frost & Pearlman, filed a lawsuit today on behalf of a man, John Doe 239, who was sexually abused by Father Daniel McCormack at St. Agatha parish in Chicago. The lawsuit names the Archdiocese of Chicago as the defendant and alleges the Archdiocese created a public nuisance by conspiring and engaging in efforts to conceal the sexual assault of children within the Archdiocese from authorities and allowed known child molesters to live freely in the community.

Jeff Anderson & Associates has filed several public nuisance cases against Catholic dioceses throughout the country with notable success. As a result, dioceses have been forced to disclose the identities of the accused priests and the files pertaining to each priest.

The lawsuit seeks to expose the dangerous practices employed by the Archdiocese of Chicago in protecting known child abusers. Attorney Jeff Anderson noted, “We acknowledge that the Archdiocese has made significant strides towards transparency and the protection of children. But that there is still more work to be done. We wish to work with the Archdiocese rather against them to achieve these goals. This lawsuit is an invitation to the new Archbishop to compassionately engage with survivors and to fulfill his pledge of openness and transparency. In order for the community to be safe today the secrets of the past must be disclosed.” The new lawsuit requires further disclosure regarding Daniel McCormack and all other priests accused of sexually abusing minors in the Archdiocese.

Archbishop Cupich was not involved in the McCormack case and does not have a history in the Archdiocese. Anderson thinks Cupich is well-equipped by reason of his experience and his word to work with the survivors instead of against them in court.

A copy of the complaint can be found here: Doe 239 Complaint 2-4-2015

Contact Jeff Anderson: Office: 651.318.2650 Mobile: 612.817.8665
Contact Marc Pearlman: Office: 312.261.4550 Mobile: 773.368.0142

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Former Arctic priest gets 19 years for sex offences

CANADA
Global News

IQALUIT, Nunavut – A defrocked Arctic priest has been sentenced to 19 years in prison for dozens of sex offences against Inuit children.

Eric Dejaeger‘s crimes took place 35 years ago in the remote Nunavut community of Igloolik when he was there as an Oblate missionary.

He was originally supposed to be tried on some of the charges in 1995, but fled to his native Belgium and lived in Oblate homes until he was returned to Canada for immigration violations.

His return roiled long-suppressed memories and traumas in Igloolik.

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Go to jail for 11 more years, Nunavut judge tells pedophile ex-priest Dejaeger

CANADA
Nunatsiaq Online

JIM BELL

Convicted of using numerous Inuit children as his private sex toys between 1978 and 1982, ex-priest Eric Dejaeger, 67, must spend 11 more years in prison, Justice Robert Kilpatrick said in a 60-page written judgment issued Feb. 4.

“Your selfishness has devastated a generation of young Roman Catholic parishioners in Igloolik. Many lives have been irrevocably altered by your dark legacy,” Kilpatrick said in a direct address to Dejaeger.

The judge imposed a sentence of 19 years, minus eight years, calculated on a two-for-one basis from the four-year period during which Dejaeger was detained in custody following his arrest in January 2011.

Kilpatrick, following a lengthy trial that held 2013 and 2014, convicted Dejaeger this past September on 24 of 68 charges he stood trial on.

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Eric Dejaeger, former priest, sentenced to 19 years for child sex abuse

CANADA
CBC News

A former priest found guilty of sexually abusing children in Igloolik, Nunavut, 30 years ago has been sentenced to 19 years in prison.

Eric Dejaeger, 67, was found guilty last year of 32 counts of child sexual abuse dating back to his time as a priest in between 1978 and 1982.

“Your selfishness has devastated a generation of young Roman Catholic parishioners in Igloolik,” Justice Robert Kilpatrick wrote in his sentencing decision.

“Many lives have been irrevocably altered by your dark legacy. For many victims, the commission of your offence has marked the end of living and the beginning of their survival. You must now atone for the many wrongs that you have inflicted on others. This sentence is only the beginning of that atonement.”

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Church must not reduce women to ‘clichés’, says Vatican

ROME
The Tablet

02 February 2015 by Liz Dodd, Hannah Roberts in Rome

A new Vatican report has warned that the Church’s image of women does not correspond to reality, and called for them to be given decision-making roles.

However, days ahead of the Pontifical Council for Culture’s 4-7 February conference, which will focus on women’s issues, the organisers removed from their site a video promoting the event because of “a very negative reaction from both conservative and progressives in Anglo-Saxon countries.”

Cardinal Gianfranco Ravasi, head of the dicastery, said that bishops had also written to him privately to express their concerns about the English-language version of a video featuring a blonde Italian actress Nancy Brilli (pictured above).

The authors of a discussion document for the conference warn the Church against using “rhetoric and clichés” to portray women as an “army” of teachers, catechists, mothers and grandmothers – a depiction it says that “seems to belong to a small ancient world that is disappearing”.

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Vatican Council launches plenary on Women with Rome gala

ROME
Vatican Radio

(Vatican Radio) Nuns, a plastic surgeon, an actress, a mother and daughter, women in the workforce and in the killing fields of Syria. These are just some of the women who took part in an event organized in Rome by the Pontifical Council for Culture to kick off its plenary assembly February 4-7.

Tracey McClure was there and filed this report:

The focus of this year’s plenary is “Women’s Cultures: Equality and Difference.” Council members will be discussing among other themes, the social and cultural pressures facing women today, the rising numbers of women leaving the Church and violence against women.

Wednesday afternoon’s gala event in Rome’s Teatro Argentina included video clips sent by women from around the world. They were responding to the Pontifical Council for Culture’s President Cardinal Gianfranco Ravasi’s call for input ahead of the plenary to jumpstart a conversation about the “Life of Women”.

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Will UK Probe of Teresa May Compel Ex-Pope Benedict To Testify?

UNITED STATES
Christian Catholicism

Jerry Slevin

The UK’s Home Secretary, Teresa May, has finally acted to establish an independent child sex abuse commission with power to compel testimony, as reported here,

[Mirror]

and here:

[BBC News]

Will it call ex-Pope Benedict to testify, as it appears it should, and as it can, in my view as an experienced international lawyer? Please see my “Pope Continues Priest Child Abuse Cover-up Policy” at:

[Christian Catholicism]

Teresa May’s boss, UK Prime Minister David Cameron, recently on US CBS’ “Face the Nation” challenged the pope on the pope’s position that would limit free speech about religious matters. Has the English common law finally caught up to the Vatican? Stay tuned, please!

Again, it took Teresa May, a brave woman, to act, following the bold example of Julia Gillard (also UK born), who set up the outstanding and ongoing Australian Royal Commission.

Will Hillary Clinton, who studied the common law at Yale and worked on the Watergate Commission that transparently and independently investigated US President Nixon’s criminal cover-up conspiracy, be next to call for a national investigation commission in the USA. President Obama seems to lack the fortitude to do so. Is this a women’s thing only? Why is Michelle Obama. a Harvard lawyer, so silent here?

Will UK abuse survivor and advocate, Peter Saunders, who demanded this action in the UK, this weekend (as he meets with the long stalled first full meeting of the pope’s abuse commission), now demand that the pope add to his commission some experienced, independent and proven members, like Fr. Thomas Doyle, Illinois Justice Anne Burke and former Irish President, Mary McAleese? If not, why not?

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New faculty handbooks in San Francisco to include statement developed by archbishop

CALIFORNIA
National Catholic Reproter

Dan Morris-Young | Feb. 4, 2015

Faculty handbooks of the four high schools owned and operated by the San Francisco archdiocese will carry a new, free-standing section for the 2015-16 school year that puts teachers and faculty on notice about heightened demands regarding adherence to Catholic teaching, particularly on sexual issues, and warns against taking public positions that are contrary to church teaching.

The section:

* Delineates areas of church teaching on “sexual morality and religious practice” it says needs more clarity and emphasis;
* Underscores that “administrators, faculty and staff of any faith or no faith are expected to arrange and conduct their lives so as not to visibly contradict, undermine or deny” church doctrine and practice;
* Calls on “administrators, faculty and staff who are Catholics” to “not only avoid public contradiction of their status as professional agents in the mission of Catholic education,” but to also “conform their hearts, minds and consciences, as well as their public and private behavior, ever more closely to the truths taught by the Catholic Church”;
* Warns educators to “refrain from participation in organizations that call themselves ‘Catholic’ but support or advocate issues or causes contrary” to church teaching.

