ABUSE TRACKER

AUSTRALIA
The Morning Bulletin

Austin King | 15th Apr 2015

OLD demons came back to haunt former Neerkol Orphanage residents who lived at the institution between 1940 and 1975.

The witnesses who will give evidence throughout the two-week hearing were expected to identify the main alleged offenders of sexual abuse as Father John Anderson (deceased), Father Reginald Durham (deceased), Father Cahill (deceased) and Kevin Baker.

Mr Baker, a former employee at the orphanage, denies the allegations of sexual abuse.

A witness, who cannot be identified for legal reasons, yesterday gave evidence about the sexual abuse she suffered from Fr Durham.

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

AUSTRALIA
The Morning Bulletin

Austin King | 15th Apr 2015

FORMER Neerkol Orphanage resident Mary Adams could never be whole again.

The “cracks” of severe trauma from her childhood, when she was a resident at St Joseph’s Orphanage in Neerkol, prevented her from being so.

Those cracks were the permanent scars she received, from the physical, sexual and psychological abuse, at the orphanage between the 1950s and 1960s.

Mary, 64, along with her brother and sister, were placed there in 1951 after her mother fell into financial difficulties.

During her moving testimony at yesterday’s Royal Commission hearing into Neerkol, Mary said she was two years old and her sister about four when they were placed into the care of the Sisters of Mercy.

She was placed in a nursery and moved to the “big girls’ dormitory” when she turned five years old.

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

AUSTRALIA
Eureka Street

Andrew Hamilton | 15 April 2015

Two weeks ago one Melbourne church was burned down, and fires were started in two other churches.

The media response to the fires focused on Rachael Griffiths’ remark that she was happy to see her former parish church, St James, Gardenvale, in Melbourne, go up in flames because of the predatory behaviour of one of its parish priests. It also speculated whether the fire may have been lit by a victim of abuse.

My own feelings about the destruction of St James were mixed. I was baptised and made my first confession and communion there. I was also an altar server, where I helped with the ritual and experimented in such pyrotechnics as putting gunpowder in the incense and making a blow torch out of the fly spray and candle, so mixing the boyhood dough of piety, responsibility and mischief that might later be baked into a living adult faith. Later I returned to the church to celebrate my first Mass and my mother’s and father’s funerals, as well as other family events. So the church is a place of remembered blessing.

But more recently at the beginning of celebrations at St James I have felt bound to acknowledge that for some of those present this church would be a holy place, but for others a demonic place. And indeed for me, as for most former parishioners of my own and the next generation, it has become associated irredeemably with a parish priest who preyed on many children and bullied many older women. He redecorated the church in his own style, and devastated many lives in his own way. So the church is a place of remembered blasphemy.

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

ILLINOIS
Chicago Tribune

By Christy Gutowski
Chicago Tribune

The Diocese of Joliet agreed to pay a $4.14 million settlement to 14 men who said their childhood priests molested them decades ago while assigned to various suburban churches, plaintiff attorneys announced Tuesday.

The five priests involved in the settlement were previously identified by the diocese as having had at least one substantiated allegation of sexual abuse. But the settlement revealed new allegations with more victims.

Four of the 14 men had filed a lawsuit, while the others were part of out-of-court negotiations. The alleged acts occurred in the 1960s through the 1980s.

One of the newly named victims, Steve Janik, a consultant from Wheaton, said he was repeatedly abused by Rev. James Nowak during a three-year period beginning in the 1960s when he was 12 years old and attended Sacred Heart Catholic Church in Lombard.

Nowak, 77, who is retired, also served at Saints Peter and Paul Catholic Church in Naperville. Janik, 61, said he reported his abuse in summer 2012 after he read an article about another man who came forward with similar allegations.

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

AUSTRALIA
7 News

By Miranda Forster
April 15, 2015

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.

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

AUSTRALIA
ABC News

By William Rollo and Marlina Whop

A woman has told an inquiry how she was sexually abused by a priest and forced to drink her own urine to stay hydrated at St Joseph’s Neerkol Orphanage at Rockhampton.

Diane Carpenter, who lived at Neerkol intermittently until she turned 17, was giving evidence at the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse, which is holding public hearings in the central Queensland city.

The inquiry is continuing to hear evidence from former residents of the orphanage, where hundreds of children were physically and sexually abused from the 1940s to 1970s.

Ms Carpenter, one of several Aboriginal children at the orphanage, said her sexual abuse at the hands of Father Michael Hayes, who ministered to the Indigenous children, was witnessed by another priest.

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

CALIFORNIA
Center for Investigative Reporting – Reveal

By Trey Bundy / April 14, 2015

Candace Conti drew worldwide attention in her fight against the Jehovah’s Witnesses when a jury awarded her $28 million in damages – the largest verdict for a single victim of child abuse against a religious organization in U.S. history.

The amount was later reduced to $15.6 million, including $8.6 million in punitive damages.

Now, three years later, an appeals court has eroded her courtroom victory even further by ruling that the leadership of the Jehovah’s Witnesses had no duty to warn congregants that a confessed child molester was one of their own. As a result, judges eliminated the punitive damages in the case. Conti still stands to receive $2.8 million.

The decision by the California Court of Appeal is the latest ruling in a rash of lawsuits aimed at Jehovah’s Witnesses policies directing elders to keep child abuse secret from their congregations and secular authorities.

Conti, who is no longer a Jehovah’s Witness, had sued her abuser, her former congregation in Fremont and the Watchtower Bible and Tract Society of New York – the Jehovah’s Witnesses’ parent corporation – in 2011. She claimed that Watchtower policies allowed a Witness named Jonathan Kendrick to molest her repeatedly when she was 9 and 10 years old.

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

MINNESOTA
Canonical Consultation

Jennifer Haselberger

Earlier this month, the Archdiocese of Saint Paul and Minneapolis posted the following announcement regarding Father William Stolzman on its website. …

From Archbishop John Nienstedt, Archbishop of Saint Paul and Minneapolis

In January 2015, the Archdiocese reopened its investigation of the alleged 1970s abuse and Rev. Stolzman was placed on a leave of absence. He has not exercised priestly ministry during the investigation. The recent investigation did not uncover any additional information that was not known to the Clergy Review Board in 2008 that would support the allegation of abuse. Therefore, I have decided to reinstate his faculties and permit Rev. Stolzman to resume public ministry.

The wording of the announcement suggests that the Archdiocese was either unable to locate the alleged victim or he declined to participate in the investigation. For my previous post on this matter, please click here.

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

AUSTRALIA
ABC Brisbane

[with audio]

by Jacquie Mackay

Leneen FordeThe Royal Commission into Child Abuse is currently holding it’s first regional public hearing here in Central Queensland looking into what happened at St Joseph’s Orphanage Neerkol.

However this isn’t the first time that there has been information taken about this orphanage – 17 years ago former Queensland Governor Leneen Forde took information from more than 300 people and looked at the histories of more than

150 orphanages and detention centres for ther inquiry into institutional child abuse.

Her report made 42 recommendations, 41 of which were adopted by the Queensland Government.

Leneen Forde says that the Forde inquiry was the first real opportunity for these former orphanage residents to give their testimony and has paved the way for such information to come out at a national level in this Royal Commission.

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ITALIA
Brescia Today

[A priest in Brescia had sex with boys at the oratory and masturbated with a rosary.]

Un ragazzo di 32 anni, Andrea B. di Rovigo, ha presentato nei giorni scorsi una denuncia presso il tribunale ecclesiastico di Brescia contro il parroco di un Comune della Bassa, accusato di aver avanzato nei suoi confronti proposte esplicite di attività sessuali.

Assieme alla denuncia, il cui deposito è stato firmato dal vicario giudiziale monsignor Marco Alba, Andrea ha fornito anche una serie di materiali inequivocabili, dagli ‘screenshot’ delle conversazioni avvenute su skype e whatsapp, ad alcuni video in cui si vede il sacerdote compiere veri e propri atti sessuali, anche di natura blasfema.

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

AUSTRALIA
The New Daily

Apr 15, 2015
EBONY BOWDEN AM Producer

Notorious orphanage subject of police investigation after claims children ‘disappeared overnight’.

A forensic team is digging up the grounds of a former orphanage in regional Victoria after allegations children were buried at the site before its closure in the 1960s.

The claims were first raised at a council meeting by two former residents at the Ballarat Orphanage after the site was sold to developers in 2011.

In a statement, police said they had received information children were buried at the site, and were working with The Coroner’s Court to investigate the allegations.

Speaking to the ABC, Frank Golding, who lived at the site as a child, said children would disappear in the middle of the night.

“I think that part of it is that children just disappeared overnight, sometimes they would be ill and they simply wouldn’t be there at roll call the following morning,” Mr Golding said.

“We had no information on what happened to those children, there were never any formal farewells … so I think in an era where children were also quite viciously punished at times and had illnesses which were neglected, that leads to speculation, and it’s not just confined to the Ballarat Orphanage.”

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GUAM
U-T San Diego

HAGATNA, Guam (AP) — A Roman Catholic priest is being reinstated after a church investigation cleared him of allegations he molested two boys while serving in the Archdiocese of Los Angeles in the 1970s.

The Pacific Daily News (http://bit.ly/1ze3Bdc ) reports the Archdiocese of Agana said Tuesday that the Rev. John Howard Wadeson has been fully reinstated to public ministry. The archdiocese didn’t say whether Wadeson would return to Guam.

Wadeson was stripped of his duties and left Guam last July amid community concerns about his past. He says he was falsely accused but left because he didn’t want the accusations to tarnish Guam’s archbishop.

A 2004 clergy-abuse report by the Los Angeles archdiocese lists Wadeson as being credibly accused of molesting two people between 1973 and 1977.

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NORTHERN IRELAND
Mirror

4 April 2015 By Jilly Beattie

The Historical Institutional Abuse Inquiry also heard lamb stew was made but the meat was off and the nuns at Nazareth House, Belfast, forced them to eat it

Nuns allegedly forced children as young as five to ear their own vomit in exchange for a holiday.

The Historical Institutional Abuse Inquiry heard how youngsters at Nazareth House in South Belfast had been promised a holiday if they ate their dinner.

In a statement read to the hearing, a witness said a lamb stew had been made but the meat was off and the nuns forced them to eat it anyway, reports Belfast Live.

And with the 66-year-old ex-Nazareth House resident taking the stand on oath, she was challenged: “You have said the smell was horrendous but the nuns made you eat it otherwise no one would go on holidays.

“You were literally eating your own vomit. Each of the children as young as five were doing this.

“You said it seemed to go on for hours.

“If you didn’t eat your stew, somebody else ate it for you because you all wanted to go on your holidays.

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GUAM/CALIFORNIA
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests

For immediate release: Tuesday, April 14

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

Quietly and with little explanation, LA Catholic officials have reversed themselves on a twice-accused predator priest. That priest has now been put back to work. This is incredibly reckless.

[KUAM]

In a 120 word statement printed on April 10 in the LA archdiocesan newspaper, church officials now claim “there is no reason to preclude Father John H. Wadeson from serving in priestly ministry” and he is a “priest in good standing.”

In the 1970s, he was accused of molesting two kids.

Years ago, the LA archdiocese listed him as “credibly accused” and banned him from ministry.

Last year, the San Francisco Archdiocese withdrew his priestly privileges.

Last year, an archdiocese in Guam suspended him.

But now, Archbishop Jose Gomez thinks Fr. Wadeson is OK to put in a parish around kids. And Guam’s archbishop apparently agrees. Shame on both of them.

The statement by the LA archdiocese says that last year, “at the request of Father Wadeson a reexamination of the matter was conducted.” We fear that dozens of credibly accused child molesting clerics will now start asking their bishops to “re-examine” their cases and that some of them will find a more sympathetic hearing before church officials desperate to fill empty positions. If even one credibly accused predator priest, nun, brother, seminarian or bishop gets a job around kids again, based on such a “re-examination” by another bishop, that will be a travesty.

Years ago, reluctantly and belatedly, under tremendous pressure, Los Angles Catholic officials publicly released the names of hundreds of proven, admitted and credibly accused predator priests. As best we can tell, until now, they’ve never gone backwards and said “We were wrong about this guy. We should have never listed him as ‘accused.’”

In fact, we don’t know of a single Catholic official on the planet who has disclosed child sex abuse allegations against a priest who has later said “Oops, I made a mistake. I shouldn’t have done that.”

We’ve said this before and we’ll say it again: At least four church officials must step up here, tell the truth about Fr. Wadeson.

