ABUSE TRACKER

CANADA
CBC News

By Jason Proctor, CBC News Posted: Jun 19, 2015

The Georgia Straight’s editor claims John Furlong conducted a sustained public relations attack on the paper and a reporter in the wake an article alleging the former Olympics CEO abused children at a Burns Lake Catholic school.

Testifying in B.C. Supreme Court, Charlie Smith said he believed Furlong never seriously intended to pursue a lawsuit he filed against the alternative weekly — and then dropped a year later.

“I always thought that was just a PR narrative,” he testified.

Freelance journalist Laura Robinson claims Furlong defamed her in his responses to the September 2012 article; the piece reported allegations of physical and verbal abuse against students at Immaculata school.

Robinson claims she suffered financially, emotionally and physically as a result of repeated accusations implying she is unprofessional, unethical and motivated by a personal vendetta.

Laura Robinson
Freelance journalist Laura Robinson claims John Furlong defamed her in his responses to her 2012 Georgia Straight article. (Jonathan Hayward/Canadian Press)

Although Furlong publicly announced legal action following the article’s publication, Smith said he never contacted the paper to say he was withdrawing his suit in October 2013.

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OKLAHOMA
KOCO

A federal jury has convicted an Edmond man of seven out of 17 counts of illicit sexual conduct on Kenyan orphans while he served a mission at an orphanage.

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OKLAHOME
The Norman Transcript

By Michael Kinney

OKLAHOMA CITY — A federal jury on Friday found former Edmond church missionary Matthew Lane Durham guilty of aggravated sexual abuse with children.

Durham, 20, had served as a volunteer at the Upendo Children’s Home in the Kenyan capital of Nairobi since 2012. During his fourth trip, he was accused of sexually assaulting seven boys and girls under the age of 18 between April and June of 2014.

Jurors found him guilty on seven counts. It took the jury nine hours of deliberation over two days to reach a verdict. Durham, who claimed his innocence on the stand, showed no emotion as the verdict was read. His parents wept openly as did members of the orphanage staff who testified at the trial.

“The jury has determined that while in Kenya, Mr. Durham committed sexual acts with children,” U.S. Attorney Sanford C. Coats said. “This is a sad situation for all involved. The bottom line is Mr. Durham is a threat to children and it will be our position that he be extracted from society at sentencing for a significant period of time.”

According to Coats, Durham can receive up to 30 years for each count, a maximum of 210 years. After the verdict was read, Durham was remanded to the custody of the U.S. Marshals. Judge David Russell ordered a pre-sentence investigation.

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UNITED STATES
National Catholic Register

BY BRIAN FRAGA 06/19/2015

MINNEAPOLIS — The missing piece in the Church’s response to the clergy sexual-abuse crisis, many have argued, has been accountability for bishops who mishandled, covered up or ignored cases of priests who preyed on minors and young people.

But that could be changing, as evidenced by several recent developments that include Pope Francis’ June 10 approval of a new Vatican tribunal to adjudicate cases of negligent bishops — and, most prominently, the June 15 resignations of Archbishop John Nienstedt and Auxiliary Bishop Lee Anthony Piche in the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis, which on June 5 was criminally charged as a corporation for allegedly failing to protect minors.

In a June 15 statement on the archdiocesan website, the outgoing archbishop said, “In order to give the archdiocese a new beginning amidst the many challenges we face, I have submitted my resignation as archbishop of St. Paul and Minneapolis to our Holy Father, Pope Francis, and I have just received word that he has accepted it.”

In closing, he said, “I leave with a clear conscience, knowing that my team and I have put in place solid protocols to ensure the protection of minors and vulnerable adults.”

The same day the Minnesota bishops resigned, the Holy See announced that its former ambassador to the Dominican Republic, the laicized archbishop Jozef Wesolowski, will stand trial this July in Vatican City on charges that he sexually abused boys and possessed child pornography while he served in the Caribbean (see story on page 5).

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UNITED STATES
The Tampa Tribune

Published: June 20, 2015

Pope Francis has taken an admirable if overdue step in creating a tribunal to deal with bishops accused of covering up for priests suspected of sexual abuse against children.

A new Vatican tribunal will conduct inquiries and hand out punishment to bishops who protect abusive priests or look the other way when legitimate complaints are made. The need was reinforced just days after Francis’ recent announcement when a Roman Catholic archbishop and a deputy bishop in Minnesota resigned over accusations the archdiocese of protected an abusive priest.

As The New York Times reports, bishops have largely avoided punishment as the public became aware of the child sex abuse cases against Catholic priests. The bishops were considered above the criminality.

But the refusal in some instances to take the appropriate action against abusive priests — in some cases transferring the priests and allowing them to abuse again — is in itself deserving of punishment.

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UNITED KINGDOM
Island Echo

A charity supporter and former vicar who volunteered at the Isle of Wight Steam Railway, the British Legion and was part of the Isle of Wight Music Dance & Drama Festival Committee, has been jailed for 7 years and 2 months after being found guilty of historic indecent assault, including abusing an altar boy.

John Charles Hibberd, 77, was found guilty of six counts of indecent assault dating back as far as 1967 when he appeared at Kingston Crown Court in London yesterday (Friday).

Hibberd, originally from Chiswick in London, worked as a priest in the area before joining the staff of the Diocese of London as finance secretary. He was there for 12 years before retiring to the Isle of Wight when he moved into a bungalow at Lake. He worshiped at the Church of the Good Shepherd in the town.

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MINNESOTA
Star Tribune

By Tony Kennedy Star Tribune JUNE 19, 2015

A man who once studied under John Nienstedt to become a Catholic priest told private investigators hired by the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis that Nienstedt made what he felt certain was a sexual advance toward him and then expelled him from the seminary after being rebuffed.

James Heathcott, now an adult and living on the West Coast, said Friday that he believes it was his story — given in a sworn affidavit — and others uncovered by investigators at the Greene Espel law firm in Minneapolis that prompted Nienstedt to resign earlier this week.

“I certainly hope that anyone who was ever subjected to his abuse of power and arrogance will get a sense of justice and peace of mind from this,” Heathcott said in an interview.

Nienstedt could not be reached for comment Friday.

In an interview with the Star Tribune last summer, after the archdiocese announced it had commissioned the Greene Espel investigation, Nienstedt said the probe centered on five allegations of sexual impropriety made by priests and seminarians, but he staunchly denied that he was gay or had engaged in any improper acts.

“I’m not gay,” he said. “And I’m not anti-gay.”

Heathcott was one of several former priests and seminarians who gave sworn affidavits to Greene Espel in the course of their investigation early last year.

By the end of July, however, Nienstedt abruptly halted the investigation even while attorneys Matt Forsgren and David Wallace-Jackson were still pursuing leads, according to sources with direct knowledge of the events. The archdiocese has declined to comment on anything related to the investigation because it is considered a personnel matter. Greene Espel also has declined to comment. “The archbishop resigned, and now the archdiocese is moving forward,” Auxiliary Bishop Andrew Cozzens said Friday.