Developed by Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone and titled “Statement of the High Schools of the Archdiocese of San Francisco Regarding the Teachings and Practice of the Catholic Church,” the new 2,000-word faculty handbook section was made public Tuesday afternoon during meetings between administrators of the four schools and their faculties and staffs.

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FOX2 KERFUFFLE

MISSOURI
Berger’s Beat

FOR EIGHT YEARS, a credibly accused serial predator priest lived quietly across the river while two bishops warned no one of his presence. Newly-released church records show that from 1995-2002, Fr. J. Vincent Fitzgerald lived at St. Henry’s Oblate Residence in Belleville. (In 2006, an admitted predator priest, Fr. Real Bourque, was found at the same facility.) Fr. Fitzgerald, who was sued for reportedly assaulting two Native American kids on a South Dakota reservation, also worked at in the Springfield, MO and Springfield, IL dioceses.

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Has the new abuse inquiry got what it takes?

UNITED KINGDOM
BBC News

Dominic Casciani
Home affairs correspondent

Last year’s catastrophic double-failure to launch the historical child sex abuse inquiry posed serious questions for Home Secretary Theresa May and her team.

Two chairs appointed, two chairs resigned and there was a deepening sense of despair among people who’ve been abused that the truth would never come out.

Right from the start, both of the previous chairs – Baroness Butler-Sloss and her successor Fiona Woolf – were under incredible scrutiny. And both were ultimately compromised because they could not command the support of people who have spent years waiting for justice.

Justice Goddard has all the key qualities necessary to lead the Inquiry’s work … this is a completely fresh start”

So last November, under immense political pressure, the Home Secretary publicly conceded she had got it wrong. She would pause and listen to survivors and their representatives before she went any further.

The omens did not look good. She knew that abuse survivors were at the end of their tether – so much talk, so many promises, but so little delivered.

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Theresa May selects New Zealand judge to head up Westminster paedophile inquiry

UNITED KINGDOM
Mirror

4 February 2015 By Owen Bennett

A New Zealand judge is the new chairwoman of the troubled child abuse inquiry, Home Secretary Theresa May revealed today.

Lowell Goddard, 66, is the third person chosen to lead the panel after the two previous appointees stepped down for having links to the British establishment.

Justice Goddard has experience of investigation child abuse cases, having previously chaired an inquiry into how police in New Zealand handled such cases.

As well as the new chairwoman, Mrs May also announced today the inquiry would investigate allegations further back than the 1970s and witnesses would be compelled to give evidence.

The current panel was being dissolved in order to have fresh start, but those who had been axed could apply to be part of the new inquiry.

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New Zealand judge to chair Child Sex Abuse Inquiry

UNITED KINGDOM
ITV

The chair of the new Child Sex Abuse Inquiry has been named as New Zealand High Court judge Justice Lowell Goddard.

She will head up a new panel after Home Secretary Theresa May dissolved the existing inquiry, following a series of criticisms and the resignation of two previous chairs.

Former Child Protection manager Peter McKelvie has welcomed the appointment of New Zealand judge Lowell Goddard to lead the Child Sex Abuse Inquiry.

Speaking after a meeting at the Home Office, he said it was a “positive day for survivors” and that “the cement has been put down so whichever government comes in at the next election, the [inquiry] process will go on.”

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Rabbi told child sex abuse victim to ‘let it go’, royal commission told

AUSTRALIA
The Guardin

Melissa Davey
@MelissaLDavey
Wednesday 4 February 2015

A senior religious figure within the orthodox Jewish community, rabbi Baruch Lesches, told a child sex abuse victim that “the proper, clever thing to do” about the abuse “would be to let it go”.

The victim, identified only as AVB, told the royal commission into institutional responses to child sex abuse about that Lesches also told him that if he spoke up about the Yeshiva Centre Sydney and Melbourne staff who had abused him, he would ruin their lives.

Lesches said: “If you are going to do something to them at a certain stage in their life, you are destroying their whole life and their children and therefore, this is like something ridiculous.”

The conversation happened in 2011 when, as an adult, AVB phoned Lesches to confront him about what he knew about the extent of the abuse that had occurred within the orthodox Yeshivah community.

Lesches told AVB he had confronted a known abuser, former Yeshivah Centre Bondi director Daniel Hayman, about his abuse of children several times, but had never gone to the police.

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Child abuse royal commission: Jewish victims ‘treated like devil’ by ultra-Orthodox community

AUSTRALIA
ABC News

By Sarah Farnsworth

Jewish victims of child sexual abuse are being treated like the devil and told they should burn by members of the ultra-Orthodox community, the royal commission has been told.

A man known as AVB gave evidence at a hearing of the Royal Commission in Institutional Responses to Child Abuse in Melbourne on Wednesday.

He was sexually assaulted at the age of 10 by convicted child abusers Daniel Hayman and David Cyrprys in the 1980s, but he remained silent for 20 years.

AVB told the inquiry he had been subjected to ongoing bullying and intimidation at the hands of the Yeshivah community for speaking out.

“There are issues we are still encountering,” he said.

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Rabbi Meir Shlomo Kluwgant …

AUSTRALIA
Herald Sun

Rabbi Meir Shlomo Kluwgant accused of telling abuse victim to ‘remain silent’ royal commission hears

SHANNON DEERY NEWS LIMITED FEBRUARY 04, 2015

AUSTRALIA’s top Rabbi tried to silence a victim who called on Jewish leaders to confront the child sexual abuse crisis telling him to “remain silent”, it has been claimed.

The victim, known only as AVB, told the royal commission yesterday respected rabbi Meir Shlomo Kluwgant told him he had no right to speak up over the abuse crisis.

Rabbi Kluwgant is the president of the Organisation of Rabbis of Australia and a current Victoria Police chaplain.

AVB said after the call for action he was bullied and ostracised from the orthodox Chabad community and vilified by senior rabbis.

He said he had emailed a group of influential figures connected to Melbourne’s Yeshivah Centre calling on them to confront the issue of child sexual abuse in 2011.

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Jewish belief sees claims of child abuse ignored, says leading rabbi

AUSTRALIA
The Australian

FEBRUARY 05, 2015

Pia Akerman
Reporter
Melbourne

A PROMINENT ultra-Orthodox rabbi has warned that key Jewish concepts are being misused to prevent reports of child sexual abuse, amid claims that leaders within the Chabad community are still failing to confront cases they have known about for years.

Rabbi Moshe Gutnick yesterday told the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse that the historical code against mes­irah (informing on a Jew to non-Jewish authorities) should never apply to criminal cases, but had been misused by those in power.

He described how a Jewish doctor who discovered injuries on an infant consistent with sexual abuse was threatened with mes­irah after reporting it to police and child protection services.

“This was only a few years ago, with an infant,” said Rabbi Gutnick, a former president of the ­Organisation of Rabbis of Australasia. “It is my belief that the threat of transgressing mesirah is used as a means with which to ­retain power and control.

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Hearing into Jewish abuse continues

AUSTRALIA
9 News

AAP

Prominent Australian rabbis are set to give evidence at a hearing into how sexual abuse reports were dealt with in two Jewish communities.

Rabbis including current and former principals of Melbourne’s Yeshivah College will give evidence as part of the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse.

The hearings have focused on abuse at the Yeshivah Melbourne and Yeshiva Bondi by David Cyprys, Rabbi David Kramer and Daniel Hayman.

All three have been convicted for offences in the 1980s and 1990s.

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New Zealand high court judge named as new chair of child abuse inquiry

UNITED KINGDOM
The Guardian

Alan Travis, home affairs editor
Wednesday 4 February 2015

Justice Lowell Goddard, a New Zealand high court judge, is to be the new head of the official inquiry into child abuse, the home secretary, Theresa May, has announced.

Goddard, who already conducted one inquiry into the police handling of child abuse in New Zealand, said she was well aware of the scale of the “crucial inquiry” that faced her.

