ABUSE TRACKER

AUSTRALIA
Herald Sun

SHANNON DEERY HERALD SUN APRIL 01, 2015

NOTORIOUS paedophile priest Gerald Ridsdale is being chased for thousands of dollars in compensation by 12 of his victims.

The frail 81-year-old appeared at the County Court via videolink from jail today for a brief hearing where a lawyer for the victims sought extra time to prepare their case.

Ridsdale, who has spent decades behind bars, has admitted abusing at least 54 students during the 1960s, 70s and 80s.

He is currently expected to remain in prison until at least 2019.

Ridsdale portrayed himself as the “friendly priest”, luring his victims with inducements such as lollies and money to gain their trust.

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WASHINGTON (DC)
Washington Post

By Michelle Boorstein April 1

Many people look to their religious leaders for guidance in getting through trauma. But what about when the leaders are themselves caught up in the trauma?

That’s what happened at Kesher Israel, a prominent D.C. synagogue that was rocked last fall when its longtime rabbi, Barry Freundel, was charged with secretly videotaping women preparing to use a ritual bath. Freundel, a national Orthodox leader whose arrest made global news, hasn’t said anything since except to enter a guilty plea in February. His wife, Sharon, a well-regarded and popular Jewish educator in the District who shared in leadership at Kesher – a common role for a rabbi’s wife, who is called “rebbetzin” – remained publicly silent as well, until last week, when she gave an unusual and striking lecture.

After six months of pained, emotional and sometimes angry community meetings and worldwide media coverage, Sharon Freundel, director of Hebrew and Judaic Studies at the Jewish Primary Day School in Northwest Washington, chose to communicate to her community for the first time with a talk called “Post-Traumatic Stress Responses in the TaNaKH,” or the Hebrew Bible.

The talk on March 22 was simultaneously intimate and removed. Here was the wife of the central figure of this hugely publicized drama, speaking about sex abuse and murder and the mysteries of the human spirit and the limitations of marriage – but never referring specifically to herself. Instead she spoke about trauma – and responses to trauma – in the Bible, assuming the posture of a teacher. The talk was going on at two levels. Freundel declined to comment for this article.

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VATICAN CITY
swissinfo

APR 1, 2015

(Bloomberg) — The Vatican and Italy signed a tax accord on Wednesday that includes an exchange of financial information as part of Pope Francis’s drive for transparency and preventing money-laundering.

The agreement, signed by Archbishop Paul Gallagher, the Vatican’s secretary for relations with states, and Pier Carlo Padoan, Italy’s economy minister, follows guidelines from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, the Vatican said in a statement. It ensures exchange of information on taxable sums since January 1, 2009.

The agreement will apply to Italian individuals, institutions and companies with accounts at Vatican financial bodies. It comes after similar accords by the Italian Treasury with Switzerland, Lichtenstein and the Principality of Monaco as Prime Minister Matteo Renzi seeks to boost revenue from fighting tax evasion.

Under pressure from Italian investigators, the Institute for Works of Religion (IOR), known as the Vatican Bank, has started reviewing its account holders amid money-laundering probes. More than 2,000 accounts have so far been blocked. The IOR, set up in 1942, oversees about 6 billion euros ($6.45 billion) of customer assets.

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VATICAN CITY
The Kansas City Star

THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
04/01/2015

ROME

Italy and the Holy See have signed an accord to cooperate on fiscal matters, as the Vatican works to improve transparency after a string of financial scandals.

Italy’s finance ministry and the Vatican announced the agreement on Wednesday.

The ministry said “full cooperation” between Italy and the Holy See was now possible thanks to reforms begun by the Vatican in 2010. It noted that Italy was the first state with which the Vatican signed such a cooperation accord.

Vatican-owned property outside the tiny Vatican City State’s borders and situated in Italy will continue to be exempt from Italian property tax.