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CANADA
AM 730

Marcella Bernardo
June 19, 2015

The editor of the Vancouver newspaper to first publish allegations of child abuse involving 2010 Olympic boss John Furlong has taken the stand at Furlong’s defamation trial in Vancouver.

Charlie Smith says freelance journalist Laura Robinson first approached him in 2011 and he was intrigued by her research.

Smith says he was curious to learn why Furlong’s book Patriot Hearts made no mention of his time in Canada before he officially moved here in 1974.

Smith says Robinson wrote previous articles for the Georgia Straight and he had a lot respect for her.

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CANADA
The Globe and Mail

SUNNY DHILLON
VANCOUVER — The Globe and Mail
Published Friday, Jun. 19, 2015

The editor of a weekly newspaper that published a controversial article about former Vancouver Olympics CEO John Furlong says the people who allege Mr. Furlong was physically abusive when he was a gym teacher had a right to be heard.

The Georgia Straight published a lengthy article about Mr. Furlong, authored by freelance journalist Laura Robinson, in September, 2012. Eight people swore affidavits that alleged Mr. Furlong abused his students when he was a physical-education instructor at Immaculata Roman Catholic Elementary School in Burns Lake, B.C., from 1969-70.

Ms. Robinson is suing Mr. Furlong over comments he made at a news conference the day the story was published. Mr. Furlong vehemently denied any wrongdoing and criticized Ms. Robinson’s reporting, saying she had a vendetta against him.

Mr. Furlong filed lawsuits against Ms. Robinson and the Georgia Straight, but ultimately abandoned both.

On Friday, Georgia Straight editor Charlie Smith testified about the paper’s decision to run the story.

“Do people have the right to be heard who swear affidavits about what happened? That’s what it was all about,” said Mr. Smith.

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CANADA
The Province

BY KEITH FRASER, THE PROVINCE JUNE 19, 2015

The editor of the Georgia Straight on Friday accused Vancouver Olympic CEO John Furlong of engaging in a “sustained public relations blitz” against his newspaper after it published allegations Furlong had physically abused his former students more than 40 years ago.

Charlie Smith made the comment while testifying at the trial at which freelance journalist Laura Robinson is suing Furlong for defamation arising from his response to her article on the abuse allegations for the Vancouver weekly.

After the article was published in September 2012, Furlong sued the paper and Robinson for defamation, claiming that he’d been falsely accused and alleging Robinson was unethical and incompetent.

In October 2013, Furlong held a press conference at which he announced that a police investigation into an allegation of sexual abuse against Furlong, which was not reported by the Straight, had been concluded and no charges had been laid.

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CANADA
CBC News

A lawyer from Kenora, Ont., under investigation by the Law Society of Upper Canada, says all of his residential school clients received their full entitlement.

Doug Keshen is facing allegations of professional misconduct and is to appear before the Law Society tribunal on June 30.

He is accused of advancing money to clients against anticipated settlement funds and transferring money from residential school clients’ settlement funds to himself.

“I’m not in a situation like the ones in other parts of Canada where lawyers took people’s money and the clients didn’t receive their benefit,” Keshen said. “My situation is that I advanced some dollars interest-free. I never personally benefited.”

Keshen is also accused of facilitating high interest loans from Settlement Lenders of Canada. The loans were secured against anticipated settlement funds, according to the Law Society’s Notice of Application.

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UNITED KINGDOM
Chiswick W4

A former Anglican vicar has been found guilty of six counts of indecent assault including abusing an altar boy at a Church in Chiswick.

John Charles Hibberd, aged 77, was found guilty of six counts of indecent assault, the oldest offence dating back to 1967. He has been jailed for a total of seven years and two months at Kingston Crown Court.

Hibberd worked for the Church of England in West London for many years. On 20 February 2013, one of his victims contacted the police to make aa allegation of sexual abuse by Hibberd dating back decades. When he was younger he had lived in Chiswick with his family and was taken to a local church; St James, Gunnersbury by his mother from the ages of seven to eight years and attended until he was 12. He became an altar boy and Hibberd targeted him for abuse. During the investigation, two other victims were identified and contacted by the police. St. James was incorporated into the Parish of Brentford in 1987.

Hibberd retired to the Isle of Wight over 15 years ago and worked in churches and voluntary organisations on the island.

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ALABAMA
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests

For immediate release: Friday, June 19

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

Shame on Mobile Archbishop Thomas Rodi for spending parishioners’ donations to keep secrets about an accused predator priest.

[AL.com]

Again, church lawyers are trying to make sure that Fr. Johnny Savoie won’t have to answer questions about his alleged child sex crimes under oath.

In February 2014, Savoie disclosed to his parishioners that he had been accused of molesting a child in Fairhope, Alabama. Earlier this year, the allegation surfaced during a separate civil lawsuit brought by several families charging bullying at Savoie’s parish school. Archdiocesan officials did not publicly announce the abuse report, nor did they suspend or remove Savoie during their purported investigation.

[BishopAccountability.org]

Fr. Savoie continues as pastor of St. Pius church (with a parochial school) in Mobile.

[Mobile archdiocese]

Rodi and his top aides are being incredibly risky and callous. They’re violating the official national Catholic church abuse policy. And they are putting kids at risk of horrific pain.

But if that’s not bad enough, Rodi is wasting thousands of dollars, generously given to the archdiocese by caring Catholics, trying to keep Savoie’s wrongdoing hidden.

If Rodi refuses to show caution – by suspending Savoie – we call on him to show some sensitivity to donors and fidelity to church policy by letting Savoie be questioned about his sexual misdeeds with a teenager.

And we call on anyone who may have seen, suspected or suffered Savoie’s misdeeds or Rodi’s cover ups to come forward, speak up, call police, expose wrongdoers, protect kids and start healing.

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PUERTO RICO
Tribune 242

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico (AP) – A former Roman Catholic priest was sentenced on Thursday to 11 years in prison for taking a teenage boy on a cruise ship vacation to the Bahamas with the intent to engage in illegal sexual conduct.

#The United States Attorney’s Office on the Caribbean island announced the sentencing of expelled priest Israel Berrios, who had pleaded guilty in August, 2014.

#Prosecutors accused Berrios of giving the 15-year-old boy money, a computer and a camera and taking him on a four-day cruise to the Bahamas with his mother’s permission in July, 2008. The victim, now a young adult, was apparently an altar boy at the time.

#Berrios previously served as director of a Catholic school in the mountain town of Aibonito and as a priest in the diocese of Caguas, south of the US island’s capital. He is in his late 50s.

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NEW YORK
Wall Street Journal

By MELANIE GRAYCE WEST
June 19, 2015

In a move offering promise to hundreds of Roman Catholic parishioners across the region, a Vatican office has decided to further study several parishes that appealed recent orders, made by the Archdiocese of New York, to either merge or close.

The Congregation for the Clergy, a Vatican office that handles issues concerning parishes and priests, sent letters to at least seven parishes this week notifying each that a decision on an appeal won’t be reached until Sept. 1, weeks before Pope Francis is expected to visit New York.