“The inquiry will be long, challenging and complex,” Goddard said. “The many, many survivors of child sexual abuse, committed over decades, deserve a robust and thorough investigation of the appalling crimes perpetrated on them. It is vitally important that their voices are now being heard.”

Goddard, who will arrive in Britain next week when she will face a confirmation hearing before the Commons home affairs committee, said she was committed to “leading a robust and independent inquiry that will act on these matters without fear or favour and will hold those responsible to account”.

She added: “The outcome of the inquiry must ensure that the children of today and the future will not only be protected from such dreadful exploitation but empowered to combat it.”

Goddard’s appointment as the third head of the troubled inquiry was immediately welcomed by survivors’ groups and MPs after May made clear her renewed determination to expose “the hard truths” of past child sex abuse, those who had failed to act and those who “positively covered up evidence of abuse”.

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Goddard inquiry: Northern Ireland will not be included in child abuse investigation

NORTHERN IRELAND
BBC News

Northern Ireland will not be included in the new statutory inquiry into historical child sexual abuse being set up by the government in Westminster.

Home Secretary Theresa May told the House of Commons that the inquiry will be confined to England and Wales.

Campaigners had called for Northern Ireland to be included, demanding that a fresh investigation of the Kincora scandal form part of a UK-wide inquiry.

But Mrs May said the Hart Inquiry in Northern Ireland was already under way.

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New Zealand Judge To Chair Child Abuse Inquiry

UNITED KINGDOM
Sky News

New Zealand high court judge Justice Lowell Goddard has been named as the latest chair of the troubled child abuse inquiry.

Home Secretary Theresa May said in a statement to MPs that a new statutory inquiry will be established, meaning the current panel will be dissolved.

Current members have been encouraged to reapply for their roles, and the panel has been asked to produce a report on its work so far.

The terms of reference are also being looked at, meaning that the investigations could potentially go back beyond 1970.

However, Mrs May suggested the remit is unlikely to be extended beyond England and Wales

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New Zealand judge Lowell Goddard to lead abuse inquiry

UNITED KINGDOM
BBC News

New Zealand High Court judge Lowell Goddard has been named as the head of a new inquiry into historical child sex abuse in England and Wales.

The inquiry will have statutory powers and a new panel, Home Secretary Theresa May told the House of Commons.

Mrs May said she was determined to “expose despicable crimes”.

Since the original child abuse inquiry was set up last July, two chairwomen have resigned amid concerns over their links with the establishment.

Mrs May said Justice Goddard was “as removed as possible from the organisations and institutions that might become the focus of the inquiry”.

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New Zealand judge to head child sex abuse inquiry

UNITED KINGDOM
The Times

Richard Ford Home Correspondent
Last updated at 2:13PM, February 4 2015

A New Zealand High Court judge has been chosen to head the child sex abuse inquiry, the home secretary announced today.

Justice Lowell Goddard, 66, is to lead a new statutory inquiry which is expected to investigate child sex abuse going back to 1945.

The New Zealand judge will be questioned by MPs next week when the Commons home affairs select committee holds a pre-appointment hearing with her.

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Kiwi judged picked for major UK inquiry

NEW ZEALAND
TVNZ

By Jessica Mutch
Published: 3:52AM Thursday February 05, 2015

A high powered New Zealand judge has been named to lead a controversial inquiry into historic child sex abuse in England and Wales.

Justice Lowell Goddard has been named to head the investigation and Home Secretary Theresa May told the British Parliament she has a “wealth of expertise”.

Justice Goddard is the third choice. The other two candidates quit because of perceived conflicts of interest so the British government turned to the Commonwealth for someone who is “removed” from those being investigated. There were 150 nominations for the position.

Theresa May says: “Justice Goddard is a judge of the high court of New Zealand and is a highly respected member of the judiciary who has been at the forefront of criminal law and procedure. As chairman of the Independent Police Complaints Association of New Zealand she conducted an inquiry into the policing of child abuse in New Zealand and she is also a member of the United Nations sub committee on prevention of torture. She will bring a wealth of expertise to the role of chair and crucially she will be as removed as possible from the organisations and institutions that might become the focus of the inquiry.”

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Justice Lowell Goddard will ‘enhance’ child abuse inquiry

UNITED KINGDOM
BBC News

Campaigners for a child abuse inquiry have welcomed the appointment of New Zealand judge Justice Lowell Goddard as chairwoman of the independent panel.

Labour MP Simon Danczuk, who led calls for an inquiry, told the BBC the appointment was “right this time”.

Peter Saunders, a spokesman for one victims’ group, said Justice Goddard would “enhance the whole credibility of the inquiry”.

Two chairwomen have resigned amid concerns over links with the establishment since July.

Making the announcement in the Commons, Home Secretary Theresa May said Justice Goddard would bring a “wealth of expertise” to the role and was “as removed as possible” from individuals and groups that may be implicated in the inquiry.

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Lowell Goddard profile: judge ‘has key qualities’ to lead child abuse inquiry

UNITED KINGDOM
The Guardian

Owen Bowcott, legal affairs correspondent
@owenbowcott
Wednesday 4 February 2015

Justice Lowell Goddard, the newly appointed chair of the inquiry into child sexual abuse, is a New Zealand high court judge who has served on United Nations committees.

The first woman from a Maori background to sit in her country’s high court, Goddard, 66, has experience working with victims of sexual assault; as a barrister she helped establish support programmes for survivors of abuse.

Goddard has also been chair of New Zealand’s Independent Police Conduct Authority and has sat on the UN subcommittee on the prevention of torture.

A law graduate from the University of Auckland, she began practising as a barrister in 1977 and was appointed Queen’s counsel in 1988. In 1992 she was appointed deputy solicitorgeneral for New Zealand. Goddard was appointed to the high court bench in December 1995.

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Manny and Zephaniah Waks tell royal commission about sex abuse ordeal at Yeshivah Centre

AUSTRALIA
7 News

By Jessica Longbottom and Norman Hermant
February 4, 2015

For Manny Waks it has been a long road to the royal commission investigating institutional responses to child sex abuse.

The only survivor of abuse within Melbourne’s Jewish community to speak publicly, he has become a name synonymous with the fight against sexual abuse in the Jewish community worldwide.

However it has come with a cost.

Mr Waks has felt so ostracised by the ultra-orthodox Chabad Jewish community that he moved his family to France to start a new life.

Only days ago he returned to Australia to give evidence at the royal commission, as it hears for the first time allegations of abuse in Jewish institutions.

“You know on the plane ride on the way here I had to pinch myself to say, ‘Wow, I’m actually coming to Australia because the royal commission is happening’,” he said.

“I’ve literally been working towards this goal, even subconsciously, for decades.”

Mr Waks, 39, was sexually abused by security guard David Cyprus at the Yeshivah Centre in Melbourne in the 1990s.

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TX–Victims blast Catholic officials

TEXAS
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests

Victims blast Catholic officials
Child sex abuse case vs. priest settles
But church hierarchy acts “callously,” group says
SNAP: “Bishop must “reach out” to others who were hurt
Group urges Ft. Worth diocese to put 3 more predators on its website

WHAT
Holding signs and childhood photos at a sidewalk news conference, clergy sex abuse victims and their supporters will

— blast two Catholic officials for their reaction to a recent clergy sex abuse settlement,
— make public the personnel files of this offender, and
— urge them to “aggressively reach out” to others who may have been hurt by the predator priest.

They will also prod Ft. Worth’s bishop to

— post at least three more names of credibly accused child molesting clerics on his website, and
— send a letter rebuking an Arkansas church staffer who made harsh remarks that hurt a victim.

WHEN
Wednesday, Feb. 4 at 11:00 a.m.

WHERE
Outside the Ft. Worth Catholic cathedral, 1206 Throckmorton Street (corner of 11th) in Ft. Worth

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

WHY
A Dallas area attorney has disclosed that two Catholic institutions – the Ft. Worth diocese and an Arkansas abbey – have settled a clergy sex abuse case. The victim is a Ft. Worth woman and the crimes took place in Cooke County at Sacred Heart Catholic Church in Muenster. The alleged predator is a now-deceased priest, Fr. Bede Mitchel, who taught at Corpus Christi Academy and Laneri High School in Ft. Worth, worked at six local parishes and traveled extensively leading retreats and missions.