First, San Francisco Archbishop Cordileone should tell what he knows about these allegations and explain why Fr. Wadeson was apparently allowed to work as a priest there even though he was ousted elsewhere. Not one of his aides. Not one of his spokespersons. But the archbishop himself.

Second, the Los Angeles Archbishop José Gomez should explain, in detail, why LA officials banned Fr. Wadeson from ministry and why he’s now reversing this decision. He should release all necessary documents, post them on his website, and keep them there.

Third, the Guam Archbishop Anthony Apuron should explain why he let a credibly accused child molesting cleric work unchecked in his archdiocese and why he suspended him this past year.

Fourth, the head of the religious order to which Wadeson belongs – the Divine Word Missionaries – should explain this situation in detail and take steps to ensure Fr. Wadeson does not present himself as a priest.

We believe each of these prelates has a moral and civic duty to use their websites, parish bulletins and pulpit announcements to beg anyone who saw, suspected or suffered crimes by Fr. Wadeson to call police immediately.

And it should go without saying – but we’ll stress it here – that US bishops pledged “zero tolerance” of abuse and “one strike and you’re out.”

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

UNITED STATES
dotCommonweal

Grant Gallicho April 14, 2015

“It’s an outrage,” Peter Saunders told the National Catholic Reporter, that Pope Francis appointed Juan Barros–a man accused of covering up and witnessing a priest’s acts of sexual abuse–bishop of Osorno, Chile. (Barros denies both allegations.) “That man should be removed as a bishop because he has a very, very dubious history–corroborated by more than one person,” according to Saunders, a member of the pope’s new Commission for the Protection of Minors, and a clergy-abuse victim. Saunders went so far as to say that he would consider resigning if he doesn’t get an explanation. He wasn’t the only commission member who was shocked by the pope’s decision. “As a survivor, I’m very surprised at the appointment in Chile because it seems to go against…what the Holy Father has been saying about not wanting anyone in positions of trust in the church who don’t have an absolutely 100 percent record of child protection,” said Marie Collins. On March 31 the Holy See announced that the Congregation for Bishops had found no “objective reasons to preclude the appointment.”

That did not sit well with Saunders, Collins, and two other members of the commission (there are seventeen in total). So they flew to Rome last weekend for an unscheduled meeting with Cardinal Sean O’Malley, president of the body. What a difference a day makes. “The meeting went very well and the cardinal is going to take our concerns to the Holy Father,” Collins told NCR on Sunday. The group issued a brief statement explaining that while they are not charged with investigating individual cases, “The process of appointing bishops who are committed to, and have an understanding of child protection is of paramount importance.” The statement continued: “In the light of the fact that sexual abuse is so common, the ability of a bishop to enact effective policies, and to carefully monitor compliance is essential. Cardinal O’Malley agreed to present the concerns of the subcommittee to the Holy Father.” That’s quite a bit different from decrying the appointment as an outrage. Did Cardinal O’Malley bring them back from the brink simply by listening? What’s going to happen after he shares their concerns with Pope Francis?

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

GUAM
Pacific Daily News

Written by
Gaynor Dumat-ol Daleno
Pacific Daily News

A Guam priest who was stripped of his public duties last year, after a decade-old clergy sex abuse allegation surfaced, has been cleared, the Archdiocese of Agana announced yesterday.

Father John Wadeson “has been reinstated fully to public ministry,” the Archdiocese of Agana stated.

Wadeson left the Redemptoris Mater Seminary on Guam in July last year.

A decade ago, the Archdiocese of Los Angeles issued a report listing Wadeson among 113 priests who were accused of sexual abuse in a 75-year span in the archdiocese, out of more than 5,000 priests who served there. The Archdiocese of Los Angeles issued a public apology in 2004 over the allegations.

Last year, at the request of Wadeson, the archdiocese of Los Angeles conducted “a reexamination of the matter,” the Archdiocese of Agana stated, citing its Los Angeles counterpart.

“Having reviewed the documentation presented by Father Wadeson, and following the 2014 re-examination, the archdiocese has concluded that there is no reason to preclude Father Wadeson from serving in priestly ministry,” the Archdiocese of Agana stated, quoting the Los Angeles archdiocese.

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

AUSTRALIA
9 News

More former residents of a central Queensland orphanage are expected to detail physical and sexual abuse by Catholic priests and nuns before a national inquiry.

The Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse heard harrowing accounts on Tuesday of abuse from both a former resident of the Neerkol orphanage and a past employee, on the first day of a public hearing in Rockhampton.

One woman said she was sexually assaulted more than 100 times by a priest who is now deceased, while the other related stories of public floggings and humiliation.

On Wednesday, the commission is expected to hear from former Neerkol residents Diane Carpenter and David Owen who claim they were molested by two different priests at the orphanage.

Mr Owen, 76, is also expected to describe how he suffered beatings and floggings dispensed by the Sisters of Mercy, who ran the institution from 1885 to 1978.

Advocacy group Care Leavers Australia Network chief executive Leonie Sheedy said it was the first time the Sisters of Mercy had been under the spotlight.

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UNITED STATES
Christian Catholicism

Jerry Slevin

Pope Francis, in a blistering criticism, listed at the Vatican’s Christmas party 15 “spiritual illnesses” that he suggested senior Catholic Church officials are especially prone to. In the current Harvard Business Review, a prominent consultant perceptively analyzes these “illnesses” from a management expert’s perspective. Please see, “The 15 Diseases of Leadership, According to Pope Francis“, here,

[HBR]

The management expert correctly observes that the Catholic Church is a bureaucracy: a hierarchy populated by less-than-perfect souls. In that sense, he notes, the Church is not much different than many corporate and other organizations. Of course, the Catholic hierarchy is unaccountable compared to most other organizations’ senior management. Bishops’ management performance (including the pope’s) is generally secretive and is neither reported on by independent public auditors nor subject to oversight by shareholders or publicly elected officials. Usually, the Vatican feeds the frequently opportunistic religious news reporters the latest papal pontifications, and these reporters parrot them with little attention usually to the pope’s actual course of action.

In light of my personal experience in the half century since I took a Harvard Business School management course, I think the author has apt and wise insights. Indeed, his analysis suggests to me that the pope himself seems to suffer at times from several of these illnesses. This was very evident in his recent mistaken appointment of Chilean Bishop Barros, his snubbing of his own non-clerical abuse commission members who visited his residence, and his “family-less” Family Synod. One “illness” in particular that caught my attention is the “disease of closed circles”. The author describes this as follows: ” … where belonging to a clique becomes more powerful than our shared identity. This disease too always begins with good intentions, but with the passing of time it enslaves its members and becomes a cancer which threatens the harmony of the organization and causes immense evil, especially to those we treat as outsiders. ‘Friendly fire’ from our fellow soldiers, is the most insidious danger. …

The lack of public accountability and secretiveness was recently noted in an interview by the perceptive Jesuit educated former Wall Street lawyer, Posner, the author of the troubling and comprehensive book, “God’s Bankers: A History of Money and Power at the Vatican” . Posner reportedly stated: ” I knew it would be difficult to get inside the {Vatican’s} Secret Archives… . More disappointing than being turned away from the archives, was that Vatican Press Office simply ignored for years several dozen requests by snail mail, fax, email, and telephone messages, seeking interviews with a long list of people who worked at Vatican City. I am accustomed on my book projects to someone not wanting to interview. Occasionally, when I reach out to an individual, their way of saying “no” is simply not to answer. But I have never had the department that is serving as a press office for both a sovereign country as well as one of the world’s biggest religions, simply ignore all requests for assistance. It served as a vivid reminder that the Vatican’s press office is still antiquated when it comes to cultivating good media relations.“

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UNITED STATES
The Worthy Adversary

Posted by Joelle Casteix on April 14, 2015

It’s not 1984 anymore. But Saturday Night Live forgot that this past weekend.

Yesterday, I discussed what we can learn from the awful Barbara Walters/Mary Kay LeTourneau interview aired last Friday.

But ABC is not alone in its total disregard for the damage caused by adult women who sexually abuse children (girls and boys). NBC is right at ABC’s heels.

In a skit in Saturday’s episode, a male child victim of sexual abuse by a teacher is portrayed as lucky and happy about the abuse. The accused teacher, who is very attractive, is let off by the judge who gives the victim a celebratory “fist bump.”

Like I said yesterday, handwringing is not going to save a single boy from abuse. Being upset or feeling “triggered” will not stop this kind of horrific portrayal of the sexual abuse of boys.

Instead, we need to empower ourselves and our children to make sure that the “hot for teacher” stereotype is shut down permanently and that women who abuse boys are punished.
How do we do that?

Talk to your boys (and girls, too) about sexual abuse when it is age appropriate. Tell them that sexual behavior between adults and children/teenagers is a crime. It does not matter whether the adult is a woman or a man. Encourage your children to report abuse or suspected abuse.

Shut down the “teenage fantasy” stereotype. Sure, it may be a “fantasy” for a teenage boy to be with a beautiful woman. But my eight-year-old wishes that he could shoot a cannon. He also wants to have a real gun and drive in NASCAR. But he is neither old nor mature enough to do any of these things. He will hurt himself and be damaged, possibly for life … just like how teenage boy is horribly damaged when he is sexually exploited by a female teacher.

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

NEW YORK
Road to Recovery

Brooklyn, New York Bishop Nicholas Di Marzio is holding a Mass in his Cathedral for clergy sexual abuse victims but he will not help pass legislation that will give childhood victims of clergy sexual abuse their day in court in order to obtain justice and allow for healing

Bishop Nicholas Di Marzio has not done the right thing relative to several cases of clergy and religious sexual abuse in the Brooklyn Diocese and as a result has re-victimized clergy sexual abuse victims

What
A demonstration alerting victims of clergy and religious sexual abuse, in particular, to the dangers of attending religious ceremonies that pretend to promote healing and hope but only give bishops and their assistants more reason to deceptively claim that they are truly serious about promoting healing and protecting children, teenagers, and vulnerable adults in the Catholic Church.

When
Wednesday evening, April 15, 2015 from 6:30 PM until 8:00 PM

Where
On the public sidewalks outside St. James Cathedral Basilica, 250 Cathedral Place, Brooklyn, NY in Downtown Brooklyn (near Jay Street and one block north of Tillary Street)

Who
Members of Road to Recovery, Inc., a non-profit charity that assists victims of sexual abuse and their families; other survivors, and supporters

Why
Catholic bishops deceptively conduct healing and hope Masses and prayer services for victims of sexual abuse and their families when they should be focused on promoting healing and protecting children, teenagers, and vulnerable adults through legislation and the courts. A healing and hope Mass only serves to make the local bishop and his child abuse office feel like they are accomplishing something. In fact, Bishop Nicholas Di Marzio has consistently attempted to block legislation that would give sexual abuse victims their day in court in New York State, and he has barred victims from getting the services they need to heal. Victims are better served when bishops stop blocking legislative attempts, such as the Child Victims’ Act, sponsored by a Brooklyn diocesan Catholic legislator, Assemblywoman Marge Markey, which would hold clergy sexual abusers and their enablers accountable.

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

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

NEW JERSEY
Asbury Park Press

Shannon Mullen, Asbury Park Press April 14, 2015

TRENTON – The federal kidnapping case against the Lakewood rabbi dubbed “The Prodfather” lacks a critical piece of evidence, his attorney told the jury Tuesday: an actual cattle prod.

Robert Stahl, representing Rabbi Mendel Epstein, said there were no electric shock devices or other weapons recovered in 2013 when the FBI swept into an Edison warehouse and arrested a group of men wearing dark clothing and disguises with ties to Epstein, a well-known authority on contentious religious divorces within the insular Orthodox Jewish communities in Brooklyn and Lakewood.

In his closing statement, Stahl suggested that the 69-year-old rabbi was “puffing and exaggerating” when he talked to undercover FBI agents about abducting, beating and tasering Jewish men in the testicles until they agreed to grant their wives divorces.

Stahl said his client only meant to reassure someone he believed to be a “desperate” wife who was counting on the rabbi to pressure her husband into providing her with a get, the document that proves a marriage has been dissolved under Jewish law.

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

NEW JERSEY
NJ.com

By MaryAnn Spoto | NJ Advance Media for NJ.com
on April 14, 2015

TRENTON — Rabbi Mendel Epstein engaged in puffery and exaggerations when he talked about torturing husbands to extract divorces from them but he was not involved in a federal kidnapping scheme, his attorney told jurors on Tuesday.

As the federal kidnapping and conspiracy trial of the Lakewood religious leader winds down, defense attorneys are summing up two months of testimony that federal prosecutors argued on Monday shows Epstein and three others employed criminal practices to get those divorces.

