ABUSE TRACKER

NEW YORK
Road to Recovery

I can just imagine what happened during the past week in the office of Cardinal Timothy Dolan. He more than likely gathered his communications and public relations team to answer the question, “How are we going to respond to the “Spotlight” movie about the clergy sexual abuse scandal in the Archdiocese of Boston? After all, it is getting rave reviews and there is growing Oscar buzz about it.”

The plan that was settled on in Cardinal Dolan’s office was a clever one. “Let’s get a good and faithful Catholic nun, Sr. Patricia Anastasio, head of the Archdiocese of New York’s Sexual Abuse Review Board and a loyal employee of the Archdiocese for a very long time, to write an article for the Daily News,” they most likely said to each other. “In fact, we will brief her on what we want in the article and have her send it to the Daily News.”

I can just imagine Cardinal Dolan and his communications experts meeting with Sr. Pat and telling her to focus on her service as an inner-city Catholic school principal, tugging on readers’ heart-strings, instead of as someone who has worked as a bureaucratic “insider” for decades for the Office of Catholic Education. She is currently the hand-picked Chair of the Archdiocesan Sexual Abuse Review Board. Sister Pat is not a psychologist, social worker, police officer, or law enforcement professional, yet she leads a panel that deliberates and offers opinions about crimes against children.

Sr. Pat’s article succeeded in parroting the words of Cardinal Dolan and all bishops who continue to do exactly what the “Spotlight” movie effectively exposes: treat sexual abuse victims as enemies, cover-up allegations of clergy sexual abuse, and attempt to discredit victims’ supporters and advocates, including plaintiffs’ attorneys. Nothing has changed; in fact, it is worse, because many Catholics, like Sr. Patricia Anastasio, and others believe the bishops when they say, “The crisis is over.” Actually, it is just beginning.

There are priests in the Archdiocese of New York who are still in ministry today after being credibly accused of sexual abuse. I work with some of their victims, demonstrate outside parishes and schools and institutions where these men (and women) are or were stationed, and assist these victims and their families to get on the road to recovery. In addition, Cardinal Dolan has refused to release the names, locations, and status of all New York Archdiocesan priests, deacons, and religious persons who have been accused of sexual abuse of children, and he continues to lead the multi-million dollar campaign to block fair and just legislation in Albany that would give victims of sexual abuse in New York State their day in court.

If Cardinal Dolan and Sr. Patricia Anastasio want to help sexual abuse victims, they can start by supporting the Child Victims’ Act which is introduced every year in the New York State legislature but successfully defeated primarily by one institution that claims to do everything in its power to protect children; namely, the Roman Catholic Church. Cardinal Dolan should be keeping his promise of transparency regarding sexual abuse of children, a promise he and his fellow bishops made in 2002 but have yet to fulfill.

The Catholic Church is not the safest place for children. It is far from it, largely because Catholic bishops continue to operate much the same as Cardinal Law did in the film, “Spotlight.” Children are no safer today in Catholic institutions than they were a hundred years ago because bishops, like Cardinal Dolan, continue to use communications and public relations experts (and heart string-tugging nuns) to try and convince Catholics and the public otherwise.

Robert M. Hoatson, Ph.D.
Co-founder and President
Road to Recovery, Inc. (assisting victims of sexual abuse and their families)
P.O. Box 279
Livingston, NJ 07039
862-368-2800

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MASSACHUSETTS
Boston Globe

By Kevin Cullen GLOBE COLUMNIST NOVEMBER 08, 2015

When the red-carpet premiere at the Coolidge Corner Theatre in Brookline was over, some of the well-heeled and high-heeled crowd headed down Beacon Street, into Kenmore Square, for a party at a swanky bar.

Joe Crowley doesn’t do bars anymore. He doesn’t do booze anymore. And after watching a movie that featured his real-life experience of being sexually abused at the age of 15 by a priest, he wasn’t in the mood for a party. So we left the theater and crossed Harvard Street to grab some pizza and just talk.

“Spotlight,” the film about the Boston Globe’s Pulitzer Prize-winning investigation of the coverup of sexual abuse by priests, is rightly drawing critical acclaim for the way it captures the tedious, unglamorous reality of what newspaper reporters do to hold the powerful accountable. It’s a very good, very realistic movie.

But for people like Joe Crowley, the movie is not about process. It’s more personal, far more visceral. They don’t call Crowley and others abused by predators wearing Roman collars survivors for nothing.

Three weeks before the premiere, Crowley and Phil Saviano, another survivor who is portrayed in the film, watched the film in an 18-seat screening room in the South End. Tom McCarthy, who directed the film, and Josh Singer, who wrote the screenplay with McCarthy, arranged the private showing.

“Tom and Josh were concerned that the initial viewing of the film would be tough going for us,” Joe Crowley said. “They were right to be concerned. There were 11 of us in that screening room, and from the very first scene, you could hear muted crying. Even the projectionist was weeping.”

So was Joe Crowley.

‘From the very first scene, you could hear muted crying. Even the projectionist was weeping.’

“When Patrick McSorley’s character came on the screen, I remembered going to Patrick’s wake in Hyde Park,” he said.

McSorley was 12 years old when a priest named John Geoghan began molesting him. Patrick had used booze and drugs and whatever else he thought might make him forget. But what happened to Patrick McSorley, what happened to Joe Crowley, is not something you forget. McSorley was just 29 when he died in 2004, two years after the Globe published Cardinal Bernard Law’s sickening, fawning letter praising Geoghan, a serial pedophile.

“I didn’t know Patrick,” Joe Crowley said, “but I had to go to his wake. I had to tell his family and his friends how sorry I was.”

When Crowley saw McSorley’s character on screen, he cried again.

“I felt so sad for Patrick,” he said. “I cried for Patrick and I cried for myself. It never should have happened. None of this should have happened.”

After the premiere was over, Crowley hugged Michael Cyril Creighton, the actor who plays him in the film. Crowley and Creighton have become good friends as a result of the movie, just as Phil Saviano is good friends with Neal Huff, the actor who portrays him.

Crowley hugged Jim Scanlan, who was instrumental in seeing his abuser, Rev. James Talbot, sent to prison. Crowley had not met Scanlan before the premiere.

“A very courageous man,” Crowley said of Scanlan, and the same could be said of Joe Crowley, who came forward to point the finger at Rev. Paul Shanley, the hip street priest who preyed on kids. Shanley raped Joe Crowley, then passed him on to other men, who plied a 15-year-old boy with booze and cigarettes and shame.

Shanley was convicted of sexual abuse on the day that Joe Crowley commemorated his ninth year of sobriety, and the courtroom erupted. But Crowley did not.

“Watching Shanley answer to criminal charges was the real beginning of my recovery,” he said.

The film is also part of that recovery. I don’t know anybody who knows as much about movies as Joe Crowley. He can tell you everything about movies and movie stars. He never thought his story would be included in a major motion picture. And his only real pleasure in all this is that it might help someone who was abused as he was.

The night after the premiere of “Spotlight,” Joe Crowley was inside a movie theater again, this one in the Fenway. He and Saviano hosted a screening for abuse survivors, their advocates, and their friends.

Crowley thought he had gotten his emotions out of his system at the first two screenings. But this was different. This was his crowd, his people. The emotion was palpable, completely different from the red carpet night. In the dark, the muffled crying grew louder as the film progressed.

“Everyone in the theater seemed as though they were reliving some horrible moment,” he said.

As the credits rolled, Joe Crowley ran up to the front of the theater with his portable oxygen tank. He looked out into a sea of faces, many of them wet with tears.

“I knew this would be a highly emotional night for everyone so I want you to know I brought extra oxygen for anyone who needs it,” he told the audience. They roared.

An elderly woman came up to him after the Q&A and asked him how she could have entrusted her son to the priest who abused him. How could she have been so blind?

“I didn’t say anything. I just held her gaze,” he said. “I was hoping my dumbfounded inability to grasp a word would somehow comfort her.”

He met survivors he never knew. He hugged and was hugged. He left the theater with 20 new telephone numbers.

Joe Crowley knows movies and he thinks this one is well-made, well-acted, well done in every way. But more importantly, it is a cinematic vindication of those like him, who suffered in silence for years, who still suffer, who live with memories that don’t fade when the screen goes dark and the lights come on.

Kevin Cullen is a Globe columnist. He can be reached at cullen@globe.com. Follow him on Twitter@GlobeCullen.

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VATICAN CITY
Asia Times

BY FRANCESCO SISCI on NOVEMBER 9, 2015

In the Middle Ages, as personified by the Borgias, the struggle for power in Rome was characterized by poisoning or mayhem behind closed doors. There were no public announcements of such bloodletting. There was only the whisper of rumors in the streets.

Times have apparently changed: Public information or the dissemination of it is now the battlefield for what may amount to an attempted coup d’état in the Vatican.

After a three-year hiatus, the the Holy See is again swamped by a series of scandalous revelations. All appear aimed at shaking papal authority in the Catholic Church, the largest unified religion in the world, to its core.

Some three years ago, a series of news disclosures, popularly called Vati-leaks, led to the resignation of Pope Benedict XVI. One of the Pope’s butlers was eventually arrested and sentenced for those leaks.

There are those in Rome who believe other, more powerful figures (who remain unknown), were involved in the story of Benedict’s resignation. The reports, letters, and internal correspondence of the Pope and his closest associates ended up in a book by journalist Gianluigi Nuzzi, Sua Santità: le carte segrete di Benedetto XVI.

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MILWAUKEE (WI)
Milwaukee Business Journal

Rich Kirchen
Senior Reporter
Milwaukee Business Journal

Nearly five years after the Archdiocese of Milwaukee filed for Chapter 11 reorganization, a U.S. Bankruptcy Court judge Monday approved a plan that distributes $21 million to 355 priest-abuse survivors and establishes a $500,000 fund to cover victims’ personal therapy sessions.

An additional 104 people who filed claims for priest abuse will receive $2,000 each out of the same $21 million settlement fund.

The reorganization plan releases all Archdiocese of Milwaukee parishes, schools and institutions from future lawsuits relating to abuse claims that were filed or could have been filed in the Chapter 11 proceeding, according to a Monday press release from the Archdiocese.

The settlement money will come from various sources, including about $11 million in insurance settlements and voluntary financial arrangements with the Catholic Cemetery Perpetual Care Trust of Milwaukee.

The Cemetery Perpetual Care Trust will lend the archdiocese $3 million; provide $5 million for past cemetery care expenses that had previously not been reimbursed by the trust; and contribute $8 million to settle all pending litigation.

The plan filed calls for paying $6.5 million in accrued professional fees in the case and capping at $1.25 million additional fees for a total of $7.75 million.

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UNITED STATES
Chicago Tribune

Michael Phillips
Chicago Tribune

Nothing in the superb new film “Spotlight” screams for attention. It’s an ordinary film in its technique, and it’s relentlessly beige. It avoids fist-pounding, crusading-reporter cliches almost entirely, the ones the movies have loved since the first close-up of the front page rolling off the presses in high-speed replicate. The story is a big one, and the movie about how a handful of Boston Globe investigative reporters got that story is thrillingly good.

Most of “Spotlight” takes place in 2001. It seems a long way off now, closer to the era of “All the President’s Men” — in some ways “Spotlight” is a better, less glossy picture — than to our own. For a cynical look at how far the press has fallen, or how low it’s willing to limbo in the name of survival, seek another movie; for gassy fulminations about the state of political and corporate pressures, try “Truth.” This one makes you believe in the mission, and the value a few journalists can bring to a society.

Director and co-writer Tom McCarthy played a weasel of a journalist in “The Wire.” Now he has made a meticulous, exacting procedural on real-life journalists who excelled at their job; had the resources to do it properly; and in early 2002, published the first in a Pulitzer Prize-winning series of grim, carefully detailed stories of pedophile priests. The most formidable institution in Boston preferred to keep the story from breaking. And they did, for decades.

“Spotlight” is no less concerned with the dynamic in any big city between the born-and-raised faction and the wary, mistrusted outsiders. There’s a moment in McCarthy’s film, co-written by Josh Singer, capturing this tension. It’s an arranged meeting called by Cardinal Law (Len Cariou), who has invited the Globe’s recently appointed editor Marty Baron (Liev Schreiber) for a visit.

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DELAWARE
WMDT

WILMINGTON, Del. –
(AP) – A state lawsuit against elders of a Jehovah’s Witnesses congregation has prompted a judge to question the constitutionality of a Delaware law mandating the reporting of suspected child abuse.

The attorney general’s office is suing elders of the Sussex County congregation for not reporting an unlawful sexual relationship between a woman and a 14-year-old boy, both of whom were congregation members.

State law requires anyone who knows or in good faith suspects that a child is being abused or neglected to call a 24-hour hotline. But the law contains exemptions for attorney-client conversations and communications “between priest and penitent in a sacramental confession.”

The Jehovah’s Witnesses’ lawyer argued Monday that they are covered by the clergy exemption, which the judge suggested seems to give special protection, as written, to Catholics.

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UNITED KINGDOM
BBC News

A former teacher at a Catholic home and school for delinquent boys in East Yorkshire has been acquitted of assault and indecent assault.

Michael Curran, 62, walked free from Leeds Crown Court earlier after a judge directed the jury to return not guilty verdicts on the two charges.

The allegations related to his time as a teacher at St Williams residential school in Market Weighton in the 1980s.

The trial continues into the case of James Carragher and Anthony McCallen.

Both plead not guilty to allegations of abuse.

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UNITED STATES
RevEverett

Spotlight is a film about the two institutions I hold most dear: newspapers and the Church, set in Boston, the city I have claimed as home.

I left the film full of rage, despondent, and convicted- if you serve any religious institution, you need to see this film.

Spotlight is the cautionary tale of an institution that is more invested in self-protection than the protection of the vulnerable.

This is non-neogotiable: If you plan to attend to the tender spiritual lives of people, you need to know and see what damage any of us or our institutions can do. Ministry is an awesome responsibility, which is part of what makes it such meaningful work. The flip-side of this power and intimacy in people’s lives and souls is the potential for enormous damage. I wish our ordination vows included the promise to “do no harm.”

There are plenty of strong reviews of the film: Vulture, Wall Street Journal, NPR, New York Times, The New Yorker, Variety, the Roman Catholic magazine America, and the definitive review by Ty Burr from the Boston Globe. Here, I’m less interested in whether this is a good film ( near unanimous reviews think it is, and I do too), and more interested in what we who lead religious institutions might learn and do.

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MILWAUKEE (WI)
CBS 58

By Christie Green

A federal bankruptcy judge in Milwaukee has approved a reorganization plan for the city’s Roman Catholic Archdiocese.

The judge on the bench became a bit emotional almost in tears saying she did the best she could for victims of clergy abuse.

The bankruptcy case is now over.

The plan calls for $21 million to be paid to clergy abuse victims.

The money will be split among 355 people. Another class of 104 victims will get about $2,000 each.

“The criminal and immoral cases never should’ve happened, and as I said because of the courageous statements they’ve made, were a better church today than we were before,” said Archbishop Listecki.

Right now, attorneys representing the victims and the Milwaukee archdiocese are working out the final language for the agreement in this bankruptcy case.