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VATICAN CITY
Reuters

VATICAN CITY | BY PHILIP PULLELLA

(Reuters) – The Vatican and Italy signed a financial information sharing agreement on Wednesday in which the Holy See pledged full cooperation and transparency and effectively relinquished banking secrecy.

The Vatican has long been criticised by international financial organisations for providing a tax haven for well-connected Italians.

In particular, the Vatican bank for decades allowed many Italian citizens to hold bank accounts. That practice, which was in violation of the bank’s mission to manage money for the Church, helped individuals evade taxes and launder cash, Italian law enforcement officials say.

Pope Francis has made financial reform a central plank of his two-year-old papacy and the bank, officially known as the Institute for Works of Religion, has been undergoing change. As of July, it had blocked the accounts of 2,000 clients and ended some 3,000 “customer relationships”.

The deal, announced in two separate statements from the Vatican and the Italian Economy Ministry, came after months of negotiations and will cover information from 2009 onwards.

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VATICAN CITY
Crux

By Inés San Martín
Vatican correspondent April 1, 2015

ROME — In the latest effort under Pope Francis to reform the Church’s finances, the Vatican and Italy reached an agreement on Wednesday to share financial and tax information, designed to help both states crack down on money-laundering and other illicit behavior.

The agreement is also intended to ensure that the so-called “Vatican bank,” which reportedly controls almost $10 billion in assets, no longer functions as an offshore tax haven for wealthy Italian VIPs, a perception that has long angered both tax officials and financial regulators in Italy.

Among other things, the agreement likely will mean that entities with deposits in the Vatican bank will have pay taxes on interest income to Italy.

Given that some of the most damaging complaints about Vatican money management over the years have come from Italian politicians, bankers, and regulators, the agreement could provide the Vatican with a firebreak against new scandal.

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VATICAN CITY
Internatinal Business Times

By Lora Moftah @LoraMoftah l.moftah@ibtimes.com on April 01 2015

Criticisms of the Catholic Church’s effort to promote accountability on clergy sex abuse is poised to intensify as the Vatican stood by its decision to back a controversial Chilean bishop who has been linked to an alleged cover-up of child abuse. The controversy over the appointment of Juan Barros as bishop of Osorno is raising doubts about the pace of reforms promised by Pope Francis, who has made a zero tolerance approach to clergy sex abuse a cornerstone of his papacy. But, according to a prominent U.S. expert on Catholic church matters, the controversy is a snag in the reform process, rather than the indication of a retreat.

A spokesperson for the Holy See announced Tuesday that the Church’s Congregation of Bishops had “carefully examined the prelate’s candidature and did not find objective reasons to preclude the appointment,” in the Vatican’s first official comment on the divisive case. The news comes amid a growing controversy over the bishop’s appointment in Chile, where protests broke out last week during his installation ceremony at the cathedral of the southern city of Osorno. About 3,000 people gathered to protest Barros on Saturday, demanding that he resign his post.

The outrage stems from Barros’ connection to one of Chile’s most notorious pedophile priests, Father Fernando Karadima, who was found guilty of abusing teenage boys over the years in a 2011 Vatican investigation. Critics allege that Barros was not only aware of the abuse but also helped to cover it up in his capacity as Karadima’s protégé. The bishop has denied having any knowledge of the abuse, claiming to have only found out about the allegations through news reports.

Catholic clergy in Chile have voiced their opposition to Barros’ installation, with one of the most vocal critics, Father Alex Vigueras of Santiago’s congregation of the Sacred Heart, saying the appointment was “not attuned with the zero tolerance [policy on pedophilia] that is trying to be installed in the church,” the Guardian reported. …

“As a survivor, I’m very surprised at the appointment in Chile because it seems to go against … what the Holy Father has been saying about not wanting anyone in positions of trust in the church who don’t have an absolutely 100 percent record of child protection,” said Marie Collins, an Irish member of the commission, in an interview with the National Catholic Reporter. “[Barros] is not accused of abuse himself in anyway,” she continued. “He may have been aware of it and did nothing. And that’s enough.”