“A crime may have been committed here, but it wasn’t federal kidnapping,” said Epstein’s attorney, Robert Stahl. “We all know what the goal of what happened here was.”

Stahl said Epstein was “puffing” to put at ease a woman who told him she was desperate for a divorce in order to start a new life. That woman was actually an undercover FBI agent.

Epstein, 69, is on trial before U.S. District Judge Freda Wolfson in Trenton along with his son, David “Ari” Epstein, and two other rabbis, Binyamin Stimler and Jay Goldstein on charges they were part of a kidnapping conspiracy to force Orthodox Jewish husbands to grant their wives religious divorces.

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

NEW JERSEY
Newsday

TRENTON, N.J. – (AP) — The lawyer for an Orthodox rabbi accused of using brutal tactics to force unwilling Jewish husbands to divorce their wives says his client was “puffing and exaggerating” when he talked to undercover FBI agents.

Robert Stahl made his claims during his closing argument Tuesday. Stahl acknowledged that while some crimes may have been committed, he said 69-year-old Mendel Epstein was not part of a kidnapping conspiracy.

Stahl said Epstein was “puffing” to put at ease a woman who told him she was desperate for a divorce in order to start a new life. That woman was actually an undercover FBI agent.

Epstein faces charges of conspiracy to commit kidnapping and attempted kidnapping with his son and two other orthodox rabbis.

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

AUSTRALIA
The Morning Bulletin

ROCKHAMPTON Bishop Michael McCarthy (pictured) and Sisters of Mercy leader Berneice Loch have released a joint statement in relation to the Royal Commission hearing into Neerkol Orphanage.

Here is what they said:

Together we give our wholehearted support to the work of the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse which will conduct a public hearing in Rockhampton, from this week.

Through the work of the Royal Commission, people who have been so badly impacted by childhood sexual abuse can be heard.

It is our sincere hope that survivors and their families may experience some healing from the opportunity the Royal Commission provides.

We renew our heartfelt apology to people who have suffered child sexual abuse by church personnel and again we extend this apology to their families and all others who have shared in their suffering.

During the coming weeks we offer our prayers and support for all who have bravely stepped forward to share their story.

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VATICAN CITY
The Daily Beast

Barbie Latza Nadeau

ROME — It must be hard to be the pope sometimes. You are either damned if you do—like when he speaks his mind—or damned if you don’t, as in the latest scandal rattling the Vatican, in which Pope Francis stands accused of nixing France’s ambassadorial candidate to the Holy See because he is gay.

On Jan. 5, French President Francois Hollande offered Laurent Stefanini’s curriculum vitae to succeed former Ambassador Bruno Jouber, who has moved on to another position within the French embassy. Generally, the Vatican approves such applications within six weeks with a letter of acceptance. It traditionally refuses applicants with radio silence, which is how Stefanini’s nomination has been received. The Vatican press office has not commented on the matter.

Some Vatican watchers have called the French nomination a true test of Pope Francis’s willingness to not judge devout gays, as he so famously pronounced early in his papacy when he told journalists on the papal plane that he did not feel worthy to judge a devout priest who happened to be gay.

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VATICAN CITY
U.S. News

By NICOLE WINFIELD, Associated Press

VATICAN CITY (AP) — Pope Francis’ finance minister is on the move, literally.

Four months after he raised eyebrows by taking up residence in the Vatican bank, Cardinal George Pell is moving out and into the permanent offices of his new economy secretariat.

The move coincides with a major reorganization of the Vatican’s financial structures ordered by Pope Francis as part of his reform of the Vatican’s administration. It also removes any question of Pell’s direct authority over the bank, which is governed by a separate commission of cardinals who report to the pope.

Francis tapped the straight-talking Australian to bring order and efficiency to the Vatican’s complicated finances. Pell has promised a new era of transparency, budgeting accountability and internationally accepted accounting standards, and has been given broad oversight powers.

But he has ruffled feathers within the Vatican’s old guard, and some saw his decision to move into the vacant, spacious presidents’ office of the Vatican bank as a symbolic assertion of control over the institution. Vatican reporter Andrea Tornielli noted that Pell’s presence in the bank might have led to confusion about who really ran the show there, him or the cardinal’s commission.

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MONTANA
Independent Record

Landon Hemsley
Independent Record

Bankruptcies are painful for many, but especially for those who are owed money they will never receive.

As part of the Diocese of Helena’s bankruptcy proceeding, the court released a document entailing the 20 creditors who lost the most when the Diocese declared bankruptcy.

Two of the 20 creditors were identified one group of 95 and a second group of 268 “abuse claimaints.” The amount of money these two groups of claimants lost in the bankruptcy is not revealed in the court documents. One of the claimants had two separate claims in the document, bringing the total of known claimants to 17.

The Diocese is passing through a chapter 11 bankruptcy, which means the Diocese has declared that it is working to restore its ability to pay obligations that it is presently unable to honor; it has not declared that it will be unable to pay those obligations forever.

Most of the claimants held deposits in a private bank the Diocese had set up for itself. Called a Deposit and Loan (D&L), funds from this private bank were used in day-to-day operations of the Diocese and its parishes in addition to maintaining and building facilities.

With respect to many of the creditors that lost money in the D&L, the Diocese has established a restoration trust operated by members of several different parishes and not by the Diocese central office. The Diocese says it is confident this trust fund will be able to bring some recovery in the future to those creditors who lost substantial amounts in the D&L, but while the trust is attempting to bring the D&L back from the dead, those creditors are out of luck.

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GUAM
Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Agana

April 14, 2015

On April 10, 2015 the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Los Angeles in its weekly diocesan newspaper, The Tidings, published a report stating the Archdiocese of Los Angeles had conducted a thorough re-examination of the whole issue concerning the alleged accusations against Father John H. Wadeson. The Tidings made the announcement in its print edition.

The Archdiocese of Los Angeles has concluded that there is no reason to preclude Father Wadeson from serving in priestly ministry showing that all the rumors and alleged calumnies against him were unfounded.

The Archdiocese of Agana therefore announces that Fr. John Wadeson has been reinstated fully to public ministry according to a decree dated April 13, 2015.

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DELAWARE
Delaware Law Weekly

Gina Passarella, Delaware Law Weekly
April 15, 2015

A sex-abuse victim’s suit against his personal injury and trust and estate lawyers can proceed over the victim’s allegations that his attorneys negligently created a trust to hold proceeds from a settlement with his abuser.

The plaintiff, who Delaware Law Weekly will not name under a policy of not identifying sexual abuse victims, sued his lawyers at Jacobs & Crumplar and the Neuberger Firm after his family-member trustees misused funds in his trust. He alleged the lawyers, who helped him secure the settlement with his sexual abuser, negligently created the trust and negligently selected the trustees.

The law firms and attorney defendants, who also included estate planning attorney Edward Luria, filed a motion to dismiss, arguing failure to state a claim and collateral estoppel given the Delaware Court of Chancery’s prior ruling in a separate case that found the trustees violated their fiduciary duties.

In order to consider that prior Chancery Court action, Superior Court Judge Robert B. Young said he had to convert the motions to dismiss to summary judgment motions.

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GUAM/CALIFORNIA
The Worthy Adversry

Posted by Joelle Casteix on April 14, 2015

KUAM announced today that former LA priest John Wadeson has been reinstated in the Archdiocese of Agana (Guam).

I have written about Wadeson in the past. According to the Los Angeles Archdiocese, he was twice accused of sexually abusing children and had been banned from working as a priest there.

According to a statement published in The Tidings (the Archdiocese of LA Newspaper), the LA Archdiocese did a investigation and “concluded that there is no reason to preclude Father Wadeson from serving in priestly ministry.”

This decision was based on the fact there has never been a settlement paid on an abuse case against Wadeson. According to the statement, when the allegations first arose, the Society of the Divine Word (the order to which Wadeson belonged) investigated the claims and found them “unverified.”

Here are my issues:

* According to the Archdiocese of Los Angeles and every other diocese across the US, the payment of a settlement does NOT equate implied guilt on the behalf of the accused. If this were the case, former San Diego Bishop Robert Brom would have been removed years ago. (He paid a former seminarian a confidential $250,000 settlement for allegedly coercing the victim into sex)

* Why didn’t Wadeson do something immediately when the LA Archdiocese published reports that he was twice accused? If in the same position, I would do everything in my power to clear my name immediately. And I would be public about it to ensure that I was adhering to transparency.

* What does “unverified” mean? That there was only one victim? There were no witnesses? What is a “verified” allegation?

And probably the most troublesome:

*Why would Agana Archbishop Apuron publish this statement?

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UNITED STATES
HBR

Gary Hamel
APRIL 14, 2015

Pope Francis has made no secret of his intention to radically reform the administrative structures of the Catholic church, which he regards as insular, imperious, and bureaucratic. He understands that in a hyper-kinetic world, inward-looking and self-obsessed leaders are a liability.

Last year, just before Christmas, the Pope addressed the leaders of the Roman Curia — the Cardinals and other officials who are charged with running the church’s byzantine network of administrative bodies. The Pope’s message to his colleagues was blunt. Leaders are susceptible to an array of debilitating maladies, including arrogance, intolerance, myopia, and pettiness. When those diseases go untreated, the organization itself is enfeebled. To have a healthy church, we need healthy leaders.

Through the years, I’ve heard dozens of management experts enumerate the qualities of great leaders. Seldom, though, do they speak plainly about the “diseases” of leadership. The Pope is more forthright. He understands that as human beings we have certain proclivities — not all of them noble. Nevertheless, leaders should be held to a high standard, since their scope of influence makes their ailments particularly infectious.

The Catholic Church is a bureaucracy: a hierarchy populated by good-hearted, but less-than-perfect souls. It that sense, it’s not much different than your organization. That’s why the Pope’s counsel is relevant to leaders everywhere.

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

AUSTRALIA
The Australian

APRIL 15, 2015

Sarah Elks
Reporter
Brisbane

The Catholic Church’s insurers scolded Rockhampton’s Sisters of Mercy for issuing a “prejudicial” unreserved apology to hundreds of children who suffered alleged sexual abuse and bashings in their orphanage decades earlier.

The Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse yesterday heard ­evidence of shocking abuse — ­including rapes by priests, public floggings, ritual humiliation for bed-wetters, and scant education — at the nuns’ Neerkol orphanage, which housed about 4000 children between 1885 and 1978.

When abuse complaints from former residents surfaced in the 1990s, the Sisters of Mercy worked with survivors to draft and publish an apology in 1997 to those victims of “physical, psychological, emotional and spiritual abuse”. The following month, however, Catholic Church Insurance Limited wrote to one of the order’s nuns, criticising the apology.

“The reason why you have ­issued an apology is well understood, and your concern for the victims and your recognition of their plight are recognised from a pastoral viewpoint,” the letter read. “However, CCI is entitled to consider the extent to which the position of the insurer has been prejudiced in relation to those cases in respect of which a claim may be subsequently submitted.”

The Sisters of Mercy and the Rockhampton Diocese of the Catholic Church ended up settling out of court with 72 abuse survivors. By June 1999, $790,910 had been paid in compensation.

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MINNESOTA
Minnesota Daily

ByJasper Johnson April 14, 2015

A United States bankruptcy court recently granted the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis an extension for its bankruptcy restructuring, postponing the deadline until Nov. 30. Most of the discourse regarding this bankruptcy, which the archdiocese filed because of numerous sexual abuse lawsuits, focuses purely on finances.

In my mind, this detracts from the root cause that no one likes to address — sexual abuse. The church needs massive organizational restructuring, and finances are only a small part of the solution.

The Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis has a sordid record as far as sexual abuse goes. The current Archbishop John Nienstedt and his two predecessors, Harry Flynn and John Roach, were involved in cover-ups of sexual abuse.

Flynn and Roach were both members of the Ad Hoc Committee on Sexual Abuse by Priests, whose goal was to address sexual abuse problems. However, the archbishops went on enabling monstrosities. Empty promises of reform are insufficient and do nothing to address the chronic, underlying problem that led to the church being swamped by legal payouts.

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TEXAS
The Raw Story

TRAVIS GETTYS
14 APR 2015

A Texas couple fled to Mexico after a failed attempt to raise a starved toddler from the dead, police said.

Officers received an anonymous tip March 26 that the 2-year-old boy had died nearly a week earlier but was not reported, according to NBC News.

Police went to a Balch Springs home, which also operated as a church, where they were told a “rising ceremony” had been performed four days earlier in an attempt to resurrect him, the network reported.

The child’s body was taken to Mexico the next day by his parents and other members of the Congregacional Pueblo De Dios, police said.

Investigators have not yet located the parents or church congregants.

