ABUSE TRACKER

UNITED STATES
Slate

By Miriam Krule

At the end of last year, the Vatican ended its controversial six-year investigation into the lives and actions of American nuns with an approving report. The entire exercise was a strange waste of time that rightfully angered many Catholics: Though the report scrutinized the nuns for their commitment to social justice—referred to as their “feminist spirit” and “secular mentality”—it concluded by essentially telling them to keep doing what they’re doing to work toward “the elimination of the structural causes of poverty.”

That wasn’t the church’s only pointless nun investigation. Even after Pope Francis’ call “to create still broader opportunities for a more incisive female presence in the church,” the Vatican was still in the midst of another nun review. This one focused on the Leadership Conference of Women Religious, an umbrella group representing about 80 percent of American nuns, who were accused of indulging in “radical feminist themes” and therefore straying from Catholic doctrine.

The timeline for the review was always murky, but on Thursday morning, the Vatican abruptly announced an end to that investigation as well. Cardinal Gerhard Mueller, head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith and leader of this effort, did little in the way of explanation—the official joint statement speaks in the abstract, mentioning “fruitful conversation” and “substantive dialogue,” with few, if any, details. As the Jesuit priest and Slate contributor James Martin posted on Facebook:

In a press release and statement the LCWR agreed to implement some changes, mainly regarding speakers and liturgies at its annual conventions. But overall, the operations of the LCWR remains intact. Early fears of the outright elimination of the group, a wholesale Vatican takeover or a complete reordering of their statutes have proven unfounded.

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AUSTRALIA
The Morning Bulletin

Austin King | 17th Apr 2015

IT WAS hard to obtain justice when the priest of Neerkol Orphanage, Father John Anderson, was friends with the State Children’s Department inspector, a Mr Paterson.

That’s what former resident David Owen alleged in yesterday’s Royal Commission hearing into child sex abuse at Neerkol Orphanage.

But justice, and a promise made to his mother Catherine Pearl Owen, was finally served when David Owen told his story.

Catherine gave birth to David at Kidston in north Queensland. She was just 13 years of age.

The commission heard a police officer of the town, who David knew only as Constable 3322, raped his mother when she was 12.

It was Catherine’s job each week to attend the Kidston Police Station to collect Constable 3322’s dirty laundry and take it back to her grandmother’s wash house.

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VATICAN CITY
The New York Times

By LAURIE GOODSTEIN
APRIL 16, 2015

The Vatican abruptly ended its takeover of the main leadership group of American nuns on Thursday, allowing Pope Francis to put to rest a confrontation started by his predecessor that had created an uproar among American Catholics who came to the sisters’ defense.

Four of the leaders of the American nuns’ group, the Leadership Conference of Women Religious, were called to an unexpected meeting on Thursday with Pope Francis in the Vatican that lasted 50 minutes. He did not speak publicly, but the sisters said afterward in a statement that they were “deeply heartened” by Francis’ “expression of appreciation” for the lives and ministry of Catholic sisters.

The sweeping investigation of American women’s religious orders was begun under Francis’ predecessor, Pope Benedict XVI, at the urging of American and some foreign prelates who accused the sisters of disobeying the bishops and departing from Catholic doctrine. It set off protests by Catholic laypeople across the country, who signed petitions and sent letters to the Vatican in defense of the sisters.

The matter has now been brought to an early conclusion by Francis, who has never spoken directly about it in public but has often talked of the important role of women in the church and the nuns and priests in religious orders. He himself is a member of the Jesuit order.

The news came in a brief report issued jointly by the Leadership Conference of Women Religious and the three American bishops who had been appointed by the Vatican three years ago to take over and overhaul the organization.

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AUSTRALIA
9 News

A retired Catholic bishop who came under fire for once dismissing abuse allegations at a Queensland orphanage will face a royal commission.

In 1996, then-head of the Catholic diocese of Rockhampton Brian Heenan labelled claims of child abuse at the Neerkol orphanage “scurrilous” and “slanderous”.

Mr Heenan later formally apologised to former Neerkol residents on behalf of the diocese and said he regretted not acknowledging their sufferings.

The former bishop is due to appear at a public hearing of the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse in Rockhampton on Friday.

Representatives of the Sisters of Mercy, who ran the orphanage, are also expected to be called.

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VATICAN CITY
Crux

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

Sometimes in the news business, stories run their course without the explosive ending their dramatic arc would seem to merit. Think a nasty lawsuit, for instance, which ends with an amicable settlement, or the early years of the Super Bowl when a matchup that looked like a heavyweight collision on paper ended with a blowout.

Such would appear to be the case with the conclusion announced Thursday of the Vatican’s now six-year-old investigation of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious (LCWR), the main umbrella group for the leaders of women’s religious orders in the United States.

The review was first communicated to the LCWR in 2009, and came to a preliminary crescendo with a tough “doctrinal assessment” in 2012 accusing the organization of various forms of dissent and error.

Purely at the level of perception, this was a made-for-Hollywood standoff between rigid male hierarchs and feisty progressive nuns. Most media outlets and a solid chunk of Catholic opinion at the grassroots, naturally, sided with the nuns.

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CALIFORNIA
Crux

By Michael O’Loughlin
National reporter April 16, 2015

A study in contrasts is playing out in California, where the newly installed bishop of San Diego, Robert McElroy, issued a call to resist the culture wars yesterday at the same time that prominent Catholics in San Francisco, just 50 miles up the coast, were calling for the firing of his former boss, Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone.

McElroy, an auxiliary bishop in San Francisco for many years, was tapped by Pope Francis last month to lead one of the nation’s largest dioceses, with more than 1 million Catholics, in the latest sign that Francis intends to leave his pastoral imprint on the American Church.

A frequent writer on social inequality and an admirer of Pope Francis, McElroy called on Catholics to step back from the culture wars rocking the country during a service right before his installation Mass yesterday.

Describing culture as “a spiritual enterprise to be cherished,” he said the Church must be a bridge builder.

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IRELAND
Irish Times

Patsy McGarry

An international gathering of Catholic Church reform movements has called on bishops to be more pro-active in support of Pope Francis and changes he is trying to bring about in the church.

In a joint statement on Thursday the meeting of Catholic Priests’ Associations and Reform Groups called on bishops in their respective countries to “courageously and publicly” support the vision and programme of Pope Francis for the church.

“A key issue will be to devolve authority away from the Vatican to local churches. Connected to this is the need to enhance the authority of the local churches, especially parishes,” it said.

The statement followed a three-day meeting in Limerick hosted by silenced Redemptorist priest Fr Tony Flannery and the Association of Catholic Priests (ACP).

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TEXAS
ABC 7

Friday, April 03, 2015

FREEPORT, Texas — A Freeport Sunday school teacher is accused of having a sexual relationship with a teen student.

Juan Miguel Mendoza, 35, is charged with sexual assault of a child. According to investigators, the victim, who is 17 now, said she when she was 15, began a sexual relationship with Mendoza at Iglesias Bautista Emanuel church.

They met, she said, when he was her Sunday school teacher. Investigators say Mendoza had been texting the victim since she was 13 years old.

Mendoza was arrested Thursday. Bond was set at $100,000. Mendoza is in the Freeport City Jail where he is awaiting transport to the Brazoria County Sheriff’s Department Jail.

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CALIFORNIA
KTVU

SAN FRANCISCO (KTVU and wires) – In an open letter to Pope Francis made public Thursday, a group of angry Bay Area Catholics have asked the pontiff to replace controversial San Francisco Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone.

The signers, who include alumni of San Francisco Catholic schools, parents, educators, Church volunteers and former Board Members of Catholic Charities CYO, disagree and are upset with Cordileone’s stance on traditional Catholic ideals.

They note that “morality clauses” included by Cordileone in contracts and handbooks for teachers and staff members at four San Francisco Catholic schools have caused major division in the community.

“The absolute mean-spiritedness of his required language for the Archdiocesan high school faculty handbook sets a pastoral tone that is closer to persecution than evangelization,” the letter published in the San Francisco Chronicle read. “Students, families and teachers have been deeply wounded by this language, yet the Archbishop refuses to withdraw his demands.”

While she is not among the signees, Eileen Woods, a teacher at San Francisco’s St. Cecila’s, said she was happy to see the letter sent to the Vatican.

“I was thrilled to hear they took out an ad,” she told KTVU Fox 2. “I’m appalled at what the church has done. I don’t understand. The Pope is moving in a progressive direction and archdiocese is regressive.”

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CALIFORNIA
Roman Catholic Archdiocese of San Francisco

(SAN FRANCISCO, April 15, 2015)

Regarding the paid advertisement in the San Francisco Chronicle slated for publication April 16th, the Archdiocese of San Francisco responds:

The advertisement is a misrepresentation of Catholic teaching, a misrepresentation of the nature of the teacher contract, and a misrepresentation of the spirit of the Archbishop. The greatest misrepresentation of all is that the signers presume to speak for “the Catholic Community of San Francisco.” They do not.

The Archdiocese has met with a broad range of stakeholders. Together, we have engaged in a constructive dialogue on all of the issues raised in this ad. We welcome the chance to continue that discussion.

###

For more information, please call Larry Kamer at (415) 290-7240 or email: lkamer@kamergroup.com

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CALIFORNIA
National Catholic Reporter

[the ad]

Dan Morris-Young | Apr. 16, 2015

A powerful cross-section of Catholics in the San Francisco archdiocese is asking Pope Francis to replace Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone, saying the archbishop has “fostered an atmosphere of division and intolerance.”

In an April 16 full-page advertisement in the San Francisco Chronicle, more than 100 signers say the embattled archbishop pursues “a single-issue agenda,” coercing teachers with a “morality code which violates individual consciences as well as California labor laws” and “[isolating] himself from our community” as he “relies … on a tiny group of advisors recruited from outside of our diocese and estranged from their own religious orders.”

Referring to themselves as “committed Catholics inspired by Vatican II,” signers include well-known philanthropists in the archdiocese, members of school and university boards, the former director of Catholic Charities CYO, high-profile attorneys and physicians, major figures in the business and corporate world, and officials of trusts, foundations and charitable organizations.

The archdiocese issued a press release Wednesday afternoon calling the open letter “a misrepresentation of Catholic teaching, a misrepresentation of the nature of the teacher contract, and a misrepresentation of the spirit of the Archbishop.”

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VATICAN CITY
Aljazeera

The Vatican on Thursday announced an unexpected conclusion to its crackdown on the main umbrella group of U.S. nuns, ending a controversial takeover of the liberal group and signaling a major shift in tone and treatment of U.S. sisters under the social justice-minded Pope Francis.

The Vatican said it had accepted a final report on its overhaul of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious (LCWR) and declared that the “implementation of the mandate has been accomplished.”

In a final joint report, the congregation and the LCWR said the group’s statutes had been revised to show its focus on Christ and being faithful to church teaching. It said an advisory committee would be created to ensure manuscripts submitted for inclusion in LCWR publications are doctrinally sound. It also said speakers at LCWR events must use the “ecclesial language of faith” in their remarks.

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VATICAN CITY
swissinfo

By Philip Pullella

VATICAN CITY (Reuters) – A six-year row between activist American nuns and Vatican officials who had branded them radical feminists ended on Thursday with the nuns conceding to demands that they keep within the doctrine of the Roman Catholic church.

The clash with the Leadership Conference of Women Religious (LCWR), an umbrella group representing 80 percent of U.S. nuns, became a national issue in America, with many supporters accusing the Vatican of bullying them.

The Vatican investigated the group for three years and then in 2012 issued a stinging report saying the LCWR had “serious doctrinal problems” and promoted “radical feminist themes incompatible with the (Roman) Catholic faith”.

The Vatican criticised the group for taking a soft line on issues such as birth control and homosexual activity.

Many nuns said the Vatican’s report misunderstood their intentions and undervalued their work for social justice.

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VATICAN CITY
The New York Times

THE ASSOCIATED PRESSAPRIL 16, 2015

The Vatican unexpectedly ended its takeover of the main umbrella group of American nuns on Thursday, signaling a shift in tone and treatment under Pope Francis.

The Vatican said it had accepted a final report on its overhaul of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious and declared that the “implementation of the mandate has been accomplished.”

When the Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith took over the religious group in 2012, it accused the group of taking positions that undermined Catholic teaching on the priesthood and homosexuality while promoting “certain radical feminist themes incompatible with the Catholic faith.”

It envisioned a five-year overhaul to fix what it called a “grave” doctrinal crisis, fueled by concerns among American conservatives that the group had strayed from church teaching by not focusing enough on issues like abortion and euthanasia. The Vatican appointed a bishop to oversee rewriting the statutes of the religious group, which represents 80 percent of the 57,000 Roman Catholic nuns in the United States, reviewing all its plans and programs — including approving speakers — and ensuring the organization properly followed Catholic prayer and ritual.

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CALIFORNIA
Towleroad

SF Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone has a long and continuing history of demonizing gays.

In February, we reported on a new “purity test” he had instituted for Catholic schools which threatened termination for teachers who give any statement that contradicts church doctrine, including holding a position that homosexuality is anything other than “gravely evil.”

Cordileone’s new rules even applied to sharing photos and personal opinions on social media sites like Facebook. For instance, if a teacher posted photos on Facebook of a gay son’s wedding, that would be cause for review.