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MILWAUKEE (WI)
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

By Bruce Vielmetti of the Journal Sentinel

U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Susan V. Kelley on Monday confirmed the Archdiocese of Milwaukee reorganization plan, marking a milestone in the longest-running and most contentious of the 14 Catholic Church bankruptcies filed since 2004 to address sexual abuse liabilities going back decades.

The deal is valued at about $29 million, with $21 million going to victims, $500,000 for a therapy fund and $7.8 million to legal fees. The archdiocese’s insurers will pay $11 million and its cemetery trust $16 million. The balance will come from archdiocesan resources that are yet to be determined, said Jerry Topczewski, chief of staff for Archbishop Jerome Listecki. Parishes will contribute to the therapy fund.

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MILWAUKEE (WI)
Wisconsin Public Radio

Monday, November 9, 2015
By Chuck Quirmbach

Update: U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Susan V. Kelley approved the $21 million settlement plan Monday morning.

A federal judge may approve a tentative bankruptcy settlement Monday between the Milwaukee Catholic Archdiocese and its creditors — including hundreds of clergy abuse victims.

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MILWAUKEE (WI)
St. Louis Post-Dispatch

By GREG MOORE

MILWAUKEE (AP) — A federal bankruptcy judge in Milwaukee approved a reorganization plan for the city’s Roman Catholic archdiocese Monday that calls for $21 million to be paid to hundreds of clergy abuse victims.

The plan approved by U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Susan Kelley splits most of that money among 355 people. Another class of 104 victims will get about $2,000 each.

Several victims have said they wished the settlement amounts had been larger and that they wanted to see deeper investigation of abuse claims. Victim advocates have sharply criticized the proposed settlement for its size.

The archdiocese filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in 2011 to address its sex abuse lawsuit liabilities, and is among a dozen nationally to do so in the past decade.

Church lawyers have said all claims have been properly investigated.

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MILWAUKEE (WI)
Reuters

MILWAUKEE | BY BRENDAN O’BRIEN

A federal judge on Monday approved a bankruptcy plan for the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Milwaukee that includes a $21 million settlement for 330 victims of sexual abuse by clergy.

U.S. Bankruptcy Court Judge Susan Kelley approved the church’s Chapter 11 reorganization plan more than four years after the archdiocese filed for bankruptcy protection.

The U.S. Catholic Church has been hit with a series of sexual abuse accusations aimed mainly at clergy who targeted youths over the past two decades. The scandals have cost the U.S. church about $3 billion in settlements and driven prominent dioceses like Milwaukee’s into bankruptcy.

The archdiocese filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in 2011, citing the financial drain of settling sexual-abuse claims and acknowledging missteps by the church in dealing with pedophile priests.

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CALIFORNIA
Orange County Weekly

By Matt Coker Mon., Nov. 9 2015

A youth pastor at Grace Community Church of Saddleback Valley has been arrested for alleged sexual assaults of several females ranging from their late teens to early 20s at the Lake Forest place of worship, throughout Orange County and during church sponsored international trips to such locales as Moldova, Costa Rica and South Africa.

So far, Sean Patrick Aday, 38, of Lake Forest, has been arrested on suspicion of rape, sodomy, penetration with a foreign object and sexual assault of known victims, but investigators believes there may be others out there.

The investigation was sparked in October, when an alleged female victim contacted sheriff’s investigators to claim Aday assaulted her sexually while he worked as the youth pastor at the 40-year-old, non-denominational church at 26052 Trabuco Road, according to Lt. Jeff Hallock, the sheriff’s spokesman.

Many more accusers–some parishoners, others volunteers and none related to one another–were discovered shortly thereafter, Hallock added, and the church went on to fire Aday last month. He allegedly assaulted some females inside the church and some on other church property.

After a traffic stop Friday, Aday was arrested and booked into Orange County Jail. He posted $500,000 bond and was released from custody Saturday morning, Hallock says.

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DELAWARE
Daily Journal

THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
November 09, 2015

WILMINGTON, Delaware — A Delaware judge is set to hear arguments in a civil lawsuit by the attorney general’s claiming that elders of a Jehovah’s Witnesses congregation failed to report an unlawful sexual relationship between a woman and a 14-year-old boy, both of whom were congregation members.

State law requires any person, agency, organization or entity who knows or in good faith suspects that a child is being abused or neglected to call a 24-hour hotline. The law specifically states that the reporting requirements apply to health care workers and organizations, school employees, social workers, psychologists and law enforcement officials.

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DELAWARE
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests

For immediate release: Monday, Nov. 9, 2015

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

We hope Delaware’s attorney general succeeds in winning a conviction against Jehovah Witness officials who did not report suspected child sex crimes to secular agencies.

[Daily Journal]

[The News Journal]

We are grateful that these charges have been brought in the first place. All too often, law enforcement authorities pursue only the “low hanging fruit” in child sex cases: just the perpetrator. Far too rarely do prosecutors go after church officials who knew of or suspected the crimes but stayed silent or hid them.

Elders Joel Mulchansingh and William Perkins of the Seaford Kingdom Hall are accused of not reporting the sexual abuse by Katheryn Harris Carmean White, a fellow member of the congregation and a teacher’s aide at Seaford Middle School, when the victim’s mom told them about the crimes.

We beg church goers in every denomination: please call the independent, unbiased professionals in law enforcement when you see, suspect or suffer child sex crimes. Please do NOT call church officials when reporting abuse.

And we beg police and prosecutors: Spend more time and energy preventing child sex crimes and cover ups by charging those who conceal suspected child sex crimes.

Finally, we beg anyone associated with Seaford Middle School or the Seaford Kingdom Hall to aggressively seek out others who may have been hurt by White.

If Perkins and Mulchansignh are found guilty, we hope they get the toughest possible penalty. That’s the best way to scare other church officials into obeying the law, protecting children and reporting crimes.

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UNITED STATES
Courthouse News Service

By DAN MCCUE

(CN) – The Supreme Court on Friday said it will consider whether the Sex Offender Registration and Notification Act requires sex offenders who move to a foreign country to notify their prior home state of their change of residence.

At issue is are the cases of two men who lived on opposite sides of the Missouri River in the Kansas City Metropolitan area, were both convicted of sex crimes in unrelated cases prior to the enactment of the Sex Offender Registration and Notification Act, and later moved — again separately — to the Philippines.

Once Lester Nichols and Robert Lunsford left the country, they neither man updated their sex offender registrations in the respective jurisdictions they’d departed. But because of where they lived before leaving Kansas City, their fates were decided different, and that is what presumably triggered the pending high court review.

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MISSOURI
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests

For immediate release: Monday, Nov. 9, 2015

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

In most of the world, kids are even more vulnerable to predators than they are in the US. That’s why we hope the Supreme Court will uphold laws requiring convicted sex offenders to notify authorities when they move to a foreign country.

Two Kansas City men – Lester Nichols and Robert Lunsford – were convicted of sex crimes in unrelated cases and later moved – separately – to the Philippines. Neither of them updated their sex offender registrations. The question is: can or should they be required to do so?

[Courthouse News Service]

We think so. For the safety of kids, we hope the justices will side with the vulnerable over the guilty. Sex offender registries aren’t panaceas. We believe they are legal, fair and effective, and should be restricted with great caution.

There’s must to be said for our society’s growing zeal to reduce prison populations and the burdens on ex-criminals. Still, however, because the harm they inflict is so egregious and their chance of re-offense is so high, we believe child molesters should be imprisoned and monitored with utmost care.

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UNITED STATES
Washington Square News

Ethan Sapienza, Staff Writer
November 9, 2015

Newspapers are dying, but the journalism industry is attempting to evolve in a far more web-based world. Thus far, the growing pains have been hefty, with many print publications disappearing since the dawn of the century.

Tom McCarthy’s “Spotlight” is a vindication of journalism. It tells the courageous story of Boston Globe journalists who exposed the Catholic Church for repeatedly covering up instances of sexual abuse against children. The name comes from their unit, Spotlight, which specialized in lengthy investigations. Even in 2001, when the film takes place, the emergence of the Internet age began to eliminate the financial means for investigative units like Spotlight.

Both the investigation and film are necessary pieces in the media milieu. Without the breadth of time allotted to the steadfast Spotlight team, the proper story may have failed to been told in the film.

“Spotlight” is expertly made, taking a quiet and observational tone much like its characters, who are portrayed by an all-star cast including Mark Ruffalo, Michael Keaton, Rachel McAdams, Liev Schreiber and John Slattery. There will likely be debate about which cast member should be Best Actor or Best Supporting Actor at the Oscars, as the rounded talent works together like cogs in a machine. The emotional heights and depths as the investigation progresses are achieved through wonderful chemistry, bouncing from Ruffalo’s dogged, slump-shouldered determination to McAdams’ honest, moral care to Slattery’s comical and thoughtful commentary.

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UNITED STATES
MSN

Todd Cunningham

Tom McCarthy’s “Spotlight” made a bid to break out of a very crowded pack of independent films with Oscar hopes with a strong limited opening this weekend.

The drama, detailing the Boston Globe’s Pulitzer Prize-winning coverage of the Catholic Church molestation scandal, opened to $302,276 from five theaters for a strong $60,455 per-theater average for Open Road Films.

“Spotlight,” directed by McCarthy who co-wrote with Josh Singer, stars Mark Ruffalo, Rachel McAdams, Michael Keaton, Stanley Tucci, Liev Schreiber, and Billy Crudup.

It was one of three indie films with awards ambitions to debut over the weekend.

Fox Searchlight’s “Brookyln” also rolled out in five theaters and took in just $181,00 for a solid per-screen average of $36,200. The drama starring Saoirse Ronan as an Irish immigrant in 1950s New York opened Wednesday and has taken in $237,000 so far.

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VATICAN CITY
Vatican Information Service

Vatican City, 9 November 2015 (VIS) – The Holy Father has appointed Fr. Herve Gosselin as bishop of Angouleme (area 5,956, population 365,851, Catholics 275,000, priests 75, religious 176, permanent deacons 10), France. The bishop-elect was born in 1956 in Nantes, France, and was ordained a priest in 1994. He holds a licentiate in moral theology and has served in a number of roles, including parish vicar, chaplain in the Rennes prison for men, professor of moral theology, spiritual director and treasurer of the interdiocesan seminary of Rennes. He is currently director of the “Foyer de Charite” of Tressaint. He succeeds Bishop Claude Dagens, whose resignation from the pastoral care of the same diocese upon reaching the age limit was accepted by the Holy Father.

On Saturday 6 November the Holy Father appointed:

– Fr. Lorenzo Piretto, O.P., as archbishop of Izmir (Catholics 15,000, priests 17, religious 19), Turkey. The bishop-elect was born in Mazze, Italy in 1942, gave his religious vows in 1963, and was ordained a priest in 1966. He holds a licentiate in theology from the University of Bologna and a doctorate in philosophy from the University of Turin. He has occupied a number of academic roles at the F.I.S.T. of Turin and the University of Marmara in Istanbul. He has also served within his order as superior of the Convent of Istanbul, and as provincial vicar of Turkey, as in a number of pastoral roles including parish priest and vicar general. He is currently superior of the Convent of Izmir. He succeeds Archbishop Ruggero Franceschini, O.F.M. Cap., whose resignation from the pastoral care of the same archdiocese upon reaching the age limit was accepted by the Holy Father.

– Bishop Eugeniusz Miroslaw Popowicz as archbishop of the archieparchy of Przemysl-Warszawa of the Byzantines (Catholics 30,000, priests 47, religious 97), Poland. Msgr. Popowicz is currently auxiliary of the same archieparchy. He succeeds Archbishop Jan Martyniak whose resignation from the pastoral care of the same archieparchy upon reaching the age limit was accepted by the Holy Father.

– Rev. Fr. Damase Zinga Atangana as bishop of Kribi (area 11,000, population 150,000, Catholics 85,000, priests 44, religious 17), Cameroon. The bishop-elect was born in Nkog Bong, Cameroon in 1964 and was ordained a priest in 1992. He holds a doctorate in moral theology and a diploma in history and science of religions from the Charles de Gaulle University in Lille, France. He has served in a number of roles in the diocese of Obala, Cameroon, including rector of the minor seminary, vicar general, parish priest, and diocesan chaplain. He is currently vicar general of Obala.

– Rev. Fr. Pedro Manuel Salamanca Mantilla and Rev. Fr. Luis Manuel Ali Herrera as auxiliaries of the archdiocese of Bogota (area 4,019, population 4,580,000, Catholics 3,925,000, priests 844, permanent deacons 107, religious 2,481), Colombia.

Rev. Fr. Salamanca Mantilla was born in Bucaramanga, Colombia in 1961 and ordained a priest in 1986. He holds a licentiate in biblical theology from the Pontifical Gregorian University, Rome. He has served in a number of pastoral roles in the archdiocese of Bogota, including parish vicar, pastor, and formator in the major seminary. He is currently archdiocesan delegate for the coordination of permanent formation of the clergy, and parish priest.

Rev. Fr. Ali Herrera was born in Barranquilla, Colombia in 1967 and was ordained a priest in 1992. He holds licentiates theology and psychology from the Pontifical Gregorian University, Rome. He has served in a number of pastoral roles in the archdiocese of Bogota, including parish vicar, secretary and notary of the episcopal vicar, parish priest, university chaplain, and formator in the major seminary. He is currently parish priest and member of the Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors.

– Msgr. Ricardo Orlando Seirutti as auxiliary of the archdiocese of Cordoba (area 13,717, population 755,000, Catholics 698,179, priests 83, religious 169), Argentina. The bishop-elect was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina in 1956 and was ordained a priest in 1988. He holds a licentiate in theology from the Catholic University of Cordoba and has served as formator in the minor seminary, assessor for youth pastoral ministry, chaplain and formator of candidates to the permanent diaconate. He is currently vicar forane and parish priest.
Published by VISarchive 02 – Monday, November 09, 2015

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VATICAN CITY
Vatican Information Service

Vatican City, 8 November 2015 (VIS) – After the Angelus prayer, the Holy Father addressed some words to those present on the events of recent days in the Vatican:

“I know that many of you are concerned by the news that has circulated in recent days regarding reserved documents of the Holy See that have been stolen and published. Therefore, I would like to say to you, first and foremost, that stealing those documents is a crime. It is a deplorable and unhelpful act. I myself had asked for that study to be undertaken; my collaborators and I were very familiar with the documents and measures had been taken that had started to bear fruit, including some that were visible”.

“Therefore I wish to assure you that this sad event will certainly not divert me from the work of reform that we are carrying forward with my collaborators and with the support of all of you. Yes, with the support of all the Church, because the Church is renewed with the prayer and daily sanctity of every baptised person. Therefore, I thank you and I ask you to continue to pray for the Pope and for the Church, without letting yourselves be disturbed, but instead going ahead with trust and hope”.

He went on to speak about the Italian Day of Thanksgiving, whose theme this year is “The earth, a common good”. “I join with the bishops in hoping that all will act as responsible administrators of an inestimable common good, the earth, whose fruits have a universal destiny. I wish to express my gratitude to the world of agriculture, and encourage the cultivation of the earth in such a way as to conserve its fertility so that it produces food for all, today and for future generations”.

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UNITED STATES
Pax Culturati

by Kate O’Hare

The other night, I went to a screening of the new movie “Spotlight,” which details the investigation by the Boston Globe’s Spotlight team into the priest sex-abuse scandal and cover-up in Boston, first published in January 2002.