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CHILE
ADN

[con audio]

[Catholic University Students protested against the appointment of Bishop Barros.]

Estudiantes de la U. Católica se manifestaron en contra de la designación del obispo Barros

La designación de Juan Barros Madrid como obispo de Osorno sigue generando controversia tras ser sindicado como encubridor de Karadima,. Este lunes, un grupo de estudiantes de la Universidad Católica se manifestó en contra del prelado, en el centro de extensión de la casa de estudios.

Frente a las diversas protestas por el nombramiento, el Arzobispo de Santiago Ricardo Ezzati señaló que todo el mundo tiene derecho a expresarse. Consultado por la permanencia de Barros en el cargo, Ezzati dijo que eso lo debe responder el Papa.

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PHILADELPHIA (PA)
Big Trial

By Ralph Cipriano
for Bigtrial.net

The defense lawyer for Father Andrew McCormick today accused the district attorney’s office of prosecutorial misconduct for trying to put a Catholic priest in jail “by any means necessary.”

The D.A.’s office “took every witness at their word no matter how fantastical the story was,” Trevan Borum complained to reporters outside the Criminal Justice Center.

Borum, a former prosecutor himself, said that the D.A.’s office didn’t do their homework, but “Thank God we did.” Speaking moments after a judge lifted a gag order, Borum told reporters about how the defense went out looking for witnesses to refute the prosecution’s case.

“They were easy to find,” Borum said, including a former altar boy now a state trooper who discredited a key prosecution witness. That’s how Borum managed to thwart a district attorney’s office that he said was “looking to convict a priest at all costs.”

After two heavily publicized trials in 14 months, however, both of which ended in deadlocked juries, “Father Andy” faces “an uncertain future,” his lawyer said. The priest is on administrative leave with the Archdiocese of Philadelphia and still has to face a church hearing over alleged boundary violations. Then there’s the matter of his reputation, his lawyer said, after being accused in the media and the courts of something he didn’t do, an attempted rape of a 10-year-old altar boy.

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AUSTRALIA
The Courier

By RACHEL AFFLICK Aug. 14, 2013

The alleged burial of children at the former Ballarat Orphanage has been referred to the Coroner and Victoria Police.

Former orphanage resident Edith Orr raised the issue at a Ballarat City Council meeting earlier this year, asking how the remains of children allegedly buried on the old orphanage site would be respected if it was redeveloped.

The issue comes after the council received a formal application to rezone the site, which has been sold for a residential subdivision with a medical centre and shopping complex.

Yesterday, a spokesperson for the Office of Aboriginal Affairs Victoria said the department had referred the concerns to Victoria Police and the Coroner for further investigation.

Ms Orr’s sister, Phyllis Read, laid a “blood claim” to the Victoria Street site last year, declaring at the September 14 Ballarat City Council meeting: “I say it’s our blood, so it’s our land”.

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AUSTRALIA
ABC News

Police are digging up the grounds of a former Ballarat orphanage, in a search for the remains of children.

Police began the search on Monday at 200 Victoria Street, which was once home to the Ballarat Orphanage, the Ballarat Children’s Homes and finally Damascus College.

The site was sold to developers in 2011, who applied to have it rezoned for commercial and mixed use.

Ballarat mayor John Phillips confirmed that the allegations had been raised at a council meeting in 2013, when the council were considering plans to redevelop the site.

He did not confirm that the council then referred the claims to the coroner and the Government.

The site is under police guard.

“The investigation relates to alleged activities that may have occurred whilst the orphanage was operational, prior to its closure in 1968,” Victoria Police said in a statement.

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AUSTRALIA
The Age

April 14, 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 now 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,” she 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. …

Former residents have alleged horrific sexual, physical and emotional abuse.

Allegations include that Catholic nuns “procured children” for notorious paedophile priest Gerald Ridsdale.

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VATICAN CITY
Catholic Culture

Pope Francis has named Msgr. Luigi Mistò, 62, as the secretary of the administrative section of the Secretariat for the Economy.

Msgr. Mistò will assist Cardinal George Pell, the secretariat’s prefect, in his personnel and budgetary oversight of the Vatican’s dicasteries.

In 2011, Pope Benedict XVI appointed Msgr. Mistò the secretary of the Administration of the Patrimony of the Apostolic See (APSA), whose purview has been reduced since 2014 to acting “as a guardian for moveable goods entrusted to it by other institutes of the Holy See,” in the words of the 1988 apostolic constitution on the Curia.

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UNITED STATES
The Worthy Adversary

Posted by Joelle Casteix on April 13, 2015

Barbara Walters’ interview with convicted child molester Mary Kay LeTourneau and her once-victim-now-husband Vili Fualaau was gut wrenching. The romanticization of the abuse was awful enough. But giving a woman like LeTourneau a platform to justify what she did is reprehensible.

Being outraged or upset about the interview doesn’t help anyone. But talking about her predatory patterns can help keep children safer. The more we understand how she thinks, the more we can see her behavioral patterns in other people who may abuse or try to abuse children.

1) Mary Kay LeTourneau is a narcissist. It’s all about her. LeTourneau wants to get off of the sex offender registry because she feels like she has “served her time” for what she still believes is a “love affair” with a 13-year-old boy. Predators tend to be narcissists, with very limited understanding of boundaries. According to the narcissist, the child “comes on to them” and “the predator is the real victim.” This also traps the victim, who believes that the abuse was his/her fault or that they are “hurting” the predator by reporting or refusing. In my opinion, Fualaau is trapped and blames himself. LeTourneau groomed Fualaau and sexually abused him. Period.

She should and must remain a registered sex offender, just like a man convicted of the same crimes.

2) She got a pass because she is a woman predator. Yes, she was convicted. But Barbara Walters would never have interviewed a predator who married a victim if the predator were male. Walters and ABC have no comprehension of the damage LeTourneau has done. (Speaking of networks perpetuating the “hot for teacher” stereotype, we can look at Saturday Night Live’s skit this weekend where a male victim of child sexual abuse by a woman is portrayed as the luckiest kid around.)

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NEW JERSEY
NJ.com

By MaryAnn Spoto | NJ Advance Media for NJ.com
on April 13, 2015

TRENTON —In his own words, Rabbi Mendel Epstein told an undercover FBI agent that he wore two hats as a religious leader – one rabbinical and one criminal.

That statement, captured in video surveillance in 2013, was played for jurors on Monday as they hear federal prosecutors’ and defense attorneys’ summations of eight weeks of testimony in a trial accusing Epstein and three others of conspiring to force husbands into granting their wives religious divorces.

“Mendel Epstein is telling you right here what he is – he’s a criminal,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Sarah Wolfe told jurors after playing a segment of video in which Epstein claimed to describe the two roles he played in his Orthodox Jewish communities in Lakewood and Brooklyn.

“Don’t confuse the defendants’ religious beliefs with criminal acts,” Wolfe said toward the beginning of her nearly four hours of closing arguments. “You’re here to judge Mendel Epstein for acts he did while wearing his criminal hat.”

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AUSTRALIA
Brisbane Times

Children housed in a notorious central Queensland orphanage were subjected to repeated physical and sexual abuse and allegedly punished if they spoke out, a national inquiry has heard.

Thirteen former residents of the Neerkol Orphanage near Rockhampton are set to describe their traumatic experiences at a public hearing of the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse.

Counsel assisting the commission Sophie David SC said the allegations centre on three priests, now

Ms David told the hearing in Rockhampton that the former residents, many who can’t be identified by name, will speak of how they were beaten by nuns and repeatedly sexually abused by priests connected to the orphanage.

She said many former residents will say they were too frightened to report the abuse, while others reported being physically punished for speaking out.

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CANADA
CTV

Tamsyn Burgmann, The Canadian Press
Published Monday, April 13, 2015

VANCOUVER — Strappings, beatings with a pointed stick and orders to stand in the classroom corner for speaking her own language were among “horrific” measures that erased Darlene Bulpit’s ability to pass along her First Nations heritage to her two children and three grandchildren.

The 66-year-old from the Shishalh Indian band, on British Columbia’s Sunshine Coast, was allowed to go home at night and grins when she recalls learning to hunt with her brothers and bringing home “the prize.”

Each morning she trudged back to school with dread.

As a day scholar for eight years, Bulpit said she suffered similar harms as thousands of aboriginals who survived the residential school system. Yet unlike her peers, she was excluded from the federal government’s historic apology in July 2008 and was never awarded compensation.

The woman is among hundreds of First Nations plaintiffs who attended the notorious schools by day and now want to sue the Canadian government contending they were overlooked in the reconciliation process.

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GUAM
KUAM

By Sabrina Salas Matanane

The Archdiocese of Agana has reinstated Father John Wadeson to practice ministry in Guam. Last July Archbishop Anthony Apuron removed the priest following the Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests (SNAP), calling on him to have him removed.

SNAP said Fr. Wadeson was accused twice of child molestation and had been banned from the Los Angeles Archdiocese.

The Archdiocese of Los Angeles conducted a thorough re-examination of the whole issue concerning the alleged accusations against Father Wadeson. They had concluded that there is no reason to preclude Father Wadeson from serving in priestly ministry, showing that all the rumors and alleged calumnies against him were unfounded.

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AUSTRALIA
7 News

A ten year legal battle has finally come to an end for one sex abuse victim, who has reached a settlement with the Catholic Church.

Pedophile bus driver Brian Perkins sexually abused disabled students at St Ann’s School in the late 1980s and early 1990s. He was eventually jailed for his crimes for six years but died in prison in 2009.

7News understands the church has agreed to pay a six figure sum to compensate one of his victims and, just days ago, agreed to formally settle with a second.

A further five cases brought against the church on behalf of Perkins’ disabled victims are now expected to be resolved by the end of the year.

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OREGON
The Oregonian

By Aimee Green | The Oregonian/OregonLive
on April 13, 2015

A Happy Valley pastor scheduled to go to trial this week to fight accusations that he sexually violated a kindergarten-age girl in the mid-1990s suffered a setback last week.

A judge will allow jurors to hear testimony from six other women who claim that pastor Michael Sperou sexually abused them, too, when they were children. But because the statute of limitations has passed for those alleged “prior bad acts,” Sperou can’t be prosecuted for them.

The statute of limitations hasn’t passed for the youngest of Sperou’s alleged victims, the subject of this week’s trial.

Attorneys were selecting a jury Monday. Opening statements are expected to begin Tuesday. Sperou denies the allegations.

Multnomah County Circuit Judge Cheryl Albrecht ruled Friday that jurors also will get to hear from other former members of the Southeast Bible Church. Those members say that the cultlike organization required them to live in a network of homes in Happy Valley and Portland, sometimes with entire families in a single bedroom and children living in closets.

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VATICAN CITY
National Catholic Reporter

Robert Mickens | Apr. 13, 2015 A Roman Observer

The seas have suddenly become a lot more agitated for Pope Francis, who up to now has proven to be amazingly unsinkable in the face of any kind of adversity.

But in the last few weeks, he has found himself in the midst of several minor crises and controversies that if not resolved well could work to undermine his credibility with many Catholics and deal a blow to his project for reforming the church.

The polemics range from the unprecedented and violent protests that cut short the installation Mass last month of a bishop he appointed in Chile to a diplomatic storm with Turkey after he repeated his long-held conviction Sunday that the killing of Armenians by Ottoman Turks in 1915 was, in fact, a “genocide.”

Sandwiched between these more sensational incidents are troubles hidden from public view. Most of them concern episcopal politics and power struggles, especially inside the Vatican.

However, one of them spilled into the press just last week: a supposed Vatican stalemate with France over the appointment three months ago of the new French ambassador. Reports say the pope has refused to give the Holy See’s approval (“agrément”) to the French envoy, which is required before he takes up the post, because the diplomat is said to be openly gay.

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AUSTRALIA
7 News

By Miranda Forster
April 14, 2015

A former resident of a central Queensland orphanage has told a national inquiry how nuns administered public floggings and forced bed-wetting children to stand with soiled sheets draped over their heads.

Retired nurse Mary Adams, 64, suffered repeated emotional, physical and sexual mistreatment at the hands of nuns and priests at the Neerkol orphanage near Rockhampton in the 1950s and 1960s, the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse heard.

Sobbing uncontrollably at times, Ms Adams told the hearing in Rockhampton she was punched, slapped, pulled by her hair and on one occasion flogged with a skipping rope so forcefully she struggled to walk for days.

Boys who tried to run away from Neerkol were publicly flogged with horse whips and those who wet the bed were forced to stand with the soiled sheets draped over their heads.