[Star-Telegram]

But SNAP is begging Catholic officials – in Ft. Worth and Arkansas – to do more. Specifically, the group wants church staff to “come clean” about all child molesting clerics and post their names on church websites “for the safety of the vulnerable and healing of the wounded.” Roughly 30 US bishops have done this.

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Episcopal leader suspected Cook was drunk days before installation as bishop

MARYLAND
The Baltimore Sun

By Jonathan Pitts
The Baltimore Sun

The leader of the Episcopal Diocese of Maryland suspected that the Rev. Heather Elizabeth Cook — now facing drunken driving and manslaughter charges in the December death of a local bicyclist — was intoxicated at a dinner two days before she was installed as bishop last year, according to the diocese.

The Rt. Rev. Eugene Taylor Sutton, head of the Maryland diocese, quickly shared his concerns about Cook’s behavior that night with the Most Rev. Katharine Jefferts Schori, presiding bishop of the Episcopal Church in the United States, the diocese said in a timeline posted on its website this week.

“Bishop Sutton suspects that Cook is inebriated during pre-consecration dinner and conveys concern
The timeline does not say whether Schori in fact talked to Cook — who church officials were aware had been arrested four years earlier on a charge of driving under the influence.

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Bishop’s drinking raised concern

MARYLAND
Philly.com

JULIET LINDERMAN, ASSOCIATED PRESS
POSTED: Wednesday, February 4, 2015

BALTIMORE – The leader of the Episcopal Diocese of Maryland said a bishop-elect charged in a drunken-driving death may also have been inebriated at a dinner months earlier, just days before her consecration as a bishop, according to a timeline released by the diocese.

The diocese leader relayed his concerns to the head of the national church, according to the timeline released Monday, which is the first indication church officials had concerns about alcohol misuse occurring after a 2010 drunken-driving conviction.

Bishop Heather Cook is facing manslaughter, drunken-driving and texting while driving charges after she fatally struck bicyclist Thomas Palermo in December in Baltimore while legally drunk. Palermo was a native of Riverton, N.J.

Prosecutors say Cook left the scene before returning and recording a breathalyzer reading of .22. The blood-alcohol content limit for driving in Maryland is .08.

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Ex-Youth Pastor Arrested

PENNSYLVANIA
PA Homepage

Andy Mehalshick

Eyewitness News was there as Adam D’Albero of Drums walked into district court near Hazleton to be charged with indecent contact with a 13-year old girl.

Detectives say D’Albero met the alleged victim while he was working as a youth ministries director at the Mountain View Community church near White Haven.

“There was a youth group at the Mountain View Community Church which brought in youth from all over the area.Then when he opened up his own church Well Spring Life center a lot of the youth group followed him to.” said Chief Tom Szoke of White Haven Police Department

It’s at that Wellspring Church that detectives say D’Albero began a one year long relationship between May of 2011 and May of 2012.

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Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse – Day 3: Rabbi Moshe Gutnick

AUSTRALIA
J-Wire

February 4, 2015 by Henry Benjamin

Statements made by Sydney Rabbi Moshe Gutnick have reignited a commitment to Judaism for child sexual abuse victim Manny Waks.

Waks, who co-founded the child sexual abuse advocacy organisation Tzedek was present at the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse hearings in Melbourne today when Rabbi Gutnick’s statements came under the scrutiny of counsel assisting the enquiry.

Waks told J-Wire at the end of the day’s proceedings: “Rabbi Moshe Gutnick has restored my faith in ultra-orthodox Judaism. Following his statements it seems that whereas more reform is urgently needed within the ultra-orthdox’s handling of what has happened to me and others, the reform seems closer. We need more like Rabbi Moshe Gutnick.”

Rabbi Gutnick is a senior rabbi and Dayan at the Sydney Beth Din. After learning that individual rabbis were in effect the spiritual head of the community in which they functioned, Counsel Assisting the Royal Commission Maria Gerace asked Rabbi Gutnick: “Is it accurate to say there is no overseeing body in terms of the way that that rabbi acts or operates within that community.” Rabbi Gutnick responded: “There is no overseeing body but any member of the Jewish faith has the ability to challenge that rabbi and to take him to Beth Din. [Jewish Court of Law].” When asked if a rabbi could refuse to attend, Rabbi Gutnick said: “If the rabbi didn’t want to attend he would have to give good reason why he doesn’t want to attend. Nobody is above the law.”

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Rabbi admits he ‘forgot’ about call from young boy, royal commission told

AUSTRALIA
The Guardian

Melissa Davey
@MelissaLDavey
Wednesday 4 February 2015

An orthodox Jewish religious leader said he “forgot” about a boy who called him to say he had been sexually abused at the Yeshivah Centre in Sydney because he thought it must be a prank – a judgment he said he came to “profoundly regret”.

Rabbi Moshe Gutnick, a senior judge of the Sydney Beth Din rabbinical court, now worked with victims of child sexual abuse and encouraged them to go to police without fear, he told the royal commission into institutional responses into child sex abuse on Wednesday.

Gutnick said he received the phone call in 1987, when he was a teacher at the orthodox Yeshivah Centre Bondi, and it was the first time he had heard of sexual abuse there.

Gutnick said he first spoke to an “older boy” who told him he had a “younger boy” with him who had something to tell him.

“He then put the younger male on the phone and [he] told me he had been sexually abused by Daniel Robert Hayman, ‘Gug’,” Gutnick said.

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Rabbi regrets inaction over 1987 abuse

AUSTRALIA
Sky News

A prominent Melbourne rabbi insists the idea that reporting sexual abuse to police goes against Jewish religious principles is an abomination.

He brushed off a sex abuse report 28 years ago as a hoax, and profoundly regrets it.

Rabbi Moshe Gutnick is now an advocate for child sex abuse victims and says those who come forward should be considered heroes.

He told the sex abuse royal commission on Wednesday he felt guilty for taking no action after a boy called him in 1987 to report a man, Daniel Hayman, who was later convicted of abusing another boy.

The rabbi told the commission the victim, with the help of another boy, called him about abuse by Hayman.

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New abuse inquiry chair to be named

UNITED KINGDOM
Belfast Telegraph

04 FEBRUARY 2015

Theresa May is expected to announce the new chair of the troubled child abuse inquiry following the resignations of two previous holders of the post.

The Home Secretary has also been considering the format of the inquiry, which could potentially involve scrapping the existing panel and replacing it with a more powerful body.

The new appointment follows the loss of two former chairwomen, who stood down over perceived conflicts of interest.

A Home Office spokesman said: “The Home Secretary has been having a series of meetings with survivors of child abuse right up to this point. She is going to make an announcement today.”

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Rabbis tried, failed to deter Yeshivah child sex offender, victim tells inquiry

AUSTRALIA
The Age

February 4, 2015

Jane Lee

One of Australia’s most senior Orthodox rabbis says Jewish people have an obligation to report sexual abuse, and that the prohibition against informing against other Jews to secular authorities does not apply to child sexual abuse.

Rabbi Moshe Gutnick spoke out against the ultra Orthodox Chabad community’s treatment of victims and cover-up of past crimes at the royal commission into child sexual abuse on Wednesday.

“I believe it is an absolute religious obligation to report any allegations of child sexual abuse as quickly as possible to the appropriate authorities and to suggest there is some religious obligation not to do so is an abomination,” he said.

Victims of former Yeshivah Centre employees David Cyprys, Daniel Hayman and David Kramer have told the commission that senior rabbis have labelled them “mosars”, or informers, for breaching the prohibition of mersirah, which they said prevented other victims coming forward.