Vigils have been held against the evil archbishop.

But Cordileone’s crusade against gays goes back much further.

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CALIFORNIA
Breitbart News

On Thursday, proving that the attractions of an increasingly secular society seem more important than the tenets of traditional religion, over 100 prominent Roman Catholic donors and church members wrote an open letter to the Pope that ran as a full-page ad in the San Francisco Chronicle condemning staunch traditionalist San Francisco Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone for fostering “an atmosphere of division and intolerance,” and calling on Pope Francis to replace him.

Cordileone has always championed traditional Catholic doctrine, but the letter was provoked by his request that high school teachers and staff within the Catholic schools within his diocese sign a morality clause that espouses basic Catholic doctrine. The language in the clause upset the group, as Cordileone wrote that sex outside of marriage and homosexual relations were “gravely evil.” As CBS San Francisco reported, the archdiocese felt that their mission was to make clear that Catholic schools “exist to affirm and proclaim the Gospel of Jesus Christ as held and taught by his Catholic Church.” The archdiocese pointed out that the statements they promulgated were taken from the Catechism of the Catholic Church.

The letter-writers called Cordileone’s efforts mean-spirited, and said his clause “sets a pastoral tone that is closer to persecution than evangelization.” The letter states that he selected a pastor for Star of the Sea parish in the Richmond District “who marginalizes women’s participation in the church” by barring girls from altar service and who gave elementary-school children a pamphlet that asked if they had engaged in masturbation, homosexual relations or had an abortion. Another complaint stated Cordileone relied on “a tiny group of advisers recruited from outside (the) diocese and estranged from their own religious orders” instead of his own priests and retired priests. A further criticism labeled Cordileone as a threat to the archdiocese because of his “single-issue agenda.”

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VATICAN CITY
Vatican Information Service

Vatican City, 16 April 2015 (VIS) – The Annuarium Pontificium 2015 and the Annuarium Statisticum Ecclesiae 2013 have been issued this morning. The former reveals some new aspects of the life of the Church that have emerged between February 2014 and February 2015, and the latter illustrates the changes that took place in 2013.

The statistics referring to the year 2013, show the dynamics of the Catholic Church in the world’s 2,989 ecclesiastical circumscriptions. It may be seen that in this period one diocese and two eparchies have been elevated to the level of metropolitan sees; three new episcopal sees, three eparchies and one archiepiscopal exarchate have been erected; one territorial prelature has been elevated to a diocese, and one apostolic prefecture to an apostolic vicariate.

Since 2005, the number of Catholics worldwide has increased from 1,115 million to 1,254 million, an increase of 139 million faithful. During the last two years, the presence of baptised Catholics in the world has increased from 17.3% to 17.7%.

There has been a 34% increase in Catholics in Africa, which has experienced a population increase of 1.9% between 2005 and 2013. The increase of Catholics in Asia (3.2% in 2013, compared to 2.9% in 2005) has been higher than that of population growth in Asia. In America Catholics continue to represent 63% of a growing population. In Europe, where the population is stagnant, there has been a slight increase in the number of baptised faithful in recent years. The percentage of baptised Catholics in Oceania remains stable although in a declining population.

From 2012 to 2013 the number of bishops has increased by 40 from 5,133 to 5,173. In North America and Oceania there has been a reduction of 6 and 5 bishops respectively, in contrast to an increase of 23 in the rest of the American continent, 5 in Africa, 14 in Asia and 9 in Europe.

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VATICAN CITY
Vatican Information Service

Vatican City, 16 April 2015 (VIS) – Officials of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (C.D.F.), Archbishop Peter Sartain and officers of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious (L.C.W.R.) met April 16. Archbishop Sartain and L.C.W.R. officers presented a joint report (attached) on the implementation of the C.D.F. Doctrinal Assessment and Mandate of April 2012. The joint report outlines the manner in which the implementation of the Mandate has been accomplished. The Congregation accepted the joint report, marking the conclusion of the Doctrinal Assessment of L.C.W.R. Present for the April 16 meeting were His Eminence Gerhard Cardinal Muller, Archbishop Peter Sartain, Sr. Carol Zinn, S.S.J., Sr. Marcia Allen, C.S.J., Sr. Joan Marie Steadman, C.S.C., and Sr. Janet Mock, C.S.J., and other officials of CDF.

During the meeting, Archbishop Sartain and L.C.W.R. officers outlined the process undertaken by the Bishop Delegates and L.C.W.R. over the past three years, noting the spirit of cooperation among participants throughout the sensitive process. Cardinal Muller offered his thoughts on the Doctrinal Assessment as well as the Mandate and its completion. He expressed gratitude to those present for their willing participation in this important and delicate work and extended thanks to others who had participated, especially Archbishop Leonard P. Blair, Bishop Thomas J. Paprocki, and the past officers and executive directors of L.C.W.R.

Following the meeting, Cardinal Muller said: “At the conclusion of this process, the Congregation is confident that L.C.W.R. has made clear its mission to support its member Institutes by fostering a vision of religious life that is centred on the person of Jesus Christ and is rooted in the tradition of the Church. It is this vision that makes religious women and men radical witnesses to the Gospel, and, therefore, is essential for the flourishing of religious life in the Church”.

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VATICAN CITY
Vatican Information Service

Vatican City, 16 April 2015 (VIS) – The director of the Holy See Press Office, Fr. Federico Lombardi, S.J., today declared that Pope Francis, accepting the invitation offered by the respective Heads of State and bishops of these countries, will make an apostolic trip to Ecuador, from 6 to 8 July, Bolivia from 8 to 10 July, and Paraguay, from 10 to 12 of the same month. The programme for the trip will be published shortly.

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MINNESOTA
Star Tribune

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

Archdiocese wants all abuse claims filed by Aug. 3. Victim’s attorneys say abuse survivors should get full time allotted by law.

The Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis will ask a U.S. Bankruptcy Court judge Thursday morning to shorten the time frame available for victims of priest sex abuse to submit claims.

When the state Legislature temporarily lifted the statute of limitations on older abuse claims, the so-called Minnesota Child Victim’s Act set the claims deadline for May 25, 2016. The archdiocese is asking the court to shorten that window to Aug. 3, 2015.

The archdiocese argues that victims have been sufficiently notified of the opportunity to file claims against the church, because of widespread publicity surrounding the abuse lawsuits. It also notes that having an earlier cutoff date will allow it to proceed with its financial reorganization.

“Establishing bar dates for parties to file claims in this case is critical to allow the Archdiocese to proceed with a reorganization plan and avoid protracted proceedings that could deplete the Archdiocese’s assets available to pay sexual abuse claimants and other creditors,” the archdiocese wrote in court documents.

Attorneys for victims strongly opposed the move.

The request “is unprecedented in church bankruptcy cases and also unwarranted,” wrote victims’ attorney Jeff Anderson in court documents.

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WEST VIRGINIA
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests

For immediate release: Thursday, April 16

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

In an outrageous perversion of justice, victims of a twice-convicted serial child molester are being forced to pay half the legal fees of two court-appointed private lawyers in a civil abuse and cover up case, thanks to stunningly callous and aggressive legal tactics by Mormon church officials.

[Journal News]

In 25 years of monitoring clergy sex abuse cases across the US, we’ve never seen anything like this.

Mormon officials have persuaded a West Virginia judge to make victims of Christopher Michael Jensen pay half the cost of a “discovery commissioner” to rule on discovery motions. And those same victims, in this same case, are being forced to pay half the cost of a second court-appointed private attorney, Kirk Bottner, who is acting as a “guardian ad litem” for Jensen, a serial predator who has been convicted for assaulting young kids in Utah and West Virginia.

How on earth can this be legal? Even if it is, it’s immoral. It’s especially immoral when purportedly spiritual figures propose, accept or benefit from this unfair and hurtful arrangement.

Our hearts go out to the families in this case. They’ve experienced three horrific betrayals – first by a child molester, then by callous Mormon officials and now by the misuse of our justice system by these Mormon officials.

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UNITED STATES
Catholic League

Bill Donohue comments on several campaigns against Catholic schools:

We never hear of attempts by outsiders to dictate to Jews how to run their yeshivas. The same is true of the increasing number of Islamic schools: no one tells Muslims what their employment policies should be. The same is not true of Catholic schools.

* In San Francisco, outsiders have spent an enormous amount of money seeking to pressure the Archdiocese to change its prospective handbook for faculty.

* Outsiders, driven by the media, put Iowa Governor Terry Branstad on the firing line: they forced him to comment on Dowling Catholic High School’s decision not to hire an openly gay teacher; the Catholic executive exercised good sense and is not getting involved in the internal matters of this school.

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CALIFORNIA
National Catholic Reporter

[the ad]

Michael Sean Winters | Apr. 16, 2015 Distinctly Catholic

The decision by some prominent Catholics in San Francisco to take out a full-page ad in that city’s major newspaper, the San Francisco Chronicle, calling on Pope Francis to remove Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone is deeply regrettable. Full Disclosure: A couple of weeks ago, a friend in San Francisco familiar with the plan to take out the ad called and asked my advice and I encouraged her not to do so.

Why is it a mistake? The issue of the accountability of bishops is a difficult one. Most of the discussion in recent years has focused on this issue through the lens of the clergy sex abuse crisis. Bishop after bishop was seen to have mishandled charges of clergy sex abuse against members of the clergy. This was galling to be sure. Since the adoption by the U.S. Bishops of the “Dallas Charter” on child protection, which set forth the promise of the bishops not to tolerate clergy sex abuse, and the explicit means for fulfilling that promise, such dereliction of responsibility is worse than galling. This is why there has been such a clamor for the removal of Kansas City Bishop Robert Finn. It is not just that Finn violated the civil law, which he did. He violated the Dallas Charter and thus questioned the commitment of the bishops to keep their own promises. He should have resigned the day he pled guilty for failing to report an instance of clergy sex abuse. The good people of Kansas City – and the whole country and, indeed, the world – are still waiting for the Holy See to remove him.

No one has charged Archbishop Cordileone with failing to live up to the Dallas Charter. The complainants who took out the full-page ad charge that he has fostered “an atmosphere of division and intolerance.” This is a grave charge indeed, but it is important, actually vital, to distinguish such a charge from the charge of violating the Dallas Charter and failing to protect children. The stain of clergy sex abuse is unique in the life of the Church in recent years. No issue has done more to wound the Church and compromise the bishops’ spiritual authority. But, if tomorrow, every bishop really did live out the promises of the Dallas Charter, and most do, there would still be bishops who are not up to the job. What is to be done about such cases?

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VIRGINIA
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests

For immediate release: Thursday, April 16

Statement by Judy Jones of St. Louis, Midwest Associate Director of SNAP, the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests ( h: 636.433.2511, c: 314.974.5003, SNAPjudy@gmail.com )

More civil child sex abuse and cover up lawsuits involving one of the most prolific child molesting clerics in the US have settled. He’s Brother Stephen P. Baker who worked in Norfolk Virginia and four other states (Minnesota, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Ohio).

[Tribune-Democrat]

In the 1970s, he worked at two church facilities in Norfolk (in the Richmond diocese): Holy Trinity Catholic Church and School and James Barry-Robinson High School and Home for Boys.

[BishopAccountability.org]

Br. Baker’s accused of molesting more than 90 kids. We suspect that literally dozens of his Catholic colleagues and supervisors knew or suspected his crimes and ignored or hid them.

In 2005, church officials paid one Br. Baker victim $50,000 but told no one. As a result, “Baker may have had access to children through the late 2000s,” according to the independent archive group BishopAccountability.org.

We call on Richmond Bishop Francis DiLorenzo to use his vast resources – church websites, parish bulletins, pulpit announcements and news releases – to aggressively seek out others in Minnesota who were assaulted by Br. Baker. If he refuses, we call on the dozens of Virginia priests who run parishes to do this outreach.

We hope these settlements bring long-overdue and much-needed help, comfort and closures to these brave men. And we hope that they will prod others, who may have knowledge or suspicions about Baker’s crimes or his supervisors’ cover ups, to speak up.

We believe that Br. Baker abused more kids. Some of them, now adults, are likely still suffering in shame, silence and self-blame. We want them to know that they are not alone, not at fault and can get better, but only if they find the courage to break their silence and get independent help.

And we want Catholic officials in all four states to take vigorous steps to reach out to those who’ve been hurt by Br. Baker, instead of saying and doing little to acknowledge his crimes and help his victims.

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MINNESOTA
Canonical Consultation

04/15/2015

Jennifer Haselberger

After my earlier post about the Catholic Services Appeal, I learned that the poor priests of the Archdiocese of Saint Paul and Minneapolis were hit with a double-whammy of fundraising requests last week. Not only were they asked to put the screws into reluctant donors at their parishes, they were also asked to personally contribute to the support of the seminarians at the Saint Paul Seminary School of Divinity.

This request, which came by means of a letter from the SPS rector, Monsignor Aloysius Callaghan, provided some interesting information about seminary operations. For instance, the Monsignor wrote that the four year formation program for priests costs more than $200,000 per student, or $140 per day. Half of this, the letter states, is paid by the seminarian’s diocese, and the other half through donations to the seminary itself. Of course, I am sure what the Monsignor meant to say is that, in the case of the W.D.O.E, half is paid by contributions to the independent Catholic Services Appeal, and not the seminarian’s diocese. But I digress.