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AUSTRALIA
ABC Brisbane

[with audio]

by Jacquie Mackay

As you’d probably be aware the Royal Commission hearing on the St Joseph’s orphanage at Neerkol begins today, but what of the former orphanage buildings?

The site is now owned by Stanwell Corporation which has closed off the area to the public, but a couple of years ago a petition called for the restoration and opening of the Orphanage, Grounds and Burial Sites to the public.

Belinda Brown began the petition because she says that families, friends & the public have a right to honour, remember and grieve the Neerkol story.

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AUSTRALIA
9 News

Queensland women have recalled gut-wrenching memories of abuse at the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse today.

Mary Adams sobbed through her statement, saying she remembered yelling “You are committing a mortal sin” at a priest who abused her as a child.

Another woman known only as AYB said she was repeatedly raped as a child by a Catholic priest, who then made her confess to her “sin”.

The 67-year-old woman was 11 when Father Reginald Durham, her parish priest, began sexually abusing her at her Rockhampton home, the commision heard.

AYB said Fr Durham abused her more than 100 times over the following years, including at his presbytery at the Neerkol orphanage when she worked there as a teacher.

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AUSTRALIA
ABC News

By William Rollo and Marlina Whop

A witness at a child sex abuse inquiry says she was raped “well over 100 times” by a priest at St Joseph’s Neerkol Orphanage Rockhampton in central Queensland.

The Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse has heard the treatment of children at the orphanage was “vicious and sadistic”, while an earlier inquiry found hundreds of children were sexually abused, beaten and forced into hard labour there.

The inquiry has begun hearings into how the Sisters of Mercy, the Rockhampton diocese and the state government responded to complaints made by former residents of St Joseph’s Neerkol Orphanage.

The orphanage has already been the subject of several police and government investigations, and a 1999 inquiry led by former Queensland governor Leneen Forde.

After the so-called Forde Inquiry, the Queensland government at the time offered ex gratia payments of up to $40,000 to people as long as they dropped other legal action against the state.

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AUSTRALIA
news.com.au

Abuse victim David Owen to relive pain of abuse at Neerkol orphanage at Royal Commission

DETAILS divulged to the Royal Commission into Child Sexual Abuse about horrific abuse that took place in a Queensland orphanage have been deemed “too lurid” to be made public, but one man is keen for his shocking story to be heard.

The Commission, sitting in Rockhampton from today, has begun to hear from men and women who attended the Neerkol Orphanage outside the city between 1940 and 1975.

The institution has previously been exposed as a place where physical, sexual and psychological abuse was rife during the Forde Inquiry in 1998 and 1999.

David Owen, 76, was one of the victims of abuse to come forward at that inquiry and will now be one of 18 witnesses to front the Commission opening up about his shocking abuse, all because he wants people to care.

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AUSTRALIA
The Morning Bulletin

Austin King | 14th Apr 2015

UPDATE 3.15PM: Former Neerkol Orphanage resident Mary Adams has taken the stand to retell her harrowing experience when she was a resident in the 1950s and 1960s.

She has told of the severe physical and sexual abuse she endured from a Father John, who was relieving at the orphanage during a Sisters of Mercy retreat.

The commission also heard of the emotional evidence by a witness who said she was raped “well over 100 times” by a priest at St Joseph’s Neerkol Orphanage Rockhampton in central Queensland.

EARLIER: EIGHTEEN witnesses, including Neerkol Orphanage survivors and Sisters of Mercy representatives, will share their stories at a public hearing as the Royal Commission into the institution gets underway.

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AUSTRALIA
Brisbane Times

A Queensland woman has told a national inquiry she was repeatedly raped as a child by a Catholic priest, who then made her confess to her “sin”.

The 67-year-old woman was 11 when Father Reginald Durham, her parish priest, began sexually abusing her at her Rockhampton home, the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse heard.

The woman, identified by the commission only as AYB, said Fr Durham abused her more than 100 times over the following years, including at his presbytery at the Neerkol orphanage when she worked there as a teacher.

She detailed how the now-deceased priest fondled her breasts, forced her to masturbate him, digitally raped her and penetrated her with objects.

“After each time I was sexually abused, I had to go to confession to him and confess my sin of impurity,” AYB told the commission, which was sitting in Rockhampton on Tuesday.

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OREGON
KOIN

HILLSBORO, Ore. (KOIN) — Jury selection begins Monday in the trial of a pastor accused of sexual assault.

Michael Sperou, 64, faces three felonies for unlawful sexual penetration. He is listed on the website of BcResources.net as a senior pastor and founding member of the North Clackamas Bible Community.

Police said Sperou’s arrest stems from a series of 1997 police reports involving juvenile girls who lived within the Southeast Bible Church community, which is now known as the North Clackamas Bible Community.

The churches have operated in Southeast Portland and Happy Valley beginning in 1980.

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OREGON
Huffington Post

By Andy Campbell

An Oregon pastor was charged 18 years after several women accused him of sexually abusing them as minors.

Michael Sperou, 64, faces three felonies for unlawful sexual penetration of people under 12, according to KOIN. Seven women have lived in frustration since their complaints about the Happy Valley pastor in the 1990s went unanswered.

Now, prosecutors are taking a second look at those complaints. Sperou, who was arrested last June, is accused of sexually abusing women — who ranged in age from 11 to 16 at the time — in the Southeast Bible Church community, which is now known as the North Clackamas Bible Community, the Oregonian reports.

Jury selection began in his case this week. Prosecutors found that the statute of limitations had expired on most of the women’s cases, but Sperou was charged based on new allegations by 28-year-old Shannon Clark. The victim said she withheld information from investigators in 1997 because she thought the community was on Sperou’s side.

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AUSTRALIA
Courier Mail

Victims of a ‘reign of terror’ conducted by nuns at Central Queensland orphanage to tell their stories

VICTIMS of a decades-long “reign of terror” conducted by nuns at a central Queensland orphanage are due to tell their stories at a royal commission.

The Neerkol orphanage near Rockhampton has previously been exposed by the Forde Inquiry in 1998 and 1999 as a place where physical, sexual and psychological abuse was rife.

The home, also known as St Joseph’s Orphanage, was operated by the Sisters of Mercy until 1978.

About nine former residents are expected to detail their experiences at a public hearing of the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse in Rockhampton this month.

The scope of the hearing includes their experiences and the responses of the Sisters of Mercy, the Catholic Diocese of Rockhampton and the Queensland government to complaints of child sexual abuse.

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UNITED STATES
Christian Catholicism

Jerry Slevin

Outrage against current mass violence is courageous. Outrage against historical mass violence is less courageous. Selective outrage, however, is hypocrisy. Pope Francis vented calculatingly this week against 100 year old mass atrocities during World War I by Turkish Muslims against Armenian Christians. At the same time, he pointedly ducked a meeting with non-clerical members of his own illusory abuse commission seeking to curtail sexual violence by priests against hundreds of thousands of defenseless children worldwide.

Two abuse survivors, Marie Collins and Peter Saunders, along with London-based psychiatrist Baroness, Sheila Hollins, and French child/adolescent psychiatrist, Dr. Catherine Bonnet, traveled to Francis’ residence, but he did not meet with them. For their widely publicized and considerable efforts, the commission members got a mere promise from Cardinal Sean O”Malley to tell Francis they are concerned, as indicated reportedly in the members’ statement released by the commission’s top staffer, Fr. Robert Oliver, formerly disgraced Cardinal Bernard Law’s canon lawyer. These developments were widely reported to Latino Catholics by CNN in Spanish, including with an interview with Juan Carlos Cruz, a top Philadelphia USA communications executive and a key abuse survivor in the current Chile crisis, see here,

[CNN]

Moreover, Francis has also avoided condemning adequately the Vatican’s role during his own lifetime in Mussolini’s facilitation of Hitler’s genocide of Jews, while Catholic clerics in Italy and Germany remained silent or worse, as amply documented in the recent and well regarded book, “The Pope and Mussolini”.

As to the Holocaust genocide itself, Gerald Posner has fairly and recently complained that Pope Francis’ Vatican archivists recently denied Posner access to Nazi era files that pertained to assets that may have been confiscated from Holocaust victims. And after Francis, who knows who will be calling the financial shots in Rome and granting access, if any? This is a real concern expressed by the perceptive Jesuit educated former Wall Street lawyer, Posner, the author of the troubling and comprehensive book, “God’s Bankers: A History of Money and Power at the Vatican” .

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SPAIN
El Pais

JUAN G. BEDOYA Madrid 13 ABR 2015

They say that it is best to retire with a golden parachute, but the way that Cardinal Antonio María Rouco has withdrawn from public life has raised many questions among Catholics, and has prompted public outrage.

Rouco, 78, was replaced last August as Madrid archbishop by the Vatican, but since then he has reportedly been living a life of luxury, while deciding on his own terms when and how he will retire.

Recent press reports state that Rouco lives in a €1.7-million apartment in front of Madrid’s Virgen of Almudena Cathedral. His six-room living quarters measure 370 square meters and include four bathrooms and a large balcony. The refurbishment of the apartment cost €370,000.

Pope Francis is reported to have been angered by Rouco’s refusal to step down, as per the Vatican’s mandatory retirement age of 75. In February, reports emerged that the ultra-conservative cardinal had gone to live in the palatial apartment, but only after he failed in his attempts to stay put at the archdiocese official residence – even after Carlos Osoro had been appointed by the Holy See to take over.

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BRAZIL
Catholic Culture

Cardinal Mario Poli of Buenos Aires, Argentina has recognized a branch of the Society of St. Pius X (SSPX) as an “association of diocesan right,” marking the first time that the breakaway traditionalist group has been officially recognized by a Catholic diocese.

At the request of Cardinal Poli–who succeeded Pope Francis as Archbishop of Buenos Aires—the Argentine government has recognized the SSPX as “a juridical person within the apostolic Roman Catholic Church.” That recognition entitles the SSPX to the help of the country’s government, which is pledged to support the Catholic Church.

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MINNESOTA
Pioneer Press

By Elizabeth Mohr
emohr@pioneerpress.com
POSTED: 04/13/2015

The Roman Catholic Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis, which has filed for bankruptcy protection in the face of clergy abuse claims, is asking the court to sidestep a state law and reduce the window for victims’ claims by about nine months.

Minnesota lawmakers decided that victims of past child sexual abuse should have more time to file lawsuits and hold their abusers accountable, no matter how long ago the abuse occurred. The Legislature suspended the statute of limitations and created a three-year window, ending in May 2016.

The archdiocese argued in its motion that, since whistleblower efforts gained momentum in 2013, followed by the Legislature’s passage of the Child Victims Act, church officials have reviewed personnel files to identify accused priests and possible victims; the church has disclosed names of “credibly accused” clergy; and the issue of clergy abuse has been covered by media.

In short: publicity has alerted victims who might wish to file a claim.

The archdiocese is seeking an Aug. 3 deadline for victims to file claims with the court. The legislative window, set by the Child Victim Act, ends May 25, 2016.

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NEW JERSEY
NJ.com

By MaryAnn Spoto | NJ Advance Media for NJ.com
on April 13, 2015

TRENTON —Federal prosecutors in the conspiracy and kidnapping trial of a Lakewood rabbi on Monday dismissed one of the charges in a case alleging the religious leader arranged for Orthodox Jewish husbands to be held and tortured until they gave their wives religious divorces.

The announcement came hours before federal prosecutors were set to deliver closing arguments in a two-month long trial in which the government claims three rabbis and the son of one of them distorted Jewish law for their financial gain.

The dismissal of the single charge still leaves jurors to consider four other counts in the indictment against Rabbi Mendel Epstein, his son David “Ari” Epstein, and rabbis Jay Goldstein and Binyamin Stimler.

The government dismissed the charge pertaining to Usher Chaimowitz, a Brooklyn man whose roommate testified they were ambushed, bound and beaten on Aug. 22, 2011, until Chaimowitz agreed to give his wife a religious divorce, known as a get.

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UNITED STATES
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests

For the ninth time, Pope Francis sat down this morning with a group he’s charged with improving Vatican governance.

Once, Francis has sat down with the group he’s charged with dealing with clergy sex abuse and cover ups.

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CALIFORNIA
KTVU

By Ann Rubin, Reporter

OAKLAND, Calif (KTVU) – Today marks his anniversary. Every Sunday for the last five years, Tim Stier has stood in front of Oakland’s cathedral, in protest.

“I was a priest for 25 years, and I would much rather be in church,” Stier says.

Instead, he’s out front. He calls this a voluntary exile from the Catholic Church, and says he won’t be back until there are changes to the policies on dealing with the LGBT community, women, and victims of abuse.