Aside from a couple of pointed efforts to deflect the conversation away from whatever role homosexuality played in this – not surprising, considering our current political climate – the film, which opens in selected theaters on Friday, Nov. 6, was clear-eyed, not sensationalistic, and balanced. It not only hammered the Church (and rightfully so) for its role in the scandals but also the Globe and other city institutions that downplayed the reality of the situation or turned a blind eye.

If you’re of a weak constitution, or just want to think somebody was out to get an otherwise innocent Church, this isn’t the movie for you. Our priests and bishops not only did wrong, some of them did evil. Too many have escaped the legal penalties for what they did, but be assured, their real Boss missed nothing that was done, and there will be a reckoning for each and every one, whether they wore clerical blacks or a red cap.

As a Catholic revert who only came back to the full-time practice of the Faith after the scandals, my understanding that this is a general sin of mankind, not a particular sin of Catholics, was a great help.

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AUSTRALIA
Brisbane Times

November 10, 2015 – 12:00AM

Jorge Branco
Journalist

A former deputy Premier will again take the stand on Tuesday to explain why he gave a positive reference to a man he knew to have sexually assaulted minors in his care.

child abuse, royal commission, Brisbane Grammar, Peter Holliwngworth, St Paul’s, abuse Brisbane

Convicted paedophile Gregory Robert Knight was accused of rubbing and touching Year 7 and 8 students’ bodies, including their penises, on two separate school camps for a school in South Australia three years before he came to teach in Queensland, where he abused boys at St Paul’s School.

The SA government investigated and found Knight guilty of several counts of improper and disgraceful conduct stemming from the two camps. SA Police also investigated but decided they didn’t have enough evidence to lay charges.

Following this investigation then South Australian Education Minister Dr Donald Hopgood, who later became deputy premier of the state, wrote Knight a positive reference for the time they spent together in the Noarlunga City Concert Band
.
In his opening address to the child sex abuse royal commission last week, Counsel Assisting David Lloyd told the commission Dr Hopgood knew about the investigation findings and wrote the reference on parliamentary letterhead, although not ministerial letterhead.

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VATICAN CITY
The Express Tribune

AFP

VATICAN CITY: Pope Francis pledged on Sunday to forge ahead with reforms within the Church, while decrying “deplorable” leaks over uncontrolled spending by the Vatican.

The pope was speaking for the first time since the arrest last weekend of an Italian PR expert and a Spanish priest on suspicion of stealing and leaking classified documents to the media revealing the pope’s frustration with his aides over financial mismanagement.

“I want to assure you that this sad fact will not prevent me from the reforms which will proceed with my collaborators and the backing of you all,” he said after Angelus prayers, in reference to the leaks.

Francis has sought to lead a drive for reforms within the secretive Vatican to clamp down on unbridled spending.

“I know that many of you are perturbed by the recent news on the secret documents of the Holy See which were taken and published,” he said.

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MILWAUKEE (WI)
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests

Nearly five year old bankruptcy may end at Monday morning hearing for 575 survivors who filed cases

Deaf survivors say “major issues and concerns about justice, criminal fraud and financial mismanagement remain uninvestigated and unresolved”

WHO/WHAT: Victim/survivors of childhood rape, sexual assault and abuse by priests of the Milwaukee Archdiocese who will be attending a final confirmation hearing for the nearly five year old Milwaukee archdiocese bankruptcy.

Among them will be deaf survivors of Fr. Lawrence Murphy from St. John’s School for the Deaf, who have requested a meeting Monday to be arranged by Archbishop Jerome Listecki and Pope Francis. Deaf survivors will attempt to hand deliver the request in a letter sent to the Vatican to Archbishop Listecki at or outside the Milwaukee Federal Courthouse. Listecki is scheduled to testify in the morning. Survivors will be conducting a press conference on the steps of the Federal Courthouse after the hearing or at noon, whichever comes first.

WHEN: Monday, November 9; hearing is scheduled to start at 9:00 a.m. Survivors will hold a press conference when the hearing ends or at noon, whichever comes first.

WHERE: Courtroom of Federal Bankruptcy Judge Susan V Kelley, 517 E. Wisconsin Ave., Milwaukee.

WHY: Leaders of some 200 deaf victims of childhood sexual assault from Milwaukee’s St. John’s School for the Deaf, a case which came to symbolize the global sexual abuse cover up crisis in the church, are asking for a meeting with Pope Francis and they want Milwaukee Archbishop Jerome Listecki to join them.

The survivors will attempt to hand deliver the request Monday morning at the Milwaukee Federal Courthouse where Listecki is expected to testify at a hearing that should effectively end a nearly five year old church bankruptcy.

“This five year bankruptcy,” write the deaf victims to Pope Francis, “has been a wounding and revictimizing experience. And the most important issues about the church cover up of sex crimes in Milwaukee remain unanswered and unresolved, especially the pattern of financial fraud and mismanagement by church officials.

Financial scandals continue to plague the church, the survivors note, as evidenced with the new eruption of the Vatileaks scandal: “As documents in the Milwaukee Archdiocese bankruptcy show, financial fraud, deceit and cover-ups are often directly related to the cover up of other, more heinous misdeeds, such as the systematic and widespread abuse of children, including hundreds of our deaf brothers and sisters.”

“These courageous deaf survivors” according to Peter Isely, the Milwaukee based Midwest Director of SNAP (The Survivors Network of those Abuses by Priests), “speak for all of us 575 victims that filed into the bankruptcy, which Archbishop Listecki promised would bring ‘healing and resolution.’ Very little has been healed and virtually nothing has been resolved.”

Among the issues the deaf survivors want to discuss with Pope Francis, several relate to financial fraud or mismanagement of church money, including transferring nearly $60 million dollars into what court documents show is a fraudulently constituted Cemetery Trust created by former Archbishop Timothy Dolan before the archdiocese filed for bankruptcy.

They also want Pope Francis to look into how “twice as much money in the bankruptcy settlement will be going to church and other lawyers (the most lavish legal profits of any church bankruptcy in US history) than to all 575 victims combined. Clearly, this shows a serious mismanagement and diversion of church resources. It is hard for us not to believe that you intended those resources to go to help heal victims not enrich lawyers. How does this possibly promote the church’s mission of spreading the Gospel and healing the wounded?”

Other concerns in the letter relate, the St. John survivors say, to public safety: “There are 575 victim reports detailing over 8,000 instances of criminal sexual assault by over 150 Milwaukee clergy and others. These reports have not been reviewed by US law enforcement or even by Vatican officials.” The letter urges Francis to obtain from Listecki the 575 victim reports in preparation for the meeting.

The letter to Francis concludes: “We are willing to go to Rome with Archbishop Listecki to sit down with you. This is something that could quite easily be arranged by giving your consent. This meeting will give Archbishop Listecki an opportunity as well, to explain how this bankruptcy has not furthered damaged the public view of the church and has resulted in truth, justice and the advancement of the common good.”

CONTACT: Peter Isely, SNAP Midwest Director (Milwaukee) 414.429.7259 peterisley@yahoo.com or Monica Barrett, 414.704.6074, mlbarrett@gmail.com

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AUSTRALIA
Brisbane Times

November 9, 2015

Jorge Branco
Journalist

A mother has emotionally recalled how a former St Paul’s School headmaster accused her, her son, and an alleged abuse victim of lying when they tried to raise complaints about a paedophile teacher.

The mother of two former students told the child abuse royal commission she organised a meeting with Gilbert Case within a week of hearing complaints her son’s friend was regularly “touched up” by music teacher Gregory Robert Knight under the guise of checking pockets for cigarettes.

The 70-year-old, known only as BRW, said the meeting was in the early part of 1984 but she was so affected by the conversation that her memory was still perfect.

“I’m still stinging from it, because I couldn’t do anything,” she said.

“It hurt. It hurt not to be listened to and it hurt to be standing there like a schoolkid.”

BRW said a Bishop Wicks and another school representative were also at the meeting. At the end of the meeting she said she asked the Bishop what he was going to do,

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NEW YORK
New York Daily News

BY MARCI HAMILTON NEW YORK DAILY NEWS Monday, November 9, 2015

The movie “Spotlight” is being welcomed with Oscar buzz. For those of us laboring in the vineyard of child protection, this is music to our ears, because this story — about the Boston Globe journalists who revealed the Catholic bishops’ callous cover-up of prolific pedophile priests — will likely do more to educate the public about child sex abuse than the Boston Globe news stories it is about, or the other child sex abuse scandals in the news, from Penn State and Syracuse to Horace Mann School, Woody Allen and Josh Duggar.

The greatest barrier to child protection is ignorance. The movie shows smart, experienced journalists struggling to comprehend what was right in front of them. “Spotlight” will likely educate millions about the ways in which adults and institutions we trust protect adults and put children at risk every day.

Despite news coverage of one scandal after another, most adults still trust their instincts regarding who is an abuser and who is not. That is dangerous. Until parents, teachers, clergy and all other adults understand the cunning moves of pedophiles and the ease with which we as adults let abusers persist, kids are at serious risk.

“Spotlight” should carry special significance in New York, where, unlike in Boston, so little of the truth about the bishops’ cover-up has surfaced. That is because New York shares the ignominious distinction with Alabama, Michigan and Mississippi of having the worst civil statutes of limitations for child sex abuse in the United States.

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AUSTRALIA
Brisbane Times

The former head of an elite Brisbane school told a student who had been abused by a paedophile music teacher to “never lie like that” when the boy spoke of his ordeal, an inquiry has heard.

The Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse is sitting in Brisbane, and is examining the experiences of former students and staff responses at two prestigious Brisbane schools.

A former student of St Paul’s School alleged one-time headmaster Gilbert Case told him to stop lying when the child revealed he’d been sexually abused by Gregory Robert Knight, telling the boy he owed the music tutor “a great debt of gratitude”.

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AUSTRALIA
The Guardian

Australian Associated Press
Sunday 8 November 2015

The former Anglican archbishop of Brisbane, Phillip Aspinall, allegedly told a paedophile music tutor’s victim to turn away from his “sinful path” of pursuing legal action against the church.

The royal commission into institutional responses to child sexual abuse continued hearings on Monday into the experiences of former students and staff responses at two prestigious Brisbane schools.

A former student of St Paul’s school told the inquiry he had been abused by convicted pedophile Gregory Robert Knight after starting at the school in 1981. Knight groomed him for abuse, eventually drugging and raping him, he said.

The victim said a maths teacher even taunted him about his relationship with the tutor, calling him Knight’s “doormat” among other homophobic slurs.

He claimed this teacher also made him sit on the classroom doormat and encouraged students to pretend to wipe dog faeces on him.

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MILWAUKEE (WI)
Wisconsin Public Radio

Monday, November 9, 2015
By Chuck Quirmbach

A federal judge may approve a tentative bankruptcy settlement Monday between the Milwaukee Catholic Archdiocese and its creditors — including hundreds of clergy abuse victims.

The archdiocese announced the tentative $21 million settlement this August, after having reached the agreement with a committee of creditors through the help of a private mediator earlier in the summer.

Peter Isely of the Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests said he worries important parts of the bankruptcy case may never be fully explored. He said questions remain about the amount of money being paid to the church’s lawyers and about former Milwaukee Archbishop Timothy Dolan moving tens of millions of dollars into a cemetery trust fund.

“It is not going to restore or result in a kind of trust or restoration of the church’s credibility concerning this issue,” said Dolan.

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IRELAND
Irish Examiner

Monday, November 09, 2015

By Conall Ó Fátharta
Irish Examiner Reporter

Religious order reported to the State that 353 babies died in Bessborough, but its own register showed 80 fewer deaths. A report found a system of ‘human trafficking’ in which ‘women and babies were considered little more than a commodity for trade’. Conall Ó Fatharta reports

THE revelation that the order which operated the Bessborough Mother and Baby home was reporting higher numbers of infant deaths to the State than it recorded in its own death register raises some serious questions.

So far, the Sisters of the Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary have declined to offer any answers. The order says it will only deal with the Commission of Investigation into Mother and Baby Homes. It can only be hoped that Judge Yvonne Murphy can get some answers. It is imperative she does.

One question is straightforward: Why was the order informing the State of higher numbers of infant deaths in Bessborough than it was recording in it’s own death register?

The figures are worth repeating. An inspection report from Department of Local Government and Public Health (DLGPH) by inspector Alice Litster in late 1944 revealed that between March 31, 1938, and December 5, 1944, a total of 353 infants died in Bessborough (out of 610 births).

Ms Litster stated that the figures for 1939 to 1941 “were furnished by the superioress”, while those for 1943 and 1944 had been “checked and verified and their accuracy can be vouched for”.

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AUSTRALIA
Courier-Mail

MATTHEW KILLORAN THE COURIER-MAIL NOVEMBER 09, 2015

THE FORMER South Australian Education Minister who gave a glowing reference to a music teacher accused of inappropriately touching and rubbing 13-year-old boys says they were friendly but not “mates”.

The Royal Commission into Institutional Responses into Child Sexual Abuse has been sitting in Brisbane and today focused on paedophile music teacher Gregory Robert Knight.

The Commission has been told former Minister Dr Donald Hopgood was in the same band as Knight.

Knight resigned from a South Australian school in 1978 following allegations of inappropriate behaviour towards students and, by 1981, was a music teacher at St Paul’s in Bald Hills, Brisbane, where he continued to abuse students.

It has heard Dr Hopood rescinded Knight’s dismissal from the South Australian school to allow him to resign after the investigation into allegations of inappropriate behaviour, then later wrote him a reference.

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AUSTRALIA
7 News

By Alexandra Patrikios
November 9, 2015

A victim of a convicted pedophile at an elite Brisbane school says it’s outrageous a lawyer for Peter Hollingworth asked him to delete references to the former governor-general from his statement to the sex abuse royal commission.

The former student of St Paul’s School told the royal commission he’d been abused by music tutor Gregory Robert Knight after starting at the school in 1981.

He said Knight groomed him for abuse, eventually drugging and raping him, but then-headmaster Gilbert Case told him to “never lie like that” when he revealed his treatment.

But he also said Mr Hollingworth, who was then Archbishop of Brisbane, showed no empathy and had made comments “instrumental” to his mental decline which tipped him into a severe depression.

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AUSTRALIA
Brisbane Times

[with video]

Jorge Branco
Journalist

A barrister acting for former Governor-General Peter Hollingworth asked a child sex abuse victim to change his testimony to remove all references to her client, a royal commission has heard.

On Monday morning, a former St Paul’s School student, known only as BSG, told the child sex abuse royal commission Caroline Kirton QC approached his solicitor on the first day of hearings last week and asked him to make “significant” changes to his statement.

That would amount to having removed every reference to the name Hollingworth from my statement and she requested that I do that and submit that as my amended statement,” he said.

“I just think that’s terrible. That’s just outrageous, that someone of her calibre representing someone of his calibre, Hollingworth, would request me to change what I was saying or what I wanted to say to the commission in favour of them, that would remove his name entirely from my story.

“And I think that’s disgusting.”

Ms Kirton didn’t deny BSG’s claims when she briefly questioned him, nor did she comment when asked outside Brisbane Magistrates Court why the request was made.