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Sexism is the Original Sin: WOW …

Women’s Ordination Conference

Sexism is the Original Sin: WOW Statement on The Pontifical Council for Culture’s Plenary Assembly About Women’s Cultures

For Immediate Release
February 2, 2015
Pat Brown, (UK) +44 (0) 113 268 2887
Miriam Duignan (USA) +1 510 984 8678
Marilyn Hatton (Australia) +61 2 6262 5275
Kate McElwee, (Italy) +39 393 6922100

Sexism is the Original Sin: WOW Statement on The Pontifical Council for Culture’s Plenary Assembly About Women’s Cultures

The Vatican’s Pontifical Council for Culture’s Plenary Assembly about Women’s Cultures has released its Working Document for the Assembly set to begin on February 4, 2015. The document yet again shows that the Vatican refuses to read the signs of the times to an unacceptable degree. The international umbrella network, Women’s Ordination Worldwide (founded in 1996 at the First European Women’s Synod), observes several glaring aspects about the document:

The document claims that there will be no discussion on women’s ordination because “according to statistics, [ordination] is not something that women want.” This undeniable falsehood and the Vatican’s refusal to open dialogue shows contempt for the faithful and demonstrates that as a leadership, the male hierarchy is out of touch with the people it is called to serve. Many qualified women, with the support of their communities, discern vocations to priesthood, and yet the hierarchy is comfortable in rejecting the obvious: God does not discriminate.

The document divides humanity into socially-constructed stereotypes and attempts to say they are “natural,” with corresponding gender-defined roles. This thinking and language have been challenged and rejected in scholarship for decades, and are wildly culturally and spiritually unacceptable. Human beings exist on multiple continuums, with intersectional identities: without including gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered people, this document denies the full humanity of God’s people.

Sexism is the original sin of Church leadership. It is long past due for the Church to rid itself of this sin and to welcome women as equal partners in all realms of ministry and leadership.

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Vatican. Vatican. Vatican. Women. Women. Women. …

UNITED STATES
Bilgrimage

William D. Lindsey

Vatican. Vatican. Vatican. Women. Women. Women. (“Equal” but Different and Subordinate.)

The Vatican’s Pontifical Council on Culture (whose members are all cardinals and bishops) will discuss women tomorrow. And for several days after that. And as Kaya Oakes says (see the tweet above), this is the image their website is using to advertise their discussion?

The conference’s working document states that the group won’t discuss the issue of women’s ordination since women don’t want that — they don’t want ordination. Women want, the cardinals and bishops doing the discussing inform us, some kind of “equality” which recognizes that they are distinctively different from men.

Here’s the wonderful response of the Women’s Ordination Conference to this toxic silliness:

The document claims that there will be no discussion on women’s ordination because “according to statistics, [ordination] is not something that women want.” This undeniable falsehood and the Vatican’s refusal to open dialogue shows contempt for the faithful and demonstrates that as a leadership, the male hierarchy is out of touch with the people it is called to serve. Many qualified women, with the support of their communities, discern vocations to priesthood, and yet the hierarchy is comfortable in rejecting the obvious: God does not discriminate.

The document divides humanity into socially-constructed stereotypes and attempts to say they are “natural,” with corresponding gender-defined roles. This thinking and language have been challenged and rejected in scholarship for decades, and are wildly culturally and spiritually unacceptable. Human beings exist on multiple continuums, with intersectional identities: without including gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered people, this document denies the full humanity of God’s people.

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Bishop Bill Wright backs removal of statutory limitations on court action by sex abuse victim

AUSTRALIA
Maitland Mercury

By NICK BIELBY Feb. 1, 2015

The leader of the Catholic church in the Hunter has thrown his support behind a suggestion to repeal a time limit for victims of child sexual abuse to pursue civil litigation against the church and its clergy.

The Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sex Abuse discussed a possible repeal in its consultation paper, which was released on Friday.

It also earmarked the possibility of a national redress scheme, which would involve the federal government and institutions that were responsible for child sexual abuse.

Diocese of Maitland-Newcastle Bishop Bill Wright said in a written statement that a significant number of Catholic church abuse victims were from the Maitland-Newcastle region.

He said the church was committed to continuing to support abuse victims.

“As I have stated previously, I strongly support the royal commission in its mission to investigate and recommend improvements to laws, policies and procedures to better protect children,” Bishop Wright said.

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Settlement reached in Ursuline Academy sex abuse case

MONTANA
NBC Montana

Adam Painter, Reporter/Meteorologist, apainter@keci.com

ST. IGNATIUS, Mont. –
A settlement has been reached between 232 plaintiffs who were sexually abused by priests and nuns.

It happened from the 1930s to the 1970s at the Ursuline Academy in St. Ignatius, which is located about 40 miles north of Missoula.

The case began in 2011, and the settlement is for $4.45 million. The agreement breaks down to less than $20,000 per victim.

We spoke with Vito de la Cruz, one of the attorneys who represented 35 percent of the plaintiffs. He said, “Child sexual abuse is often hidden, and it often lies buried for many years. For people to stand up and fight for their dignity, speak truth, and shine a light on this horrible, horrible occurrence to children is, for me, one of the most courageous things that victims can do.”

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What mediation means for the archdiocese, insurers and victims

MINNESOTA
Minnesota Public Radio

Martin Moylan Feb 4, 2015

The Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy on Jan. 16, a step that allows the church to operate as usual while reorganizing its operations and paying its creditors.

Federal bankruptcy Judge Robert Kressel, who is overseeing the process, has ordered the archdiocese and its creditors into mediation, where the parties will attempt to negotiate a settlement to reorganize the archdiocese and compensate victims of clergy sexual abuses.

Compromise is critical to mediation, as parties try to work toward a settlement that most — or many — can live with.

If mediation is successful, the archdiocese and its creditors can avoid moving the process to a federal bankruptcy courtroom — where the process can be more contentious than negotiation.

“Litigation is war,” said Roger Haydock, professor at the William Mitchell School of Law in St. Paul. “It’s civil war, but it’s war. To that extent, you try to get a peace treaty.”

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Former Ballarat priest Leslie Sheahan indecently assaulted girl, 9

AUSTRALIA
The Courier

By William Vallely Feb. 3, 2015

A FORMER Ballarat parish priest who indecently assaulted a nine-year-old girl with a carrot told police he mistakenly thought he was playing a “practical joke” on her mother, a court has heard.

Leslie Sheahan, 84, offered a “bizarre” and “troubling” explanation for the historical crime, telling police it was a practical joke gone awfully wrong, Ballarat Magistrates Court heard on Tuesday.

Sheahan, who was appointed priest at a Ballarat North church in the mid 1960s, was an assistant priest in the Horsham Catholic Diocese when the offence occurred between 1970-1971.

He pleaded guilty to unlawful/indecent assault of a girl – a historical charge which the court heard predates the sexual penetration of a child charges introduced in 1980s.

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Norse Gods Regain Popularity In Iceland As Country Builds First Pagan Temple In 1,000 Years

ICELAND
International Business Times

By Zoe Mintz

For the first time in 1,000 years, Iceland will have a new temple dedicated to Norse gods. The house of worship will be a circular building built into a hill that overlooks the country’s capital, Reykjavik, Reuters reported.

The 3,800-square-foot-temple will belong to members of Ásatrúarfélagið, a neopagan faith that has tripled in size over the last decade in Iceland. The organization was founded in 1972 and had fewer than 100 members for nearly two decades. Today there are nearly 2,400 followers in the island nation of only 320,000 people.

“I don’t believe anyone believes in a one-eyed man who is riding about on a horse with eight feet,” Hilmar Örn Hilmarsson, high priest of Ásatrúarfélagið, told Reuters. “We see the stories as poetic metaphors and a manifestation of the forces of nature and human psychology.” …

The Ásatrúarfélagið denomination grew after its leader Sveinbjörn Beinteinsson died in 1993. This thrust the faith into the national spotlight. A sexual abuse scandal in the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Iceland also led many to leave the pews.

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Priest vows to fight back at Vatican dismissal

IRELAND
Irish Independent

Ralph Riegel and Majella O’Sullivan
PUBLISHED
04/02/2015

A CLERIC has vowed to fight the decision by a top Vatican court to dismiss him from the priesthood.

Fr Dan Duane (76) told the Irish Independent that he was “very disappointed” by the decision of the Vatican to uphold a ruling of the Apostolic Signatura, one of Rome’s highest clerical courts, which recommended he be dismissed.