“So since then, I’ve been out of a job and I’ve dedicated myself to supporting those groups of people,” Stier says.

Some days, he’s out there practically by himself. Sometimes, others join him.

“Nothing happens if you don’t do something. And so here we are,” says protester Billy Bradford.

And other issues have taken center stage, like controversial morality clauses in San Francisco Catholic teacher contracts.

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DEUTSCHLAND
Kolner Staadt-Anzeiger

[In the case of Erftstadt priest Winfried Jansen, who is on leave for alleged sexual assault, he had a four-on-one meeting with his employer, the Archbishop of Cologne, Rainer Woelki, but there was no convergence of views.]

Zwischen dem Erftstädter Pfarrer Jansen, dem sexuelle Übergriffe vorgeworfen werden, und Erzbischof Woelki hat es ein Treffen gegeben. Jansen räumt die Vorwürfe inzwischen ein, sieht sich aber über Gebühr streng behandelt Von Joachim Frank

Köln.
Im Fall des Erftstädter Pfarrers Winfried Jansen, der wegen des Vorwurfs sexueller Übergriffe beurlaubt ist, hat ein Vier-Augen-Gespräch mit seinem Dienstherrn, dem Kölner Erzbischof Rainer Woelki, keine Annäherung der Standpunkte gebracht. Wie der „Kölner Stadt-Anzeiger“ jetzt erfuhr, fand das Treffen zwischen Jansen und dem Kardinal bereits vor einem Monat, am 12. März, statt. Das Erzbistum Köln lehnte auf Anfrage eine Stellungnahme ab und verwies auf die Vertraulichkeit von Personalangelegenheiten.

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SCHWEIZ
Bieler Tagblatt

[Researchers in Zurich and Basel are working on a brain test to identify pedophiles. This could one day be a tool to estimate more accurately how dangerous an offender is.]

Forscher in Zürich und Basel arbeiten an einem Gehirntest, der Pädophile erkennen soll. Damit könnte dereinst genauer eingeschätzt werden, wie gefährlich ein Straftäter ist. Das Vorhaben weckt aber auch Ängste – vor präventiven Tests beispielsweise.

(sda) 43 Männer haben in Basel bereits an dem Experiment teilgenommen: 20 verurteilte Straftäter, die Kinderpornografie konsumiert oder Kinder missbraucht hatten, sowie 23 Normalbürger. Sie alle liessen sich an Kopf und Fingern verkabeln und lösten Testaufgaben. Dabei wurden sie beispielsweise durch Kinderfotos abgelenkt, worauf erfasst wurde, wie stark die Ablenkung ausfiel. Die Apparate massen derweil, was die Probanden stimulierte.

Die “SonntagsZeitung” und “Le Matin Dimanche” hatten am Sonntag erstmals über die Experimente berichtet. Sie werden von Forschern der Universitären Psychiatrischen Kliniken Basel durchgeführt. Das Projekt wird vom Bundesamt für Justiz finanziell unterstützt, wie Sprecher Folco Galli auf Anfrage bestätigte. Parallel zum Basler Projekt bereiten auch Forscher der Psychiatrischen Universitätsklinik Zürich solche Tests vor.

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VATIKAN
kathweb

London, 13.04.2015 (KAP/KNA) Opfer sexuellen Missbrauchs wollen im Beratergremium von Papst Franziskus auf eine Entlassung des chilenischen Bischofs Juan Barros hinwirken. Der Brite Peter Saunders, eines von wenigen Laienmitgliedern im päpstlichen Missbrauchskomitee und persönlicher Betroffener, sagte der Zeitung “The Guardian” am Montag, die Vertuschungsvorwürfe sprächen für eine Entfernung des Bischofs von Osorno aus dem Bischofsamt.

Dem Bericht zufolge habe es ein Treffen der Missbrauchsopfer mit dem Bostoner Kardinal Sean O’Malley, dem Vorsitzenden des päpstlichen Komitees, gegeben. Dort protestierten sie nach Angaben von Saunders gegen das Vorgehen des Vatikan in dem Fall.

Der Vatikan hatte zuletzt die Ernennung des umstrittenen Bischofs Juan de la Cruz Barros Madrid verteidigt. Die Bischofskongregation habe die Nominierung zuvor genau geprüft und “keine objektiven Gründe gefunden, die gegen die Ernennung sprachen”.

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IRELAND/VATICAN CITY
Irish Times

Patsy McGarry

Mon, Apr 13, 2015

An unscheduled meeting on Sunday between a working group of the Vatican’s Commission for the Protection of Minors and its chairman Cardinal Seán O’Malley, about the controversial appointment of a Chilean bishop, went “very well”, Dublin survivor Marie Collins has said.

Bishop Juan Barros Madrid was installed as Bishop of Osorno, Chile, last month amid serious protests. Chilean survivors accuse him of covering up abuse by Fr Fernando Karadima, and of witnessing abuse by the priest. In 2011 the Vatican found Fr Karadima, once a key Church figure in Chile, guilty of sexually abusing minors.

The only Irish member of the Vatican Commission Marie Colline, UK survivor Peter Saunders, London-based psychiatrist Baroness Sheila Hollins, and French child/adolescent psychiatrist Dr Catherine Bonnet, met Cardinal Seán O’Malley in Rome. He is there for a meeting of the so-called C9 Council of Cardinals who are to meet Pope Francis this week.

In Dublin on Monday night Marie Collins said she and fellow Commission members were “very happy” with how the meeting had gone. “We asked Cardinal O’Malley to meet us and he was very quick to say ‘yes’,” she recalled.

“Our main concern was that the appointment (of Bishop Barros) was made and that similar appointments might be made in future,” she said. The new Bishop’s “view of abuse, his mindset could be dangerous in his diocese and as Commission members we felt we had to make the Pope aware,” she said.

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PENNSYLVANIA
The Legal Intelligencer

Daniel F. Monahan, The Legal Intelligencer
April 14, 2015

Survivors of childhood sexual abuse often lead lives in silence, secrecy and shame. Not only do they suffer from the traumatic effects of sexual abuse, which often causes depression, post-traumatic stress and addiction issues, but the fear of exposing that secret creates its own hosts of problems.

One of the more significant obstacles to recovery is survivors’ reluctance to report the abuse to criminal authorities or pursue civil remedies against the perpetrators and the institutions that protect them. In my practice, I have spoken with dozens of survivors who either could not reveal their secrets or did not recognize the significant harms that the abuse inflicted until years, and sometimes decades, after the abuse occurred.

Although there are serious questions of when the statute of limitations should be imposed with respect to these cases, that is a debate that continues to rage in both the legislature and the courts in Pennsylvania. That is a discussion for another day. However, one of the other obstacles that inhibit survivors is the uncertainty in Pennsylvania of pursuing civil cases using a pseudonym to protect the identity of the survivors of sexual abuse. The time has come for an open discussion on uniform rules and procedures to deal with this issue.

Currently, the Pennsylvania Rules of Civil Procedure do not provide any option to handle this situation. In addition, over the past six years, in handling a variety of sexual-abuse matters, primarily in the Philadelphia Court of Common Pleas, I have discovered that the procedure for dealing with the issue has been inconsistent at best.

In a series of childhood sexual-abuse cases filed between 2011 and 2013, the Philadelphia courts have dealt with the question of filing a complaint using a pseudonym in the following manner: (1) the prothonotary permitted the filing without objection; (2) the prothonotary required the filing of a precomplaint petition for permission to file using a pseudonym; and (3) after filing the complaint, the court required discovery and hearings after defendants’ filing of preliminary objections. In the aftermath of numerous childhood sexual-abuse cases including not only those filed against organizations responsible for supervising young children, the time has come to adopt such a rule of civil procedure.

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UNITED KINGDOM
Catholic Herald

by Laura Ieraci posted Monday, 13 Apr 2015

Members of papal commission met one of Pope Francis’ top cardinal advisers to express concerns over appointment of Bishop Juan Barros

Four lay members of the Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors met with one of Pope Francis’ top cardinal advisers at the Vatican on Sunday to voice their concerns about the appointment of a Chilean bishop, accused of covering up for an abusive priest.

The four said in a written statement the same day that Cardinal Sean O’Malley of Boston, who is also the protection commission’s president, “agreed to present their concerns to the Holy Father” about the nomination of Bishop Juan Barros to the Diocese of Osorno, Chile.

The bishop had been accused of covering up for a priest who was known to have committed sexual abuse. Bishop Barros, however, denied having had knowledge of Father Fernando Karadima’s criminal behaviour, prior to news about the abuse in the press.

Commission member Marie Collins from Ireland expressed her satisfaction with their discussion at the Vatican, posting on her Twitter feed on April 13 that she was “heading home after a good meeting” with Cardinal O’Malley.

The three other members of the 17-person commission at the 30-minute meeting included Peter Saunders, Dr Catherine Bonnet and Baroness Sheila Hollins. Collins and Saunders are both survivors of clerical sex abuse.

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VATICAN CITY
National Catholic Reporter

Joshua J. McElwee | Apr. 13, 2015

VATICAN CITY Pope Francis has warned against letting the lower numbers of people entering Catholic religious life from influencing decisions about who is healthy and able to take lifelong vows as a priest, brother or sister.

On Saturday, the pope told a meeting of an estimated 1,200 formation directors for religious orders they must be “lovingly attentive” to those they are guiding so that “the eventual crisis of quantity does not result in a much graver crisis of quality.”

“Vocational discernment is important,” Francis said.

He continued: “All the people who know the human personality — may they be psychologists, spiritual fathers, spiritual mothers — tell us that young people who unconsciously feel they have something unbalanced or some problem of mental imbalance or deviation unconsciously seek strong structures that protect them, to protect themselves.”

“There is the discernment: to know to say no,” said the pope, referring to formation directors who tell young people that religious life may not be for them.

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IOWA
WCF Courier

By Dennis Magee

FAYETTE, Mo. | The fake monk arrested recently in Howard County in Missouri must remain in jail until he produces $150,000 for bail, cash only.

The judge assigned Ryan St. Anne Scott’s case refused a request April 7 to reduce the amount, according to court records.

Scott, charged as Ryan St. Anne Gevelinger, created a long-running legal mess several years ago involving bankruptcies in Iowa and Illinois, a lawsuit, a herd of registered llamas and the former Buchanan County home near Independence.

At that time, Scott referred to himself as the Most Rev. and Lord Abbott Ryan St. Anne Scott, and he was attempting to establish an alleged religious community. Multiple officials in multiple Catholic dioceses, including Dubuque, emphatically denounced Scott, however, as neither a Benedictine monk or a Catholic priest.

Scott faces three counts of financial exploitation of an elderly or disabled person in Missouri. One count is a Class A felony because Scott allegedly received property worth more than $50,000.

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PHILADELPHIA (PA)
CBS Philly

By Steve Tawa

PHILADELPHIA (CBS) — A month after a second jury failed to reach a verdict in the case of a suspended Philadelphia priest for allegedly sexually assaulting a ten-year-old altar boy in 1997, a judge has lifted his gag order on all of the involved parties.

And now, they’re talking about the case publically for the first time.

After two hung juries in 12 months and talking it over with the alleged victim, now 27, and his family, the district attorney’s office announced that it would not retry Father Andrew McCormick a third time.

Assistant DA Kristen Kemp, who handled both trials, praised all of those who stepped forward despite their presumed emotional scars.

“Every victim who displays the courage to speak up, like the young man in this case, helps our community expose, stop, and prevent the sexual abuse of children,” she said.

Defense attorney Trevan Borum discounts any talk that McCormick, now 59, considered a plea deal during his legal difficulties.

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IRELAND
Irish Examiner

By Conall Ó Fátharta
Irish Examiner Reporter

Justice For Magdalenes Research (JFMR) has hit back at Government claims that it is issuing “factually incorrect” statements on the implementation of the Magdalene redress scheme.

The group was referring to allegations made by Equality Minister Aodhán Ó Ríordáin during a Seanad debate concerning the provision of health services to Magdalene survivors.

JFMR has argued that what is being offered by the Government in its Redress Bill in terms of the health package for survivors is not what was recommended by Justice Quirke.

Mr Ó Ríordáin responded by saying this claim is “factually incorrect” and accused the group of spreading “misinformation” and issuing “factually incorrect” press releases on the issue.

“When a press release or a statement, which is factually incorrect, is issued, as Minister of State at the Department of Justice and Equality, I have to point to what is correct and what is incorrect,” he said.

The Irish Examiner understands that the Department of Justice has written to some Magdalene survivors in recent weeks, advising them that there had been “some confusion” in relation to the provision of medical services and that the Government was committed to “fully implementing all of the recommendations made by Judge Quirke”.