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GUAM
Jungle Watch

If you or someone you know was the victim of sexual abuse during these periods and at these locations, you no longer have to remain silent. In addition to the Vatican office of the Promoter of Justice (linked in the sidebar) we are in touch with SNAP and attorneys willing to assist you confidentially.

You can contact me directly at timrohr.guam@gmail.com or you can have a third party get in touch with me and I will put you in touch with our legal people. Our inquiry is not limited to these dates and locations, but they are our primary areas of inquiry. If you have other information it is welcome.

1974-1975: Father Duenas Minor Seminary
1975-1976: Our Lady of Mt. Carmel Parish, Saipan
1976-1978: Our Lady of Mt. Carmel Parish, Agat
1978-1984: Agana Cathedral

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AUSTRALIA
Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse

The Hon Justice Peter McClellan AM
Chair, Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse

Opening Address: 7th Biennial International Research, Theory & Practice Conference

The Royal Commission first sat in public in April 2013. On that occasion I emphasised that Australians of recent generations have lived through a period of rapid change across many aspects of society. Many changes can be identified. One which is important for the work of the Royal Commission is the preparedness of the community to challenge authority and the actions of those in power in areas where this would not previously have been contemplated. We have also seen significant changes in the manner in which power is distributed throughout the community. The women’s movement and the fact that many women now hold positions of responsibility in government and business are markers of many of the changes that have occurred.

These changes have brought with them a need and capacity to reflect on the functioning of institutions and the behaviour of individuals within those institutions. We have seen both Royal Commissions and Inquiries directed to that end. Some Inquiries have been conducted by Senate Committees. Inquiries have looked at diverse issues including institutional and out of home care, foster care, child migration, the various child protection systems in the States and Territories, the stolen generations, Aboriginal deaths in custody, child sexual abuse in Indigenous communities and forced adoptions.

Many Inquiries have touched upon the issues raised by the Royal Commission’s Terms of Reference. They number more than 40. Some of the inquiries will be familiar to you. They include: in NSW, the Paedophile Inquiry of the Wood Royal Commission; in Queensland, the Forde Inquiry into Abuse of Children in Queensland Institutions; in Victoria, the Victorian Parliamentary Inquiry into the Handling of Child Abuse by Religious and Other Organisations; in South Australia, the Mullighan Inquiry into Children in State Care; in Tasmania, the Select Committee on Child Protection Final Report; and in Western Australia, the Blaxell Inquiry into St Andrew’s Hostel Katanning: How the System and Society Failed Our Children. At the Commonwealth level they include the Senate Inquiry into Children in Institutional Care. That inquiry culminated in the publishing of the Forgotten Australians report in 2004, and an apology to survivors being delivered in Parliament in November 2009.

In addition, there have been a very large number of Inquiries into these issues overseas. As the Royal Commissions and Inquiries that have been held in the last 30 years make plain, the community has come to acknowledge that fundamental wrongs have been committed in the past which have caused great trauma and lasting damage to many people. Although a painful process, if a community is to move forward, it must come to understand where wrongs have occurred and so far as possible, right those wrongs. …

Some Statistics

You will be interested in some of the information we have gathered to this stage. Our most recent analysis of 2,794 private sessions tell us:

Around 62% of survivors are male, and around 37% are female.

Around 30% of survivors are aged between 50 and 59. Almost 25% are aged between 60 and 69. Around 20% are aged between 40 and 49.

The average age at abuse was just over 10 for males and just under 10 for females.

The most common decade in which abuse reported to us first occurred was the 1960s (around 28%) followed by the 1970s (23%).

The most common type of institution in which abuse occurred – at around 45% – was out of home care (this includes orphanages, children’s homes or foster care)

Around 60% of the institutions in which sexual abuse occurred were faith-based organisations, followed by 23% which were managed by government.

Most offenders were male – around 89%.

Half of the abuse involved penetration and around two thirds involved fondling.

On average, children were abused over a period of 2.8 years.

I must emphasise that these statistics are of those who have made contact with us and come to a private session. It may not be representative of all survivors.

Impacts of Child Sexual Abuse

It would not be a surprise for this audience to learn that an analysis of our private sessions data indicates that impacts on behaviour and mental health functioning are the most commonly reported impacts by survivors.

Many people who have been abused report post-traumatic stress disorder, depression, and high rates of alcohol and substance abuse.

An often unrecognised impact of child sexual abuse is the adverse impact on ‘human capital’. These are the skills, knowledge and experience that equip people to engage and participate in society. Compared to non-abused groups, victims of abuse are less likely to achieve secondary school qualifications, gain a higher school certificate, attend university and gain a university degree.[1]

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AUSTRALIA
9 News

AAP

Victims of two pedophiles at a north Brisbane school will this week have a chance to speak out publicly against their abusers and their schools.

The Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse last week heard from past students and teachers at Brisbane Grammar School about abuse at the hands of pedophile counsellor Kevin John Lynch.

Lynch, who worked at the elite school between 1973 and 1988, moved to St Paul’s School in Bald Hills in 1989, where he worked until his death in 1997.

He committed suicide a day after being charged with sexually abusing a former St Paul’s student.

His St Paul’s victims will take the stand this week.

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VATICAN CITY
Crux

By John L. Allen Jr.
Associate editor November 8, 2015

This week brought fresh embarrassments for the Vatican on the financial front, raising questions anew about whether Pope Francis’ pledge to impose transparency and accountability can succeed in an institution historically more inclined to cronyism and operating under cover of darkness.

It began with the arrest of two Vatican insiders on charges of leaking secret reports to journalists. Both are former members of a now-dissolved commission created by Francis in the summer of 2013 to get a handle on the financial situation.

Mid-week, two new books on the Vatican’s money woes appeared, to some extent based on those leaked documents.

The books are Avarizia (“Avarice”), by Italian journalist Emiliano Fittipaldi, and Via Crucis (released in English as “Merchants in the Temple”) by Gianluigi Nuzzi, another Italian journalist who was at the heart of the Vatican leaks affair under Pope Benedict XVI.

Both offer enough ugly detail to raise fears about whether reform efforts can prevail.

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WASHINGTON (DC)
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

By Peter Smith / Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

WASHINGTON — The pageantry, puffs of incense and polyphonic choral voices filled the domed sanctuary as worshipers celebrated the 175th anniversary of the Roman Catholic cathedral parish in the nation’s capital last Sunday.

And when it was over, Cardinal Donald W. Wuerl stood in his formal vestments at the back of St. Matthew’s Cathedral. With a broad smile contrasting with his slight frame, he greeted one by one worshipers who ranged from Latino and African immigrants to government workers transplanted from the American heartland to even a few visitors from the cardinal’s native Pittsburgh.

He shook hands with some, hugged others and crouched to greet small children. He obliged a few requests to bless a holy object or pose for photos.

Cardinal Donald Wuerl of Washington, formerly bishop of Pittsburgh, turns 75 on November 12. Under church law bishops have to offer their resignations at age 75, but the pope doesn’t have to accept them right away. (Video by Bob Donaldson)

The cathedral wasn’t the only one having a milestone this month.

Cardinal Wuerl — who served as bishop of the Diocese of Pittsburgh from 1988 to 2006 before moving here — marks his 75th birthday on Thursday.

As church law requires, he’ll send a letter on that date to Pope Francis, offering his resignation as archbishop of the fast-growing Archdiocese of Washington.

Don’t expect him to go quickly into retirement, however. Popes rarely accept bishops’ resignations right away, typically deliberating for months or longer on a successor. Cardinals often stay in their archdioceses for years.

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NEW JERSEY
Road to Recovery

REVISED MEDIA RELEASE – NOVEMBER 7, 2015

Leaders of the Salesian Priests and Brothers have settled previous childhood sexual abuse claims against serial pedophiles Fr. Joseph Maffei, SDB, and Br. George Sheehan, SDB, but refuse to help two victims who were sexually abused in Indiana and New Hampshire by reasonably settling their claims and allowing them to gain a degree of closure

What
A press conference and leafleting alerting the media, parishioners, and general public about the refusal of the Salesian Priests and Brothers, based in New Rochelle, New York, to help two sexual abuse victims of two members of the Salesians of Don Bosco religious order, Fr. Joseph Maffei, SDB, and Br. George Sheehan, SDB.

When
Sunday, November 8, 2015 from 9:30 am until Noon (Masses at 9:00, 10:30, and Noon).
Press conference at 11:30 am

Where
On the public sidewalk outside of Our Lady of the Valley Church, 510 Valley Street, Orange, NJ, 07050. The parish is administered by the Salesian Priests and Brothers based in New Rochelle, New York.

Who
Members of Road to Recovery, Inc., a non-profit charity based in New Jersey that assists victims of sexual abuse and their families, including its co-founder and President, Robert M. Hoatson, Ph.D.

Why
The Salesian Priests and Brothers of Don Bosco, based in New Rochelle, New York, refuse to verify the sexual abuse claims of two men who were sexually abused in two states by two Salesians and help them heal. They have told the men to “take a hike.” One of the men was sexually abused as a minor child by Fr. Joseph Maffei, SDB, at St. Dominic Savio Juniorate in Cedar Lake, Indiana. The other man was sexually abused as a minor child at Camp Don Bosco near East Barrington, New Hampshire, when he was a camper and Br. George Sheehan, SDB was a staff member and/or an administrator there.

Demonstrators will call on the Salesians of Don Bosco, who administer Our Lady of the Valley Parish in Orange, to acknowledge and verify the claims of the two victims, settle their claims, and help them heal.

In addition, demonstrators will call on Catholic parishioners of Our Lady of the Valley Parish to demand of their priests and brothers that they settle sexual abuse cases against Fr. Joseph Maffei, SDB, Br. George Sheehan, SDB, and all Salesians Priests and Brothers, and help their victims heal.

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

Leaflet:

ATTENTION PARISHIONERS OF OUR LADY OF THE VALLEY PARISH
ORANGE, NEW JERSEY

PLEASE JOIN US IN DEMANDING THAT THE SALESIAN FATHERS AND BROTHERS TREAT CHILDHOOD SEXUAL ABUSE VICTIMS FAIRLY

The leaders of the Salesian Priests and Brothers, based in New Rochelle, New York, have refused to help two victims of childhood sexual abuse heal. The two men have reported their allegations to the Salesians – one was sexually abused by Fr. Joseph Maffei, SDB, at St. Dominic Savio Juniorate in Cedar Lake, Indiana, and the other was sexually abused by Br. George Sheehan, SDB, at Camp Don Bosco, East Barrington, New Hampshire.

The leaders of the Salesian Fathers and Brothers have settled previous childhood sexual abuse claims against Fr. Joseph Maffei, SDB, and Br. George Sheehan, SDB, and allowed other victims of this priest and brother to get on with their lives. Why are they stalling and dragging their feet now?

The two men who recently reported their allegations of sexual abuse as children to the Salesian Priests and Brothers are waiting for justice. They want to heal and get on with their lives. How can you help them?

Many of you have children or grandchildren of your own. More than likely, you would do anything in your power to make sure that anyone who sexually abused your child or grandchild is held accountable. We are asking you to reach out to your Salesian priests and brothers and demand that they hold their religious order members, Fr. Joseph Maffei and Br. George Sheehan, accountable for sexually abusing minor children.

The last place we want to be today is here! But, when Catholic Church leaders tell childhood victims of sexual abuse to “take a hike” and “don’t bother us,” we are forced to take their plight to the people and ask for their help.

Please demand that the Salesians do the right thing, acknowledge and verify the claims of the two victims, settle their claims, and help them heal.

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MASSACHUSETTS
WBUR

WRITTEN BY
Ed Siegel

For many people, going to the movies is a way of stepping outside their world and into another. Sometimes it’s a fantasy world — all too prevalent in Hollywood’s adolescent mindset these days. Sometimes, as with “Steve Jobs,” it’s a hyper-realistic attempt to create a new mythology that may or may not have much to do with the truth.

The great film “Spotlight” is something else, particularly for someone who worked at the Boston Globe for 35 years. I spent two hours trying to figure out if I was in a movie theater or back on Morrissey Boulevard, home of the Globe and where some of the scenes were shot.

I should say upfront that I had absolutely nothing to do with the real Spotlight series on Boston priests preying on their charges and the archdiocese’s cover-ups. As the amazing piece of investigative journalism was getting ready to roll out, I was charting the great leap forward in Boston’s small and midsize theaters in 2001 as the paper’s theater critic.

And I thought I was working on a big local story.

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KENTUCKY
WKYT

[with video]

By: Phil Pendleton

DANVILLE, Ky. (WKYT) – A Boyle County man was charged Monday with sending inappropriate text messages and photographs to two teenage boys.

Bobby Cassady, 28, was arrested Monday evening and charged with promoting sexual performance by a minor, unlawful transaction with a minor and portraying a police officer.

Police say they were contacted by a 17-year-old Sunday night. Danville police say an investigation was launched after the 17-year-old boy told police about “suspicious activity.” That investigation led them to a 15-year-old boy.

Police say Cassady had a juvenile send him pictures over a period of several months. In a release, police said Cassady’s activity “centered around improper text messages and photographs.” Police did not provide any other details.

Cassady has worked as a volunteer with the Danville School system and was the youth director at Gethsemane Baptist Church. The pastor at Gethsemane Baptist says the allegations are troubling based on the man they hired two years ago to work with their young people.

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CALIFORNIA
Orange County Register

By ART MARROQUIN / STAFF WRITERS

LAKE FOREST – A 38-year-old youth pastor was arrested on suspicion of sexually assaulting several women ranging from their late teens to early 20s, the Orange County Sheriff’s Department said Saturday.

Sean Patrick Aday of Lake Forest was arrested on suspicion of rape, sodomy, penetration with a foreign object and sexual assault, following a traffic stop on Friday, said sheriff’s Lt. Jeff Hallock. He was booked into Orange County Jail and released Saturday morning on $500,000 bail.

Aday couldn’t be reached for comment by phone Saturday afternoon.

The probe began last month, when a woman told authorities that she was sexually assaulted by Aday while he was working as a youth pastor at Grace Community Church in Lake Forest, Hallock said. Aday was fired last month.

Shortly after the woman came forward, several other women allege that Aday had assaulted them inside the church, on church property and during church-sponsored overseas trips to Costa Rica, Moldova and South Africa, Hallock said. All the women were either parishioners or volunteers at Grace Community.

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CALIFORNIA
CBS Los Angeles

[with video]

LAKE FOREST (CBSLA.com) — A 38-year-old youth pastor at a Lake Forest church was arrested for allegedly sexually assaulting several women ranging in age from their late teens to early twenties, according to the Orange County Sheriff’s Department.

The suspect was released Saturday on a $500,000 bond.

Orange County Sheriff’s Department Special Victims Unit investigators arrested Sean Patrick Aday on Friday during a traffic stop, after several weeks of investigation. The investigation included several interviews with female victims, according to OCSD Lt. Jeff Hallock.

An alleged female victim had contacted sheriff’s investigators in October to report that she had been sexually assaulted by Aday while he was working as the youth pastor at Grace Community Church, located on Trabuco Rd.

Throughout the investigation, several additional alleged victims were contacted, each indicating that they had been assaulted by Aday over the course of the last several years.

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UNITED STATES
The Daily Beast

Jason Berry

The Pope’s disparaging remarks about an abuse scandal in Chile have survivors and Vatican watchers wondering whether Francis is really committed to cracking down on predator priests.
Peter Saunders last saw Pope Francis three weeks ago at the Vatican.