The Vatican court last month rejected Fr Duane’s appeal against being defrocked following a Church investigation over child sexual abuse allegations.

Fr Duane, who has been in restricted ministry for the past eight years, had appealed the ruling of a canonical court in Ireland that he be dismissed from the clerical state.

But Pope Francis has now endorsed the decision of the top Roman court.

The Diocese of Cloyne apologised to those who had levelled abuse allegations for the length of time the clerical dismissal process took.

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Onetime Lansdale priest admits to indecent assault at local YMCA

PENNSYLVANIA
Montgomery Media

By Carl Hessler Jr.
chessler@21st-centurymedia.com
@MontcoCourtNews on Twitter

Norristown >> A onetime Lansdale priest will be under court supervision after he admitted to having indecent contact with a man in a local YMCA locker area.

John H. Roebuck, 65, of the unit block of Lansdale Avenue, was sentenced in Montgomery County Court to two years’ probation after he pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor charge of indecent assault without consent in connection with the December 2013 incident that occurred at the YMCA on East Main Street in Lansdale.

“Basically, he admitted to inappropriately touching another patron outside the locker room area at the Lansdale YMCA. He violated another person right out in the open. It really shocked the victim,” Assistant District Attorney Jordan Friter, who leads the district attorney’s sex crimes prosecution division, said on Wednesday.

“He’ll be supervised by the sex offender unit of the probation department. They’ll do their own evaluation and then they determine what kind of counseling and treatment he’ll undergo,” Friter added.

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Eric Dejaeger sentencing: Judge’s decision expected today

CANADA
CBC News

Feb 04, 2015

A Nunavut judge will announce today how much time former priest Eric Dejaeger will get for sexually abusing children in Igloolik 30 years ago.

Eric Dejaeger was convicted last year on 32 counts of child sexual abuse dating back to his time as a priest in Igloolik between 1978 and 1982.

The Crown has asked for a sentence of 25 years in prison, while the defence suggested 12 years. Both lawyers suggested the accused be credited two days for every day spent in pre-trial custody.

Dejaeger has been in custody since January 2011 following his arrest on immigration charges in his home country of Belgium. It was discovered his citizenship there was no longer valid. Dejaeger was then returned to Canada to face charges that were laid in 1995.

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February 3, 2015

Some see Junipero Serra, Pope Francis’ next American saint, as less than holy

CALIFORNIA
National Catholic Reporter

David Gibson Religion News Service | Feb. 3, 2015

When Pope Francis unexpectedly announced last month that he would canonize Fr. Junipero Serra during his visit to the U.S. in September, he thrilled the many fans of the legendary 18th-century Spanish Franciscan who spread the Catholic faith across what is now California.

But the pope who has decried the “ideological colonization” of the developing world by the secular West is now facing criticism from those who say Serra — called “the Columbus of California” — abused Native Americans and pressured them to convert, aiding in the devastation of the indigenous culture on behalf of the Spanish crown.

“Serra was no saint to us,” Ron Andrade, executive director of the Los Angeles City/County Native American Indian Commission, told the Los Angeles Times.

Some of Serra’s sharpest critics say he was part of an imperial conquest that beat and enslaved Native Americans, raped their women, and destroyed their culture by forcing them to abandon their traditional language, diet, dress and other customs and rites.

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The Progressive Pope Has a Blind Spot

VATICAN CITY
The Daily Beast

Barbie Latza Nadeau

VATICAN CITY — One has to wonder who spiked the holy water when the publicity gurus for the Pontifical Council for Culture came up with the idea to use a sexy blond actress as their talent in an ad ahead of a plenary conference in Rome this week called Women’s Cultures: Equality and Difference. The protagonist, Nancy Brilli, a sort of Italian Suzanne Somers, is no doubt devout in her faith. But considering Brilli’s best-known role was as a ditzy adulteress in a 1980s comedy, one might ask exactly who the Vatican is trying to reach with it latest missive. Writing in National Catholic Reporter, Phyllis Zagano, a research associate at Hofstra University, has the million-dollar question: “Is the Vatican convinced women’s intellectual abilities rise only to the level of televised soap operas and cosmetics commercials?”

Brilli, fabulous at 50, may be a fine actress. But in the Vatican’s advertisement, she pouts for the camera and says, “I am sure you have asked yourself many times who you are, what you do, what you think about your being a woman, your strengths, your difficulties, your body, and your spiritual life,” before asking women to send in a one-minute video with the hashtag #lifeofwomen to be considered for the February 4-7 conference opening program. After a tsunami of criticism from Catholic women who said they don’t relate to Brilli, the Vatican took down the English version of the video.

Perhaps the Vatican can be forgiven for not knowing its female audience. After all, it is hard to understand the opponent in the fight for equality when there are so few women in the hierarchy of the Holy See’s good old boys’ club. One person who has been knocking at the door for a long time is Miriam Duignan, communications director for the Catholic reform think tank Wijngaards Institute for Catholic Research and a leader in the WOW Women’s Ordination Worldwide movement. Last year she took 700 letters to Pope Francis from women who have been called to the priesthood, but the open-minded pope didn’t respond to a single one. The Catholic Church has been telling women to wait their turn for far too long, she says. “So many men in the priesthood who gravitate to the Vatican like to live in their fortress on the hill as if women don’t exist,” she told The Daily Beast. “The world will not fall apart if there are more women in the church.”

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Eternal Hope, Persistent Disappointment

UNITED STATES
Catholics for Choice

By W. David Myers

IT IS WHEN SITTING BEFORE A CLASS full of bright, eager, even devout young university women that the jarring history and current realities of their relationship to Catholicism strike with full force. Honors students all, many among them theology majors, they see in their daily life on campus the work of women—scholars, campus ministers, counselors—whose talents and accomplishments can only inspire to greater heights. They demand every week to hear something of the “woman’s voice” in European history. Every week, I dutifully try to set something out. We talk about St. Teresa of Avila of course, and a host of intelligent, ardent women who led vital, active, and meaningful lives within the church. In return, the hierarchy has variously demanded the images, minds and bodies of these women without giving something in return except the promise of heavenly happiness. Whether women have created mystical music and visions or served uncomplainingly as servants and cooks for priests and monks, the Catholic hierarchy has v iewed them as instruments, useful but second class. And yet women stay. They have always stayed.

The history of Catholicism’s relation to women is a long and tangled one, involving dazzling, beautiful myths based on female sanctity and a more depressing, mundane reality rooted in exploitative labor and exclusion from power. The contrast between the two explains much of the tension in Catholic life and culture, from the beginnings until today. The New Testament displays the tension. Women were among the first and most persistent disciples of Jesus—the last to remain at the cross and the very first to witness to the Resurrection of Christ.

In the culture of early Christianity, women as owners or managers of houses where Christians met were active in welcoming and fostering the community. Over time, wealthy women could have a profound influence in granting land and founding monasteries. This is not to say the early church was any kind of golden age for gender equality in Christianity. It was instead a time of continual crisis, in which Christianity grew at the margins of society, always under threat of persecution and suppression, constantly forced to make concessions to its members in order to survive. The letters of St. Paul are full of greetings and references to women’s activity, and at the same time they admonish women to silence and duty, forbidding them to preach.

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ACT sexual abuse crimes dating back to 1951 investigated under new police operation

AUSTRALIA
ABC News

Allegations of sexual abuse at ACT institutions covering a period of more than 60 years are to be investigated under a new police operation.

In 2013, laws passed by the ACT Legislative Assembly recently removed the statute of limitations on historic abuse crimes.

Previously, victims had to report the offence within 12 months or it could not be prosecuted.

Operation Attest has now been set up to allow police to prosecute certain sexual offences allegedly committed between 1951 and 1985.

Former Marist Brother John ‘Kostka’ Chute was convicted of multiple counts of acts of indecency on children under the age of 16.

Last year the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse hearings in Canberra heard from some of Brother Kostka’s victims while examining the response of the Marist Brothers to allegations of child sexual abuse in schools across the ACT, New South Wales and Queensland.

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Aurora parishioners noisily demand to get their suspended priest back

CANADA
Toronto Star

By: Marco Chown Oved Staff Reporter, Published on Tue Feb 03 2015

They stood up; they yelled; they walked out.