The reaction from members of the commission and from within Chile shows that the appointment was not a prudent decision by the Vatican, said Rev. James Bretzke, a professor of moral theology at Boston College. “I believe it is sending the wrong message. The fact that [Barros] was named shows a certain tone deafness or lack of sensitivity even today among people involved in these decision-making processes.”

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VATICAN CITY
Vatican Information Service

Vatican City, 1 April 2015 (VIS) – This morning, in the Secretariat of State, an agreement on fiscal matters was signed by the Holy See and the Italian Republic. It was signed on behalf of the Holy See by Archbishop Paul Richard Gallagher, secretary for Relations with States, and for the Italian Republic by Pier Carlo Padoan, minister of Economics and Finance, with full powers.

The reforms introduced in 2010 and the creation by the Holy See of institutions with specific experience in economics and finance now enable full administrative cooperation, also with regard to fiscal matters. Within the framework of the special importance of bilateral relations, Italy is the first country with which the Holy See has signed an agreement governing the exchange of information.

In accordance with the current process of establishing transparency in the field of financial relations at a global level, the Convention transposes the most up to date international standard in terms of the exchange of information (article 26 of the OSCE Model) to regulate cooperation between the competent authorities of the two contracting Parties. The exchange of information relates to the fiscal year starting 1 January 2009.

The Convention, from the date on which it enters into force, will enable full compliance, with simplified procedures, with the tax obligations relating to financial assets held by institutions engaging in financial activities in the Holy See by various physical and legal persons resident in Italy. The same persons will be able to have access to a procedure for the regularisation of these activities, with the same effects as established by Law 186/2014.

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CHILE
Cooperativa

[Juan Carlos Cruz: The hierarchy of the Catholic Church has zero credibility.]

El 73 por ciento de los chilenos tiene poca o ninguna confianza en la Iglesia Católica, de acuerdo a la última encuesta de Cooperativa, Imaginacción y la Universidad Central.

El sondeo, dado a conocer este martes, en plena Semana Santa, grafica el impacto provocado por los numerosos casos de abusos sexuales cometidos por sacerdotes y conocidos durante los último años, pero también mide el impacto de polémicas decisiones recientes, como la designación de Juan Barros a cargo de la Diócesis de Osorno, con la que el 79,6 por ciento de los consultados se declaró en desacuerdo.

El resultado de esta encuesta “me da pena, porque soy católico, y me da pena porque hay mucha gente buena en la Iglesia que no se merece esto, pero es cierto que la jerarquía ha encubierto los abusos, que tienen cero credibilidad”, dijo a El Diario de Cooperativa desde Filadelfia, Estados Unidos, el periodista Juan Carlos Cruz, uno de los pocos denunciantes públicos del caso Karadima.

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NEW JERSEY
NJ.com

By MaryAnn Spoto | NJ Advance Media for NJ.com
on March 31, 2015

TRENTON —Attorneys in the federal conspiracy trial of a Lakewood rabbi accused of arranging forced religious divorces are clashing over whether one of the charges against his son – accused of beating husbands into compliance– should be dismissed.

As the trial of Rabbi Mendel Epstein wound up its seventh week of testimony on Tuesday, the defense attorney for his son, David “Ari” Epstein continued to press with jurors the younger man’s alibi for one of the alleged beatings.

Jurors have seen phone records, hotel records, photographs and meeting schedules indicating Epstein was in Ohio on Aug. 22, 2011. And they’ve heard from one of Epstein’s business associates and one of his workers who claim Epstein was with them that day on a trip to Kaeser & Blair Inc. in Batavia, Ohio.

Because of that evidence, defense attorney Henry Mazurek wants one of the kidnapping charges against his client dismissed.

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VATICAN CITY
WISC

By NICOLE WINFIELD

VATICAN CITY (AP) — The Vatican finance minister said Tuesday he hopes to avoid financial scandal with the upcoming Jubilee Year, saying the plans will be subject to new Vatican procedures to ensure they follow international standards for transparency and accountability.