A London activist abused as a boy by two Jesuits at a Wimbledon school, Saunders, 57, was appointed in December 2014 to a papal advisory commission on protecting children.

After the commission’s October 14 meeting, Saunders met privately with Francis, as he explained to The Daily Beast in a telephone interview.

Boston Cardinal Sean O’Malley, Francis’s point man on the abuse crisis, ushered Saunders in to see the pope. Pope Francis and Saunders first met in July 2014, one-on-one, at the papal residence Casa Santa Marta. At O’Malley’s invitation, Saunders recounted his history of abuse and recovery, to which Francis listened, and apologized. Several months later, O’Malley invited Saunders to join the Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors.

As founder of a front-line activist group in the U.K, the National Association for People Abused in Childhood, Saunders, at least on paper, was a natural choice as the Vatican sought credibility for internal reform.

Saunders still goes to Mass, and still sees a therapist to deal with the long, cold reach of his past.

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CALIFORNIA
NBC Los Angeles

By Jessica Perez

A former Lake Forest youth pastor was arrested on charges of rape Friday after multiple victims accused him of sexual assault, investigators said.

Sean Patrick Aday, 38, was arrested during a traffic stop following several weeks of investigation by the Orange County Sheriff’s Department.

Last month, a female victim contacted investigators saying she had been sexually assaulted by Aday while he worked as the youth pastor at Grace Community Church in Lake Forest. During the investigation, several other victims also indicated they had been sexually abused by Aday.

According to investigators, the assaults occurred over the course of the last several years in various places in Orange County, including inside the church, on church property and during church sponsored international trips.

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CALIFORNIA
KABC

LAKE FOREST, Calif. (KABC) — A former Lake Forest youth pastor believed to be responsible for a series of sexual assaults was arrested on Friday, and Orange County sheriff’s deputies are now looking for additional victims.

Sean Patrick Aday, 38, was arrested during a traffic stop following weeks of investigation that included interviews with several female victims.

A female victim contacted sheriff’s investigators in October and reported that she had been sexually assaulted by Aday, a youth pastor at Grace Community Church.

During the investigation that followed, sheriff’s deputies were able to contact several other victims who reported they had also been sexually assaulted by Aday over the course of several years.

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CALIFORNIA
KTLA

NOVEMBER 7, 2015, BY ASHLEY SOLEY-CERRO

A former youth pastor in Lake Forest has been arrested on charges of rape after multiple victims accused him of sexually assaulting them both inside and outside the church where they worked, and investigators said Saturday they are seeking additional victims.

Sean Patrick Aday, a 38-year-old Lake Forest resident, was arrested Friday on charges of rape, sodomy, penetration with a foreign object and sexual assault, according to an Orange County Sheriff’s Department news release.

He was was released on $500,000 bond Saturday morning.

The arrest came after a female victim told investigators in October that Aday had sexually assaulted her while he worked as a youth pastor at Grace Community Church.

Several other females later indicated to investigators that they had been sexually assaulted by Aday in the past several years while he was employed there. The church terminated Aday in October because of the allegations.

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PHILADELPHIA (PA)
Big Trial

FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 6, 2015

By Ralph Cipriano
for BigTrial.net

In the civil case of Billy Doe vs. the Archdiocese of Philadelphia et al., it’s all over before it even got started.

This morning, lawyers in the case were scheduled to pick a jury in Courtroom 480 at City Hall, in preparation for going to trial at 9:30 a.m. Monday, “trial date certain,” according to the court docket.

But late last night, Billy Doe’s lawyers notified other lawyers in the case that the trial was off and the case was “being discontinued.”

The big question is why. The short answer appears to be that with no money left on the table, Billy Doe’s lawyers decided not to risk exposing their client’s complete lack of credibility by proceeding with what would have been at best, a show trial. A show trial where the only thing left to gain was some headlines about a big jury verdict that they would have never been able to collect from the three penniless defendants left in the case.

But on the risk side of the risk/reward ledger, there was a chance, depending on the judge’s rulings, that the show trial could have turned into a real trial, and Billy Doe would have been unmasked in court as a complete fraud. The next big question is what was it that Billy Doe and his lawyers were so afraid of coming out that they didn’t want to run the risk of going ahead with the trial, and putting their boy on the stand?

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PARAGUAY
Ultima Hora

[Bishops created protocol to investigate sexual abuse by priests of minors.]

La Conferencia Episcopal Paraguaya (CEP) cuenta con un protocolo para la investigación de abusos sexuales de parte de sacerdotes y la protección de los niños afectados, que fue aprobado por la Santa Sede. Así lo anunció ayer monseñor Edmundo Valenzuela, titular de la CEP y arzobispo de Asunción, durante una reunión de prensa en el último día de la asamblea de obispos que tuvo lugar en la casa de retiros Emaús de Luque.

“El documento lo estaremos difundiendo oportunamente a la sociedad en una reunión de prensa, una vez que tengamos todo impreso”, señaló el prelado.

Explicó que el protocolo “contempla muchas cosas. En primer lugar la Iglesia quiere asegurar que protege a los niños de los abusos sexuales, y por lo tanto se establece toda una comisión de investigación”, destacó.

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NEDERLAND
Volkskrant

[Abuse victims have more time for filing claim.]

Minister Van der Steur van Justitie (VVD) en staatssecretaris Van Rijn van Volksgezondheid (PvdA) maken de verlenging van de regeling vandaag bekend.

Volgens oud-kinderrechter Sonja de Pauw Gerlings van het Schadefonds Geweldsmisdrijven, dat de aanvragen beoordeelt, kost het sommige slachtoffers enorme moeite het aanvraagformulier in te vullen. ‘Dit zit soms ver weg gestopt. Wij horen van mensen dat ze voorheen redelijk functioneerden, maar sinds de rapporten van de commissies Deetman en Samson over seksueel misbruik totaal van de kaart zijn.’

Door de verlenging krijgen misbruikslachtoffers in de jeugdzorg nu evenveel tijd zich te melden als slachtoffers in de katholieke kerk: drieënhalf jaar. De regeling is voor kinderen die tussen 1945 en 2012 onder verantwoordelijkheid van de overheid in kindertehuizen en pleeggezinnen zijn geplaatst en seksueel werden misbruikt.

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UNITED STATES
The New York Times

Editorial

Now that the Supreme Court has agreed to hear the latest challenge to the Affordable Care Act’s guarantee of insurance coverage for birth control, it is worth reiterating what the conflict at the core of these cases is really about.

The plaintiff employers — including several religious schools and an order of Catholic nuns that provides services to the elderly poor — refuse to provide coverage for certain contraceptives, which they believe (contrary to scientific consensus) induce abortions. The government has already agreed that these employers are not required to provide such coverage.

The problem is, they refuse even to notify the government or their insurers of their refusal, which would mean using a simple two-page form designed especially for the purpose. They argue that signing the form would make them complicit in the eventual provision of contraception, and thus would violate their faith.

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NEW YORK
Road to Recovery

Leaders of the Salesian Priests and Brothers have settled previous childhood sexual abuse claims against serial pedophiles Fr. Joseph Maffei, SDB, and Br. George Sheehan, SDB, but refuse to help two victims who were sexually abused in Indiana and New Hampshire by reasonably settling their claims and allowing them to gain a degree of closure

What
A press conference and leafleting alerting the media, parishioners, and general public about the refusal of the Salesian Priests and Brothers, based in New Rochelle, New York, to help two sexual abuse victims of two members of the Salesians of Don Bosco religious order, Fr. Joseph Maffei, SDB, and Br. George Sheehan, SDB.

When
Saturday, November 7, 2015 – 3:30 pm until 5:30 pm (before the 4:00 and 6:00 pm Masses)
Sunday, November 8, 2015 from 8:30 am until Noon (Masses at 7:30, 9:00, 11:00 and 12:30).
Press conference at 11:30 am

Where
On the public sidewalk outside Corpus Christi Roman Catholic Church, 136 South Regent Street, Port Chester, New York 10573 – 914-939-3169. The parish is administered by the Salesian Priests and Brothers based in New Rochelle, New York.

Who
Members of Road to Recovery, Inc., a non-profit charity based in New Jersey that assists victims of sexual abuse and their families, including its co-founder and President, Robert M. Hoatson, Ph.D.

Why
The Salesian Priests and Brothers of Don Bosco, based in New Rochelle, New York, refuse to verify the sexual abuse claims of two men who were sexually abused in two states by two Salesians and help them heal. They have told the men to “take a hike.” One of the men was sexually abused as a minor child by Fr. Joseph Maffei, SDB, at St. Dominic Savio Juniorate in Cedar Lake, Indiana. The other man was sexually abused as a minor child at Camp Don Bosco near East Barrington, New Hampshire, when he was a camper and Br. George Sheehan, SDB was a staff member and/or an administrator there.

Demonstrators will call on the Salesians of Don Bosco, who administer Corpus Christi Parish in Port Chester, to acknowledge and verify the claims of the two victims, settle their claims, and help them heal.

In addition, demonstrators will call on Catholic parishioners of Corpus Christi Parish to demand of their priests and brothers that they settle sexual abuse cases against Fr. Joseph Maffei, SDB, Br. George Sheehan, SDB, and all Salesians Priests and Brothers, and help their victims heal.

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

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NORTHERN IRELAND
Belfast Telegraph

By Alan Erwin
PUBLISHED
07/11/2015

A former children’s care home resident allegedly treated with “callous indifference” has been denied compensation because it took him too long to make a claim.

At the High Court, Mr Justice Horner said Michael McKee would have been entitled to £6,500 over his stay at Nazareth Lodge in Belfast nearly 60 years ago.

But the claim was dismissed because of the excessive time he took to bring proceedings.

The 65-year-old sued the Sisters of Nazareth over the physical abuse he allegedly suffered as an eight-year-old in 1958.

Mr McKee, who spent 73 days at the home, told the court he had been attacked every day.

He alleged he had been beaten around the head and pulled to the ground, and claimed that one alleged perpetrator used a 12-inch leather strap to punish any boy who wet the bed.

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UNITED STATES
New York Daily News

BY SISTER PATRICIA ANASTASIO NEW YORK DAILY NEWS Saturday, November 7, 2015

The movie “Spotlight,” in theaters Friday, is refocusing the public’s attention on sexual abuse of minors and the failings of some Catholic Church leaders at the time to respond appropriately to this horrific crime and sin. While I have not yet seen the film, I have heard many positive things about it — even from a reviewer at Vatican Radio! — and I look forward to seeing it soon.

Catholic or otherwise, all of our eyes should be wide open to this story. It is wrenching but necessary truth to absorb.

It might at first seem odd to say, but we as a church owe a tremendous debt to the journalists — not only in Boston, but here at the Daily News, and at hundreds of other newspapers, radio stations and TV newsrooms — who exposed a serious and nauseating problem that needed to change.

The media scrutiny led to important reforms, and a vastly improved response to the evil of sexual abuse of minors, not just in the Catholic Church and other faiths, but at public elementary and secondary schools, sports leagues, the Boy Scouts and other institutions.

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UNITED STATES
United States Conference of Catholic Bishops

November 6, 2015

WASHINGTON—The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) will vote on a new introductory note and limited revisions to the 2007 version of “Forming Consciences for Faithful Citizenship,” the USCCB’s quadrennial statement on political responsibility, at the bishops’ annual Fall General Assembly in Baltimore, November 16-18. The document, which is issued about a year before each U.S. presidential election, will feature proposed new language around issues of public concern for Catholics.

The revisions are the result of a working group led by USCCB’s vice president, Cardinal Daniel N. DiNardo of Galveston-Houston. The working group consisted of the chairmen of a broad cross-section of USCCB committees whose work encompasses the issues raised in “Forming Consciences for Faithful Citizenship.” The working group sought to update language in keeping with policy developments since the 2007 version, and to include the later teachings of Benedict XVI, as well as the teachings of Pope Francis, including his recent encyclical Laudato Si’.

“We are convinced that these documents exemplify what Pope Francis has asked of us as bishops in his recent address at St. Matthew’s Cathedral in Washington: reinforcing strong unity among us, based on uncompromising commitment to the whole of Church teaching, expressed in language appropriate to our role as pastors,” said Cardinal DiNardo.

The bishops voted to move forward with a process of “limited revision” of the 2007 document, along with a new introductory note, at their 2014 Spring General Assembly in New Orleans.

More information on this month’s General Assembly is available online: www.usccb.org/news/2015/15-143.cfm

Coverage of the bishops’ meeting is open to credentialed media. Sessions open to the media Monday, November 16, and Tuesday, November 17. Media conferences will follow each open session, midday and end of day. Media seeking to cover the meeting can download the credential application: www.usccb.org/about/media-relations/upload/application-news-media-credentials.pdf

November Meeting Credentials
Office of Public Affairs
3211 4th St. NE
Washington, DC 20017-1194
—
Keywords: U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, USCCB, U.S. bishops, November meeting, Baltimore, Fall General Assembly, Forming Consciences for Faithful Citizenship, political responsibility, Cardinal Daniel N. DiNardo, vice president, voting,
Pope Francis
# # #
MEDIA CONTACT
Don Clemmer
O: 202-541-3206

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UNITED STATES
KPCC

[with video and audio]

by John Horn and Elizabeth Nonemaker | The Frame November 06

When the Boston Globe reported in 2002 on sex abuse lawsuits that were pending against five local priests, it wasn’t the first time the Catholic Church had come under such charges. But the coverage gathered steam and eventually became a national, then international, story.

Victims from around the world came forward with cases that sometimes reached back decades. They revealed not only the extent of abuse, but also the institutionalized efforts to sweep charges under the rug.

In Boston, each of the five charged priests were given prison sentences. Meanwhile, the Boston Globe reporters won the 2003 Pulitzer Prize for Public Service for their coverage.

Now their story is being told. “Spotlight,” written by Tom McCarthy and Josh Singer, explores what it was like for the Globe’s journalists to conduct one of the last great investigative reports before the age of Internet journalism.

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AUSTRALIA
ABC News

The Anglican Church has defrocked a Brisbane priest who pleaded guilty to making and possessing child exploitation material.

Andrew Peter Stabback Johns, also known as Brother William, was convicted in February of two offences, dating back to between 2010 and 2014.

Johns was charged by police with one count of making child exploitation material and one count of possessing child exploitation material.

The offences occurred between February 26, 2010 and February 28, 2014 when the defendant was aged in his 80s.

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AUSTRALIA
Brisbane Times

An elderly Brisbane priest has been deposed from his Holy Orders for possessing child exploitation material.

Andrew Peter Stabback Johns was convicted in February after more than 1000 child exploitation images that he had stored on his computer between 2010 and 2014 were found.

Johns was 88 when he was sentenced to 15 months behind bars. The sentence was wholly suspended for two years given his age.

The Anglican Diocese of Brisbane announced on Saturday that the Archbishop of Brisbane, Dr Phillip Aspinall, formally deposed Johns from Holy Orders on October 23.