In exchange for this rather large sum, the student at the Saint Paul Seminary is ensured to receive ‘the best human, intellectual, spiritual, and pastoral formation possible’, preparing him and his peers to become ‘good shepherds and capable pastors’. Of course, this has recently been called into question, at least in the case of Saint John Vianney College Seminary, thanks to the article by Paul Blaschko in Commonweal Magazine. I will leave it to you to decide if we are getting our money’s worth from the formation program provided by SPS. From my vantage point, the seminary seems to have made little progress in separating the wheat from the chaff.

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VATICAN CITY
National Catholic Reporter

Joshua J. McElwee | Apr. 16, 2015

VATICAN CITY A controversial three-year program of Vatican oversight of the main leadership group of U.S. Catholic sisters has come to a curt and unexpected end, with the sisters and the church’s doctrinal office announcing that the goal of the oversight “has been accomplished.”

The Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith has accepted a final report of the doctrinal assessment of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious, “marking the conclusion” of the oversight, the Vatican announced Thursday.

After a lengthy process that saw the saw the Vatican issue what the sisters called unsubstantiated sharp critiques of their work and life while appointing Seattle Archbishop Peter Sartain to oversee a program of reform for LCWR, Thursday’s release says the Vatican and the sisters both noted the “spirit of cooperation” of the ordeal.

The end of the mandate, the Vatican release says, came in a meeting Thursday morning between LCWR officers, Sartain, and officials of the Vatican’s doctrinal congregation. Saratin and the LCWR officers presented a joint report on the implementation of the mandate, which was approved by the doctrinal congregation.

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VATICAN CITY
Bolletino

Following the publication of the Doctrinal Assessment of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious (LCWR) by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (April 18, 2012), the officers of LCWR and the Bishop Delegates began working in close collaboration toward the implementation of the Mandate which accompanied that document. From the beginning, our extensive conversations were marked by a spirit of prayer, love for the Church, mutual respect, and cooperation. We found our conversations to be mutually beneficial. In this Joint Final Report, we set forth the manner in which the implementation of the Mandate has been accomplished.

LCWR Statutes: The Statutes of the Conference were definitively approved for the first time by the Sacred Congregation for Religious in 1962; a revised text was subsequently approved by the Congregation for Institutes of Consecrated Life and Societies of Apostolic Life on June 29, 1989. LCWR had initiated a review of the Statutes prior to receiving the Mandate. In response to the 2012 Mandate, a subcommittee representing LCWR and the Bishop Delegates reviewed that document, attentive to the Mandate’s request for greater clarity in expressing the mission and responsibilities of the LCWR as a Conference of Major Superiors under the ultimate direction of the Apostolic See. Through a collaborative process of mutual learning and of refining several drafts, it was agreed that “the role of the Conference as a public juridic person centered on Jesus Christ and faithful to the teachings of the Church is to undertake through its membership and in collaboration with other sisters those services which develop the life and mission of women religious in responding to the Gospel in the contemporary world” (Statutes, Section 2). At the conclusion of this drafting and refining process, the subcommittee’s work was considered ready to be submitted to the LCWR Assembly. The 2014 Assembly overwhelmingly approved the text, and it was forwarded to the Apostolic See. Following a positive review by the CDF, the revised Statutes were approved on February 6, 2015 by Decree of the Congregation for Institutes of Consecrated Life and Societies of Apostolic Life.

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VATICAN CITY
Bolletino

Officials of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF), Archbishop Peter Sartain and officers of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious (LCWR) met April 16. Archbishop Sartain and LCWR officers presented a joint report (attached) on the implementation of the CDF Doctrinal Assessment and Mandate of April 2012. The joint report outlines the manner in which the implementation of the Mandate has been accomplished. The Congregation accepted the joint report, marking the conclusion of the Doctrinal Assessment of LCWR. Present for the April 16 meeting were His Eminence Gerhard Cardinal Müller, Archbishop Peter Sartain, Sr. Carol Zinn, SSJ, Sr. Marcia Allen, CSJ, Sr. Joan Marie Steadman, CSC, and Sr. Janet Mock, CSJ, and other officials of CDF.

During the meeting, Archbishop Sartain and LCWR officers outlined the process undertaken by the Bishop Delegates and LCWR over the past three years, noting the spirit of cooperation among participants throughout the sensitive process. Cardinal Müller offered his thoughts on the Doctrinal Assessment as well as the Mandate and its completion. He expressed gratitude to those present for their willing participation in this important and delicate work and extended thanks to others who had participated, especially Archbishop Leonard P. Blair, Bishop Thomas J. Paprocki, and the past officers and Executive Directors of LCWR.

Following the meeting, Cardinal Müller said: “At the conclusion of this process, the Congregation is confident that LCWR has made clear its mission to support its member Institutes by fostering a vision of religious life that is centered on the Person of Jesus Christ and is rooted in the Tradition of the Church. It is this vision that makes religious women and men radical witnesses to the Gospel, and, therefore, is essential for the flourishing of religious life in the Church.”

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VATICAN CITY
Headlines from the Catholic World

Vatican City, Apr 16, 2015 / 04:15 am (CNA/EWTN News).- In a joint report marking the conclusion of a multi-year mandate for reform, members of the LCWR have agreed to the corrections called for by the Vatican, and said they will continue on the path of dialogue.

“We are pleased at the completion of the Mandate, which involved long and challenging exchanges of our understandings of and perspectives on critical matters of Religious Life and its practice,” Sr. Sharon Holland, IHM, President of LCWR, said in an April 16 press release.

Officials of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Archbishop Peter Sartain of Seattle and officers of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious (LCWR) met at the Vatican April 16.
Although she was unable to attend the Vatican meeting, Sr. Holland said that “we learned that what we hold in common is much greater than any of our differences.”

Cardinal Gerhard Muller, prefect of the Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, said in the press release that “the Congregation is confident that LCWR has made clear its mission to support its member institutes by fostering a vision of religious life that is centered on the Person of Jesus Christ and is rooted in the Tradition of the Church.”

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CALIFORNIA
SFGate

By Matier & Ross
Wednesday, April 15, 2015

In an unprecedented move, more than 100 prominent Roman Catholic donors and church members signed a full-page ad running Thursday in The Chronicle that calls on Pope Francis to replace San Francisco Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone for fostering “an atmosphere of division and intolerance.”

The plea follows months of dissent within the archdiocese over Cordileone’s emphasis on traditional, conservative church doctrine — including asking high school teachers and staffers at Catholic schools to sign a morality clause that characterizes sex outside of marriage and homosexual relations as “gravely evil.”

In their open letter to the pope, Cordileone’s critics say his morality-clause push is mean-spirited and “sets a pastoral tone that is closer to persecution than evangelization.”

The ad drew swift condemnation from the archdiocese, which said those who signed it don’t speak for San Francisco’s Catholic community.

The list of signatories includes Brian Cahill, the retired executive director of Catholic Charities, former city commissioner and Boudin Bakery executive Lou Giraudo, retired Swinerton Builders Chairman David Grubb, businessman and former political consultant Clint Reilly and his wife, Janet, San Francisco attorney Michael Kelly, and Charles Geschke, chairman of Adobe Systems and former head of the University of San Francisco Board of Trustees. Also on the list is Tom Brady Sr., father of New England Patriots quarterback Tom Brady.

Among their complaints, they say Cordileone:

•Picked a pastor for Star of the Sea parish in the Richmond District “who marginalizes women’s participation in the church by banning girls from altar service” and who provided elementary-school children with a pamphlet about sexuality that asked whether they had masturbated, engaged in sodomy or undergone an abortion.

•Disregards the advice of his own priests and retired priests in favor of “a tiny group of advisers recruited from outside (the) diocese and estranged from their own religious orders.”

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CALIFORNIA
CBS News

SAN FRANCISCO — More than 100 local leaders are calling on Pope Francis to replace San Francisco Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone in an open letter in Thursday’s San Francisco Chronicle, notes CBS San Francisco.

The newspaper calls it “an unprecedented move.”

“The plea follows months of dissent within the archdiocese over Cordileone’s emphasis on traditional, conservative church doctrine,” the Chronicle reports.

Among the contentious issues — so-called “morality clauses” Cordileone has included in contracts for teachers and staff at four Catholic high schools.

“Holy Father, please provide us with a leader true to our values and your namesake,” the letter reads in part.

Signers include alumni of San Francisco Catholic schools, church volunteers and former board members of Catholic Charities. One signer is Tom Brady Sr., father of New England Patriots quarterback Tom Brady, the Chronicle says.

The group claims the clauses have caused division in the community.

The clauses call for teachers to abide by the church’s stance against things like sex outside of marriage and homosexuality.

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VATIKAN
Blick

Sein Vorhaben diskutierte Papst Franziskus gestern mit Kardinälen in seinem Beraterstab. Demnach beanstandeten die Kardinäle, dass die bisherigen Regeln «nicht genügen klar» seien. Dies teilte Vatikansprecher Federico Lombardi am späten Abend bei einer Pressekonferenz mit.

Opferverbände werfen dem Vatikan vor, nicht genügend gegen Bischöfe zu unternehmen, die Kindesmissbrauch durch Geistliche ignorieren. So wurden Priester, die sich an Kindern vergingen, bisher einfach in andere Gegenden oder auf andere Posten versetzt.

Innerhalb der Kirche wird derzeit auch über die Ernennung des Chilenen Juan de la Cruz Barros zum Bischof diskutiert. Ihm wird vorgeworfen, seine schützende Hand über einen pädophilen Priester gehalten zu haben.

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AUSTRALIA
9 News

The Queensland government will meet with Bruce and Denise Morcombe after child sex abuse charges were laid against the man who helped set up the education curriculum for the Daniel Morcombe Foundation.

Former Queensland Director of Child Safety Brett Anthony O’Connor, also a former Catholic brother, was arrested in March and accused of indecently assaulting two 12-year-old boys at schools in Sydney more than 25 years ago.

Police allege the assaults occurred at schools in Hunters Hill in 1987 and Campbelltown in 1989.

Bruce Morcombe, the father of 13-year-old Daniel who was assaulted and killed in December 2003, said he and his wife Denise were in shock at the news, but stressed the revelations would not impact upon the foundation, reported The Courier Mail.

“We had a number of meetings with him,” Mr Morcombe said.

“He was very easy to deal with – in fact, I found him very helpful.

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NEW YORK
Road to Recovery

Rev. Roy Alan Drake, SJ is a known sexual offender of minor children and has been accused once again of having sexually abused a minor teenager

In 2014, Rev. Roy Alan Drake SJ, was accused of sexually abusing a minor child at Maine Maritime Academy in Castine, Maine, when Rev. Roy Alan Drake SJ was a professor there and acted as a Jesuit priest

The Northeast Jesuits, formerly the New York Province of the Society of Jesus, who staff Fordham University where Roy Alan Drake worked, refuse to acknowledge and bear responsibility for the allegation of sexual abuse against Fr. Roy Alan Drake, SJ in Maine and give any assistance to the victim, settle and validate his claim, and help him heal

What
A press conference and leafleting alerting the media and general public that the Northeast Province of the Society of Jesus (Jesuits) refuses to assist a sexual abuse victim of one of its
members, Rev. Roy Alan Drake, SJ.

When
Thursday, April 16, 2015 from Noon until 2:00 PM

Where
On the public sidewalks outside the motor vehicle entrance to Fordham University, Rose Hill, the Bronx, NY across the street from the Bronx Botanical Gardens on Southern Boulevard

Who
Hollywood screenwriter Neal E. Gumpel, a resident of Connecticut, who has alleged that he was sexually abused as a minor teenager by Fr. Roy Alan Drake, SJ; and members of Road to Recovery, Inc., a non- profit charity that assists victims of sexual abuse and their families.

Why
Neal E. Gumpel, whose mother and father are both graduates of Fordham University, was an unsuspecting high school minor teenager when his brother invited him to spend a weekend with him at Maine Maritime Academy in Castine, Maine. Rev. Roy Alan Drake, SJ was a Jesuit priest who was working at Maine Maritime Academy at the time as a professor and acting as a Jesuit priest. At all times during the period of the sexual abuse, Fr. Roy Alan Drake, SJ invited Neal E. Gumpel as a minor teenager to his residence on or near the Maine Maritime Academy campus, served him alcohol, and sexually abused him. When Neal E. Gumpel reported these allegations to the superiors of the Northeast Province of the Jesuit Fathers and Brothers, the Jesuit leaders refused to acknowledge and validate his allegations and told him they were not going to help him. Fr. Roy Alan Drake, SJ, who died in 2008, was a repeat sexual abuser of young teenagers. Neal E. Gumpel will demand of the Northeast Province Jesuits that they acknowledge and validate Mr. Gumpel’s allegations, compensate him for his injuries, and assist in his healing.

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

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AUSTRALIA
news.com.au

A CATHOLIC priest at the notorious Neerkol orphanage in central Queensland brutally abused boys as young as nine and told his victims they would go to hell if they spoke out, a royal commission has heard.