Cardinal George Pell outlined the Vatican’s financial reform during a conference Tuesday to launch a book on better managing church assets — a priority for Pope Francis after years of financial scandals and mismanagement at the Holy See.

Francis announced the Jubilee Year earlier this month to focus the church on his priority: mercy. It immediately set off panic among Rome officials who remember well the chaos that surrounded the 2000 Jubilee, when some 25 million pilgrims flocked to the Eternal City to mark the start of Christianity’s third millennium. Millions were spent cleaning up monuments and constructing new buildings, including a huge Vatican garage.

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AUSTRALIA
The Age

Ex-priest David Rapson suffered breakdown in prison after being found guilty of raping students

April 1, 2015

Adam Cooper
Court reporter for The Age

A former Catholic priest found guilty of raping and sexually assaulting school students in his care abused alcohol in the lead-up to a trial and suffered a breakdown in prison, a court has heard.

David Edwin Rapson was found guilty of five charges of rape and six counts of indecent assault at trials this year, that related to attacks on students aged between 12 and 17 years at two Victorian schools between the mid-1970s and 1990.

Rapson, 61, was originally found guilty of charges during a 2013 trial in the County Court and later sentenced to minimum 10 years in prison.

But the Court of Appeal last year quashed those convictions and ordered new trials take place. Rapson was freed from custody following the Court of Appeal’s ruling.
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Across four trials in February and March this year, Rapson was found guilty of 11 charges relating to attacks on six students, five of whom attended a Catholic boarding school where the then-priest was at one stage the school’s vice-principal.

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AUSTRALIA
Herald Sun

SHANNON DEERY MERCURY APRIL 01, 2015

A FORMER Hobart Catholic priest who plied boys with cigarettes and alco­hol before raping them ­deserves a sentencing discount because he is unwell, a court has heard.

David Edwin Rapson, who taught at Dominic College in the 1980s, has many victims from his offending that spanned three decades.

In 2013 he was jailed for 13 years for crimes on children, but was released on appeal after serving 11 months.

His convictions were quashed by the Court of ­Appeal after a concession by the Office of Public Prosecutions that Rapson should have faced several trials.

It admitted that because of the varying nature of his ­offending it was unfair for all matters to be determined by a single jury, as they had been.

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GEORGIA
Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Victims of childhood sexual abuse would have additional time in Georgia to seek damages from their abusers, under a bill passed unanimously Tuesday by the Senate.

House Bill 17 would for the next two years extend the statute of limitations for civil suits for anyone who was sexually abused before the age of 18, allowing past victims to seek damages if they have not yet come forward.

The bill would apply to victims of rape, sodomy, child molestation, pandering, incest or sexual battery.

Finally, victims of childhood sexual abuse would have access to records of any investigation related to the case.

The bill does not, however, permanently extend the statute of limitations for civil suits from five years to 35 years, which the bill’s sponsor, state Rep. Jason Spencer, R-Woodbine, originally proposed. The Senate also made other amendments on the floor.

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AUSTRALIA
Gladstone Adveriser

Ebony Battersby | 1st Apr 2015

A FORMER principal of the Gladstone Catholic high school now known as Chanel College has been jailed for sexually assaulting a student – and new alleged victims are coming forward now the case has hit the headlines.

Brother John Dennis Maguire was principal at the Gladstone school between 1975-1977 when it was operated by Marist Brothers.

Last week he was jailed for sexually assaulting a student at a prestigious Sydney Catholic college.

He moved to Sydney from Gladstone and the incidents happened shortly after. Chanel College yesterday distanced itself from Brother Maguire, and urged anyone with any evidence against him to report their experiences to police.

At least five members of the public had contacted The Observer last night after we started asking questions about his background.

A letter, sent out to parents and members of the Chanel College community late yesterday in the wake of those inquiries is printed below.