The notifications are important because they allow parishes affected by the reorganization to continue their appeals at the Vatican.

“It’s a good sign that they are continuing to study it, and I’m glad that they are giving it careful consideration,” said Janice Dooner Lynch, a parishioner of Our Lady of Peace, an Upper East Side parish that is part of the group that appealed to reverse a decision to merge with another parish.

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OKLAHOMA
News 9

BY JESSICA HOLLEY

OKLAHOMA CITY – Matthew Durham, the Edmond missionary charged with sexually assaulting children from a Kenyan orphanage, testified Wednesday.

Durham is charged with more than a dozen counts of sexual misconduct stemming from trip he took last April through May. Durham repeatedly told the jury throughout his six hours of testimony that he never molested any of the children from the orphanage where he volunteered.

Durham recalled the initial meeting with orphanage officials after first learning of the allegations. According to one volunteer, children had come forward saying Durham pulled them from their beds at night and molested them.

During that meeting, Durham denied abusing the children, saying, “I don’t remember. I wouldn’t do this.”

Durham says he was threatened to confess because they had recorded proof of the assaults and an eyewitness, but that evidence was never shown to him. He also spoke about a possible “inner demon” or “spirit” called Luke.

He believes “Luke” came out at night and whispered in his ear things to do to the children. He told the jury, “What if the demon wanted me to do mission work to be around children?”

Following this meeting, Durham was placed in a room away from the orphanage. He said during that time he began to question his memory. But Durham told the jury he was not allowed to return home from until he confessed.

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OKLAHOMA/KENYA
Charisma News

HEIDE BRANDES/REUTERS

An Oklahoma man charged with sexually molesting children at a Kenyan orphanage told a U.S. federal court on Wednesday he was innocent but believed he was possessed by an evil spirit that made him do things he does not remember.

Matthew Durham, 20, of Edmond, took the stand in his own defense on 17 charges of raping and sexually abusing children as young as 6 when he was performing Christian missionary work at the Upendo Children’s Home in Kenya.

If convicted, Durham faces up to life in prison.

When the home manager confronted Durham about possible inappropriate behavior with the children, he denied the accusations, he said.

Durham blamed an evil spirit named Luke for the crimes.

“They told me that an eyewitness saw me,” Durham said.

“I thought that meant (Luke) came at night. I have no recollection of molesting those children, but they told me I did, so it must have been an evil spirit. I wasn’t in a good place.”

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OKLAHOMA
Examiner-Enterprise

By Kyle Schwab
The Oklahoman
(TNS)

A former Edmond missionary accused of sexually abusing Kenyan children testified Wednesday in his own defense, repeatedly telling jurors, “It didn’t happen.”

“They made me doubt my own memories,” Matthew Lane Durham testified about his accusers. “They made me feel contaminated.”

In a calm, clear voice, Durham looked directly at the jurors each time he spoke.

Durham, 20, is accused in Oklahoma City federal court of 17 counts of rape and molestation of eight children while on a mission in 2014 at an African orphanage. The trial could conclude Thursday.

Under questioning from his attorney Stephen Jones, Durham testified about a confrontational meeting on June 13 of last year where volunteers and orphanage founders accused him of sexually abusing some of the children. Durham told jurors that he didn’t know what he was being accused of at first, and he denied all allegations at that time.

He said Eunice Menja, a co-founder of Upendo Children’s Home, told him at the meeting that she believed an evil spirit or a multiple-personality was present in him.

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OKLAHOMA
U.S. News

OKLAHOMA CITY (AP) — A federal jury convicted an Oklahoma man on Friday of illicit sexual conduct with children at a Kenyan orphanage that specializing in caring for neglected children.

Matthew Lane Durham, 20, was found guilty of multiple federal charges of engaging in illicit sexual conduct in foreign places and faces decades in prison at sentencing.

He was acquitted of several other charges that alleged he left Oklahoma with the intent to sexually abuse children.

Durham had served as a volunteer at the Upendo Children’s Home in the Kenyan capital of Nairobi since 2012. He was on his fourth visit when he was accused of sexually assaulting children between April and June 2014.

“The wolf in sheep’s clothing got among the lambs,” Assistant U.S. Attorney David Petermann told jurors during closing arguments Thursday.

The jury deliberated for about nine hours over two days.

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OKLAHOMA
News 9

OKLAHOMA CITY – A federal jury has reached a verdict in the trial of Matthew Durham. He has been convicted of illicit sexual conduct with children at a Kenyan orphanage.

Prosecutors said 20-year-old Durham of Edmond, Oklahoma, targeted the children while he worked at an orphanage in Kenya. Earlier this week, Durham testified that he never abused any of the children.

Friday afternoon, a federal jury found Durham guilty on seven counts, and not guilty on 10 counts. He’s found guilty on seven counts of engaging with illicit sexual conduct in foreign places, and not guilty on eight counts of aggravated sexual abuse of a child, one count of travel with intent to engage in illicit sexual conduct, and one count of engaging in illicit sexual conduct in foreign places.

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OKLAHOMA
News OK

By Kyle Schwab | June 19, 2015

Jurors Friday found former Edmond missionary Matthew Lane Durham guilty of seven counts at his federal trial over sexual offenses against Kenyan children at an orphanage in 2014.

The jury acquitted Durham, 20, of 10 other counts.

Jurors deliberated for nine hours over two days in Oklahoma City federal court. Durham remained emotionless as the verdict was read. A judge will determine his punishment later.

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MINNESOTA
KSTP

A report says the former archbishop of St. Paul and Minneapolis, John Nienstedt, interfered with an investigation by an outside law firm into allegations of his misconduct.

Nienstedt authorized the probe in hopes of clearing his name. But Minnesota Public Radio reports the results threatened to ruin it. MPR interviewed several people with direct knowledge of the inquiry.

Several of Nienstedt’s top advisers gathered privately in April 2014 to discuss allegations of inappropriate behavior, including sexual advances toward priests. Each adviser agreed he should resign.

A few days later, two auxiliary bishops traveled to Washington to tell the papal ambassador. Soon afterward, the investigation was narrowed to allegations of crimes and grave sins.

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MINNESOTA
Pioneer Press

By Ruben Rosario
rrosario@pioneerpress.com
POSTED: 06/19/2015

I’ve never met a Catholic without a guilty conscience. That includes yours truly, the wretched sinner, the practicing Catholic without the blinders on who is still practicing to get it right one of these days. My GC meter was installed at baptism.

I felt guilty when I and a few grammar school classmates placed tacks on the pews in front of us as a prank and got caught by Mother Superior. We were going to pull them back before other classmates sat down, but the thought itself was sin enough.

I felt guilty when I sneaked sips from the sacramental wine before Mass as an altar boy. I felt guilty when I got scolded by a nun in front of the class for not reading “Jane Eyre” as part of a book assignment.

“I just did not have the time to read it, Sister,” I remember saying. I fibbed. I did not want to admit that I found the book to be boring and girlish.