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MINNESOTA
Winona Post

(4/13/2015)

by CHRIS ROGERS

The Diocese of Winona (DOW) released the names of two more priests who were accused of sexually abusing children. Unless victims or witnesses divulge new information about past abuses or new abuses occur, those two names will be the last. The priests, Father Harold Mountain and Father Thomas Duane, both died years ago, and it appears that in both cases, victims approached the diocese after the priests’ deaths.

Mountain served in Winona, LaMoille, Minneiska, Minnesota City, Hart, and a variety of other southern Minnesota communities before retiring in 1989. He died in 2006. In 2011, an alleged victim contacted the diocese claiming that Mountain molested him as a boy.

Duane served in St. Charles and numerous other southern Minnesota towns before retiring in 1979. He died in 1993. In 2002, an alleged victim wrote to Bishop Harrington, claiming that Duane sexually abused her while she was growing up in Spring Valley, Minn.

The diocese released the information — and has released other allegations against priests — as part of a legal settlement with an anonymous victim who sued the diocese in 2013. Last fall, the diocese agreed to make all of its records of reported abuses public. With the release of the accusations against Duane and Mountain, diocese officials said they have made public all of the reports of child sex abuse they have. After the October 2014 settlement, officials began combing through the diocese’s personnel files to find any past allegations that would be required to be released. The claims against Mountain and Duane were the only new ones found in that process, according to DOW Director of Communications Joel Hennessy. Hennessy said that now parishioners have as much information about accused priests as the diocese does, and there will not be any further allegations to release unless new information is brought forward. “There was a complete review of all files. That’s been completed. At this point, we’re done,” he stated of the mandated release of information about abuse.

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MINNESOTA
Owatonna People’s Press

Monday, April 13, 2015

By JEFFREY JACKSON jjackson@owatonna.com

Two priests — one with ties to both Steele and Dodge counties, the other with ties to Dodge County — were named Friday by the Diocese of Winona as suspected of sexual abuse.

The priests, the Rev. Harold Mountain and the Rev. Thomas Duane, are both dead, and the complaints filed against the two came after they had died. Duane, who retired in 1979, died in 1993. Mountain retired in 1989 and died in 2006.

The accusations against Mountain came in 2011 in a letter from a man who said that when he was in either second or third grade, he was sent to Mountain for a supposed infraction at school. Mountain allegedly forced the boy to pull his pants down and fondled him.

“Due to this incident with Father Mountain, [the man who brought the complaint] has been very angry and estranged from the Church,” diocesan documents say. “He wants to be buried in the Catholic cemetery … and would like some amends from the Church for healing before he dies.”

The documents on file at the diocese have been redacted, so it’s not known where or when the incident allegedly took place.

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NEW YORK
Brooklyn Daily Eagle

By Francesca Norsen Tate, Religion Editor
Brooklyn Daily Eagle

Survivors of sexual abuse by members of the clergy have partnered with the Roman Catholic Diocese of Brooklyn to sponsor a Mass of Hope and Healing this Wednesday. The Most Reverend Nicholas DiMarzio, Bishop of Brooklyn, will be the main celebrant and homilist at the April 15 Mass at 7 p.m. at the Cathedral Basilica of St. James in Downtown Brooklyn.

“There has been much darkness in the past regarding this issue, but it must come out into the light,” said Bishop DiMarzio. “We must own up to past mistakes and seek to heal those who have been abused, and I must take this opportunity to publicly thank those who have come forward to help us shed light into the darkness of this most serious issue. These survivors have shown us that there is hope for healing and have helped us to identify the pastoral resources which our Diocese makes available to assist them on their journey.”

This liturgy originated from the work of the diocesan Office of Victims Assistance Ministry and a group of survivors who have joined forces to pray for the ongoing healing of sexual abuse survivors, their families, the Church, and for continued vigilance toward the protection of children and youth. Attendees will include clergy, survivors, family members of survivors and many others committed to the protection and safety of children.

Healing Intervention team members will be present for anyone wishing to speak to someone in regard to the services provided by the Office of Victim Assistance Ministry.

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VATICAN CITY
Vatican Information Service

Vatican City, 13 April 2015 (VIS) – This morning the ninth meeting of the Council of Cardinals, to be attended by the Holy Father, began in the Vatican. The Council will continue its work until Wednesday, 15 April.

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AUSTRALIA
Newcastle Herald

By JOANNE McCARTHY April 13, 2015

DAVID Owen was born after his 12-year-old mother was raped, was offered for adoption in a newspaper advertisement, and was physically, sexually and emotionally assaulted for years at an isolated orphanage run by the Catholic Sisters of Mercy.

This week, at the age of 76, he will tell the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse what it is like to live your life with the ‘‘stain on your brain’’ of being abused almost from the day you were born.

Mr Owen, of Maryville, wants Australians to care what happened at Neerkol orphanage outside Rockhampton between 1940 and 1975, when children were out of sight and out of mind of the government that was supposed to be responsible for them.

‘‘The reason why people didn’t believe when we told them years ago was because it was so outrageous and so inhuman, what was done to us. All I can do is tell how it happened,’’ Mr Owen said.

The royal commission will hear from former Neerkol ‘‘inmates’’ like Mr Owen, and examine how the Sisters of Mercy, the diocese of Rockhampton and the Queensland government responded to complaints made by the former ‘‘inmates’’ from 1993.

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NEW YORK
Frum Follies

Yerachmiel Lopin

The good news is that Yeshiva World News, a Haredi web-based outlet finally reported a case of child molesting. Yesterday (4/12/15) they ran the headline: “Williamsburg Community On Edge After Man Inappropriately Touches Child On Flushing Avenue.” The story states:

The NYPD along with Williamsburg Shomrim (WSPU) are investigating an incident involving a forcible touching of a child. Law enforcement sources tell YWN that the troubling incident happened around 9:30AM, Sunday, at the corner of Flushing Avenue and Nostrand Avenue in the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn. The victim, an 11-year-old child was touched inappropriately by a… male walking on the street. The frightened child ran to school and did not tell anyone about the incident until his father came to pick him up around 12:00 noon. At that time, police and Shomrim were called, and an NYPD Level 1 Mobilization Response was requested.

I left out one word in the above story, “Hispanic.” Apparently it is OK to object to Hispanic males inappropriately touching Jewish children. But it is not OK to expose orthodox offenders. For that matter, Shomrim in Williamsburg also will work against non-Jewish child molesters but not against Jews.

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ARGENTINA
Agencia Fe

[The archbishop is questioned about an abuse investigation.]

Tras las declaraciones del arzobispo de Santa Fe, José María Arancedo, quien señaló días atrás que “en dos o tres meses” se enviaría al Papa Francisco el expediente canónico sobre la denuncia de abuso sexual contra el ex párroco de la Basílica de Esperanza, Luis Brizzio; el abogado de la víctima, Carlos Lombardi, habló de “cinismo descomunal” en sus dichos sobre la causa. “Las declaraciones de Arancedo ratifican lo que venimos sosteniendo respecto a la ilegalidad de la investigación previa sin que el denunciante haya podido compulsarla, verla, y que tampoco tendrá esa posibilidad cuando la manden a Roma. No tendrá participación procesal en un expediente donde es parte. De modo arbitrario, autoritario y abusivo sólo se le notificará el resultado. Es una aberración jurídica”, lamentó el letrado, asesor de la Red de Sobrevivientes de Abuso Eclesiástico de Argentina, que representa al hombre que denunció haber sido abusado por Brizzio hace 20 años. Sobre la nota que enviaron al Arzobispado para tener plena participación del expediente, aún no tuvieron respuesta.

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PHILADELPHIA (PA)
Big Trial

By Ralph Cipriano
for Bigtrial.net

Here’s a switch. More than a decade ago, after former District Attorney Lynne Abraham got a judge to serve multiple subpoenas on the Archdiocese of Philadelphia, the archdiocese in a civil case has talked a judge into serving a subpoena on Abraham’s successor, District Attorney Seth Williams.

In a lengthy investigation that preceded a groundbreaking 2005 grand jury report on the church, D.A. Abraham got a judge to approve a series of subpoenas that pried open the archdiocese’s secret archive files. The files, kept under lock and key in a safe, contained some 45,000 pages of documents detailing what the grand jury described as “countless acts of sexual depravity” committed by 169 priests over four decades against hundreds of children.

But on March 12, ruling in the civil case of former altar boy “Billy Doe,” Common Pleas Court Judge Jacqueline F. Allen approved the serving of a subpoena on the D.A.’s office, over the objections of the former altar boy’s lawyers.

Court records don’t say what the archdiocese’s lawyers are seeking. But since the archdiocese has recently deposed two detectives from the D.A.’s office, it would be logical to assume that the archdiocese wants to see the D.A.’s confidential files from his flawed investigation of Billy Doe.

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MISSISSIPPI
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests

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

A Catholic priest who worked in Mississippi is the subject of a recently-filed child sex abuse and cover up lawsuit in Texas. We call on Mississippi’s two bishops to aggressively reach out to others who may have been hurt by the child molesting cleric.

[Dallas Observer]

Mississippi’s two bishops face a choice. They can break with the long-standing, selfish and destructive practices of the Catholic hierarchy, and aggressively seek out others who were hurt by these this predators. Or they can do what they and their brother bishops have done for decades, and essentially be passive.

We urge them to act like compassionate shepherds, not a cold-hearted CEOs. We urge them to personally visit every church or school where these two convicted child molesters worked or lived. We urge them to beg any victims, witnesses, and whistleblowers to step forward, call police, expose wrongdoers, and deter wrongdoing. We urge them to print prominent and clear appeals in every parish bulletin and on their diocesan websites, prodding others who have been victimized to step forward. This is an inexpensive and non-controversial way to help those who were violated as kids but are still in pain as adults.

This isn’t rocket science. It’s common sense. It’s what any responsible religious figure would do.

Over the past two decades, we in SNAP have seen, over and over again, that when public figures plead with victims to speak up, it can have a positive impact. These bishops aren’t shy. They speak up often. Why won’t they beg deeply wounded and still suffering child sex abuse victims to do the same?

In diocesan fundraising appeals, bishops put on the full court press. In clergy sex cases, however, they usually sit on the sidelines, even when guilt is clear and when his voice could help.

Have they forgotten what Pope Francis has promised: that Catholic officials will “do everything possible” to help those who were assaulted as kids by clerics?

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VATICAN CITY
Crux

By Inés San Martín
Vatican correspondent April 13, 2015

ROME — Members of a Vatican commission for the prevention of sex abuse who met in Rome on Sunday with Boston Cardinal Sean P. O’Malley to express concern over the appointment of a bishop in Chile linked to an abuser priest said they’re satisfied with the result.

“The meeting went well,” Marie Collins, a commission member and the coordinator of the hastily arranged meeting, told Crux. “We’re happy with Cardinal Sean’s response.”

Collins, who was raped by a hospital chaplain in Dublin when she was 13, is one of two survivors of clerical abuse to sit on the panel.

Members said that O’Malley, president of the panel, heard their concerns and vowed to relay them to Pope Francis, who named the bishop in Chile last October.

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CIUDAD DEL VATICANO
El Nuevo Herald

POR NICOLE WINFIELD ASSOCIATED PRESS
04/12/2015

CIUDAD DEL VATICANO
Cuatro miembros de la comisión que asesora al papa Francisco sobre abusos sexuales viajaron a Roma el domingo para expresar en persona sus preocupaciones ante la designación que hizo el pontífice de un obispo chileno acusado de encubrir al pederasta más conocido del país.

Los cuatro se reunieron con el encargado papal para abusos sexuales, el cardinal Sean O’Malley, de Boston, quien accedió a transmitir sus preocupaciones a Francisco por el nombramiento de Juan Barros como Obispo de Osorno, en el sur de Chile, dijeron los miembros de la comisión en un comunicado.

Algunas víctimas del abusador sexual más conocido en Chile, el reverendo Fernando Karadima, dicen que Barros estaba al tanto de los abusos e incluso presenció algunos de ellos varias décadas atrás cuando era protegido del carismático sacerdote, quien fue sancionado por el Vaticano en 2011 por abusar sexualmente de menores.

Marie Collins, miembro de la comisión, dijo que si Barros no comprendió entonces que la conducta de Karadima era inaceptable, “entonces no comprende la pederastia”.

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CHILE
CNN

[con video]

La víctima de Karadima dijo que “Tenemos un nuncio que es un dictador en Chile y un cardenal de la misma forma”.