THREE former residents of the orphanage told the inquiry into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse on Thursday resident priest Father John Anderson regularly molested or raped them during their time there.

David Owen, 76, said the now-deceased Fr Anderson began molesting him after he became an altar boy at age nine.

The abuse quickly escalated to the point where the priest was raping him up to two times a week, continuing over a period of two years.

“I was told by Father Anderson that it was not a sin for a child to have impurity with a priest but it was a mortal sin to tell anyone about it – and that if I did so, I would go to hell,” Mr Owen told the commission.

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OREGON
The Register-Guard

By Jonathan Cooper
The Associated Press
APRIL 16, 2015

SALEM — The Oregon House voted unanimously Wednesday to give prosecutors more time to bring criminal charges in some cases of rape and sexual abuse.

Researchers say sex crimes are under-reported, and the bill’s proponents said victims shouldn’t be denied justice because too many years passed before they felt comfortable going to police.

“It ensures the courthouse doors do not close before a victim is ready and able to report the crime,” said Rep. Jennifer Williamson, D-Portland. “It means that maybe some of those six out of 10 women who don’t report don’t have to suffer in silence and have time to get to the place where they can choose their own path on how to report.”

The bill would extend the statute of limitations to 12 years from six for first-­degree rape, sodomy, unlawful sexual penetration and sexual abuse.

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CANADA
StarPhoenix

BY MARK KENNEDY, OTTAWA CITIZEN APRIL 16, 2015

The residential schools that scarred thousands of aboriginal children over seven generations were symptomatic of a larger Canadian attitude that treated indigenous people as ethnically inferior, says the head of a commission on the issue.

In an interview with the Ottawa Citizen, Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) chairman Justice Murray Sinclair said he wants to kick-start a national debate about how to reconcile inequities that still remain between aboriginal and nonaboriginal Canadians. The TRC will release its report in Ottawa on June 2, just months before the federal election. Created in 2009, the commission heard from 7,000 people and is still receiving federal archival documents that Sinclair says tell an “astounding” story of what happened in the schools.

The commission’s report will contain recommendations and Sinclair said he wants all Canadians – not just politicians – involved in a national discussion on how to improve relations between aboriginals and nonaboriginals.

“The essence of what people need to know is this: For the longest time, aboriginal people have been mistreated by this country. In terms of their rights, but also in terms of their ability to function as human beings,” he said.

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WEST VIRGINIA
The Journal News

April 16, 2015
By Henry Culvyhouse – Journal Staff Writer (hculvyhouse@journal-news.net) , Journal News

MARTINSBURG – A motion for a civil case involving the possible coverup of sexual abuse in the local Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, commonly known as the Mormon Church, will be argued next week before the West Virginia Supreme Court of Appeals.

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AUSTRALIA
ABC Brisbane

[with audio]

16 April 2015 , 5:32 PM by Gemma Snowdon

TRIGGER WARNING: This story contains disturbing details of child sexual abuse.

Over the past few days we’ve been hearing horrific details of child sex abuse at St Joseph’s Orphanage Neerkol near Rockhampton in the 1950s and 1960s.

The details have emerged in hearings held by the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse.

The Truth, Justice and Healing Council, a Catholic organisation, has been calling on the Government to introduce a compensation scheme.

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PENNSYLVANIA
We Are Central PA

JOHNSTOWN – Three former Bishop McCort students abused by Brother Stephen Baker have reached settlements with the Altoona Johnstown Diocese.

That brings the total number to 91 settlements. In this case, each of the men will be receiving $50,000.

Mitchell Garabedian has represented 82 of the brother baker victims in three states. He said 37 of them are from Pennsylvania.

He told us that four more victims have come forward; the diocese is still reviewing those cases.

He said victims of clergy sexual abuse have a hard time coming forward because of when they’re young; they feel some sort of blame attached to what happened. And many like the three men in this case, don’t come forward until the statute of limitations has already run out.

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AUSTRALIA
Brisbane Times

[with video]

Warning: This article contains content that may distress some readers.

A Queensland government official who oversaw children’s institutions in the 1950s helped cover up brutal sexual abuse, a national inquiry has heard.

A former resident of the Neerkol Orphanage near Rockhampton has told a royal commission an inspector from the state children’s department told him to keep quiet about repeated sexual abuse inflicted upon him by a priest.

David Owen, 76, told the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse on Thursday he was abused so badly by priest Fr John Anderson as a nine-year-old altar boy at Neerkol, he often bled from his backside.

Mr Owen said when he was a teenager he told a state children’s department inspector called Mr Paterson of the abuse during a visit by Mr Paterson to Neerkol.

“He said that he knew Fr Anderson was abusing me, but I wasn’t to tell anyone, and that if I was caught bleeding I was to say that it was piles,” Mr Owen said.

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AUSTRALIA
Radio Australia

Child sex abuse inquiry: Former Neerkol resident ‘received a bullet in the mail’ after reporting child abuse at orphanage

By William Rollo and Marlina Whop

A man who reported sexual abuse at St Joseph’s Neerkol Orphanage received death threats after talking to police, including a bullet in his mailbox, the royal commission into child abuse hears.

A man who reported sexual abuse at St Joseph’s Neerkol Orphanage received death threats after talking to police, including a bullet in his mailbox, the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse has heard.

The commission, entering its third day of public hearings, is taking evidence from former residents of the orphanage in Rockhampton.

David Owen, 76, said he became a resident of the orphanage at five months of age.

He told the commission he was an altar boy for Father John Anderson, who sodomised him for years.

“One occasion I was held over the side of a bridge by Father Anderson and told he would drop me into the fires of hell if I didn’t do what he required me to do,” Mr Owen said.

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VATICAN CITY
Boston Globe

By Inés San Martín
GLOBE STAFF APRIL 16, 2015

ROME — Cardinal Sean P. O’Malley of Boston made a pitch to Pope Francis and his team of cardinal advisers Wednesday on the need to hold bishops who fail to report sexual abuse accountable.

O’Malley’s talk came three days after two survivors of clerical sexual abuse met with him to protest the pope’s naming of a bishop in Chile linked to a notorious abuser.

According to a Vatican spokesman, O’Malley brought the issue to the attention of the pontiff’s “G9” commission of cardinal advisers, a body whose meetings the pope attends. O’Malley is a member.

On Sunday, O’Malley, who also serves as president of the pope’s anti-abuse commission, met with four members of that commission, called the Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors. It was established by Francis in 2013 to work on the prevention of clerical sex abuse. All four members — two of whom were victims of clerical sexual abuse — traveled to Rome specifically to press O’Malley about the Chile case.

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AUSTRALIA
ABC News

By William Rollo

A priest lured a 12-year-old girl into his room with food before sexually assaulting her, the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse has heard.

The commission, entering its third day of public hearings, is taking evidence from former residents of the St Joseph’s Neerkol Orphanage in Rockhampton.

A witness known as AYA said she was sexually assaulted by one of the priests.

“On my 12th birthday I was sexually abused by Father Reg Durham at Neerkol,” she said.

“Durham would often ask the girls to visit him.

“He would entice you to his room with a display of food that we didn’t have such as chicken.”

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LOUISIANA
The Advertiser

Claire Taylor, cxtaylor@gannett.com April 15, 2015

A New Jersey man filed a police complaint last week alleging he was abused by a priest in Youngsville in the 1960s.

Roy Lee Touchet, who also goes by Lee Paul Toucheque, 65, told The Daily Advertiser that he filed a complaint last week with the Youngsville Police Department alleging he was abused as a child by then-the Rev. Gerard Smit.

Youngsville Police Chief Rickey Boudreaux confirmed Wednesday that Touchet filed a complaint with his department, which is in the early stages of investigating the allegations.

Touchet, who lived in Youngsville, which was in the Diocese of Lake Charles until 1980, said he was an altar boy in the 1960s when Smit was assigned to churches in Youngsville and Milton. Touchet claims he was sexually abused by Smit at that time.

In 2006, Smit was identified in a settlement agreement between the Diocese of Wilmington, Delaware, and clergy sexual abuse survivors as one of several priests with admitted, corroborated or substantiated allegations of abuse of minors.

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UNITED STATES
Christian Catholicism

Jerry Slevin

Pope Francis appears to give much higher priority to protecting the interests of his Big Oil associated donors in the Middle East than to protecting Catholic children from priest sexual abusers enabled by his unaccountable bishops. The pope’s top financial adviser, for example, is a former Chairman of BP, which has significant Middle East oil interests. This, and similar Vatican donor connections, seem to influence the pope’s current approach of dangerously calling for another Middle East military invasion and imprudently provoking Muslim Turkey over 100 year old World War I atrocities involving Catholic Armenians. These connections may even affect the pope’s expected encyclical on global warming.

The pope recently provoked Turkey needlessly over a century old controversy, only a few months after the pope visited Turkey to promote religious harmony. Turkey’s leaders have warned the pope, among other things, suggesting the Vatican has its own skeletons to keep hidden. With the pope’s still Secret Archives of Vatican dealings with Nazis and Fascists, including over assets stolen from Jews murdered in the Holocaust, as well as the Vatican’s current sex abuse and financial scandals, Turkey has a point. Why did the pope provoke Turkey, and why now?

Meanwhile, the pope and his Council of Cardinals (C9) continued at their latest meeting to pay lip service to holding bishops accountable for child abuse facilitation. This is 30 years after Fr. Tom Doyle’s searing “dead on arrival” secret report on pervasive priest child abuse to Pope John Paul II and US bishops. The C9, in effect, once again did nothing of substance, upon reviewing briefly the “do nothing results” so far of the pope’s “go slow” abuse commission. Public objections by two prominent psychiatrist child abuse experts and two abuse survivors, all commission members, forced the C9 to at least go through the motions of a discussion two years into Francis papacy. The four members had traveled from their home countries to the pope’s residence, but the pope avoided meeting with them. So much for “mixing with the sheep”!

Turkey is an a tough position. Syrian civil war refugees are pouring over one border, and threatening Kurdish forces are battling Islamic State (ISIS) forces near another border. As ISIS forces currently engage in fierce battles for control of Iraq’s largest oil refinery, Big Oil and its allies, including some prominent Iraq War US neocons and seemingly the pope as well, are stepping up efforts for another Western military incursion in the Middle East. Many of the Iraq War neocon cheerleaders, including Paul Wolfowitz, are now advising Jeb Bush, the likely papal preference in next year’s US presidential elections. Please see the related video here,

[Reuters]

As Ray McGovern, a Jesuit educated former CIA advisor under six US Presidents, astutely noted recently: “… the neocons are nothing if not resilient. Despite their grotesque disasters, like the Iraq War, and their disappointments, like not getting their war on Syria, they neither learn lessons nor change goals. They just readjust their aim, shooting now at Putin over Ukraine as a way to clear the path again for ‘regime change’ in Syria and Iran. …” . Please see McGovern’s superb and informative, “Neocon ‘Chaos Promotion’ in the Mideast“, here,

[Truth-Out]

and see also “Jeb Bush seeks tips from wide cast of foreign policy experts” here,

[Reuters]

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NEW JERSEY
Seattle PI

TRENTON, N.J. (AP) — Jury deliberations have started in the case of an Orthodox rabbi accused of using brutal tactics to force unwilling Jewish men to divorce their wives.

Closing arguments in the case concluded Wednesday afternoon, and jurors started their discussions around 3 p.m.

Rabbi Mendel Epstein faces charges of conspiracy to commit kidnapping and attempted kidnapping with his son and two other Orthodox rabbis. Prosecutors say the charges stem from a staged kidnapping in 2013 and three other forced divorces.

Prosecutors say the rabbi’s team used brutal methods and tools, including handcuffs and electric cattle prods, to torture the men into granting divorces.

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NEW JERSEY
NJ.com

By MaryAnn Spoto | NJ Advance Media for NJ.com
on April 15, 2015

TRENTON — Jurors began deliberating Wednesday afternoon in the trial of a Lakewood rabbi and three others accused of kidnapping Orthodox Jewish men and forcing them to grant their wives religious divorces.

After hearing one last summation from one of the four defense attorneys and rebuttal from the prosecution,the jury of six men and six women who sat through eight weeks of testimony in the federal kidnapping conspiracy trial of Rabbi Mendel Epstein began discussions shortly before 3 p.m.

Charged along with Epstein are his son, David “Ari” Epstein and rabbis Jay Goldstein and Binyamin Stimler, whom federal prosecutors contend terrorized and tortured men between 2009 and 2013 into giving their wives religious divorces, known as gets.

The four defendants were arrested on Oct. 9, 2013, at a warehouse in Edison where they allegedly planned to ambush a husband they were told refused to give his wife a divorce.

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NEW JERSEY
Asbury Park Press

Shannon Mullen, Asbury Park Press April 15, 2015

TRENTON – A jury has begun deliberating the fates of three rabbis, including Rabbi Mendel Epstein of Lakewood, and another man charged for their roles in a series of coerced religious divorces.

Jurors left the courtroom shortly after 2:30 p.m. and were released for the day by 4:30 p.m.

As a group, they have spent the past two months immersed in the obscure details and shadowy underside of how divorces are handled within the insular Orthodox Jewish communities in Brooklyn and Lakewood.

Now they have to decide if the government proved its case against the four men beyond a reasonable doubt.