“You did not make time,” she snapped. She was right. I feel guilty about that, too, even now. Someone let me know how the book ended.

Possessing a healthy guilty conscience is a good thing for everyone, regardless of religious or non-religious belief. There is a moral code that is universal. My guilt meter still operates much like the race track rubber guards that help bounce the errant kiddie car back on course.

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ALABAMA
AL.com

By Brendan Kirby | bkirby@al.com
on June 19, 2015

With a new judge now hearing the case, attorneys for the Archdiocese of Mobile have renewed efforts to block a priest from answering questions under oath about a past relationship with a teenager.

Mobile County Circuit Judge Sarah Stewart on March 27 rejected the church’s arguments that statements about the decade-old relationship involving the Rev. Johnny Savoie are protected by attorney-client privilege and that an internal investigation into the matter is protected under evidentiary rules holding that lawyers are not completed to turn over their “work product” to opposing attorneys.

Several lawsuits alleging that St. Puis X School officials tolerated — and in some cases participated in — bullying of students have been consolidated in front of special Judge Braxton Kittrell. Alabama Supreme Court Chief Justice Roy Moore appointed the retired judge after Presiding Mobile County Circuit Judge Charles Graddick recused all of the sitting judges from the case.

David Kennedy, an attorney for the plaintiffs, said he is confident that Kittrell with keep Stewart’s ruling in place.

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MINNESOTA
Sun Herald

The Associated Press
June 19, 2015

ST. PAUL, MINN. — The former archbishop of St. Paul and Minneapolis, John Nienstedt, interfered with an investigation by an outside law firm into allegations of his misconduct, Minnesota Public Radio reported Friday.

While Nienstedt authorized the investigation in the hope of clearing his name, the results threatened to ruin it. Several of his top advisers gathered privately in April 2014, and read sworn statements gathered by the lawyers that accused Nienstedt of inappropriate behavior, including sexual advances toward priests. Each adviser agreed he should resign.

A few days later, Auxiliary Bishops Lee Piche and Andrew Cozzens traveled to Washington to tell the papal ambassador; MPR ( http://bit.ly/1LnNL6v ) was unable to learn what transpired there. But soon after the bishops returned home, the investigation as originally conceived ended, with Piche limiting the probe to allegations of crimes and grave sins. A new law firm eventually took over.

The Vatican announced Nienstedt’s and Piche’s resignations Monday. They stepped down amid an intensifying scandal over how the archdiocese handled cases of clerical sexual misconduct. The archdiocese sought bankruptcy protection in January as abuse claims rose, and prosecutors filed criminal child-endangerment charges against the archdiocese earlier this month for allegedly turning a blind eye to Curtis Wehmeyer, a now-imprisoned former priest convicted of molesting two boys.

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HAWAII
Hawaii Catholic Herald

Father Anthony Bolger, a retired priest who served the Diocese of Honolulu for 35 years, died Jan. 7 at his residence in Tijuana, Mexico. He was 71 and a priest for 45 years.

Father Bolger served 24 years of active ministry as a parish priest in Hawaii.

Funeral services are pending.

Anthony J. Bolger was born on Sept. 16, 1943, to Thomas J. and Sylvia L. Schneider Bolger in Toledo, Ohio, one of three brothers and three sisters.

He studied at Catholic University in Washington, D.C., and The Gregorian University in Rome where he earned a licentiate of sacred theology in moral theology a few years after his ordination.

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HAWAII
Hawaii Catholic Herald

Bishop Larry Silva will celebrate a memorial Mass for Father Anthony Bolger, 10 a.m., Feb. 25, at St. Anthony Church in Kailua, where Father Bolger once served as pastor. Father Gary Secor will give the homily.

Father Bolger, who was a priest for the Diocese of Honolulu for 35 years, died Jan. 7 at his residence in Tijuana, Mexico. He was 71 and a priest for 45 years.

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HAWAII
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests

Statement by Joelle Casteix of Newport Beach, CA, SNAP Western Regional Director, (949) 322-7434 cell, jcasteix@gmail.com

A Catholic bishop recently led a funeral for an accused predator priest who was hiding in another country.

We just learned that Fr. Anthony Bolger, a priest who is publicly accused of sexually abusing a child in Hawai’i, died months ago while in hiding in Tijuana, Mexico.

[Hawaii Catholic Herald]

Hawai’i Bishop Clarence Silva even presided over Bolger’s funeral.

[Hawaii Catholic Herald]

We are upset by Silva’s recklessness, callousness, and secrecy.

Fr. Bolger joins a long list of credibly accused child-molesting clerics who have been allowed by their Catholic supervisors to live unsupervised in the Mexico border town among unsuspecting families and vulnerable children. As best we can tell, the local Tijuana community was not warned of the accusations against Bolger and that children were put in direct risk.

[BishopAccountability.org – The Star Advertiser]

Bishop Silva has done little or nothing to reach out and comfort the brave men and women who have come forward to say that they were sexually abused by Hawaii’s clerics. Instead of doing even the smallest thing to comfort the wounded, he salutes and honors those who may have caused horrible damage. Not only does this defy the way of Aloha, but Silva’s irresponsible actions deter other victims, witnesses and whistleblowers from speaking up. He’s also essentially encouraging other Catholic officials to behave in similarly hurtful ways in clergy sex abuse and cover up cases.

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MINNESOTA
Owatonna People’s Press

Jeffrey Jackson
Posted on Jun 19, 2015

The relief that washed over many Minnesotans — Roman Catholics and the rest — with Monday’s news that Archbishop John Nienstedt has resigned should not be mistaken for a sense that all is now well within the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis.

Rather, for some time, Nienstedt’s departure has been widely seen as a sad necessity. The Star Tribune Editorial Board has called it a requisite first step in a long effort to restore the reputation of the region’s largest religious organization— a reputation sullied by child molestation and an alleged cover-up so widespread that both criminal charges and a civil case were filed against the entire archdiocese in Ramsey County District Court on June 5.

Fairly or not, the 68-year-old Nienstedt became the face of those charges — a fact that, to his credit, he seemed to acknowledge in a statement announcing his resignation early Monday. He was stepping aside, he said, “to give the Archdiocese a new beginning amidst the many challenges we face.” Exiting with him is Auxiliary Bishop Lee Piche, whose resignation statement said “the people of the archdiocese … need healing and hope. I was getting in the way of that, so I had to resign.”

At least temporarily, archdiocesan leadership will be in the hands of the Rev. Bernard Hebda, who will hold the title “apostolic administrator” in St. Paul, while continuing to function as coadjutor archbishop of Newark, New Jersey.

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VATICAN CITY
The Australian

PAOLA TOTARO THE AUSTRALIAN JUNE 20, 2015

On May 25, a relatively new but increasingly important ritual unfolded with some ceremony behind the ‘Mure Leonine’, the ancient walls of the Vatican City State.