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MILWAUKEE (WI)
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests

Settlement will leave major issues, including identities, case histories and locations of dozens of alleged offenders secret

Deal will likely stop any investigation into former Archbishop Timothy Dolan’s $60 million Cemetery “Fraud” Trust

WHO/WHAT
Victim/survivors of childhood rape, sexual assault and abuse by priests of the Milwaukee Archdiocese will be attending a final confirmation hearing for the nearly five year old Milwaukee archdiocese bankruptcy and will be conducting a press conference on the steps of the Federal Courthouse after the hearing. During the hearing, Milwaukee Archbishop Jerome Listecki is expected to testify. Survivors are also available for comment this weekend (see contact information below).

WHEN
Monday, November 9; hearing is scheduled to start at 9:00 a.m.

WHERE
Courtroom of Federal Bankruptcy Judge Susan V Kelley, 517 E. Wisconsin Ave., Milwaukee

WHY
Nearly five years ago, some 575 victims of child sexual assault by clergy filed cases into Federal Bankruptcy Court in Milwaukee at the urging of Archbishop Jerome Listecki, for “healing and resolution”. In total, victims reported in excess of 8,000 acts of criminal sexual abuse over several decades by at least 150 clergy (diocesan and religious order), teachers and lay ministers.

Court ordered release of over 60,000 pages of internal church documents during the course of the bankruptcy confirmed what was long known, suspected or revealed in previous criminal and civil court cases: that the archdiocese, under several archbishops and often with the knowledge of top Vatican officials had been engaged in a long standing, wide spread and systemic cover of up childhood sex crimes. In fact, a clergy child molester, according to documents, has been assigned or worked in each of the over 250 parishes and schools operated by the church .

On Monday, November 9, Bankruptcy Judge Susan V Kelley is expected to approve a settlement plan between creditors and the archdiocese, a decision that will effectively bring an end to the bankruptcy. At the urging of attorneys, the Creditors Committee, which represents victims, has voted in favor of the settlement, and most creditors are expected to follow their recommendation. The archdiocese has taken the public position that it would “spend down” the remaining money in the estate in litigation if victims did not agree to the offer. The archdiocese also threatened to remove a significant portion of victims from any compensation whatsoever.

The bankruptcy will be the longest and most legally expensive of all sex abuse bankruptcies in the country, with the lowest victim settlements and the highest lawyers’ fees and percentages in US history: over twice the amount of money will be going to a handful of lawyers than all of the 575 victims that filed cases.

But the unprecedented proportion of money landing in the pockets of lawyers is just one of the many troubling aspects that have emerged from the bankruptcy. Several key issues, some which directly concern public safety, potential criminal conduct, and the financial integrity of church officials will now remain unexamined, uninvestigated and unresolved by the court, particularly alarming because under Wisconsin law clergy and church officials can keep “secret” any knowledge they have of child sex crimes or cover ups.

Specifically:

–There will be no investigation of the highly publicized transfer by former Archbishop Timothy Dolan of nearly $60 million dollars into a “cemetery trust” before the archdiocese filed for bankruptcy. Based on the timing of the trust and church internal documents, the move was likely fraudulent (significantly, the archdiocese filed chapter 11 in the first place because of state court fraud cases). Among the documents that have surfaced in court is a signed letter from Dolan to the Vatican obtaining Papal permission to set up the trust to keep the money from court ordered liability settlements.

–Detailed, written victim reports of criminal sexual abuse were filed by each of the nearly 575 claimants. These reports are under a court seal and appear not to have been referred for investigation to the proper law enforcement authorities (or at least fully reviewed by law enforcement). There is strong evidence (particularly from a 2012 Wauwatosa police investigation) that even while under chapter 11 bankruptcy, the archdiocese was not referring serious sexual abuse reports to law enforcement and leaving potential abusers in ministry.

–When filing for bankruptcy and for nine months until the bar date, Milwaukee Archbishop Jerome Listecki publicly and repeatedly stated the reason for the bankruptcy was to fairly compensate victims of sexual abuse. Yet, after that date, the archdiocese has argued in oral presentations and written briefs that “none” of the 575 cases filed by victim/creditors are “legally valid”. The original chapter 11 filing has not been challenged or investigated for being filed in bad faith.

–Victims have been left totally at the mercy of the archdiocese “substantiating” their child rape or sexual assault “claim”, some receiving as little as $2,000 dollars.

–A “therapy” fund is being established under the complete control of the archdiocese (the very corporation responsible for concealing and transferring the clergy who assaulted those now needing treatment). This sets a dangerous precedent that uses bankruptcy court to allow church officials to create their own mechanism to control the clinical and mental health treatment of survivors.

CONTACT
Peter Isely, SNAP Midwest Director (Milwaukee), 414.49-7259 (peterisely@yahoo.com)

Survivors in the bankruptcy available for comment:
Monica Barrett (414.704.6074; 1lmbarrett@gmail.com)
Peter Loberg (414.881.5831; peteloberg@yahoo.com)
Dan Ograndowski (262.347.9672; danno_469@yahoo.com)
Jim Essenberg (971.226.4592; james.essenberg@frontier.com)
Nick Janovski (813.391.8291; nicolas.janovsky@gmail.com)

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ROME
Irish Times

Paddy Agnew in Rome

“And the Lord sent fiery serpents among the people, and they bit the people; and much people of Israel died.”

It may just have been a coincidence but, in his homily during Tuesday’s Mass In Suffrage for deceased cardinals and bishops, Pope Francis quoted the above words from Numbers 21, 6. In what has been another dramatic week for the Holy See, no one could blame the pope for having “fiery serpents” on his mind. For now, there seem to be a lot of them about.

This has been another Vatican week when reality has outdone the most outlandish Dan Brown fiction. A Watergate-style break-in, stolen documents, not so thinly veiled Mafia-style threats and Opus Dei all featured.

It began with the arrest on Monday by the Vatican gendarmerie of Spanish monsignor Lucio Angel Vallejo Balda and Francesca Chaouqui in connection with “the removal and dissemination” of confidential economic Vatican documents.

These arrests came just four days before the publication of two books, outlining the resistance of elements in the Roman Curia (and elsewhere) to the ongoing Francis “reform” process.

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GEORGIA
Daily Report

Meredith Hobbs, Daily Report
November 6, 2015

The University of Georgia School of Law is launching the first legal clinic in the nation to assist victims of child sexual abuse, thanks to a gift from an alumnus, Atlanta plaintiffs lawyer Marlan Wilbanks.

Wilbanks declined to say how much he is donating, but he said it’s a “substantial gift” that will be ongoing. He also plans to be personally involved in the clinic. “This is going to be a lifelong commitment for me,” he said.

The clinic, called the Wilbanks Center for Child Sexual Assault and Exploitation Survivors, will both assist adult survivors of child sexual abuse in filing civil suits and help children to gain protection from their abusers, he said.

Wilbanks is a longtime advocate for preventing child sexual abuse and helping survivors because his mother is a survivor of sexual abuse by her father. He said she was able to disclose her abuse only when she was well into adulthood, in her late 40s, which is common for many survivors.

“She has gone from being a victim to being an unbelievable advocate,” Wilbanks said. “She is my hero, and I want to continue her legacy.”

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AUSTRALIA
The West Australian

[with video]

Tim Clarke
November 7, 2015

Dawid Volmer moved to Australia because God spoke to him very clearly and told him to come.

He did not have a job or any means to support his family when he got here. But he left Singapore and came to Perth anyway, with his wife and two daughters, on the word of the Lord.

In reality, his inner demons were a lot stronger and louder and more persuasive.

This week, those demons that had chased the South African-born Christian since childhood led him into prison as an inmate and an outcast — from his family, from his church and even from the general jail population, which he had once preached to and prayed for.

His crimes — involving the repeated sexual abuse of a teenage girl who was “offered” to him by her own father — have shocked the nation.

How he came to commit them combines his own abusive father, drugs, sex addiction and a double life spanning many years and four continents.

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MILWAUKEE (WI)
Wall Street Journal

By TOM CORRIGAN
Nov. 6, 2015

The Archdiocese of Milwaukee on Monday will ask a federal judge to approve its $21 million clergy sexual abuse settlement and to exit bankruptcy after nearly five years of legal battles.

Though U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Susan Kelley’s signature is expected to formally resolve the archdiocese’s chapter 11 case, few expect the pain and anger felt by abuse victims, and throughout the church, to vanish. The archdiocese has been accused of covering up the sexual abuse of children by its priests, much of which took place decades ago.

The archdiocese sought chapter 11 protection in January 2011. Of more than a dozen bankruptcies within the Roman Catholic church in the U.S., the Milwaukee archdiocese has taken the longest to reach a settlement and has accrued the largest legal bill.

“We can’t change the past, but what’s important is that together we reached an agreement to bring this proceeding to a close,” Milwaukee Archbishop Jerome Listecki, who is expected to attend Monday’s hearing, told The Wall Street Journal in an email. “We hope that we are turning a corner on a terrible part of our history and embarking on a new road lined with hope, forgiveness and love.”

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IOWA
Catholic Globe

By Colleen Sulsberger

Protecting the Innocent

In the years since the first Charter for the Protection of Children and Young People was established by the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, there has been much debate about the education of children in abuse prevention and personal safety. The debate looks at whether or not education by the church contributes significantly to the safety, well-being, and spiritual growth of our children. Can education by the church uniquely contribute to the physical, emotional and spiritual well-being of our children?

Sexual abuse can have a devastating effect on the spiritual development of children. When abuse occurs in a setting or at the hands of an individual not associated with the church, it often raises questions about God’s love or even God’s existence. If an individual who abuses represents the church, the impact becomes more devastating to children’s spiritual development.

Given the nature of children’s thoughts, it is often difficult for youngsters and even adults to separate the actions of a fallible human being from the message and the institution that they represent. Children need to hear consistent messages that they are deserving of dignity and respect; that God and the church want them to be safe and involved in right relationships; that we want to help them if a relationship isn’t right. Such messages can help children retain their faith in the face of disappointing or even devastating behavior of an adult.

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UNITED STATES
Rolling Stone

BY DAVID EHRLICH November 6, 2015

Listen,” sighs director and co-writer Tom McCarthy as his train of thought derails while trying to answer a question. “I just finished this movie in September and I haven’t really had time to process it objectively. I just know it probably won’t be for a few more months.” In this case, it’s an understandable reaction. His new film Spotlight, a painstakingly detailed procedural about how the Boston Globe exposed the most pervasive and insidious cover-up in the history of the Catholic Church, is a powerful reminder that the truth can be hard to wrap your head around.

Unfolding like a cross between Zodiac and All the President’s Men, Spotlight rewinds to the summer of 2001, when the Globe’s new editor Marty Baron (Liev Schreiber) assigned the paper’s investigative “Spotlight” unit to look into an old story regarding a local priest who’d been accused of molesting kids and was reassigned to another parish. The team, led by veteran journalist Walter “Robby” Robinson (Michael Keaton), eventually uncovered decades of sexual abuse perpetrated by priests who preyed upon children and were protected by the Church — a story that everyone in Boston knew but nobody wanted to believe.

Most movies, especially ones with A-list stars like Keaton, Mark Ruffalo and Rachel McAdams, tend to play to the cheap seats in the name of awards-season glory. But by focusing instead on the hard-nosed journalism that broke the story, McCarthy has crafted a bracingly powerful film about the institutions that hold sway in our society, the need for a free press to hold them accountable, and the pervasive sense of guilt that can get in the way. The director rang up Rolling Stone to talk about heroes, healing, and how it feels to direct a box office mega-bomb and a presumptive Best Picture nominee in the span of a single year.

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MASSACHUSETTS
NewBostonPost

By John Farrell | November 5, 2015

I know a priest whose ecclesiastical career in this city was ruined because he had the temerity to praise the Boston Globe Spotlight team’s investigation of the clerical abuse scandal—in front of a bishop.

It’s been well over a decade since the story broke and Cardinal Law was forced to resign. And “Spotlight,” co-written and directed by Tom McCarthy, which opens today in a limited release, is a superb account of the Globe’s exposure of a scandal that still affects Boston.

Full disclosure: my late father, David J. Farrell, was a political columnist for The Boston Globe from 1972-1985.

I attended B.C. High in the late 1970s, and one of the priests there, whose sexual abuse of students forms a key piece in the storyline, was my junior year history teacher. So, watching the movie portray both of these institutions and their leaders so accurately was both strange — and gratifying.

I did not expect the film to be so good. The story opens with a brief prelude, in 1976, showing a young Irish Catholic police officer on the sidelines as he observes the secretive settlement arranged between the family of a molested boy and representatives of the Archdiocese. We learn the priest responsible for the molestation is the notorious Fr. John Geoghan. – See more at:

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LOUISIANA
The Times-Picayune

By Michelle Hunter, NOLA.com | The Times-Picayune
on November 03, 2015

A 9-year-old girl who thought she was going to see a picture of her catechism teacher dressed as Santa Claus told her mother that the teacher instead showed her a photo of a naked man.

Authorities arrested Daryle Rodriguez, 71, of Harvey, and booked him with indecent behavior with a juvenile, according to Col. John Fortunato, spokesman for the Jefferson Parish Sheriff’s Office.

Rodriguez taught fourth grade catechism classes at St. John Bosco Catholic Church’s parish school of religion, said Sarah McDonald, spokeswoman for the Archdiocese of New Orleans. He was relieved of his teaching position following his arrest, she said.

Rodriguez, who does bear resemblance to St. Nick, was trying to show his young student and her friend cell phone photos of himself dressed in full Santa regalia. But the first picture the girl saw was a full-frontal photograph of a nude man, an arrest report said. The girl went home and told her mother.

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LOUISIANA
The Raw Story

BETHANIA PALMA MARKUS
04 NOV 2015

A Catholic school student who was simply hoping to see a picture of her catechism teacher in a Santa Claus costume, but she ended up seeing a picture of a nude man instead, the New Orleans Times-Picayune reports.

Daryle Rodriguez, 71, was arrested after allegedly showing the fourth grader the picture. He is an instructor at St. John Bosco Catholic Church’s parish school, but was fired after his arrest, an Archdiocese of New Orleans spokeswoman told the paper. He was booked on charges of indecent behavior with a juvenile and was given a $15,000 bond.

Rodriguez was apparently trying to show the child a picture of himself on his cell phone but the first picture that came up was a fully nude frontal shot of a man. The girl went home and told her mother.

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UNITED STATES
The New York Times

By RAVI SOMAIYA
NOV. 6, 2015

“Spotlight,” a movie about The Boston Globe’s reporting on the sexual abuse of children in the Roman Catholic Church that opens in theaters on Friday, has caught the attention of critics.

But its costumes, based on the clothing of the real journalists involved, have caused comment for another reason: They have uncannily captured a particular style (or lack of style), that still distinguishes reporters and editors today.

When the movie’s high-wattage stars, including Rachel McAdams and Mark Ruffalo, were pictured on set last year, their unglamorous outfits made tabloid headlines.

The film’s costume designer, Wendy Chuck, a veteran of subtle clothing choices in movies like “Sideways” and “Twilight,” spoke Friday by phone on what makes newsroom-chic, and the challenges of making movie stars look like journalists. The conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

Q. How would you describe the style of journalists?

A. It’s an unthought-about uniform. It mirrors school uniforms really. It’s something you don’t think about when you dress. You don’t really care; you’ve got other things to think about that are not clothes.

It says you’re comfortable, but nobody is going to comment on how you look or how you appear. You’re not going to offend anybody. Nobody is going to be able to read much into you.