Members of Aurora’s Our Lady of Grace Roman Catholic Church had a raucous mass on Sunday, the first since learning that their pastor, Joe Gorman, had been suspended from his duties due to alleged financial issues and “ecclesiastical irregularities” at weddings.

When contacted by the Star on Tuesday, the 38-year-old priest said he had no comment on the allegations.

Auxiliary Bishop Wayne Kirkpatrick was dispatched by the Archdiocese of Toronto to explain the situation to the congregation, which is 6,000 families strong. But many in the church, which was packed with confused parishioners, were angry that their priest could be removed without warning.

Kirkpatrick read a statement issued by the Archdiocese and specified that there was no reason to suspect Father Gorman sought any personal financial gain, before he was interrupted by several people who stood and demanded their pastor back.

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Sparks fly over choice of image for Vatican document for assembly on women

UNITED STATES
National Catholic Reporter

Soli Salgado | Feb. 3, 2015 NCR Today

The Vatican Pontifical Council of Culture recently sparked controversy when the cover image for an online working document intended to advertise this week’s annual plenary assembly in Rome on “Women’s Culture: Equality and Difference” was Man Ray’s 1936 sculpture, “Venus Restored,” a plaster cast of a headless Venus bound in ropes. The work of art, according to an article at Crux, is meant to depict women as a subjugated sex object, but also as a creature who rises above men’s depictions.

Association of Roman Catholic Women Priests Bishop Bridget Mary Meehan wrote on her blog that it “reflects the Vatican’s patriarchal, dysfunctional view that holds women in spiritual bondage. This image denigrates women’s bodies and souls and reflects a deep misogyny in need of healing and transformation.”

“If we had women priests at the Vatican, do you think an image like this would see the light of day?” she asked.

Micol Forti, director of the contemporary art collection at the Vatican Museums, defended the use of the image, telling Crux that the sculpture was chosen because it represents the past as an “anchor to generate new ideas.” She added that while it is imperfect in fully articulating the purpose of the assembly, “it’s not a headless or armless body, but a reflection on classic tradition and the possibility of rediscovering a role in contemporary life.”

We Are Church of Ireland also took offense to the choice of images, saying that Man Ray was a misogynist who objectified women and viewed them as subordinates, targets of male desire and subjects to erotic fantasies.

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Happy Irony Week!!!

UNITED STATES
Questions from a Ewe

Boys and girls, a strange week it is indeed, and it’s only Monday. First, I read an article by Sr. Mary Ann Walsh in “America” magazine touting the Catholic Church as superior in offering career advancement opportunities for women as compared to secular industries. Then I gazed upon the bizarre female bondage artistic choice for the cover of the Pontifical Council on Culture’s working document regarding women. (see image below…)

It must be “happy irony week” in the Catholic Church because what else explains all this?

Let’s first enjoy the “America” magazine article’s irony in and of itselt. However, I will preface my comments with this thought: I work in the secular world as an executive and I’ve also done a lot of volunteering in the Catholic Church. “Career advancement opportunities for women” just has never been a phrase I use when describing the Catholic Church…never…not once.

Sr. Mary Ann’s article highlights statistics indicating the percentage of women CEOs for Catholic affiliated organizations such as hospitals is a higher than for secular companies. She fails to mention that those institutions cannot call themselves “Catholic” without the approval of the reigning bishop, the CEO of the local diocese. How many of those bishop/CEOs are women? The answer is “the empty set.”

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Philadelphia Child Sex Abuse Nonprofit Invites Pope Francis to Visit

PHILADELPHIA (PA)
NBC 10

By Vince Lattanzio

How do you put an international spotlight on an issue like child sexual abuse which people often don’t like to hear about?

Have the leader of one the largest organized religions in the world stop by for a visit.

That’s what staff of the Philadelphia Children’s Alliance (PCA) are hoping will happen come September.

The nonprofit, which offers care to sexually abused children and works with police to bring their abusers to justice, penned a letter to Pope Francis asking him to visit their facility when he travels to Philadelphia for the upcoming World Meeting of Families conference.

“We really thought that knowing what we know about him, knowing about his interesting commitment to the welfare of children that it would be great to showcase our work to Pope Francis,” Chris Kirchner, PCA’s executive director, tells NBC10.

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Forecast: 2015 Synod of Bishops will be just as stormy as last time

UNITED STATES
Crux

By John L. Allen Jr.
Associate editor February 3, 2015

Just a day before America’s big game, Pope Francis set the stage for the Vatican’s equivalent of the 2015 Super Bowl by confirming 48 prelates as members for October’s Synod of Bishops on the Family, after they had been chosen by their bishops’ conferences around the world.

It’s not yet a complete lineup; other bishops’ conferences still have to submit their picks. In addition, the pope presumably will appoint the heads of Vatican offices as members of the Oct. 4-25 summit, and also will make a handful of personal picks.

Looking only at Saturday’s crop, however, one point already seems clear: There’s absolutely no reason to believe the 2015 Synod of Bishops will be any less contentious than last year’s edition, which featured a vigorous, and occasionally nasty, back-and-forth over issues such as homosexuality and divorce.

On the contrary, the forecast for October seems to be for storms every bit as intense as those that erupted during the synod last fall. If anyone wondered whether Pope Francis might try to “stack the deck” in advance this time around, Saturday’s confirmations clearly seem to refute that idea.

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Outline document for the Plenary Assembly of the Pontifical Council for Culture, Rome 4-7 February 2015

VATICAN CITY
Pontifical Council for Culture

Premise

“I am convinced that the human species develops as a twofold species, ‘male’ and ‘female’; that the essence of the human being, of which no trait should be missing, is present in both, manifesting itself in two ways: and that the entire structure of being highlights this specific mould.” (Edith Stein)

In our Plenary, the invaluable contribution of our Members and Consultors will allow us to gather some aspects of women’s cultures in four thematic stages, in order to identify possible pastoral paths, which will allow Christian communities to listen and dialogue with the world today in this sphere. The expression “women’s cultures” does not imply any division from men’s cultures, but shows our awareness that there is a women’s “perspective” on the world and all that surrounds us, on life and on
experience. This perspective is a normal part of the fabric of all cultures and societies; we can see it in the family and in work, in politics and the economy, in study and decision making, in communications and literature, in art and sport, in fashion and cuisine, etc. This text has been composed by a group of women in the light of pastoral considerations sent in by our Members and Consultors and will guide us in our reflections.

At the dawn of human history, societies divided roles and functions between men and women rigorously. To the men belonged responsibility, authority, and presence in the public sphere: the law, politics, war, power. To women belonged reproduction, education, and care of the family in the domestic sphere. In ancient Europe, in the communities of Africa, in the most ancient civilisations of Asia, women exercised their talents in the family environment and personal relationships, while avoiding the public sphere or being positively excluded. The queens and empresses recalled in history books were notable exceptions to the norm.

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Vatican’s Women Initiative Gets Off To A Bad Start

VATICAN CITY
NPR

[with audio and video]

FEBRUARY 03, 2015

SYLVIA POGGIOLI

Even before it opens Wednesday, the Vatican’s outreach initiative toward women got off to a bad start.

A promotional video produced ahead of a conference on women’s issues has been widely ridiculed as a sexist stereotype of the modern Western woman.

The Vatican’s Pontifical Council for Culture is sponsoring the conference on Women’s Cultures: Equality and Difference.

In December, organizers released a promotional video that features Italian actress Nancy Brilli, tossing her hair, looking at the camera coquettishly and asking in a sultry voice for women to contribute 60-second clips of their lives to be broadcast at the conference.

“I am sure you have asked yourself many times,” the sexy blonde says, “who you are, what you do, what you think about your being a woman, your strength, your difficulties, your body and your spiritual life.”

The video drew intense criticism.

“What are they thinking at the Vatican?” asked Phyllis Zagano of Hofstra University, writing in the National Catholic Reporter.

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Sex Abuse Scandals and Just Scrutiny

UNITED STATES
Barefoot and Pregnant

February 3, 2015 by Calah Alexander

On Sunday, the prosecutor general of the Holy See announced that two cases of child pornography were discovered in the Vatican last year, along with numerous instances of drug trafficking and money-laundering.