This rite, however, involved neither sacrament nor prayer: just a phalanx of forensic accountants, international bankers and behind the scenes, a quartet of increasingly powerful Australians, led by the Pope’s Financial Tsar, Cardinal George Pell.

It is only the third time in two centuries that l’Istituto per le Opere di Religioni (IOR) – probably best known as the scandal-plagued Vatican Bank – has released its financial accounts, allowing public scrutiny of its income, assets and expenditure.

And while the balance sheets at last clarify the size of a particularly secretive slice of the Catholic Church’s historically nebulous, global wealth (set down this year at approximately €6 billion), they tell an even more intriguing back-story of the seismic reforms underway inside the world’s smallest and mysterious independent state.

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UNITED KINGDOM
BBC News

A woman who claimed Jehovah’s Witness elders failed to protect her from sex abuse carried out by a convicted paedophile has won a six-figure payout.

The woman, now in her 20s, alleges she was abused as a child in Loughborough by ministerial servant Peter Stewart.

She had argued at London’s High Court that he used his role to abuse her.

A judge ruled the organisation was liable for the abuse because it failed to take “safeguarding steps” after Stewart admitted abusing another child.

Mr Justice Globe said he was “satisfied” the organisation should be “held responsible” for the abuse, which took place between 1989 and 1994.

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MINNESOTA
Minnesota Public Radio

For immediate release: Friday, June 19

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

Most top Twin Cities Catholic officials did nothing and kept quiet as their boss interfered with and limited an allegedly “independent” investigation into the archbishop’s alleged sexual misconduct.

[Minnesota Public Radio]

Bishop Bernard Hebda should release that investigation now and disclose its cost. And every single church staffer who helped hide Archbishop John Nienstedt’s wrongdoing by their inaction should publicly apologize for and explain their self-serving silence.

In a long, damning story, Minnesota Public Radio reports that, for months, several top church officials in the St. Paul/Minneapolis archdiocese knew Nienstedt was being deceitful about the “investigation” but took no steps to expose his deceit.

This story is less about Nienstedt. It’s more about others, most of whom are still high-ranking archdiocesan staffers, who ignored or helped hide Nienstedt’s very recent wrongdoing: his tampering with an investigation while deceiving the police, prosecutors, parishioners and the public about that investigation. Shame on each of them.

Shame too on Pope Francis’ US representative Archbishop Carlo Maria Vigano. Two bishops flew to Washington DC and took a risk by telling Vigano that Nienstedt’s advisors urged him to resign. But by the time the bishops return to Minnesota, “the lawyers investigating Nienstedt’s personal life are told to limit their investigation to crimes and grave sins.” (At first, they “had been told to investigate allegations of past misconduct. “)

Whatever Vigano did or didn’t do, he clearly wasn’t helpful. Nienstedt was allowed to stay on the job and continue lying to his flock and the public for more than a year.

We commend each person who cooperated in the flawed and still-secret investigation into Nienstedt, especially those who submitted affidavits. We are particularly grateful to Fr. Eugene Tiffany, Joel Cycenas and James Heathcott for disclosing their names publicly or confirming that they gave affidavits to the investigators.

We urge Catholics, in the Twin Cities and elsewhere, to note this crucial sentence from the MPR report: “The archdiocese would cover the costs (of the investigation into Nienstedt) secretly, which meant that parishioners who put money in the collection basket each Sunday wouldn’t know that some of their money was being used to investigate rumors about Nienstedt.”

We also urge Catholics everywhere to remember this troubling case every time Catholic officials anywhere claim they’re launching a supposedly “investigation” investigation into clergy sex crimes, misdeeds and cover ups.

Finally, we urge Catholics to note the difference between what church officials write and what church officials do. Often, their words on paper look good. But their behavior in private is bad.

One Catholic official told Greene Espel lawyers – on paper – that the archdiocese wanted: “to discover, as best they could, the truth or falsity of the claims regarding the Archbishop,” to “follow the truth,” and that the “investigation” was “not to be a whitewash or a witch-hunt.” But behind the scenes, Nienstedt (and perhaps other church officials) were working to interfere with and limit that so-called “investigation.”

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ROME
Bloomberg Politics

In Rome last week, a Vatican official who had already seen Pope Francis’s encyclical on the environment had this advice for a visiting American who was concerned that the pontiff was about to blame man for changing the Earth’s climate: You might not want to read it, then.

That’s one way Catholics have been able to avoid the disagreeable experience of ever disagreeing with their pope: Just play dumb and keep walkin’. Another strategy, though—and one that’s become far more blatant under Francis—is to try and influence him by passing messages through those around him. Lobbying, in other words.

In the months leading up to the release of the encyclical, conservative American Catholics and even the oil and gas industry sent emissaries to the Vatican hoping to dissuade the Holy Father from weighing in on climate change, arguing that the science isn’t settled and that cutting back on fossil fuel use would hurt rather than help the world’s poor. Exxon Mobil sent several delegations to meet with Vatican officials, and a conservative Chicago-based think tank, the Heartland Institute, held a whole counter-conference on alternative climate science in Rome at the end of April. But the Pope was apparently unmoved, and the encyclical states “there is a very consistent scientific consensus that indicates that we are witnessing a worrying warming of the climatic system…Humanity is called to take conscience of the need to change life styles, ways of production and consumption to fight this warming, or at least the human causes that produce it or accentuate it.”

Conservatives aren’t the only ones who have been lobbying. Ahead of Francis’s September trip to the U.S., both left- and right-leaning believers, as well as secular groups, are offering him their unsolicited counsel. Earlier this month, a delegation of about 20 American community organizers and union leaders stressed to the Vatican officials they met with how important they feel it is that Pope Francis use his U.S. pulpit to preach on criminal justice and immigration reform and institutional racism. They also want him to talk as specifically and forcefully as possible about pay so low it doesn’t add up to a “living wage”—a phrase coined by the American priest John A. Ryan in his doctoral thesis at Catholic University way back in 1906.

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DEUTSCHLAND
Fairschreiben

Ermöglicht durch: Ihr Name / Firmenname. Natürlich darf das erste Halbjahr nicht enden, ohne dass es wieder einen richtig großen Skandal in Sachen Missbrauch und Kirchen gibt und selbstverständlich ist erwartungsgemäß die katholische Kirche auch wieder voll dabei. Es ist noch nicht allzu so lange her, dass genau aus dieser Richtung im Kontext Homoehe etwas von einer Niederlage für die Menschheit zu hören war. Was die neusten Machenschaften in Mainz, um welche es hier gehen soll, dann wohl sind, wird schwer in Worte zu fassen sein.

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PUERTO RICO
Primerahora

[Father Israel Berrios Berrios has been sentenced to 11 years in prisons for abusing minors.]

Por Mariana Cobián
06/18/2015

Israel Berríos Berríos es el primer sacerdote católico acusado en Puerto Rico por abusar sexualmente de un menor de edad.

El primer sacerdote católico convicto en Puerto Rico por abusar sexualmente de un menor de edad, Israel Berríos Berríos, fue condenado a cumplir 11 años de cárcel y 10 años de libertad supervisada por hechos ocurridos entre 2007 y 2008.