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UNITED STATES
Washingtonian

By Andrew Beaujon | November 6, 2015

Washington Post Executive Editor Martin Baron did not coach Liev Schreiber, who plays him in the just-released film Spotlight. The film centers on Baron’s time as top editor of the Boston Globe. “The idea that I’m going to coach a professional actor to play me is preposterous,” Baron says. Schreiber “asked me a bunch of questions and we had a conversation, and then he went and played me.”

Baron says he’s “not the person to ask” but everyone he knows who’s seen the movie says that Schreiber “nailed” the portrayal. He got to see one day of filming in person, and got a lot of questions about his wardrobe. “They got everything right about the newsroom, the set and what people wore and how they looked,” Baron says. “Their basic mannerisms, things like that.” Among the questions: “what kind of shoes I wore, and what kind of pants I wore, and where I shopped, and what shirts, and all that.”

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BOSTON (MA)
Catholic Culture

By Phil Lawler
Nov 06, 2015

In the new film Spotlight, which opens this weekend, the investigative reporters of the Boston Globe are portrayed as brave underdogs who dared to confront the overwhelming power of the Boston archdiocese, and thus exposed the sex-abuse scandal. It might make for a good movie (I wasn’t invited to the previews), but that story line is bunk.

The Globe did do the Catholic Church an enormous favor with the “Spotlight” series that opened in January 2002, revealing how the archdiocese had protected a predatory priest, the late John Geoghan, allowing him to continue molesting children for years. That Globe story—and the dozens of similar stories that came tumbling out in that “long Lent” of 2002—revealed a cancer within the Catholic clergy. The diagnosis of cancer is never welcome, but if an accurate diagnosis leads to proper treatment, it can be a blessing.

So give the Globe credit for some solid investigative journalism. But do not pretend, for the sake of the plot line, that the Globe was reluctant to do battle with the Catholic Church, or that it required a special sort of courage to do battle with the archdiocese. Quite the contrary. For years the Globe had been the most virulently anti-Catholic major newspaper in the country. And by the early years of the 21st century, when this drama opened, the Globe had achieved an unquestioned dominance as the single most powerful institution in the public life of Greater Boston: far more powerful than the Church. (If you doubt me, make a list of the political candidates who won Massachusetts elections in the 1990s, and ask yourself whether the views of those candidates more closely reflected the teachings of the Catholic Church or the editorial directives of the Boston Globe.) This was not a case of David vs. Goliath; or if it was, Goliath won.

As an antidote to Hollywood fantasies that could make Spotlight misleading, I recommend Sins of the Press, a little book self-published by an investigative reporter who really is an underdog, David Pierre.

Let me stipulate at the outset that I do not always agree with Pierre. In his determination to demonstrate the bias of the Globe he sometimes fails to give credit where credit is due. In his zeal to protect the Church from unjust criticism he sometimes defends the indefensible. Still the defects of his approach serve as a counterbalance to the politically-correct approach of the Globe and the fawning early reviews of Spotlight.

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VATICAN CITY
The New Yorker

BY ALEXANDER STILLE

Ithas been an unusually turbulent week in Rome. The Vatican’s gendarmes arrested two members of Pope Francis’s economic-reform committee—Lucio Angel Vallejo Balda, a powerful monsignor, and Francesca Immacolata Chaouqui, whose background is in public relations—for allegedly leaking documents to two Italian journalists. The news suggested a new round in the scandal known as Vatileaks, which began when Paolo Gabriele, the butler to Pope Benedict XVI, leaked portions of the Pope’s correspondence in 2012. Indeed, Gianluigi Nuzzi, who wrote a book, “Sua Santità,” based principally on the leaks of the former butler, is, along with Emiliano Fittipaldi, of the weekly L’Espresso, one of two journalists involved in this case, too. Both have new books out this week: Nuzzi’s is called “Via Crucis” (published in English with the title “Merchants in the Temple”) and Fittipaldi’s is “Avarizia” (“Greed”). But the two Vatileaks scandals may be more different than similar.

The original Vatileaks affair created the impression of a Pope who had lost control of his own government—whose own correspondence could be stolen from under his nose and published as the Vatican stood by helplessly. It contributed, one suspects, to Pope Benedict XVI’s almost unprecedented decision, in 2013, to resign. By contrast, the highly unusual decision this week to arrest the pair of alleged leakers, just days before the journalists they had supplied were about to publish their books, was the expression of a much more proactive Vatican. The Holy See is determined to show that it was not taking this matter lying down. And the content of the cases is different, too. The first Vatileaks case portrayed an elderly Benedict XVI seemingly unaware of the power struggles and institutionalized corruption around him, while the two new books show Pope Francis vigorously pushing the Vatican bureaucracy to clean house.

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BOSTON (MA)
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests

The Church needs to do more to protect children, help survivors, as well as live up to its promise of being open and transparent.

WHAT
Holding signs and childhood photos at a sidewalk news conference, Boston clergy sex abuse victims will be speaking out after the premiere of the movie “Spotlight” here in Boston this weekend, and giving their personal feelings viewing it, along with what action the church needs to take to protect children and help wounded survivors.

They will also urge Cardinal O’Malley, as the head of the Pontifical Commission, to urge Pope Francis to take concrete action punishing, firing, and defrocking known Cardinals, Bishops, and Supervisors, who are responsible for the cover-ups and destruction of children’s lives by protecting criminal clerics in their care, as well as other actions, that will protect children.

These are actions that will protect children, and send the message that the church is serious about children’s safety.

WHEN
Sunday, Nov. 8, 2015 at 11:45 am

WHERE
Outside the Cathedral of the Holy Cross, Boston
1400 Washington St, Boston, MA 02118

WHO
Two-four members of a self-help group called SNAP, the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAPnetwork.org), and supporters, including Mark Vincent Healy, a survivor from Dublin, Ireland, who was one of the European survivors who met with Pope Francis at the Vatican in 2014

WHY
With the release of the movie, “Spotlight” this weekend, the eyes and ears of the world will see played out on the big screen the shameful truth of the cover-ups of child sexual abuse by the leadership of the Catholic Church all the way up to the Pope, who were and are complicit of this reality even today.

We are concerned that “Spotlight” may trigger other victims memory’s, victims who may still be trapped in silence, shame and self-blame. We encourage them to come forward speak with police and began healing process.

CONTACT
David O’Regan 434 446 6769 worcestersnap@gmail.com David Clohessy 314 566 9790, davidgclohessy@gmail.com, Barbara Dorris 314 503 0003, bdorris@SNAPnetwork.org

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BOSTON (MA)
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests

Remarks by Phil Saviano at the Boston showing of SPOTLIGHT for abuse victims

Welcome to your film. It’s your film because it’s your courage and your compassion that made it possible.

The Globe’s team did remarkable work. But they’re the first to admit that without brave Boston survivors, they couldn’t have done their outstanding investigation.

Each one of you should feel deeply proud of your role in this film and in this crisis, regardless of whether you sued, settled, spoke publicly or didn’t. Each of you has exposed wrongdoers, protected kids, and deterred wrongdoing. We in SNAP are incredibly grateful for all you have done and are doing to safeguard the vulnerable and heal the wounded.

Please keep taking care of yourself. And please do what you can to get or stay more involved in our on-going struggle to make sure others don’t suffer like we’ve suffered.

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UNITED STATES
America Magazine

Sam Sawyer, S.J. | Nov 6 2015

Letting go of looking the other way

I dreaded the sight of satellite trucks as I drove to daily Mass. It was the winter of 2002; I was actively discerning a vocation to priesthood in the Jesuits, and most days, I went to daily Mass at St. Ignatius, just a stone’s throw down Commonwealth Avenue from the chancery and cardinal’s residence of the Archdiocese of Boston. Satellite trucks outside the archdiocesan offices meant more tragic news, more revelations of priests who had abused children, more damning evidence that the church had moved them around, covered them up and kept the victims quiet and out of sight rather than removing the abusers from ministry.

Many days, there were satellite trucks.

There were, after all, so many victims, so many years of cover-up all coming to light at once, following the Boston Globe’s breaking the story in January of 2002. The closing scene of “Spotlight,” in which calls start to pour into the Globe’s investigative team with even more stories of abuse than they found initially, was just the beginning of the story for the rest of us in Boston. The revelations, the disappointment, the scandals and the disgust kept coming for months and years, marked, for me, by satellite trucks outside the chancery. It spread beyond Boston, too; but that stretch of Commonwealth was the part of the scandal I could see, and had to see, just before Mass.

Knowing that I had seen “Spotlight” early at press screening, many fellow Jesuits in my community have asked what I thought of it; asked from one priest to another, the question carries inevitable subtext: How bad was it? Was it fair? Did it pile on, joining the collection of cheap jabs that call the whole church hypocritical and tar all priests as if we’re predators?

In order: not bad at all; yes, it was for the most part very fair; and no, it didn’t pile on.

It was all the more gut-wrenching for being so good a film and for telling its story so carefully and fairly.

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BOSTON (MA)
WBUR

Part four of our “Spotlight” series, in advance of the film’s release Friday.

The critically acclaimed film, “Spotlight”, tells the story of the Boston Globe’s 2002 investigation of what later became the world-wide clergy sex abuse crisis.

We’ve talked to members of the original Globe team, to a lawyer, and a priest. Now, we hear from someone who represents the most important group of people in this story: the survivors.

Guests

Phil Saviano, founder of the New England Chapter of SNAP, the Survivors’ Network of Those Abused by Priests.

More In This Series

Radio Boston: A ‘Spotlight’ Shines On Reporters Who Broke The Clergy Sex Abuse Story

“In 2002, an investigation by The Boston Globe’s Spotlight team revealed widespread sexual abuse that had long remained concealed within the Catholic Church.”
Radio Boston: The Longtime Advocates Behind ‘Spotlight’

Radio Boston: The Longtime Advocates Behind ‘Spotlight’

“The film ‘Spotlight’ tells a story that broke in 2002, but started years earlier. Before the Spotlight team investigated allegations of clergy sexual abuse, others — like attorney Mitchell Garabedian and Father Thomas Doyle — were already trying to get justice for the victims.”
Radio Boston: ‘Spotlight’ And A History Of Newspaper Movies

Radio Boston: ‘Spotlight’ And A History Of Newspaper Movies

“On Friday, Bostonians will finally be able to see the new film, “Spotlight,” which details how a group of investigative journalists at the The Boston Globe’s uncovered a Catholic church sex abuse crisis that affected the real lives of many people still living around Boston. But perhaps another reason there’s been so much buzz around this film is because it’s also — at its heart — a newspaper movie.”

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UNITED STATES
Religion News Service

Brian Truitt / USA Today | November 6, 2015

No need to bury the lede: Spotlight is a masterpiece.

Director Tom McCarthy’s drama (**** out of four; rated R; opens Friday in New York, Los Angeles and Boston, nationwide Nov. 20) embraces both great cinema and even better journalism as it chronicles a Boston Globe investigative team’s real-life expose on child abuse by local priests and the Catholic Church cover-up that followed. Not only is it an amazingly crafted movie, it’s an important one as well.

The Globe group won a Pulitzer Prize for its 2002 work, but the real tale begins a year earlier with the arrival of new boss Marty Baron (Liev Schreiber) to the newspaper. He wants to see the Globe dig into some really hefty stuff, like following up on a recent column accusing a priest of sexually molesting dozens of kids over three decades.

Led by editor Robby Robinson (Michael Keaton), the Spotlight team is initially wary of setting aside other projects and taking on the church, a hot-button subject in town and one of the most sacred of cows. Yet reporters Mike Rezendes (Mark Ruffalo) and Sacha Pfeiffer (Rachel McAdams), with the help of mustached ace researcher Matt Carroll (Brian d’Arcy James), begin to dig into what’s been going on and find victims as well as more damning, shocking evidence.

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KANSAS CITY (MO)
The Kansas City Star

BY RICK MONTGOMERY
rmontgomery@kcstar.com

The bishop is a fan of Johnny Cash.

One tune in particular stirs Bishop James V. Johnston, who was installed this week as leader of the Catholic Diocese of Kansas City-St. Joseph

“I think it was (first) done by Nine Inch Nails,” he said.

The song is called “Hurt.” It’s about harming one’s self. Cash’s voice breaks as he sings of addiction and a need for redemption.

Now Catholics throughout northwest Missouri are praying that Johnston, as successor to Bishop Robert W. Finn, will help heal the diocese of its own self-inflicted wounds. …

Finn resigned in April, 31 months after his criminal conviction for failing to report suspected child abuse. The diocese had waited five months to inform police that lewd pictures of pupils at a Catholic school were found on Fr. Shawn Ratigan’s computer.

At Johnston’s installation on Wednesday, he asked perishioners to support Finn with “prayer and kindness.” He did not reference the Ratigan case, the dozens of lawsuits alleging long-ago instances of sexual abuse by priests, nor specific policies he’d propose to keep children safe.

The diocese made strides in that direction before Finn’s resignation. Still, the homily given by Johnston didn’t go over well with the group SNAP, which stands for the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests.

“Ignoring abuse and cover up won’t prevent abuse and cover up,” director David Clohessy said Thursday.

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UNITED STATES
Entertainment Weekly

BY JEFF LABRECQUE • @JEFFLABRECQUE

“Journalistic thriller” doesn’t really qualify as its own movie genre. There’s All the President’s Men, of course, and The Parallax View and State of Play, to a degree. But typically, reporters and their editors are depicted as rumpled cynics, lending the profession a more comic slant when it shows up on screen, in movies like The Philadelphia Story or The Paper.

Spotlight, however, will have journos and cinephiles sitting on the edge of their seats. The new film from director Tom McCarthy, who co-wrote the script with Josh Singer (The Fifth Estate), is based on the Boston Globe investigative reporting team that published the 2002 series of articles exposing how the local Catholic Church, under the powerful Cardinal Bernard Law, had knowingly shielded scores of known pedophile priests for decades, allowing them to prey on countless children again and again. The stories were proved to be a bombshell, and the impact reverberated far beyond Boston. (Cardinal Law resigned less than a year after the news first broke.) In 2003, the Globe’s Spotlight team was awarded a Pulitzer Prize.

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VATICAN CITY
Crux

By John L. Allen Jr.
Associate editor November 6, 2015

Pope Francis continued his moderate makeover of the senior leadership of the Catholic Church on Friday, announcing key appointments for two major European archdioceses. In both cases, the pontiff tapped pastorally-minded figures not seen as either political or theological conservatives.

In Barcelona, Spain, Francis accepted the resignation of Cardinal Lluís Martínez Sistach, 78, and replaced him with 69-year-old Archbishop Juan José Omella Omella. In Brussels, Belgium, the pope accepted the resignation of Archbishop André-Joseph Léonard, 75, and put in his place Archbishop Jozef De Kesel, 68.

The move in Brussels will strike Church-watchers as especially significant, given that Léonard had carried the reputation of being one of the most staunchly conservative prelates to head a major European archdiocese. He was appointed in 2010 under Pope Benedict XVI, replacing Cardinal Godfried Danneels, who was seen as a leading progressive.

(Danneels’ term ended in controversy amid allegations that he tried to cover up sexual abuse allegations against a fellow Belgian prelate. He remains in good standing with Pope Francis, who named Danneels as a participant in the recent Synod of Bishops on the family.)