The central figure in the case is Epstein, 69, of Lakewood, the alleged mastermind behind the kidnappings of four recalcitrant husbands dating back to 2009.

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VATICAN CITY
Channel News Asia

VATICAN CITY: The Vatican is preparing to introduce legal procedures to establish the responsibilities of bishops and Catholic hierarchy found guilty of protecting priests who have sexually abused children, a spokesman said on Wednesday (Apr 15).

The issue of accountability was discussed in the presence of Pope Francis by the C9, the group of senior cardinals who advise him.

Victims’ groups accuse the Church, the Vatican and the pope of refusing to take action against hierarchy who have turned a blind eye to paedophile acts. In some cases, the priests are simply moved to different areas or different jobs.

The group of senior cardinals said the rules “were not sufficiently clear to deal with this kind of problems”. They called for “routes to be explored to proceed on the legal front against abuses of power and omissions” by bishops and other Church hierarchy, Vatican spokesman Federico Lombardi told a press conference.

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VATICAN CITY
U-T San Diego

VATICAN CITY (AP) — The issue of holding bishops accountable for failing to protect children from sexual deviants arrived squarely on Pope Francis’ agenda Wednesday as his point-man on sex abuse raised the case of a controversial bishop appointment in Chile.

The head of the pope’s sex abuse advisory board, Cardinal Sean O’Malley, urged the pope and his other cardinal advisers to take up bishops’ responsibility to protect children — and the need to punish them when they fail to do so — during one of their periodic meetings Wednesday.

The Vatican said O’Malley’s aim was to “come up with appropriate procedures and modalities to evaluate and adjudicate cases of ‘abuse of office’ in this area, especially by people in positions of responsibility within the church.”

O’Malley tabled the agenda item at the request of four members of the advisory board who traveled to Rome over the weekend for an emergency meeting with O’Malley over the appointment of Bishop Juan Barros in Osorno, Chile.

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VATICAN CITY
Catholic News Service

By Carol Glatz
Catholic News Service

VATICAN CITY (CNS) — The question of accountability for bishops and religious superiors who fail to follow through on protecting minors from abuse was “put on the table” during the latest meeting between Pope Francis and his international Council of Cardinals, said the Vatican spokesman.

Jesuit Father Federico Lombardi said the need for clear and appropriate procedures for cases of “abuse of office” or a failure to act was presented to the group by U.S. Cardinal Sean P. O’Malley of Boston — one of the pope’s top cardinal advisers and president of the Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors.

The Council of Cardinals, often referred to as the C9, held the second of five meetings scheduled this year April 13-15 with Pope Francis at the Vatican to help advise him on the reform of the Vatican’s organization and church governance.

Father Lombardi, Vatican spokesman, told reporters April 15 that Cardinal O’Malley asked the pope and the council to “take on the subject of accountability and responsibility” when it comes to bishops and others in leadership who fail to comply with child protection norms.

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VATICAN CITY
Crux

By Inés San Martín
Vatican correspondent April 15, 2015

ROME — Cardinal Sean P. O’Malley of Boston made a pitch to Pope Francis and his team of cardinal advisors Wednesday on the need to hold bishops who fail to report sexual abuse accountable.

O’Malley’s talk came three days after two survivors of clerical sexual abuse met with him to protest the pope’s naming of a bishop in Chile linked to a notorious abuser.

According to a Vatican spokesman, O’Malley brought the issue to the attention of Pope Francis’ “G9” commission of cardinal advisers, a body whose meetings the pope attends. O’Malley is a member.

On Sunday, O’Malley, who also serves as president of the pope’s anti-abuse commission, met with four members of that commission, called the Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors. It was established by Francis in 2013 to work on the prevention of clerical sex abuse. All four members — two of whom were victims of clerical sexual abuse — traveled to Rome specifically to press O’Malley about the Chile case.

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UNITED KINGDOM
BBC News

A former Church of England priest has been charged with abusing a boy more than 25 years ago.

Jonathan Graves, 57, of Jervis Avenue, Eastbourne, is accused of indecent assault against a boy aged 11 to 13 between 1987 and 1990.

He was also charged with child cruelty against the same boy and indecent assault against two women, one between 1994 and 1995 and the other in 2002.

He has been bailed to appear before Hastings Magistrates’ Court on 13 May.

Sussex Police said there was nothing to suggest that any young people were currently at risk.

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UNITED KINGDOM
The Argus

A former Church of England priest has been charged with 11 sexual and child cruelty offences.

Jonathan Graves, 57, of Jervis Avenue, Eastbourne, has been charged with:

* three offences of indecent assault on a boy aged 11 to 13 between 1987 and 1990;
* three offences of indecency with the same boy during the same period;
* three offences of cruelty against the same boy over the same period;
* one offence of indecent assault on an adult woman between 1994 and 1995;
* one offence of indecent assault on another adult woman in 2002.

Graves, who worked at St Lukes Church in Stone Cross, was charged on the authority of the Crown Prosecution Service when he answered police bail on today, having first been arrested in November 2013.

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AUSTRALIA
Daily Mail

House of horrors orphanage investigated as alleged victims reveal horrific tales of gang rape, beatings and sexual assault with a broom handle… before being forced to confess the brutal acts as their own sins

By Louise Cheer for Daily Mail Australia and Australian Associated Press

Victims at an Australian orphanage have told of the horrific abuse they suffered at the hands of the priests and nuns who ran the institution from claims of being raped by a broom handle to being forced to drink their own urine.

The Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sex Abuse in Rockhampton has also heard a woman was gang raped by employees and then had a child at 14 years of age.

While a retired nurse, who was sent to Neerkol orphanage near Rockhampton, said she was punched and slapped repeatedly, and a third victim claimed she was raped more than 100 times by parish priest Reginald Durham, who is now dead, from when she was 11.

The Rockhampton hearing in Queensland, which started on Tuesday, is expected to go until April 24
.
A victim identified as AYL told the inquiry she had allegedly been routinely raped by a male employee from 1963, and in claims aired publicly for the first time said on one occasion the man and two other employees bound, gagged and raped her at the orphanage.

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PENNSYLVANIA
TribLive

By The Associated Press
Wednesday, April 15, 2015

JOHNSTOWN, Pa. — Three more former students at a Catholic school have settled sexual abuse suits involving a Franciscan friar who worked there nearly 20 years ago, their attorney said.

Boston attorney Michael Garabedian said each of the cases settled for $50,000, or a total of $150,000, the (Johnstown) Tribune-Democrat ( http://bit.ly/1FK9zVv ) reported Wednesday.

In October, Garabedian and other attorneys announced an $8 million settlement on behalf of 88 former Bishop McCort High School students alleging abuse by Brother Stephen Baker, who committed suicide more than two years ago. Those students each received between $60,000 and slightly more than $120,000.

Since the group settlement, other former students of the school in Johnstown, some 60 miles east of Pittsburgh, have come forward to sue the Altoona-Johnstown diocese – which ran the school when Baker worked there – and others.

Diocesan spokesman Tony DeGol, declined to comment on the latest settlements saying, “As always, the diocese does not comment on matters that involve litigation.”

The latest settlements involved men who were 14 to 17 when they were abused by Baker while attending the school from 1996 to 2000, Garabedian said.

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AUSTRALIA
The Morning Bulletin

UPDATE 12.45PM: Former resident Joseph Kiernan has given evidence stating Sisters of Mercy nuns allegedly made him lick up his mess after he vomited over the floor in the boys’ dormitory at the orphanage.

After this punishment, Mr Kiernan was allegedly beaten by the nun.

UPDATE 11.45PM: WITNESS Ayn has alleged former Neerkol employee Mr Kevin Baker sexually assaulted him while he was a resident.

Ayn did not go into any detail of the alleged sexual assault at the orphanage because it made him feel disgusted.

11AM: In day two of the Royal Commission hearing into Neerkol Orphanage, former resident Diane Carpenter has revealed how she was afraid to take naps because the children were allegedly kicked in their sleep.

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AUSTRALIA
Courier-Mail

MICHAEL MADIGAN THE COURIER-MAIL APRIL 16, 2015

A NUN forced a boy to perform oral sex on her at Neerkol Orphanage while another Sister of Mercy forced a child to eat his own vomit, a Royal Commission was told.

Joseph Kiernan, a former resident of the orphanage outside Rockhampton, has told the Royal Commission into Child Sexual Abuse of sadistic physical and sexual abuse at the notorious orphanage, west of Rockhampton, in the 1960s.

Another witness Diane Carpenter, 62, alleged she was once locked in a hot room and forced to drink her own urine to remain hydrated.

Other allegations aired yesterday in the commission, which has convened in the central Queensland city of Rockhampton for two weeks, include the alleged rape of a girl by a man wielding a broom stick.

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AUSTRALIA
The Morning Bulletin

Austin King | 16th Apr 2015

ALLAN Allaway says he was ripped from his mother’s arms when he was a tot.

He was just an innocent six-month-old.

Allan claimed authorities from the State Government’s Children’s Department (at the time) stole him off his mother and delivered him to the Neerkol Orphanage nursery.

He claimed the “bureaucrats” often made immoral judgments that women who were single couldn’t look after their children.

When he was about five years old, Allan would always ask for his mother.

The nuns at the orphanage would often beat him because of this and say to him “Your parents are dead”, he claimed.

When he turned 14 years old, Allan claimed he worked as a “slave” on farms around Yeppoon.

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AUSTRALIA
The Observer

Austin King | 16th Apr 2015

JOSEPH Kiernan wasn’t supposed to live for long after he was born.

But he lived, only to endure years of alleged sickening physical and sexual abuse at Neerkol Orphanage.

Everyone on the first level of the Rockhampton Courthouse listened, transfixed by the shocking details of Joseph’s evidence to the Royal Commission panel, during yesterday’s hearing into the Neerkol institution.

The Royal Commission heard that Joseph, 54, was a very sick baby.

He told the commission his mother was told he wouldn’t live long and “she should just forget about me”.

The Department of Children’s Services placed Joseph at Neerkol Orphanage when he was seven years old.

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CIUDAD DEL VATICANO
La Tercera

EFE

[Pope Francis and the Council of Cardinals will study solutions to potential liabilities of bishops and other superiors in cases of sexual abuse by religious. Vatican spokesman Federico Lombardi told reporters the president of the commission, Cardinal Sean O’Malley, introduced to the “C9” which reconvened this week his concern about this issue and the need to give answers.]

El Papa Francisco y el Consejo de Cardenales estudiarán soluciones a posibles responsabilidades de los obispos y de otros superiores en casos de abusos sexuales cometidos por religiosoP.

El portavoz del Vaticano, Federico Lombardi, relató a la prensa que el presidente de la Comisión para la Tutela de los Menores, el cardenal Sean O’Malley, presentó al “C9”, que se volvió a reunir esta semana, la preocupación por este tema y la necesidad de darle respuestas.

O’Malley pidió al Papa y a la Comisión de cardenales que se está ocupando de la reforma de la Curia soluciones sobre “procedimientos” también del tipo jurídico y “competencias” para actuar cuando se crea existan casos de “abuso de poder, omisiones o coberturas” por parte de los responsables eclesiales ante delitos de abusos sexuales.

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CIUDAD DEL VATICANO
El Nuevo Herald

THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
04/15/2015

CIUDAD DEL VATICANO
El tema de responsabilizar a los obispos por no proteger a los niños de depredadores sexuales llegó de lleno el miércoles a la agenda del papa Francisco cuando la persona que ha designado para tratar este asunto presentó el caso del nombramiento de un controvertido obispo en Chile.

El encargado de la junta asesora del papa Francisco en materia de abuso sexual, el cardenal Sean O’Malley, exhortó al pontífice y a sus otros cardenales asesores a tratar la responsabilidad de los obispos de proteger a los niños, y la necesidad de castigarlos cuando no lo hagan, en una de sus reuniones periódicas el miércoles.

El Vaticano dijo que el objetivo de O’Malley es “establecer procedimientos apropiados para evaluar y adjudicar casos de ‘abuso de poder’ en este tema, especialmente por personas en cargos de responsabilidad en la Iglesia”.

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AUSTRALIA
The Courier-Mail

MICHAEL MADIGAN THE COURIER-MAIL APRIL 16, 2015

THE Catholic Church appears to have accepted the full extent of its shameful past at Neerkol as it faces a catalogue of extraordinary allegations of sexual aggression and cruelty against society’s most vulnerable people, orphaned children.

Francis Sullivan, chief executive of the Truth, Justice and Healing Council, made it clear outside the commission yesterday this was no place to challenge the testimony of witnesses and offered unequivocal support for sexual assault victims. Outdated attempts to handle abuse allegations internally had ended and the Church was determined to do all it could to right past wrongs, Mr Sullivan said.

Anyone approaching the Church about child sexual abuse was now immediately encouraged to speak to law enforcement agencies, he said.

Mr Sullivan’s council has already supported the Royal Commission’s chairman Peter McClellan, who wants governments to establish an independent national redress scheme, funded by the institutions responsible for the abuse.

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CANADA
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests

For immediate release: Wednesday, April 15

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

Shame on Bruce Campbell and every official with the Dufferin-Peel Catholic District School Board for their reckless, callous and dangerous practice of secrecy in child sex abuse cases.