Berríos Berríos, de 59 años, se declaró culpable el 21 de agosto de 2014 por un cargo federal por transportar a un menor feligres de su parroquia en Aibonito con el fin de cometer actos sexuales ilícitos. Llevó al adolescente de 15 años a Miami, Florida, para irse en el crucero Majesty of the Seas por las Bahamas en julio de 2008.

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CHILE
Cooperativa

[The Santiago archbishop has removed from ministry Rev. Julio Dutilh, a priest in Las Condes, who is alleged to have abused someone 26 years ago.]

El Arzobispado de Santiago informó, mediante un comunicado, sobre la remoción del sacerdote Julio Dutilh, un párroco que ejercía funciones en la comuna de Las Condes, y que fue sancionado a raíz de un caso de abuso sexual ocurrido hace 26 años.

“En noviembre del año pasado se recibió una denuncia formal en contra del Pbro. Dutilh en la que se le acusaba de un acto de connotación sexual que habría ocurrido hace 26 años, en el contexto del sacramento de la confesión. La denuncia fue hecha por una mujer que en aquel entonces no era menor de edad, según la legislación canónica de la época”, señala la nota difundida a través de la página web IglesiadeSantiago.cl.

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UNITED STATES
The Open Tabernacle: Here Comes Everybody

Posted on June 19, 2015 by Betty Clermont

Annually:

47,000 women die from complications of unsafe abortion.
8.5 million women experience complications from unsafe abortion that require medical attention, and three million do not receive the care they need.”
If every woman who wanted birth control had access to it, there would be 150,000 fewer maternal deaths
640,000 fewer newborn deaths
600,000 fewer children becoming motherless

In his encyclical on the environment, “Pope Francis stated the protection of nature is ‘incompatible with the justification of abortion … How can we genuinely teach the importance of concern for other vulnerable beings, however troublesome or inconvenient they may be, if we fail to protect a human embryo, even when its presence is uncomfortable and creates difficulties?’ he asked. He cautioned against seeking to exercise ‘absolute power’ over our bodies as if they were something that we own.”

“’Instead of resolving the problems of the poor and thinking of how the world can be different, some can only propose a reduction in the birth rate,’ Francis lamented. Even though an unequal distribution of population and available resources presents obstacles to development and environmental sustainability, ‘it must nonetheless be recognized that demographic growth is fully compatible with an integral and shared development,’ he stressed.”

“Overpopulation is the main driver of climate change, ill health and conflict,” according to the British Medical Journal.

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CANADA
The Province

BY KEITH FRASER, STAFF REPORTER JUNE 18, 2015

A lawyer for John Furlong on Thursday scoffed at claims by Laura Robinson that she was shocked and devastated by the Vancouver Olympic CEO’s response to an article she wrote alleging he’d physically abused students in northern B.C. more than 40 years ago.

In her direct examination, Robinson had commented that she was shocked in the wake of her September 2012 Georgia Straight article to see Furlong alleging she was an unethical, incompetent journalist who had fabricated the allegations.

“You say you were shocked by his response,” said John Hunter, Furlong’s lawyer. “You knew that he denied this abuse. You knew that from day one.”

“Yes,” replied Robinson.

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CANADA
The Globe and Mail

SUNNY DHILLON
VANCOUVER — The Globe and Mail
Published Thursday, Jun. 18, 2015

A freelance journalist continued to attack former Vancouver Olympics CEO John Furlong even after her initial article was published, pressuring organizations he was involved with to sever ties and writing a paper that contained untrue allegations, Mr. Furlong’s lawyer argued Thursday.

Laura Robinson wrote an article for the Georgia Straight, a weekly newspaper based in Vancouver, in September, 2012, in which eight people alleged Mr. Furlong physically abused his former students. The allegations stemmed from Mr. Furlong’s previously undisclosed time as a physical-education instructor at Immaculata Roman Catholic Elementary School in Burns Lake, B.C., from 1969-70.

Ms. Robinson is suing Mr. Furlong over comments he made at a news conference the day the story was published. Mr. Furlong vehemently denied any wrongdoing and criticized Ms. Robinson’s reporting, saying she had a vendetta against him.

On Thursday, the defamation trial heard about e-mails Ms. Robinson sent to an aboriginal news website and to a B.C. First Nation in June, 2013. In the e-mails to NationTalk and the Musqueam Indian Band, Ms. Robinson asked questions about a “First Nations evening” that was being held by the Vancouver Whitecaps soccer team. Mr. Furlong is the team’s executive chair

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CANADA
CBC News

By Jason Proctor, CBC News Posted: Jun 18, 2015

John Furlong’s lawyer claims journalist Laura Robinson conducted a “witch hunt” against the former Olympics CEO, which continued long past the publication of a controversial Georgia Straight article in September 2012.

As he wrapped up his cross-examination, John Hunter accused Robinson of being an activist — noting she was described that way in articles and a citation for an honorary degree.

Robinson admitted some might consider her an advocate for equality in sport, First Nations youth and sexual assault victims.

But she said those passions are separate from her professional life.

“I’m also an athlete and a journalist,” she said.

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CANADA
Straight

by Carlito Pablo on June 18th, 2015

Sparks flew on the fourth day of the trial of a defamation suit against former Vancouver Olympics CEO John Furlong.

“How did you expect him to react?” Furlong’s lawyer, John Hunter, asked Laura Robinson, who wrote an in-depth article about the prominent figure’s untold early years in Canada and alleged abuses he committed against First Nations students at an elementary school.

“You expected him to send you flowers?” Hunter said, pressing on with his cross-examination today (June 18) of Robinson, who sued Furlong for allegedly impugning her integrity as a journalist following publication of her article in the Georgia Straight in 2012.

“I expected him not to lie,” Robinson responded.

Hunter reminded her that she had been told by Furlong’s camp that if her article was printed, she would be sued.

Following the publication of her story in the Straight on September 27, 2012, Furlong did sue Robinson and the newspaper. He eventually discontinued the lawsuits.

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NORTHERN IRELAND
Belfast Telegraph

BY LIAM CLARKE – 19 JUNE 2015

Stormont must start planning a “redress scheme” for victims of child sex abuse – including those preyed on by paedophile priests such as Fr Brendan Smyth and others assaulted in Kincora Boys’ Home, an international expert has warned.

In Australia and Canada, ex-gratia payments are being made to survivors of child abuse who are now adults.

In Canada it is £28,500 and in Australia it is an average of £14,400.

Criminology professor Dr Kathleen Daly said it was high time politicians started talking seriously about a redress scheme.

“These are considerable sums and victims and survivors are getting older – so we need to start talking now,” she said.

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MINNESOTA
Minnesota Pubic Radio

Madeleine Baran
Jun 19, 2015

On April 10, 2014 — seven months into the clergy sex abuse scandal — Archbishop John Nienstedt’s top advisers gathered for a private meeting. They had just received several affidavits from an internal investigation of Nienstedt that had been authorized by the archbishop himself to address damaging rumors.