Unveiling the Vatican’s justice report, Milano stopped short of naming those accused of possessing child pornography. Holy See spokesman Federico Lombardi however identified Josef Wesolowski, a disgraced former ambassador, as one of the people facing charges.
(Read the rest here)

This is no longer shocking or even surprising news. Frankly, I’m so weary of hearing about the new and horrible crap some of those in our hierarchy pull that even my knee-jerk attempt to “find the positive” is half-hearted and cynical.

To be fair, the drug-trafficking and money-laundering might be more complex than corrupt clergy. The Vatican, as a small sovereignty, can be used as a center for international crime that might not involve the citizens or clergy of the Vatican state. In the instance of the cocaine-filled condoms, the Vatican was indeed cooperating with civil authorities in an attempt to ensnare the buyer. I have a hard time imagining that the German authorities who handed the package over to the Vatican as bait would have just shrugged and let it go if the buyer had turned out to be a Vatican priest. Nor do I believe that the Vatican would have insisted that a clear instance of international crime be left for them to handle if the perpetrator had been a clergyman.

The child porn case seems different.

For the record, the prosecutor general was not obligated to reveal the details of the investigation, nor was the spokesman obligated to reveal the name of one of the perpetrators.

This is good in the same way that it’s good when one child tells another child that he found his brother lighting kittens on fire, again. Honesty might be a virtue, but the tortured kittens need courage and justice to save them. I doubt they’ll be comforted to know that yeah, the people they trusted with their lives and souls might have tortured and mangled both body and soul, but at least they told the truth.

If this were being handled by the civil authorities, Wesolowski would be awaiting trial in a cozy jail cell. It seems that he is under house arrest rather than in the Vatican jail, since, as my colleague at the atheist channel points out that the Vatican jail has been otherwise, er, “occupied”.

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‘God’s Bankers’: New Book on Vatican’s Misuse of Funds

UNITED STATES
Wall Street Journal

[with video]

2/3/2015

Gerald Posner discusses his new book “God’s Bankers,” in which he says the Vatican Bank was founded by a Nazi spy, the same institution helped siphon funds for illicit reasons, and how a “gay network’ in the Vatican may have helped oust Pope Benedict. Photo: Getty.

TRANSCRIPT –

This transcript has been automatically generated and may not be 100% accurate.

… Pope Francis making strides to bring some transplants eight to one of the world’s most opaque institutions … the Vatican Bank … may be even more questionable things going on of that than most people couldn’t imagine … that’s what our next guest says it’s Gerald PostNL opening new vocal gold to bankers have a Cobia thank you Brian much for being so thanks for having me I’m because we will was surfing through about a Vatican Bank is a mysterious place so aam did you put some pretty interesting … things to get ahead why did you want this book will get to some of the things that you found I wrote the book because I wanted to find out what was going on behind the scenes was this mysterious and the news was we thought it turns out to be just as bad as one could imagine I did it actually seems to be even worse the money I can imagine that made it a summit did make some of the opinion of the fictional stuff seemed tank so the fuss thing that is that you use a former man say … when was the man who founder and former Nazi was the spike found that the Vatican idea I mean the men who founded the Vatican Bank in the middle of World War two so the Vatican Bank and avoiding keep doing business with the Nazis in the entire time the Americans and British for top trying to stop that … was actually a Nazi intelligence agent from there it goes on to become an oral than some of the biggest upset of downfalls and it’s had in political history ..

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Church: Bishop suspected Cook was drunk at installation

MARYLAND
WBAL

BALTIMORE —The Episcopal Diocese of Maryland said it suspects that the bishop charged in a fatal drunken-driving crash was drunk during her installation.

The diocese posted an updated timeline of events to its website Monday, saying another bishop thought Bishop Heather Cook was drunk in September when she officially became a bishop.

The timeline read, “Bishop Sutton suspects that Cook is inebriated during pre-consecration dinner and conveys concern to Presiding Bishop before rehearsal the next morning. Presiding bishop indicates she will discuss with Cook.”

Cook was installed despite that concern.

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Diocese: Church leader was concerned bishop was drunk

MARYLAND
Daily Mail (UK)

BALTIMORE (AP) — The Episcopal Diocese of Maryland says a church leader was concerned a bishop-elect accused of hitting a bicyclist while drunk had been intoxicated at a dinner before her consecration last year.

Heather Cook was charged with killing the cyclist Dec. 27 in Baltimore, nearly four months after that dinner. She left the scene before returning.

An official timeline of Cook’s election and her Sept. 6 consecration reports Bishop Eugene Sutton told the presiding bishop he was concerned “Cook is inebriated during pre-consecration dinner.”

The timeline says Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori “indicated she would discuss with Cook.” The timeline says another bishop met with Cook, but the details are known only to Jefferts Schori’s office.

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Extension granted to abuse inquiry

NORTHERN IRELAND
UTV

The inquiry had originally hoped to finish taking evidence by June 2015, and was scheduled to complete its report and present it to the Office of the First Minister and deputy First Minister by January 2016.

The request was made due to the heavy workload involved and was granted on Tuesday at the Assembly.

It is now expected that Sir Hart, a former senior judge, will present his report in January 2017.

The inquiry is examining the extent of wrongdoing in a number of institutions – including industrial schools, workhouses, and borstals. Many of which were run by religious orders.

Speaking at Stormont after the vote, Patrick Corrigan, of Amnesty International NI, welcomed the move.

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New York Jewish Day School Teacher Charged With Kiddie Porn

NEW YORK
The Jewish Daily Forward

A rabbi and a former Judaic studies teacher in Westchester County, N.Y., has been arrested and charged with receiving and possessing child pornography.

Lyle Kamlet, 62, is alleged to have purchased illegal DVDs over the Internet and to have had them mailed to Westchester Day School, a co-ed Modern Orthodox school in Mamaroneck, N.Y., where he worked for some three decades.

Kamlet resigned his post at WDS — a preschool, elementary and middle school — in February 2012.
On Monday, Head of School Joshua Lookstein, together with the board’s president and chairman,
emailed parents to inform them of Kamlet’s arrest. “As far as we know, during his tenure, the school had no information and had received no complaints concerning his involvement in any illegal activities,” the letter stated. “Since his resignation, Westchester Day School has not provided any references or recommendations for Kamlet.”

Kamlet was detained Friday, and charged with two counts of receipt and possession of child pornography.

“We are going to vigorously contest these charges in court,” Kamlet’s lawyer, James Roth, told The Journal News. Officials at WDS said they have been cooperating with federal authorities since April 2013. At the request of the U.S. Attorney’s Office, they agreed not to share information about the case until Kamlet’s arrest became public because “we did not believe that any of our current students were at risk,” the letter to parents stated.

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Details Emerge in Federal Arrest of Rabbi Lyle Kamlet on Child Pornography Charges

NEW YORK
Patch

By Alfred Branch (Patch Staff)
February 3, 2015

Mount Vernon resident Rabbi Lyle Kamlet, 62, was arrested by federal authorities on Jan. 30 on charges he allegedly possessed and received child pornography, and additional details are emerging about the case.

Kamlet formerly worked at the Westchester Day School in Mamaroneck, and officials of the Jewish day school emailed parents Monday notifying them of the arrest, according to JTA.org, a Jewish news site.

“As far as we know, during his tenure, the school had no information and had received no complaints concerning his involvement in any illegal activities,” the letter said, as reported by JTA. “Since his resignation, Westchester Day School has not provided any references or recommendations for Kamlet.”

Federal authorities did not identify the school Kamlet worked at, only saying that he was a “former Mamaroneck teacher,” causing some confusion in the community and initial media reports.

The Mamaroneck School District issued the following statement about the case:

“Over the last 24 hours, all of the local media outlets have picked up the news alert issued by the U.S. Attorney’s Office indicating that a ’former Mamaroneck teacher’ was arrested on child pornography charges. Just to clarify, the teacher did work at a school located in Mamaroneck; however, we have reviewed our personnel records and confirmed that he was never employed by the Mamaroneck School District.”

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