[Mississauga News]

We call on Toronto Cardinal Thomas Christopher Collins to discipline top administrators of this school and issue a strong public statement that known or suspected child sex crimes in Catholic facilities must be immediately reported to parents, parishioners, police, prosecutors and the public. Every delay in reporting, every hour of secrecy, gives accused criminals more chances to destroy evidence, intimidate victims, threaten witnesses, discredit whistleblowers, fabricate alibis, and even flee the country. Every hour serious accusations of clergy sexual misconduct are kept quiet, other innocent children and vulnerable adults are left in harm’s way.

The school’s public relations man claims that Fr. Roth occasionally went into elementary and secondary schools to help deliver liturgies and was always accompanied by a staff member in what were large group settings. We suspect he’s lying. And even if he’s not, this is irrelevant. It takes only seconds for a child predator to shove his hands down a boy’s pants or his tongue down a girl’s throat. These predators are usually very cunning and manipulative, able to win the trust of both students and staff. So this pathetic effort to reassure parents that Fr. Roth allegedly had little chance to hurt Dufferin-Peel students is stunningly irresponsible.

It’s also possible that Fr. Roth befriended and molested kids of school staffers or kids in the neighborhood around the school. But apparently Dufferin-Peel officials don’t care to try to find out.

Catholic officials can always find or invent excuses for doing little or nothing to reach out to others who may have been sexually assaulted by clerics. But these excuses (like “Roth had limited interaction with students and the allegations against him reportedly occurred in a non-school setting, in another country, and the priest had no history of wrongdoing with the Dufferin-Peel board”) are incredibly irresponsible and self-serving. Take the claim that Fr. Roth “had no history of wrongdoing with the Dufferin-Peel board. So does that mean that the school would hire a teacher or staff who had molested a dozen kids in a dozen different schools, so long as he “had no history of wrongdoing” with THEIR school? That’s preposterous.

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VATICAN CITY
Gazzetta del Sud

Vatican City, April 15 – A senior cardinal on Wednesday asked Pope Francis to put the issue of bishops’ accountability in pedophilia cases on the agenda for upcoming meetings of the Council of Cardinals, said a Vatican spokesman. Cardinal Sean O’Malley, chairman of the Commission for the Protection of Children, asked that Francis and council deal with issues around the responsibility of bishops to protect children. O’Malley and members of the commission dealing with sex abuse of children met recently in Rome. Meanwhile, the Council of Cardinals advising the pope on reforming the Roman Curia, the so-called C-9 group, was also meeting this week and is scheduled to meet again in July.

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CALIFORNIA
KEYT

[with video]

Tracy Lehr, KEYT – KCOY – KKFX Reporter, tracy@keyt.com

SANTA BARBARA, Calif. –

Some registered sex offenders will be able to live by schools and parks under a new court ruling.

The California State Supreme Court ruled that the voter-approved Jessica’s law ban on all registered sex offenders goes too far.

The ruling stems from a San Diego County case, but will soon be applied statewide.

Corrections officers will determine on a case by case basis whether a parolee is allowed to live near schools and parks.

Santa Barbara County District Attorney Joyce Dudley said, “The California sex offender management board has long recommended tailoring residency restrictions to fit the offender and the offense. The California Supreme Court noted that when applied to all offenders the restriction has created many problems and made it impossible for law-enforcement to track offenders when a new crime is committed because their whereabouts are unknown. Transient sex offenders are a bigger danger to public safety than the ones whose residence address is known to police. this change will be in the interest of Public Safety because it will allow law enforcement to keep closer track of offenders. High risk child molesters will still not be able to live near schools or parks.

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UNITED KINGDOM
Eastbourne Herald

Jonathan Graves, the former priest at St Luke’s Church at Stone Cross, has today been charged with 11 sexual and child cruelty offences involving three alleged victims.

Fifty-seven-year-old Jonathan Graves, of Jervis Avenue, a former Church of England priest, was charged when he answered police bail today (Wednesday) having first been arrested in November 2013.

He has been charged with three offences of indecent assault on a boy aged 11 to 13 between 1987 and 1990; three offences of indecency with the same boy during the same period; three offences of cruelty against the same boy over the same period; one offence of indecent assault on an adult woman between 1994 and 1995; and one offence of indecent assault on another adult woman in 2002.

Graves was charged on the authority of the Crown Prosecution Service.

He is due to appear on bail at Hastings Magistrates Court on Wednesday May 13

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CALIFORNIA
SFGate

By Bob Egelko
Monday, April 13, 2015

An Alameda County woman who was molested as a child by a fellow member of Jehovah’s Witnesses, who took her with him on door-to-door preaching, is entitled to $2.8 million of the $15.6 million in damages she won at trial, a state appeals in San Francisco court ruled Monday.

However, the First District Court of Appeal overturned $8.6 million in punitive damages against the religion’s then-governing body, the Watchtower Bible and Tract Society of New York, for failing to warn members of the North Fremont Congregation that Jonathan Kendrick had previously molested his stepdaughter.

The court said churches have no legal duty to warn members that one of their fellow congregants was a sex offender, and observed that such warnings “would discourage wrongdoers from seeking potentially beneficial intervention.” But the court said Watchtower and leaders of the congregation had failed to properly supervise Kendrick during his door-to-door recruitment activities for the church and were responsible for leaving him alone with Candace Conti during a two-year period that started in late 1994, when she was 9 years old.

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ILLINOIS
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests

For immediate release: Wednesday, April 15

Statement by Kate Bochte of Chicago, SNAP leader (630 768 1860, keight@sbcglobal.net)

Now that Joliet Catholic officials have settled more child sex abuse and cover up cases – involving five priests, 14 victims and $4.137 million – the question is “What will Joliet’s bishops do now to protect kids from and help other victims of the 39 publicly accused predator priests in this relatively small diocese?”

If bishops refuse to take action, we urge Joliet’s dozens of priests to act.

In particular, we call on Bishop Daniel Conlon and Bishop Joseph M. Siegel to warn families about and protect kids from a four-time predator priest who continues to minister even now. He’s Fr. Carroll Howlin:

[SNAP]

But with all 39 of these priests, more outreach should be done and more warnings should be issued. If I knowingly let my unsafe violent dogs loose, one bites you, and I pay you, my obligations don’t end there. I still have a duty to make sure my pets don’t hurt others. Bishops have that duty too. But they rarely take it seriously.

This latest settlement involves one priest who was on the job as recently as 2012. At least two of them showed troubling signs of deviancy in seminary (but were ordained anyway). At least two of them worked outside the diocese, and we suspect that Catholic officials elsewhere have not warned their flocks about those two.

(The five are Fr. Lawrence Gibbs, Fr. James Nowak, Fr. Fred Lenczycki. Fr. Michael Gibbney and Fr. Myles White.)

We commend Steve Janik of Wheaton and the other brave men who reported their suffering and took legal action to expose wrongdoers, get justice, warn others, protect kids, start healing and deter cover ups. We hope this settlement will bring them some sorely-needed and long-overdue comfort and closure.

We encourage them to stay in recovery programs and therapy and continue the painstaking, tough process of rebuilding their lives and restoring their trust. No one event – a conviction, a trial, a settlement, a suspension, a defrocking – can magically erase decades of pain or reverse decades of self-destructive behaviors that plague most child sex abuse victims. So we beg these courageous men to stay focused on their own care and well-being, and not assume that the lingering effects of horrific childhood betrayal will suddenly vanish because this legal struggle has ended.

Finally, we beg every single person who saw, suspected or suffered clergy sex crimes or cover ups in Joliet to break their silence, get independent help and take steps to safeguard other innocent kids and vulnerable adults from clerics who commit or conceal heinous crimes.

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ILLINOIS
Patch

Joliet Diocese Settles Victims’ Abuse Claims Against ‘Savage, Scary’ Priests for Over $4M

By DENNIS ROBAUGH (Patch National Staff)
April 15, 2015

In February 2006, a judge allowed transcripts of depositions involving the Joliet Diocese to be made public. Bishop Joseph Imesch’s deposition, conducted on Aug. 11, 2005, included details about how he handled priests accused of misconduct involving young boys. Imesch retired in June 2006.

The deposition was conducted by attorney Jeff Anderson, a Minneapolis attorney who specializes in clergy abuse cases, and focused on the actions of the Rev. Gary Berthiaume, who was brought into the Joliet Diocese by Imesch in 1987 even after he was convicted of sexual abuse; his transfer of the Rev. Larry Gibbs; his handling of the Rev. Fred Lenczycki, convicted of molesting Hinsdale altar boys; the Rev. Ed Stefanich, convicted of molesting a Woodridge girl.

RE: REV. GARY BERTHIAUME
IMESCH: “As far as I can remember I think Gary admitted to me that he had done it before the conviction.”

ANDERSON: “If he had told you that he had committed the offense against the child, isn’t that evidence of the crime?”

IMESCH: “That’s a job for the police. I’m not going to get involved in that. That’s not my responsibility.”

RE: REV. LARRY GIBBS, accused in police reports of skinny dipping with boys and playing nude games

ANDERSON: “And when you put him in that parish you didn’t alert the parishioners where you assigned him that he had had a credible allegation of sexual abuse, did you?”

IMESCH: “I don’t think that’s a credible allegation if nothing was charged.”

IMESCH: “Well, I think what happened happened. It was not considered a crime or a criminal activity so there was no reason for me not to transfer him.”

ANDERSON: “It is correct to say that you knowingly continued priests in ministry until the charter required their removal and you knew that credible allegations had been made against those clergymen, correct?”

IMESCH: “Yes.”

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CANADA
Mississauga News

By Roger Belgrave

PEEL – Peel’s Catholic school board said it is normal practice to keep parents and the community in the dark when a staff member is accused of criminal wrongdoing, such as the sexual assault of a minor.

“What we do is go on our practice and our practice has been not to communicate on allegations or charges against individual staff members,” said Bruce Campbell, chief spokesperson for the Dufferin-Peel Catholic District School Board.

The explanation comes after allegations of sexual abuse by a priest working for the board surfaced in January, but were only recently brought to light by the board.

Father James Roth reportedly committed suicide in February after confessing to sexually assaulting a young boy 14 years ago.

Roth was working as a priest-in-residence with the board until the latter part of January, when he was removed from ministry after the allegations were reported to police. He had been with the school board since 2008.

Roth was a member of the Oblates of St. Francis De Sales order based in Ohio, but on assignment with the Archdiocese of Toronto and working at the Dufferin-Peel board.

A complainant contacted police in the United States to report Roth sexually assaulted him in Michigan when he was about nine years old. When informed by police of the allegation, the order recalled Roth from his position at the school board and he returned to the United States for an investigation launched by the church.

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VATICAN CITY
National Catholic Reporter

Joshua J. McElwee | Apr. 15, 2015

VATICAN CITY The cardinals advising Pope Francis on reforming the church’s central bureaucracy have discussed the issue of accountability for Catholic bishops who mishandle cases of clergy sexual abuse, the Vatican spokesman said Wednesday.

Addressing the latest meeting of the Council of Cardinals during a press briefing, Jesuit Fr. Federico Lombardi said the prelates have put the issue “on the table” after being presented with it by Boston’s Cardinal Sean O’Malley.

“It is not that they might have made a precise project or a document” on the issue, Lombardi said. “But the theme is explicitly, let’s say, on the table of the C9, and the intention is now to find a way to proceed in the deepening of the competence in these cases.”

The Council of Cardinals is a group of nine prelates advising the pope on reforming the Vatican bureaucracy, known as the Roman Curia. The council is frequently referred to as the C9.

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VATICAN CITY
ABC News

VATICAN CITY — Apr 15, 2015

Associated Press

The issue of holding bishops accountable for failing to protect children from sexual deviants arrived squarely on Pope Francis’ agenda Wednesday as his point-man on sex abuse raised the case of a controversial bishop appointment in Chile.

The head of the pope’s sex abuse advisory board, Cardinal Sean O’Malley, urged the pope and his other cardinal advisers to take up bishops’ responsibility to protect children — and the need to punish them when they fail to do so — during one of their periodic meetings Wednesday.

The Vatican said O’Malley’s aim was to “come up with appropriate procedures and modalities to evaluate and adjudicate cases of ‘abuse of office’ in this area, especially by people in positions of responsibility within the church.”

O’Malley tabled the agenda item at the request of four members of the advisory board who traveled to Rome over the weekend for an emergency meeting with O’Malley over the appointment of Bishop Juan Barros in Osorno, Chile.

Victims of Chile’s most notorious abuser, the Rev. Fernando Karadima, say Barros witnessed their abuse decades ago and did nothing, and then defended Karadima against their claims when they came forward later. They say that makes him unfit to lead a diocese where he’d be responsible for protecting kids.

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CALIFORNIA
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests

For immediate release: Tuesday, April 14

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

The largest jury award ever in a church child sex abuse and cover up case has been reduced by an appeals court. This is a heart-breaking ruling that will mean more children will be sexually assaulted, more predators will go undetected and more employers will act more recklessly, callously and deceitfully.

[Reveal News]

Our hearts go out to Candace Conti and her family. They have now been betrayed three times – first by irresponsible, secretive and self-serving Jehovah’s Witness officials, then by a child molester named Jonathan Kendrick, and now by an appeal court that apparently values the freedom of adults to avoid independent scrutiny over the freedom of children to avoid heinous sex crimes.