The sworn statements accused Nienstedt of inappropriate behavior, according to people who read them, including sexual advances toward at least two priests.

Private investigators had even arranged a prison interview with Curtis Wehmeyer, the former priest at the center of the clergy sex abuse scandal. Wehmeyer, who pleaded guilty in 2012 to child sex abuse, told the investigators he couldn’t understand why Nienstedt wanted to spend time with him or why he kept him in ministry. Nienstedt made him uncomfortable, he said, and they never had sex. Wehmeyer said he wasn’t interested in Nienstedt.

Nienstedt had authorized the investigation with the expectation that it would clear his name. Instead, it threatened to ruin it. At the meeting last spring, the advisers went around the room. Each said Nienstedt should resign.

A few days later, Auxiliary Bishops Lee Piche and Andrew Cozzens traveled to Washington to bring that message to the pope’s ambassador to the United States, Archbishop Carlo Maria Vigano, the apostolic nuncio. It was a brave move that threatened the careers of both men. Piche and Cozzens had hoped Vigano would agree that the future of the archdiocese was more important than the reputation of one man.

What happened at that meeting is unknown. Piche, Cozzens and Vigano did not respond to interview requests.

However, when the bishops returned to Minnesota, everything changed. The investigation, as it was originally ordered, was over.

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AUSTRALIA
9 News

NSW Police says it’s disappointed its officers endured the indignity of a royal commission regarding alleged misconduct only to have their commitment and diligence recognised in a final report.

Officers including Inspector Beth Cullen were investigated following a series on ABC’s Lateline in 2013 that asserted she had been a member of the Catholic Church Professional Standards Resource Group (PSRG) from 1998 to 2005 and destroyed evidence of sexual abuse by clergy members.

Another broadcast said the Catholic Church tried to strike an agreement with police to withhold information about paedophile priests.

In the report tabled in NSW parliament on Friday, it was acknowledged that Insp Cullen’s participation in the PSRG was a conflict of interest with her obligations as a police officer.

However it said there were several factors that significantly mitigated this misconduct, including that she had no intention of any misconduct and there was also no evidence she had destroyed any documents.

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AUSTRALIA
ABC News

By the National Reporting Team’s Lorna Knowles

A senior NSW police officer engaged in misconduct by failing to investigate allegations of child sexual abuse raised during regular meetings with the Catholic Church, the Police Integrity Commission (PIC) has found.

In a report tabled in Parliament late yesterday, the PIC concluded that Inspector Beth Cullen had a conflict of interest by sitting on an internal church advisory panel, known as the Professional Standards Resource Group (PSRG).

This was because she had failed to act on multiple allegations of child sexual abuse raised in the group meetings — in breach of her duty as a police officer.

The Commission noted that while Inspector Cullen had acted in good faith, her misconduct was “not trivial”.

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UTAH
ABC 4

Marcos Ortiz

OGDEN Utah (ABC 4 Utah) – Police say a church choir director did more than make music for the ears. The choir director, Jose Zamarippa is now behind bars accused of having sexual relations with a 12 year old girl who police say was a member of his choir.

The 27-year old was a volunteer choir director at the Rios De Agua Vivo church on Grant Avenue in Ogden.

But over the past two months, investigators claim the relationship turned sexual “That relationship evolved into the exchange of sexually explicit text messages,” said Lt. Lane Findlay of the Weber County Sheriff’s Office. “There were some written notes that were also exchanged and also some nude photos that were exchanged.”

Authorities said Zamarippa who is now in jail had sexual relations with the 12 year old at her Washington Terrace home. The church’s pastor says there was no sign of trouble at his church before this happened.

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CHICAGO (IL)
Chicago Sun-Times

WRITTEN BY REEMA AMIN POSTED: 06/18/2015

Two men are claiming in a lawsuit filed Thursday that they were abused by convicted child molester and former priest Daniel McCormack while on a basketball team he coached.

The men, identified only as John J. Doe and John Doe 2, filed the suit in Cook County Circuit Court against the Archidiocese of Chicago and the Catholic Bishop of Chicago.

John J. Doe, born in early 1991, played basketball for a team coached by McCormack based out of the parish in June 2004, the suit said. McCormack would repeteadly hug, pat and rub John J. Doe and inappropriately sexually touched him, the suit claims.

John Doe 2, born in 1988, said he also played basketball for the same team between June 2002 and 2003. He claims he was in or near St. Agatha’s Parish on the West Side when McCormack “exerted an inappropriate physical presence” with hugs and pats and rubs.

The suit claims the Archdiocese knew about but did not properly investigate various sexual abuse complaints against McCormack, including claims he sexually touched sleeping seminarians and abused a minor boy in a Mexico seminarian program.

McCormack was arrested in 2006 and later sentenced to five years in prison after he pleaded guilty to sexually abusing five other children at St. Agatha Catholic Church on the West Side.

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AUSTRALIA
Global Times

Source:Xinhua Published: 2015-6-19

A senior Australian police officer failed to investigate allegations of child sexual abuse during regular meetings with the Catholic Church. Local media reported on Friday the New South Wales (NSW) Police Integrity Commission (PIC) found NSW Police Inspector Beth Cullen had engaged in misconduct by not disclosing a conflict of interest.

The investigation was established after Australia’s national broadcaster aired allegations the NSW Police allowed the Australian Catholic Church tried to make an agreement with NSW authorities allowing it to withhold information about pedophile priests.

The investigation showed that while conflicted, Cullen failed to act on multiple allegations of child sexual abuse raised by an internal Catholic Church advisory panel, of which she was a member in breach of her duty as a police officer.

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UNITED STATES
PopeCrimes& Vatican Evils.

Paris Arrow

Idiots Catholics, especially idiots Americans Catholics, are the front-row cheer leaders of Pope Francis in his Vatican Circus acts and the latest one is his new encyclical on Climate Change – what a joke and lots of hypocrisy – and another Emperor’s New Clothes act. Below are the major 8 key points of the new papal encyclical (an official teaching document for members of the Catholic Church), and our rebuttals.

But first, Pope Francis really surpasses King Solomon in wisdom and in wives.

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INDIA
The Hindu

ZUBEDA HAMID

Rev. C.M. Joseph, a Chennai-based expert on canon law, said that while he could not comment on Fr. Jeyapaul’s case without studying it, more than one course of action was open to the Bishop of the diocese concerned.

“The priest could be suspended from exercising his priestly ministry. This could be for a certain time period after which he would return. Another course of action could be his removal from the priestly ministry altogether,” he said.

While there is no monitoring programme as such for these cases, Rev. Joseph said if there was an allegation, the person is first warned to correct his behaviour, transferred if he fails to do so and if the behaviour continues, the canon law procedure is then initiated.

“But while we wait for this process to be complete, many more children could be exposed to abuse,” said Ms. Reddy.