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UNITED STATES
Reuters

WASHINGTON | BY LAWRENCE HURLEY

The U.S. Supreme Court on Friday agreed to hear appeals brought by Christian groups demanding full exemption from the requirement to provide insurance covering contraception under President Barack Obama’s signature healthcare law.

The nine justices will consider seven related cases on whether nonprofit groups that oppose the requirement on religious grounds can object under the federal Religious Freedom Restoration Act to a compromise measure offered by the Obama administration.

Among those mounting objections are various Roman Catholic groups in Washington, D.C., including the Roman Catholic archdiocese and Catholic University of America. Another petition was filed by the Little Sisters of the Poor, an order of Roman Catholic nuns that runs care homes for the elderly. Some groups belonging to other Christian denominations also objected.

By agreeing to hear the cases, the justices will once again wade into the controversial subject of how to weigh religious objections to the contraceptive requirement.

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TENNESSEE
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests

For immediate release: Friday, Nov. 6, 2015

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

A convicted ex-priest charges that his lawyers were inept, prosecutors committed misconduct, and that both a judge and a district attorney’s office should be removed from his case and he deserves another trial.

Give me a break. More important, give the predator’s brave victim, Warren Tucker, a break.

[Greeneville Sun]

We believe in due process. But we also believe that victims of horrific child sex crimes deserve some closure. Enough is enough.

It’s been almost seven years since Warren reported to law enforcement his suffering due to sexual abuse by Casey. Still William Casey continues his increasingly desperate legal maneuvers.

We urge Knoxville Bishop Richard Stika to publicly denounce Casey’s hurtful legal shenanigans. And we hope that not a single victim of a single child sex crime by a single child molester is deterred from coming forward because Casey is making a mockery of our justice system.

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UNITED STATES
Newsmax

Bill Donohue

In the run-up to the November 6 debut of “Spotlight,” movie reviewers hailed it as an eye-opening account of the sexual abuse scandal that occurred in the Boston Archdiocese.

But Hollywood has no interest in turning its cameras on itself, which is why the public’s eyes have been shut tight from seeing a movie that documents child rape in Tinseltown.

In 2011, when word surfaced that actor Corey Feldman was going public with accounts of child sexual molestation in Hollywood, it caught the attention of Boston producer Matthew Valentinas.

He had been contemplating doing a film on sexual abuse anyway, so when Feldman’s revelations hit the news, he decided the time was ripe to strike.

Feldman was interviewed by ABC’s “Primetime Live” in August 2011. He astonished viewers when he exclaimed, “I can tell you that the No. 1 problem in Hollywood was, and is, and always will be, pedophilia.”

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MINNESOTA
Pioneer Press

By Mara H. Gottfried
mgottfried@pioneerpress.com

St. Paul will get a new police chief next year — Thomas Smith said Friday he will retire at the end of his six-year term.

Smith became a St. Paul officer in 1989 and is a native of the city’s West Side, where he still lives. He stressed strong community ties when Mayor Chris Coleman appointed him chief in 2010. Smith said Friday he’s been proud of his department’s community outreach work, especially with youth programs. …

During Smith’s more than five years as chief, his department: …

— Conducted a major investigation into the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis, resulting in criminal charges over the handling of an abusive priest. The archdiocese didn’t enter a plea at its initial hearing last month.

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UNITED STATES
Poynter.org

by Bill Mitchell
Published Nov. 6, 2015

The new Spotlight movie opening in select cities this weekend is such a big deal in Boston that several university journalism programs staged special advance screenings earlier this week.

After failing to worm my way into any of those events, I showed up at Spotlight’s first public unveiling Thursday night. It’s showing at a theater just down the street from a couple of notable scenes in this stunning account of the Boston Globe’s investigation of clergy sexual abuse.

Crossing Tremont Street from the Boylston stop on the Green Line, I confessed to my wife, Carol, a parochial question I imagine one or two other journalists might share.

And that’s this: When the film comes up in discussion with family and friends at Thanksgiving Dinner in a few weeks, what impact will it have had on the public’s perception of journalists?

By the time the credits rolled, I had to agree with reviewers who’ve concluded that ink-stained, web-whipped wretches haven’t looked this good since All The President’s Men. That’s true as a result of both similarities and differences in the two movies. It’s the differences that render Spotlight a must-see not only for journalists but for the people they serve. …

Bill Mitchell is a Poynter affiliate who launched the Clergy Abuse Tracker as director of Poynter Online and ran it from March 2002 until December 2003. The tracker is now hosted by BishopAccountability.org and is updated daily by the editor Mitchell recruited in 2002, Kathy Shaw.

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ST. LOUIS (MO)
Berger’s Beat

. .Small victory for Barbara Dorris and David Clohessy of SNAP that new House Speaker Paul Ryan’s first day on the job, in response to the group’s prodding, Ryan quietly removed the portrait of ex-Speaker Dennis Hastert taken down. Hastert pled guilty to financial misdeeds stemming from alleged child sex crimes he reportedly committed years earlier. For months, SNAP argued that honoring Hastert was hurtful to victims of sexual violence. .

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CHICAGO (IL)
Crux

By Michael O’Loughlin
National reporter November 6, 2015

CHICAGO — When the movie “Spotlight” hits theaters across the country Friday, the Catholic Church’s cover-up of child sexual abuse will again be in focus, more than a decade after The Boston Globe published a series of stories exposing policies that allowed abusive priests to stay in ministry.

After the Spotlight series, revelations surfaced that many other dioceses in the United States and around the world operated in a similar manner, keeping credible allegations secret from police and parishioners, with policies aimed at protecting priests instead of children.

Just this week, an investigation by the National Catholic Reporter found that the Catholic Church in the United States incurred more than $4 billion in costs related to the sex abuse crisis, which affected more than 95 percent of all US dioceses and saw more than 4,000 priests accused, according to an independent 2004 study commissioned by US bishops.

But in Chicago, archdiocesan authorities have a message: Don’t paint with too broad a brush.

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MARYLAND
Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Baltimore – The Catholic Review

November 06, 2015

The following is an official statement released Nov. 6 by the Archdiocese of Baltimore:

Prevention, accountability, transparency and healing continue to be top priorities for the Archdiocese of Baltimore 13 years after Boston

The Archdiocese of Baltimore has made it an institutional priority to protect children in its care and restore the trust of the faithful by enacting and enforcing policies and practices that prevent future incidents of abuse, hold abusers accountable, create a culture of transparency, and promote healing for victims.

While the Archdiocese had child protection measures in place prior to the 2002 creation of the Charter for the Protection of Children & Young People, the landmark document that spells out the Catholic Church’s commitment to protecting children and young people, it has taken many additional steps since then to further strengthen the Archdiocese’s child protection efforts to create safe environments for children in our care, promote healing for victims, and to restore the trust of God’s people in the Archdiocese.

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CHILE
Radio Agricultura

[The Supreme Court on Wednesday authorized the issuing of a warrant to Pope Francis as part of the judicial investigation of allegations against priest Fernando Karadima who is accusing of abusing minors. The Chilean foreign ministry is responsible for getting the warrant to the Vatican. The issue involves a video where the pope describes as fools those who oppose appintment of Bishop Juan Barros to Osorno. It is alleged that Barros knew of the abuse by Karadima but said nothing abut it. He has denied the allegation.]

La Cancillería será la encargada de hacerlo llegar hasta el Vaticano.

La primera sala de la Corte Suprema autorizó este miércoles enviar un exhorto al Papa Francisco en el marco de la investigación judicial del denominado caso Karadima. La solicitud surgió por parte de los denunciantes luego que se diera a conocer un video del Pontífice donde se refería al Obispo de Osorno.

En las imágenes se puede apreciar que el Papa califica como tontos a quienes se oponen a la designación del Obispo, Juan Barros. Cabe mencionar, que según las presuntas víctimas Barros sería testigo de los hechos que es acusado Karadima.

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TENNESSEE
Greeneville Sun

Ken Little

A post-conviction hearing initially scheduled last week in Sullivan County Criminal Court for former Catholic priest and Greene County resident William Casey will now be held on Feb. 3.

A hearing relating to the case was held on Oct. 30. Judge James F. Goodwin denied a motion by Casey’s lawyer, Francis X. Santore Jr., to recuse prosecutor Barry Staubus and his office from the case.

Goodwin had earlier denied a motion by Santore to have himself recused from the case as judge. Santore appealed to the state Court of Criminal Appeals, which also denied the motion and remanded the case back to Goodwin’s court.

Staubus is district attorney general for the 2nd Judicial District that includes Sullivan County. He was lead prosecutor in July 2011, when Casey’s jury trial was held.

The trial judge, Robert H. Montgomery Jr., became a state Court of Criminal Appeals judge in 2014.

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PHILADELPHIA (PA)
Catholics4Change

NOVEMBER 6, 2015 BY SUSAN MATTHEWS

“Spotlight” opens in limited-release today. This movie about the Pulitzer-prize winning Boston Globe journalists who broke the clergy abuse story, may finally raise awareness to the level of outrage needed to create real change, if not in the Church, in our laws regarding statute of limitations law reforms.

Because I’m not a victim, many have wondered about my passion for this cause. While being a Catholic and a mother is certainly enough of a reason, it’s also because I began my career as a journalist. I worked as an editor with the Catholic Standard and Times – the official newspaper of the Archdiocese of Philadelphia. Cardinal Bevilacqua was the publisher during my six years there. I worked with talented, dedicated, loving people of deep faith who sacrificed better pay and work hours to spread the news and the truth of the Church.

Years later, I know the absolute evil that was taking place just floors above us. It is enraging and sickening. That’s betrayal that every Catholic should feel. Harder to imagine is the pain of those children who were raped by a trusted and adored priest as a child and then raped again by the cover up that continued past 2011 in Philadelphia.

Many would like to believe that it’s all better now. But Father Paul situations tell us that things aren’t better yet. After allegations, he was left as Pastor of Our Lady of Calvary without parents’ knowledge of an investigation. Is this the transparency that was promised? Those allegations were eventually deemed credible. He is no longer a priest. Criminal charges were not pressed due to the statute of limitations. The Pennsylvania Catholic Conference continues lobbying against statute of limitation law reform. The Church is still siding against children. Father Paul can live anywhere he chooses.

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VATICAN CITY
Star Tribune

By FRANCES D’EMILIO Associated Press NOVEMBER 6, 2015

VATICAN CITY — Pope Francis on Friday decried how bishops and other clergy exploit their roles to advance their careers and to increase wealth, in his first public comments following the latest leaked revelations of greedy Vatican prelates resisting his efforts to reform Holy See finances and administration.

“Even in the church there are these people, who, instead of serving, of thinking, of others … use the church. They are the career-climbers, those attached to money,” the pope said during Mass in the chapel of the plain Vatican hotel where he chose to live, in an example of simplicity, instead of dwelling in the ornate Apostolic Palace.

Looking somber and sounding grim, he added: “And how many priests, bishops we have seen like this. It’s sad to say it, no?”

Francis delivered the impromptu remarks during his daily homily, apparently inspired by revelations in two books, which went on sale on Thursday, of leaked documents and conversations.

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AUSTRALIA
The Australian

BY NATHAN PAULL AAP NOVEMBER 06, 2015

AN elite Brisbane school boss has refused to concede a former headmaster lied about knowing students had been sexually abused by a pedophile counsellor.

BRISBANE Grammar School board chairman Howard Stack sidestepped questions about the school’s knowledge of the abuse while giving evidence at the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse on Friday.

It came despite the inquiry hearing from multiple former students and their parents who claimed they had told then-headmaster Max Howell and senior teachers as early as 1979 of sexual abuse by counsellor Kevin John Lynch.

Dr Howell, who died in 2011, repeatedly denied he had knowledge of Lynch’s abuse – an assertion he took to his grave.

Mr Stack told the inquiry, now in its fifth day in Brisbane, that he believed former students’ claims that they had complained to Dr Howell at the time of the abuse.

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NORTHERN IRELAND
UTV

Story by Alan Erwin, Belfast

A former resident at a children’s care home treated with “cold and callous indifference” is to be denied compensation due to his delay in taking legal action, a High Court judge has ruled.

Mr Justice Horner held Michael McKee would have been entitled to £6,500 damages for emotional distress in fearing the consequences of wetting the bed during his stay at Nazareth Lodge in Belfast nearly 60 years ago.

But the claim was dismissed as statute barred because of the excessive time he took to bring proceedings.

Mr McKee, 65, sued The Sisters of Nazareth over the physical abuse he was allegedly subjected to during his stay as an eight-year-old boy back in 1958.

Lawyers for the congregation defended the case by challenging the reliability of his account and questioning why he waited half a century to take legal action.

Mr McKee spent 73 days at the home after being admitted with his older brother due to their parents’ ill-health.

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VATICAN CITY
Vatican Information Service

Vatican City, 6 November 2015 (VIS) – The Holy Father has appointed:

– Bishop Juan Jose Omella Omella of Calahorra y La Calzada-Logrono, Spain as archbishop of Barcelona (area 340, population 2,657,000, Catholics 2,116,479, priests 826, permanent deacons 46, religious 3,092), Spain.

– Bishop Jozef de Kesel of Bruges, Belgium, as archbishop of Malines-Bruxelles (area 3,635, population 2,825,000, Catholics 1,807,000, priests 1,794, permanent deacons 88, religious 3,249), Belgium. He succeeds Archbishop Andre Leonard, whose resignation from the pastoral care of the same archdiocese upon reaching the age limit was accepted by the Holy Father.

– Bishop Jozef de Kesel as military ordinary for Belgium.

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ROME
Washington Post

By Michelle Boorstein and Paul Farhi November 6

Gossip and internal politicking are so much a part of Vatican life that an old Rome joke goes: “In the Church, a secret is something you only tell one person at a time.”

But this week the definition of secret-spilling got blown up.

Two Italian journalists — an economics reporter for a prominent newsweekly and a muckraking TV figure — published books that used extensive leaked Vatican data to show in detail the kind of financial irregularities that in the past have come out in dribbles and rumors. And the alleged findings are dramatic, from the top Vatican official whose swanky Rome penthouse was refurbished by a church charity to the Vatican pension fund’s $800 million hole, to a report that Vatican real estate is worth about seven times as much as is reported on balance sheets.

Even for a place accustomed to leaks, this week produced a torrent, including surreptitiously made recordings of Pope Francis — a barrier Vatican-watchers said had never been crossed before. For an institution long accustomed to some standard of deference, one thing is becoming clear: The Catholic Church is in a new era.

“Cardinals living in fat apartments for free — we’ve known that since the dawn of time. But this is a new level of stuff spilling out. It’s the Catholic version of people-have-the-right-to-know,” said John Allen, a longtime reporter on the Vatican and Catholicism who is associate editor of Crux, a Catholic site owned by the Boston Globe. Of the Vatican, Allen said: “I think they’re living in a world that doesn’t exist anymore.”

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MASSACHUSETTS
MassLive

By Stephanie Barry | sbarry@repub.com
on November 06, 2015

SPRINGFIELD — A jury on Thursday awarded $250,000 to a 53-year-old Ludlow woman who sued her stepfather for raping her as a child after a three-day trial in U.S. District Court.

An eight-member panel found in favor of plaintiff Kathy Picard, who was at the forefront of pushing new legislation in 2014 to extend the statute of limitations to allow victims of sexual abuse more time to sue their alleged abusers.

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