In the letter, the college moved to assure parents the school would have measures in place “to respond to any pastoral issues that could arise of these crimes against children being committed by a former principal of our college”.

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AUSTRALIA
Herald Sun

SHANNON DEERY HERALD SUN APRIL 01, 2015

A DISGRACED priest who plied young boys with cigarettes and alcohol before raping them deserves a sentencing discount because he is unwell, a court has heard.

David Edwin Rapson is one of the most notorious paedophiles in Victorian history with a string of victims from his offending that spanned three decades.

In 2013 he was jailed for 13 years for sickening crimes on kids, but was released on appeal after serving just 11 months of that sentence.

His convictions were quashed by the Court of Appeal after a concession by the Office of Public Prosecutions that Rapson should have faced several trials.

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AUSTRALIA
BBC News

Police in Victoria are investigating suspicious fires at three Melbourne churches where paedophile priests have served in the past.

St Mary’s Catholic Church in Dandenong is the latest to suffer from what police are calling a suspicious fire.

The blaze started in the early hours of Tuesday, causing extensive damage.

On Monday fire almost destroyed the 123-year-old St James Church in Brighton, while a separate fire damaged St Mary’s Church in St Kilda East.

The Dandenong church was one of eight Catholic churches linked to priest Kevin O’Donnell, who sexually abused children throughout his 50-year career in Melbourne parishes.

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AUSTRALIA
The New Daily

Apr 1, 2015

EMMA YOUNGER

Suspicious fire – the third this week – on churches linked to paedophile priests.

Another Melbourne Catholic church historically linked to a paedophile priest has been targeted in a suspected arson attack overnight.

Fire crews were called to St Mary’s Catholic Church in Dandenong at 2:30am (AEDT) by the parish’s priest, Father Declan O’Brien, who lives in a detached building.

Fr O’Brien said he was woken by the sound of smoke alarms.

“I came out of my back gate and at the windows there I could see something reminiscent of the Towering Inferno,” he said.

The Country Fire Authority’s Paul Carrigg said it was clear to firefighters that someone had broken in and set several areas of the building alight.

“When they arrived they found a number of areas of the church on fire, extensive smoke damage in some areas,” he said.

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AUSTRALIA
The Age

April 1, 2015

Nino Bucci, Marissa Calligeros

A victim of paedophile priest Ronald Dennis Pickering called on those suffering not to turn to arson, as police investigate three separate fires this week at churches linked to predator priests.

“Pickering escaped, the church didn’t assist in bringing him to justice, when victims turned to the church they offered them no support, and then he died,” said Mike, who was abused almost 50 years ago when he was an altar boy at St Mary’s in St Kilda East, which someone attempted to set alight early Monday.

“If a victim is lighting these fires, it’s a symptom of anger. But you certainly don’t want to encourage this as a way of dealing with anger.”

Christian holy days such as Easter could trigger strong emotions within some victims, Mike said, but he hoped that the Royal Commission into Institutional Child Sexual Abuse would provide some justice.

It remains unclear whether a sex abuse victim, or victims, are responsible for the three fires at churches in Brighton, St Kilda East and Dandenong since Sunday.

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AUSTRALIA
Sydney Morning Herald

April 1, 2015

Henry Belot
Canberra Times Reporter

A young girl allegedly molested by a former Catholic priest stayed quiet about her ordeal because she did not want to ruin her mother’s faith, a court has heard.

Crown prosecutor Sara Gul, in her closing statement, said the girl was afraid of coming forward with allegations about a man her mother saw as “the representative of God”.

But defence barrister Steven Whybrow told the court the woman’s evidence was unreliable and inconsistent.

The submissions were heard as the ACT Supreme Court trial of Father Edward Evans, 85, entered its sixth day on Wednesday before Justice Richard Refshauge.

Father Evans has pleaded not guilty to charges of committing acts of indecency and sexual assault on the girl, who was aged between 10 and 13 at the time.

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