Cuatro miembros de la comisión vaticana sobre abusos expresarán al Papa Francisco su preocupación por la designación de Juan Barros como obispo de Osorno, quien fue acusado de encubrir los abusos realizados por Fernando Karadima.

Para conocer más en detalle, en CNN Chile tomamos contacto desde Philadelphia con Juan Carlos Cruz, denunciante del caso de El Bosque, quien comenzó una campaña internacional en las redes sociales para pedir la destitución de Barros.

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CANADA
The Vancouver Sun

The Canadian Press

VANCOUVER — Two First Nations in B.C. are looking to take the federal government to court on behalf of all the former day students of the country’s notorious residential school system.

The Tk’emlups te Secwepemc and Shishalh bands are asking permission from the federal court to launch a class-action suit representing aboriginal children who attended residential schools but returned to their families at night.

In 2008, the Canadian government formally apologized for the residential school system, but it did not provide compensation to the day students who attended the schools alongside residential students.

The lawsuit alleges day students suffered the same loss of cultural connection and language as their residential counterparts, who did receive compensation.

It argues that the program was an intentional element of Canada’s education policy and resulted in serious and life-long harm to survivors.

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NORTHERN IRELAND
Belfast Telegraph

BY RUTH DUDLEY EDWARDS – 13 APRIL 2015

Uncovering child abuse is as difficult as it is important. Damaged children need to be heard and the perpetrators dealt with, yet the police and the justice system have to be wary of witch-hunts.

Kincora-related allegations are flying all over the place. Here are a sample.

That children were abused is the firm ground which few challenge. In the 1980s, along with two of his staff, Kincora’s head, William McGrath, an extreme loyalist, was jailed for sexual assault.

But it’s been claimed for years that the three were members of a paedophile ring protected by MI5 because it wanted information about other loyalist perpetrators.

Others claim the ring went wider and included some respectable but secretly homosexual unionist MPs who visited Kincora to assault children.

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VATICAN CITY
Reuters

VATICAN CITY | BY PHILIP PULLELLA

(Reuters) – Members of a commission advising Pope Francis on how to rid the Catholic Church of sexual abuse have met a top Vatican official to express their misgivings over the appointment of a bishop in Chile accused of covering up abuse.

Marie Collins, a victim of abuse from Ireland, told Reuters the meeting four members had with Cardinal Sean O’Malley on Sunday night “went well and the cardinal promised to take our concerns to the Holy Father”.

Last month, the Vatican defended the appointment of Juan Barros as bishop of the Chilean city of Osorno, which had outraged some parishioners, national legislators and abuse victims who said Barros had protected one of the nation’s most notorious paedophiles.

The four lay commission members who flew to Rome to meet O’Malley said in a statement it was of “paramount importance” that the Vatican appoint bishops who understand child protection.

“In the light of the fact that sexual abuse is so common, the ability of a bishop to enact effective policies, and to carefully monitor compliance is essential,” it said.

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NORTHERN IRELAND
Belfast Telegraph

BY NAOMI LONG – 13 APRIL 2015

I would urge everyone who hasn’t already watched it to see last week’s harrowing revelations by former Kincora resident Richard Kerr about his traumatic experiences in the 1970s.

He claims he was hand-picked, alongside two other boys, and trafficked to London, where he was molested by powerful people at the centre of an alleged VIP paedophile ring. The dark shadow of accusation falls on Westminster itself, with the influential people believed to be figures there.

Richard’s brave decision to tell his story, linking the abuse at Kincora with similar at Elm Guest House and the Dolphin Square luxury flats for the first time, has further increased the arguments to investigate as part of the UK inquiry the abuse which took place at the east Belfast boys’ home.

While the Northern Ireland institutional abuse inquiry is the designated method to investigate what took place at Kincora, its chair, Sir Anthony Hart, does not have the same powers as the wider Home Office probe.

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UNITED STATES
Mercury News

By Amy Dickinson
Tribune Content Agency
POSTED: 04/13/2015

DEAR AMY: I am 15, and there is a man at my church who makes me feel harassed. At a concert, he started to give me a shoulder massage. My dad was there and saw it, but he didn’t do anything. This man is 30 years my senior and just went through a divorce.

Lately he’s making any excuse to give me a hug or touch me.

He is a doctor and is respected. I’m almost afraid to tell my dad because he wouldn’t believe me.

How can I either avoid this man or confront him?

Troubled Teen

DEAR TROUBLED: You’re smart to pay attention to your gut. Do not be in the same room with this man if he makes you uncomfortable.

That means if he comes into a room, you leave it. Always have a pal with you, or make sure you’re part of a big group. If he attempts to touch or hug you, no matter where you are, tell him, “I don’t like that.” Be very, very clear.

Tell your dad about this. He needs to be educated about sexual harassment, and he needs to know how you feel.

Everyone might tell you that this is nothing to worry about. However, I would stress that you should pay attention to your instincts — over anyone else’s, including your dad’s. (March 2007)

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AUSTRALIA
WA Today

April 12, 2015

Kate Nancarrow

The shocking evidence at the Royal Commission into Institutional Child Sexual Abuse has made some parents hyper-vigilant about protecting their children. But what right do parents have to complain about people who have done nothing?

Every week in the Australian media – sadly, sometimes more frequently – there is a report of alleged sexual abuse of children in Victorian schools, with some cases dating back 20, 30, 40 or even 50 years.

Some allegations and charges, however, relate to more recent events – from a time when everyone who works or helps in schools has a Working With Children clearance.

Parents who might once have been ignorant about the prevalence and planned predatory behaviour of abusers can no longer be as naive as their parents or grandparents were.

But what the submissions to the Royal Commission into Institutional Child Sexual Abuse have made clear, as have all the court cases of teachers, school workers and clerics, is that up until the point when child sex abusers are charged – often decades after their offending began – most have no criminal record and nothing that would necessarily trigger an alert in a Working With Children check.

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MINNESOTA
Duluth News Tribune

By Damien Cronin on Apr 12, 2015

As a member of the Catholic Church that I love and as a victim of clerical physical and sexual abuse, I am appalled, embarrassed, but mostly profoundly saddened by the ways priests, bishops, cardinals and even popes deliberately and knowingly have mishandled clerical sexual abuse issues. Instead of being transparent, honest and law-abiding, they consistently have chosen to cover up these crimes, usually only releasing somewhat accurate information and evidence and only when they are dragged into court or forced to do so by laws that bound the rest of us.

I don’t believe the bishops, the cardinals and especially the entrenched bureaucracy in the Vatican and Catholic Church worldwide get it yet. For more than 50 years they have been aware of the accusations and the wrenching stories from thousands of victims.
How could they not get it?

Pope Francis gets it. He has many times publicly talked about the enormity of and prevalence of clerical abuse and the fallout for victims and the reputation of the Catholic Church. But he needs real, visible and active support from all priests, bishops and cardinals worldwide. Where is this leadership and support? If one needs a prime example of groupthink, look no further than today’s Catholic Church. The Church has circled the wagons and done very little else.

Enough. Over 1 billion Catholics can deal with the truth better than the hierarchy apparently can. Tell us the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth regarding the whole sordid story of sexual abuse by priests and the equally sordid story of the Church’s organized cover-up of these crimes. We all need to clearly hear the what, the who, the where, and the when of incidents and complaints made against priests and how the bishops dealt with these complaints.

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UNITED KINGDOM
Telegraph

By Hazel Southam and John Bingham 13 Apr 2015

Churches are still viewed as a “soft touch” by paedophiles hunting for new victims despite tightening up child protection measures after a flood of abuse scandals, one of Britain’s leading experts on the issue has warned.

Justin Humphreys, Head of Safeguarding at the Churches’ Child Protection Advisory Service (CCPAS), an independent body set up to combat clerical abuse, said convicted paedophiles often seek out places of worship on their release because of members’ belief in forgiveness.

Although churches now routinely carry out criminal records checks for volunteer positions such as Sunday School teachers, he said they are “undoubtedly” still missing out on large numbers of people who pose a threat to children but have never previously been caught.

Churches of all denominations are still guilty of “naivety” on the issue of sexual abuse despite the revelations, he added.

A recent random survey by the CPAS found no examples of churches carrying out the level of full scrutiny in application processes that it recommends.

* Church warned over rights of suspected paedophile priests
* Ex-Archbishop quits over Church of England child sex abuse revelations
* Justin Welby: I broke down in tears at horror of Church child abuse
* Failing to report child abuse should be a crime, says Keir Starmer

The Roman Catholic Church around the world in particular has been rocked by waves of child abuse scandals, including in Britain, leading to the introduction of new rules to protect children.

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VATICAN CITY
National Catholic Reporter

Joshua J. McElwee | Apr. 13, 2015

ROME Members of the Vatican commission on clergy sexual abuse say an unscheduled meeting in Rome Sunday with Cardinal Sean O’Malley made them feel heard in their concerns about the appointment of a Chilean bishop accused of covering up abuse.

O’Malley, the commission members said, promised to pass on those concerns about Bishop Juan Barros Madrid to Pope Francis in coming days.

“The meeting went very well and the cardinal is going to take our concerns to the Holy Father,” Marie Collins, a member of the Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors, told NCR early Monday morning.

“It was a very, very successful meeting, really, from our point of view,” she said.

Collins was one of four members of the Vatican commission that came to Rome Sunday for the visit, held at the Sanctae Martae hotel where Francis lives.

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UNITED STATES
Christian Catholicism

Jerry Slevin

Pope Francis in his 79th year complains understandably about fatigue. It is difficult to understand, however, how and why he prioritizes his use of his limited energy the way he does. The biggest crisis the pope faces is curtailing promptly and transparently his subordinate bishops’ mismanagement of child abusing priests. If Catholic Church religious leaders cannot be trusted with children’s safety, the leaders cannot be trusted with anything else — it is that simple. Yet today, 4/12/15, Francis focused on a 100 year old World War I event involving Turkish Muslims and apparently avoided meeting with his own advisers on priest child abusers. The advisers had traveled to Rome after weeks seemingly of unheeded public complaints to the pope. The pope found time to meet with US evangelical fundamentalists before the recent US Congressional elections, but seems too busy to meet with advisers he picked. What is really going on here?

Four members of Pope Francis’ sex abuse advisory commission traveled to Rome to voice their concerns in person about Francis’ appointment of a Chilean bishop accused of covering up for the country’s most notorious molester. The four met not with Francis, but with Cardinal Sean O’Malley of Boston, who at least agreed to relay their concerns to the pope about the appointment of Juan Barros as bishop of Osorno in southern Chile, according to the commission members statement as reported. Of course, by now the pope had already been fully briefed on their concerns. If he fails to respond, let us hope the commission members, all 17 of them, continue to press the pope to match his actions to his rhetoric.

Barros, the former chaplain of Chile’s armed forces, has faced unprecedented popular and ecclesial opposition ever since he was named by Pope Francis in January. More than 1,300 church members in Osorno, some 30 diocesan priests and 51 of Chile’s 120 members of Parliament sent letters to Francis urging him to rescind the appointment. Barros has denied wrongdoing. A junior Vatican official had defended the appointment in a 19-word statement March 31 that avoided the real issues. Pope Francis has evidently carefully avoided the subject, even though he reportedly was involved in Barros’ appointment and likely knows him. Please see the superb and relevant analysis, “Vatican Defends the Chilean Appointment” here, BishopAccountability.org .

Yet its unclear how effectively Barros can lead going forward. Already, as AP has reported, a recent meeting between Barros and angry parishioners fell apart when Barros showed up with two body guards and police dogs, security measures taken after his installation ceremony was marred by unprecedented and violent protests inside the cathedral. The hounds of heaven seem less effective on earth!

So, as members of the pope’s own abuse commission were arriving at the Vatican to try to meet with Pope Francis to protest his appointment of Bishop Barros in Chile, Pope Francis seemingly managed to divert media attention to a 100 year old event. The pope instead sparked a diplomatic row today by calling a World War I Ottoman Turk massacre of Armenians 100 years ago “the first genocide of the 20th century,” prompting Turkey to accuse the pope of inciting hatred.

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AUSTRALIA
Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse

The Royal Commission will hold a public hearing in Rockhampton commencing on Tuesday 14 April 2015 at 10:00am AEST.

The public hearing will inquire into the experiences of a number of men and women who were resident at St Joseph’s Orphanage, Neerkol operated by the Sisters of Mercy between 1940 and 1975.

Please note that the audio on the webcast may be frequently cut to protect the identify of people who have been granted a pseudonym in this hearing.

Live streaming times
The public hearing will be streamed live via this website between 10am and 4pm (AEST).

Join us on Twitter and Facebook for regular updates.

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