Expecting purportedly “spiritual” officials to warn their flocks about child molesters, this court claims, would be too “burdensome.”

Frankly, it’s just hard for us to understand that whatever “adverse social consequences” the duty to keep predators away from kids might cause that would be worse than the “adverse social consequences” millions of men, women and children have endured and are enduring because of those who selfishly commit and conceal horrific sexual violence against the vulnerable.

The court worries about “the burden” that might be caused when church officials have a “reason to believe that a congregation member is capable of doing harm.” But for heaven’s sake, Kendrick admitted sexually assaulting a child, was protected by Jehovah’s Witnesses officials, then went on to sexually assault another child. So who cares what church officials “believed” he was capable of? They knew, from his own admission, that he had already sexually had abused a child. They should have called 911. They should have never deceived their flock. They should have never given him a chance to hurt another child.

This ruling is a tragedy. Our nation has just become safer, not for kids, but for those who put their own reputations, comfort and careers ahead of the well-being of innocent boys and girls and vulnerable men and women.

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AUSTRALIA
The Age

April 15, 2015

Chloe Booker

Police are digging up the grounds of a former Ballarat orphanage associated with historic sexual and physical abuse, searching for children’s remains.

The remains are suspected to have been buried at the once Damascus University site before the orphanage closed in 1968.

The investigation was sparked when former orphanage residents raised the issue at Ballarat City Council meetings discussing redevelopment plans for the 200 Victoria Street site.

Former orphanage resident Phyllis Read laid a “blood claim” to the site at a 2012 meeting.

“I say it’s our blood, so it’s our land,” the indigenous woman said.

Her sister, Edith Orr, asked at a 2013 Ballarat City Council meeting how the remains of children allegedly buried there would be respected if it was redeveloped.

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PENNSYLVANIA
Tribune-Democrat

By Kathy Mellott
kmellott@tribdem.com
Kathy Mellott

Posted on Apr 15, 2015

Three former Bishop McCort Catholic High School students who were sexually abused by Brother Stephen Baker will receive $50,000 each in compensation, a Boston-based attorney said Tuesday.

The three, who have not been named, are in addition to 88 former Bishop McCort students named in an Oct. 21 settlement providing between $60,000 and slightly more than $120,000 each.

The Roman Catholic Diocese of Altoona-Johnstown, Province of the Immaculate Conception of the Third Order Regular Franciscans and Bishop McCort are all part of the settlement with the victims, according to information provided by attorney Mitchell Garabedian.

No additional information was provided by Bishop Mark Bartchak of the Altoona-Johnstown diocese.
“As always, the diocese does not comment on matters that involve litigation,” Tony DeGol, secretary for communications, wrote in an email.

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VATICAN CITY
Vatican Information Service

Vatican City, 15 April 2015 (VIS) – The ninth meeting of the Council of Cardinals (C9), which began on 13 April, was brought to a close this afternoon, according to a briefing by the director of the Holy See Press Office, Fr. Federico Lombardi, S.J.

The Council of Cardinals dedicated the majority its work regarding reform of the Roman Curia to two aspects: reflections on the methodologies to be followed for work during 2015 and 2016 in order to be able to effectively accomplish the task of preparing the new Constitution, and a rereading of the interventions by the Cardinals in relation to reform of the Curia made during the recent Consistory (there were over sixty interventions on this theme with useful indications and cues, both for the prologue of the constitution and for specific aspects of reform).

The orientation towards the constitution of two dicasteries – one competent in fields of charity, justice and peace, the other regarding the laity, families and life – would appear to be confirmed.

The Council also focused on the issue of the reorganisation of Vatican media, following the submission of the final report of the Commission presided over by Lord Chris Patten.

It is expected that the Pope will constitute a Commission to consider how the recommendations of the report can be put into practice. This body will also include members of the Patten Commission, to ensure continuity.

Finally, Cardinal O’Malley, president of the new Commission for the Protection of Minors, under the auspices of the same Commission, has proposed that the Pope and the Council consider the theme of “Accountability” with regard to the protection of minors, in order to establish appropriate procedures and methods for evaluating and judging cases of “abuse of office” in this area, especially on the part of persons holding responsibility within the Church.

Further meetings of the Council of Cardinals are scheduled to take place from 8 to 10 June, 14 to 16 September and 10 to 12 December 2015.

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PENNSYLVANIA
New Jersey Herald

Updated: Apr 15, 2015

JOHNSTOWN, Pa. (AP) – An attorney says three more former students at a western Pennsylvania Catholic school have settled sexual abuse suits involving a Franciscan friar who worked there nearly 20 years ago.

Boston attorney Michael Garabedian tells the (Johnstown) Tribune-Democrat (http://bit.ly/1FK9zVv ) that each of the cases settled for $50,000, or a total of $150,000.

In October, Garabedian and other attorneys announced an $8 million settlement on behalf of 88 former Bishop McCort High School students alleging abuse by Brother Stephen Baker, who committed suicide in January 2013.

Since then, other alleged victims have come forward to sue the Altoona-Johnstown Diocese – which ran the school when Baker worked there – and others. A diocesan spokesman declined comment.

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AUSTRALIA
ABC News

By William Rollo

A teenager who was raped at a Queensland orphanage and fell pregnant was told by nuns she had the devil inside her, the royal commission into child sexual abuse has heard.

The woman, who gave evidence under the name AYL, was raped when she was 14 by a worker at St Joseph’s Neerkol Orphanage, near Rockhampton, in 1965.

She was taken to the Good Shepherd’s home in Brisbane to give birth in front of nuns, who she was not permitted to talk to, the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse heard.

“The baby was taken from me by one of the nuns who assisted in the delivery of the baby and was told I was ‘having the devil taken out of me’,” AYL said.

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AUSTRALIA
International Business Times

By Barsha Baruah on April 15 2015

A first person’s account of a child sex abuse inquiry revealed she was reportedly raped “well over 100 times” by a priest at St. Joseph’s Neerkol Orphanage Rockhampton in central Queensland. ABC News reported that The Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse found out that the children were treated brutally at the orphanage.

Meanwhile, in a previous investigation it was found that hundreds of children were sexually abused, beaten and forced into hard labour there. In fact, the orphanage has always been under numerous police and government inquiries, one notably being by the former Queensland governor Leneen Forde in 1999.

The Royal Commission, which is monitoring how the institutions such as schools and churches dealt with allegations related to child sexual abuse, will hear evidence from 18 witnesses for the next two weeks. Among the 18 cases, 13 are from the former residents of the orphanage, who were abused there between 1940 and 1975.

Listen In To Couple Of The Witnesses

A witness named AYB narrated her experience of being sexually abused by a former priest at the orphanage, Father Reginald Basil Durham. She told the investigation that her abuse began when she was only 11. She said, during Father Durham’s visit to the family home on Christmas Eve, he started taking advantage of her sexually. She, not only felt powerless and robotic but also felt enslaved.

When he kissed her, she said, “He was a smoker and the taste was horrible.” But he told her to keep everything secret.

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AUSTRALIA
Broken Rites

By a Broken Rites researcher (article updated 14 April 2015)

When Broken Rites launched its national telephone hotline in September 1993, our first callers included former inmates of a Catholic orphanage (St Joseph’s Home, at Neerkol, near Rockhampton, Queensland). Some of these callers said they were sexually assaulted by Father Reg Durham, who was the “chaplain” at this orphanage from 1965 to 1997. We referred these callers to an appropriate unit of the Queensland Police, and this resulted in Father Reg Durham being jailed in 1999 for child sex crimes. In 2015, Australia’s national child-abuse Royal Commission is holding a public hearing in Rockhampton into the church’s coverp-up of child-abuse at this orphanage.

Meanwhile, as well as referring these victims to the police, Broken Rites also advised the victims about other ways of obtaining justice. As a result, the matter was raised in the Queensland Parliament in September 1996. Parliament was told about the physical and emotional abuse committed by nuns and sexual abuse committed by priests at the Neerkol orphanage from the 1940s to the 1970s. Rockhampton’s Bishop Brian Heenan immediately circulated a letter in his parishes, refuting the allegations of abuse as “scurrilous” and “scandalous”.

The allegations against Durham were investigated by Rockhampton detectives. In February 1997, Father Reginald Basil Durham was charged with counts of rape and 41 of indecent dealing, involving two girls and a boy, between 1960 and 1967. When Durham’s first committal hearing began in June 1997, some unpleasant secrets surfaced about sexual and physical abuse at Neerkol. One man, who was aged 59 in 1997, said that children who ran away from the orphanage were captured, stripped naked and flogged in front of the entire assembly.

Realising that the Neerkol secrets would eventually become public at Durham’s trial, the church swung into damage control. The Sisters of Mercy (operators of the orphanage) published an apology to those inmates “who suffered spiritual, psychological, sexual and physical abuse at Neerkol.” Bishop Heenan retracted his September 1996 denial about the abuse. In a public statement in 1998, Heenan told Neerkol victims: “I regret that I did not acknowledge those sufferings when you first raised them and that my first reaction was one of disbelief.”

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INDIA
India Today

A four-year-old boy was allegedly sexually abused by a temple priest in Faridabad, police said.

According to a complaint filed by Dharmendra, a resident of Arya Samaj Mandir at SGM Nagar, on April 7 morning he saw the boy coming out of Pandit Amirchand’s room, they said.

When asked what he was doing in the room, the boy narrated the incident following which Dharmendra reported the matter to the head of the institution, police said.

Dharmendra was asked to keep quiet to avoid any bad name to the temple. Soon after, media and locals reached the spot and he was asked to give a written complaint, they said.

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INDIA
Mid-Day

Faridabad: A four-year-old boy was allegedly sexually abused by a temple priest here, police said today. According to a complaint filed by one Dharmendra, a resident of Arya Samaj Mandir at SGM Nagar, on April 7 morning he saw the boy coming out of Pandit Amirchand’s room, they said.

When asked what he was doing in the room, the boy narrated the incident following which the Dharmendra reported the matter to the head of the institution, police said. Dharmendra was asked to keep quiet to avoid any bad name to the temple. Soon after, media and locals reached the spot and he was asked to give a written complaint, they said.

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ILLINOIS
PRWeb

Chicago, IL (PRWEB) April 15, 2015

According to court documents, the Roman Catholic Diocese of Joliet has agreed to pay $4,137,500 to resolve the claims of fourteen (14) men who were the victims of abuse by priests of the Diocese from the 1960’s through the 1980’s. The men are represented by the Chicago-based law firm of Hurley McKenna & Mertz, PC., and the Seattle-based firm of Pfau Cochran Vertetis Amala PLLC.

Four of the men had previously filed suit (2013 L 391-394) in the Will County Circuit Court. The suits alleged that the Diocese of Joliet allowed known or suspected predators and pedophiles to meet with young boys at remote or private locations outside the presence of other adults. The complaints expressly allege that the plaintiffs were sworn to strict secrecy by their abusers. The alleged incidents took place in private living quarters, at off-site “retreats,” and in the back row of a school classroom. Several of the alleged incidents involve priests plying minors with alcohol and then taking advantage of them. One allegation in the suit involved an elaborate ruse in which the plaintiff was persuaded to strip out of street clothes and don a loincloth so that the priest could “practice” administering funeral rites.

The complaints allege that the Diocese of Joliet knew or should have known about the risk of abuse, or actual incidents of abuse, and yet engaged in a pattern and practice of hiding what it knew, and covertly transferring pedophile priests around the diocese and out of state – ultimately to protect its interests instead of the interests of the children entrusted to it, that it had a duty to protect.

While most of the victims wish to remain anonymous, two victims are willing to speak to the media to discuss their claims on April 16, 2015, at 10:00 a.m. at the office of Hurley McKenna & Mertz, 33 North Dearborn Street, Suite 1430, Chicago, Illinois 60602.

FOR FURTHER INFORMATION (including copies of lawsuits) please contact:
Mark R. McKenna
Hurley McKenna & Mertz
33 North Dearborn Street, Suite 1430
Chicago, Illinois 60602
(312) 553-4900
(312) 553-0964 – fax

Home

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SCOTLAND
The National

APRIL 15TH, 2015 KATHLEEN NUTT

A LEADING campaigner for victims of abuse in Scotland’s children’s homes has died just weeks before ministers are due to unveil the remit of a long-awaited public inquiry into the scandal.

Elizabeth McWilliams, who was in her late 70s, was left traumatised by her childhood in care and had been actively involved in the support group In Care Abuse Survivors (Incas). She passed away earlier this month in her home in Glasgow after many years suffering from ill-health.

Friends say it is a tragedy she did not live long enough to see the statutory inquiry she had long campaigned for get under way.

Alan Draper, parliamentary officer for Incas, told The National: “It is very, very sad that Elizabeth has passed away.

“She was a very active member of Incas, had previously been on its committee and spoken many times to the media about her experiences in care.

“She was involved for many years in the campaign and it is tragic she didn’t see her hard work come to fruition.

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VATICAN CITY
Crux

By Inés San Martín
Vatican correspondent April 14, 2015

ROME — Two personnel moves announced by the Vatican Tuesday marked the first time Italians have claimed senior positions under Australian Cardinal George Pell, the pope’s hand-picked reformer and someone for whom breaking the Italian monopoly on money management has been a keen priority.

Italian Rev. Luigi Mistò was named secretary of the Administrative Section of the Secretariat for the Economy, the new department Pell heads, after being appointed by Pope Benedict XVI in 2011 as head of the Administration of the Patrimony of the Apostolic See (APSA).

In practice, the new job means that Mistò will no longer manage the real estate portfolio of the Vatican, officially estimated at around $700 million, though some observers believe the real total may be several times higher. Instead, Mistò will implement procurement systems and manage Vatican personnel, in both cases reporting directly to Pell.

Mistò has been working closely with Pell since the Australian prelate was tapped personally by Pope Francis to head the Secretariat for the Economy in 2013.

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UNITED STATES
The Remnant

Written by Elizabeth Yore

“Look at what they do, not at what they say.”
– Ex-Communist Louis F. Budenz –

Editor’s Note: Remnant columnist, Elizabeth Yore, is an international child protection attorney who has investigated several cases of clergy sex abuse of children. She served as Special Counsel and Child Advocate to Oprah Winfrey. She is the former General Counsel of the Illinois Department of Children and Family Services and former General Counsel at National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. She is quite obviously a well-qualified expert in the field of child abuse prevention, which is why her testimony in this case is so disturbingly apropos. MJM

They still don’t get it.

With great fanfare and media fawning, Pope Francis appointed Boston Cardinal Sean O’Malley to head the new Vatican Child Protection Commission to protect children from clergy sex abuse. O’Malley said the new commission would advise the pope about the protection of children and the pastoral care of victims of abuse.

Among the members of the child protection commission, was a clergy sex abuse victim, and an array of lay members from the medical, political, academic and diplomatic arena, along with two Jesuits. There was no legal document, no formal mandate or structure assigned to the commission, leaving some to criticize the commission as mere “window dressing.”

The Pope assured Catholics that reform had finally arrived to the Vatican.

Pope Francis underscored the reform with stern words, “families need to know that the church is making every effort to protect their children and they should also know that they have every right to turn to the church with full confidence, for it is a safe and secure home.”

Tough talk from the Pontiff, si?

Not so fast.

A year later Pope Francis is embroiled in a bitter scandal over his appointment of a Chilean Bishop who is accused of not only covering up clergy sex abuse of minors, but also of being present and observing the actual abuse of three male minors during the abuse. Chilean Catholics are red hot over this outrageous appointment. So much for the “reform Pope.”

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AUSTRALIA
Herald Sun

[with video]

SAMANTHA LANDY, CHRISTOPHER GILLETT HERALD SUN APRIL 15, 2015

TWIN sisters who grew up at a Ballarat orphanage with a ­history of abuse and neglect are adamant a police search for bodies on the site will reveal the extent of the horror that unfolded there decades ago.

Phylis Read and Edith Orr, 49, have argued most of their lives that there are children’s bodies buried at the site but said they were always told to “keep our mouths shut”.

Their push for the dead to be respected went public in 2013 after the City of Ballarat asked for objections to a residential and commercial development on the site.

“We know they will find ­remains,” Ms Read said as she watched archaeologists and ­forensic crews dig up ground at the site yesterday. “We almost ended up in there with them.”

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GUAM
Pacific News Center

Written by Janela Carrera

Father Wadeson was ousted last year after it was discovered that he had been previously accused of sexual molestation.

Guam – Outsted priest Father John Wadeson will be reinstated to the ministry at the Archdiocese of Agana after the Archdiocese of Los Angeles appeared to have cleared his name for the record.

Father Wadeson was removed from the Archdiocese of Agana after it was revealed that he had twice been accused of sexual molestation in the 1990s. The issue blew up in the local community as some accused the Archdiocese of turning a blind eye to Father Wadeson’s history.

His name appeared on a list of accused priests in 2004 and he was even banned from the Archdiocese of Los Angeles.

However, in a statement issued yesterday, the local Archdiocese says the Los Angeles Archdiocese cleared Father Wadeson’s name noting that a re-examination was conducted last year and they concluded that no settlement was made and Father Wadeson was never convicted. As a result, he remains a priest in good stsanding.

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AUSTRALIA
The Guardian

Australian Associated Press
Wednesday 15 April 2015

A former resident of an infamous central Queensland orphanage has said she tried to blow the whistle on sexual abuse she suffered while in care but was ignored by authorities.

The royal commission into institutional responses to child sexual abuse sitting in Rockhampton has heard that sadistic punishments and sexual abuse were rife at St Joseph’s Neerkol orphanage, which was run by the Sisters of Mercy from 1885 and 1978.

A former resident, Diane Carpenter, 62, told the second day of a public hearing that while at Neerkol in Rockhampton she was sexually abused by a priest called Michael Hayes and by a member of a foster family who took her in during holidays.

Carpenter said she was frequently physically assaulted and abused by the Sisters of Mercy, and detailed one occasion when she was locked in a hot room and forced to drink her own urine to stay hydrated.

She told the inquiry she reported the sexual assaults to a state children’s department inspector in Rockhampton, and later to two separate police officers, but no action was taken.

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AUSTRALIA
Sky News

A former resident of an infamous central Queensland orphanage says she tried to blow the whistle on sexual abuse she suffered while in care but was ignored by authorities.

A royal commission sitting in Rockhampton has heard that sadistic punishments and sexual abuse were rife at St Joseph’s Neerkol Orphanage, which was run by the Sisters of Mercy from 1885 and 1978.

Former resident Diane Carpenter, 62, told the second day of a public hearing that while at Neerkol in Rockhampton she was sexually abused by a priest called Father Michael Hayes and by a member of a foster family who took her in during holidays.

Ms Carpenter said she was frequently physically assaulted and abused by the Sisters of Mercy, and detailed one occasion when she was locked in a hot room and forced to drink her own urine to stay hydrated.

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AUSTRALIA
The Guardian

A girl was gang raped at a central Queensland orphanage and gave birth to a child when she was 14, a national inquiry has heard.

A woman made the claims at a public hearing of the royal commission into institutional responses to child sexual abuse in Rockhampton on Wednesday.

The inquiry is investigating experiences of children at the Neerkol orphanage near Rockhampton between 1940 and 1975.

The woman, referred to as AYL, said she was 10 when she was sent to Neerkol in 1961.

There, she said, she was routinely raped by a male employee from 1963 and in claims aired publicly for the first time said on one occasion the man and two other employees bound, gagged and raped her at the orphanage.

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ILLINOIS
Patch

By LORRAINE SWANSON (Patch Staff)
April 15, 2015

Savage. Scary. Those are just a few of the words used to describe five Roman Catholic priests named in an out-of-court settlement for $4.137 million by the Roman Catholic Diocese of Joliet.

James Nowak, Michael Gibbney, Lawrence Gibbs, Myles White and Fred Lenczycki were once trusted priests who allegedly preyed upon young boys spanning Will and DuPage County parishes from the 1960s to 1980s. None of the accused priests are today involved in active ministry.

The boys — some of them now men in their sixties — claim that they were abused in school classrooms, private living quarters and a cabin owned by one of the priests’ families.

One of the allegations involved an elaborate ruse in which one boy was tricked into stripping out of his street clothes and donning a loin cloth so that one of the abusers could practice “administering” funeral rites.

The settlement culminates a previous lawsuit filed by four men in Will County Circuit Court. Their suits alleged that Diocese of Joliet allowed known or suspected predators and pedophiles to meet with young boys at remote or private locations outside the presence of other adults.

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UNITED STATES
Christian Today

Great theologians and serious sin: Does John Howard Yoder’s history of sexual abuse discredit his work?

Lucinda Borkett-Jones CHRISTIAN TODAY FEATURES EDITOR 14 April 2015

Mennonite leader and thinker John Howard Yoder abused numerous women in the 70s and 80s.
How far can a theologian go wrong before we dismiss his whole body of work? It’s a question that has been raised by a recent investigation into Mennonite theologian John Howard Yoder’s sexual abuse of women during the 1970s and 80s.

Yoder isn’t just respected in the Mennonite tradition, he’s regarded as a major figure in theological and philosophical ethics. The abuse was not a secret – it’s been widely documented – but has nonetheless been overlooked for many years.

His most well known book, The Politics of Jesus, published in 1972, is considered a classic on Christian pacifism. But while he is remembered for his contribution to theology, he also hurt a large number of women through an ‘experiment’ in sexuality, which he based on a theological theory.

For the first time since Yoder’s abuse came to light in the 1990s, the Anabaptist Mennonite Biblical Seminary in Elkhart, Indiana held a special service of ‘lament, confession and commitment’ on March 22 this year.

Yoder, who died in 1997, was a theology professor at the Associated Mennonite Biblical Seminary from 1960 until his resignation in 1984. He was also president of Goshen Biblical Seminary for a three-year period during the 1970s and taught at the University of Notre Dame for 30 years. In 1994 the two Mennonite seminaries joined and were later named the Anabaptist Mennonite Biblical Seminary (AMBS).

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ARKANSAS
Times Record

We know child abuse occurs.

We read the most horrible of the stories. We are aware of the statistics — in 2013 in the United States, there were about 679,000 cases of child abuse and 1,484 children died because of abuse.

We do not need a Child Abuse Awareness Month.

What we need is for child abuse to be stopped, to be prevented.

We need Stop Child Abuse Month.

Fortunately, we have April — National Child Abuse Prevention Month.

Knowing there were 33,353 reported cases of child abuse and neglect in Arkansas in 2013, as reported by the Arkansas Department of Human Services 2013 Statistical Report, makes us aware we need to do something.

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OREGON
KOIN

[with video]

By Brent Weisberg (Twitter: @BrentKOIN)
Published: April 14, 2015

PORTLAND, Ore. (KOIN 6) – The trial of a senior pastor for the North Clackamas Bible Community reportedly linked to sex crimes began on Tuesday as prosecutors outlined their case during opening statements at the Multnomah County Circuit Courthouse.

Pastor Michael Sperou, 64, walked confidently into Judge Cheryl A. Albrecht’s courtroom Tuesday morning wearing a white dress shirt, dress pants and a tie. He has remained out of custody since posting bail pending trial. He was arrested June 19, 2014 by federal officers.

Deputy district attorney Christine Mascal told the jury that “Pastor Mike,” as he is known in his church, “controlled everything and everybody.” She outlined the “tortured history” and years of alleged sexual touching at the hands of Sperou.

Sperou is charged with three counts of unlawful sexual penetration in the first-degree. The alleged abuse occurred three separate times between May 1995 and December 1996, Mascal said. Police identified a total of seven victims who made claims against Sperou, Mascal said. The statute of limitations has expired for six of those people.

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OREGON
The Oregonian

By Rick Bella | The Oregonian/OregonLive
on April 14, 201

A Happy Valley pastor sank into drug abuse and heavy drinking, leading to sexual abuse of young girls who lived with him in a communal church, if you believe Multnomah County prosecutors.

But if you believe defense attorneys, Pastor Mike Sperou of the North Clackamas Bible Community has been unfairly accused because the girls — now grown women — have had their memories contaminated by shoddy police interviews and conversations with others who dislike Sperou.

The conflicting pictures emerged Tuesday, the opening day of Sperou’s trial before Circuit Judge Cheryl A. Albrecht on three counts of first-degree sexual penetration. A grand jury indictment charges Sperou, 64, of placing his fingers inside the vagina of Shannon Clark while she lived at one of the church’s homes in the 1990s.

The Oregonian/OregonLive generally does not disclose the names of alleged sexual abuse victims. But Clark and other women connected with the case have come forward, asking that their stories be told.

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OREGON
The Oregonian

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

A Happy Valley church was launched with an idealistic commitment to Christian scholarship, but it gradually deteriorated into an authoritarian, cult-like organization that ignored heavy drinking, drug abuse, adultery and sexual abuse of children by its pastor, according to court testimony Tuesday.

That’s the picture of the North Clackamas Bible Community painted by prosecution witnesses in the trial of Pastor Mike Sperou, charged with abusing a girl under the age of 12 who lived with him in a communal setting.

However, defense attorney Steven J. Sherlag, active during cross-examination, asked several former church members if they complained about Sperou’s behavior or simply moved away from the church’s cluster of rented homes that straddle the Happy Valley/Portland city limits.

The answer in every case was “no.”

“You chose to participate in a small, faith-based community — isn’t that so?” Sherlag asked former Assistant Pastor David Martin, who left the church in 1996.

“Yes,” Martin said.

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CALIFORNIA
U-T San Diego

By Peter Rowe.APRIL 14, 2015

During a 1 p.m. Mass at St. Thérèse of Carmel Catholic Church Wednesday, a large and leaderless flock will acquire a new shepherd.

Robert W. McElroy, 61, will become the Roman Catholic Diocese of San Diego’s new bishop. The diocese, embracing nearly 1 million people across San Diego and Imperial counties, had been without a bishop for seven months. McElroy’s predecessor, Bishop Cirilo Flores, succumbed to cancer last September, less than two years after assuming the post. …

Calling the sexual abuse scandal “the great tragedy of the church in the last 50 years,” he said he would remove from ministry or diocesan office anyone who has abused minors.

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