Fr. Jeyapaul had spent some time in his home diocese before the law caught up with him. On his return to India in August 2005, he came back to the diocese of Ootacamund, a spokesperson said. “He was in charge of school education in the diocese for about a year after he came back, and after that he remained in the diocese,” he said.

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MINNESOTA
Pioneer Press

By Elizabeth Mohr
emohr@pioneerpress.com
POSTED: 06/18/2015

By all accounts, the man appointed by the Vatican to help run the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis is a well-liked, capable bishop.

Archbishop Bernard Hebda, 55, named Monday as apostolic administrator for the archdiocese, is known for his smile, his humility and intelligence.

Parishioners in the Twin Cities can expect Hebda, a Pittsburgh native, to approach the current challenges with compassion, said Father Lou Vallone, a Pittsburgh priest who has known “Bernie” for about 30 years.

“People who have been frustrated by not being heard, he will pay attention to them. People who are kind of put off by standoffish attitudes or embattled attitudes will not find that in him. They’ll find him warm and welcoming,” Vallone said.

Hebda’s appointment was announced at the same time the Vatican accepted the resignations of Archbishop John Nienstedt, who had been at the helm of the archdiocese since 2007, and Bishop Lee Piche, who was named auxiliary bishop in 2009.

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OREGON
Mail Tribune

By Thomas Moriarty
Mail Tribune

Posted Jun. 18, 2015

Federal prosecutors allege a Medford youth pastor arrested in January on burglary and privacy invasion charges transported at least three minors across state lines to produce child pornography.

The indictment, filed Wednesday in U.S. District Court in Medford, charges Donald Courtney Biggs with six counts of attempting to use a minor to produce a visual depiction of sexually explicit conduct, three counts of using a minor to produce a visual depiction of sexually explicit conduct and three counts of transportation with intent to engage in criminal sexual activity with a minor.

The indictment identifies by initials nine victims, three of whom Biggs is alleged to have transported to California.

Biggs, 36, was arrested by Medford police Jan. 15 in connection with an alleged burglary three days prior at Mountain Church, 1 E. Main St., where he had been employed as an administrative and youth pastor. Police said they believe Biggs, who previously had been under investigation for inappropriate text messages he allegedly exchanged with a juvenile congregation member, was attempting to steal computer hard drives from the church.

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INDIA
The Hindu

ZUBEDA HAMID

Activists are worried about how his activities will be monitored in India.

The Catholic priest from Tamil Nadu, Joseph Palanivel Jeyapaul, who was convicted of sexually abusing a teenage girl in Minnesota, U.S., after serving sentence, is set to return, sparking concern among activists in the State about how the activities of such convicted offenders will be monitored. Going by reports in the western media, Fr. Jeyapaul will be returning as his sentence of one year and one day in prison has already been served in custody.

The issue raises serious questions of monitoring and supervision of convicted sexual offenders, especially those who work with children, said Vidya Reddy of Tulir – Centre for Prevention and Healing of Child Abuse. “I am not saying people should not be given a second chance, but what is the monitoring system that is put in place to ensure they do not work with children and young people again,” she asked, adding, “the biggest societal blind spot we all have is the repetitiveness of most abusers.”

Criminal charges were filed against Fr. Jeyapaul, 60, in December 2006 for an offence dating back to the time he served as a priest in the diocese of Crookston, Minnesota in 2004 and 2005. He was held in Erode in Tamil Nadu in March 2012 and extradited to the U.S. in November 2014.

The diocese of Ootacamund, to which Fr. Jeyapaul has been attached since 1982, is yet to decide on the action to be taken against him. A.S. Selvanathan, a spokesperson for the diocese, said, “The diocese will take a decision in the matter only after we get confirmed facts about the judgment.”

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CANADA
CTV

The Canadian Press

Published Thursday, June 18, 2015

VANCOUVER — The freelance journalist suing John Furlong for defamation says she knew that a man who accused the former Olympics boss of sexual abuse had conflicting claims of abuse.
The trial has heard that the man and two women filed lawsuits alleging Furlong had sexually abused them while they were students at a Roman Catholic school in Burns Lake, B.C., in 1969 and 1970.

Laura Robinson testified under cross-examination that she presented a paper at a 2013 sports conference in Denmark that the included allegations of sexual abuse against Furlong by the three accusers.

One woman dropped her suit while the other two were dismissed earlier this year — and the man was found to have received $138,000 in compensation for abuse he alleged to have suffered at a different school during the same time period.

Robinson told the trial that she knew of the man’s compensation claim, but added that it wasn’t unusual for First Nations students to be ferried between schools even during the same year.

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

ST. LOUIS (MO)
St. Louis Post-Dispatch

By Michael D. Sorkin0

Monsignor Joseph D. Pins was pastor of the Cathedral Basilica of St. Louis and his funeral Mass will be celebrated there next week.

He died this week of cancer at age 70, the Archdiocese of St. Louis announced Thursday.

The Cathedral, 4431 Lindell Boulevard, is still known as the “New Cathedral,” although the first Mass was celebrated there in 1914. It is the seat of the archbishop and is considered the spiritual center of the archdiocese.

Monsignor Pins was named rector there in 2004. …

A spokesman for the Archdiocese said he could not answer any questions about Monsignor Pins or his accomplishments that weren’t included in a news release about his death.

Monsignor Pins is named in a pending civil lawsuit accusing the Archdiocese and the archbishop of covering up for a priest, the Rev. Xiu Hui “Joseph” Jiang. The priest was accused of molesting a teenage girl in Lincoln County. The suit claims the archbishop and the monsignor ignored Jiang’s requests to reassign the priest from the New Cathedral, where he met the girl. Criminal charges in the case have been dropped.

In 2004, Monsignor Pins was named to a newly created post of episcopal vicar at the St. Louis Review. That put him in charge of the archdiocesan newspaper, representing the archbishop.

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

CANADA
CBC News

By Nick Murray, CBC News

Convicted sex­ offender and former priest Eric Dejaeger will plead guilty to three Alberta­-based charges that date to the mid-1970s.

Dejaeger is charged with two sexual offences and failure to appear in court. The offences were allegedly committed in the period between 1975 and 1978 when he was studying at the Newman Theological College in Edmonton.

Dejaeger had applied to have his Alberta charges heard in Nunavut. He’s in the process of having those charges “waived” from Alberta to Nunavut, which means he’s agreed to plead guilty to them and will be sentenced in Nunavut.

The Alberta Crown prosecutor’s office said Dejaeger had signed the waiver shortly after being convicted last year in Iqaluit of sex-­related charges involving Inuit children when he was serving as a priest in Igloolik between 1978 and 1982.

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CANADA
Nunatsiaq Online

DAVID MURPHY

Crown prosecutors are still waiting on the Alberta Court of Queen’s Bench to send information to Nunavut regarding three outstanding charges against ex-priest Eric Dejaeger.

That’s what court heard June 18 at the Nunavut Court of Justice in Iqaluit.

According to the NCJ criminal court docket, which lists the names of accused people and the charges they face, the three charges against Dejaeger include: one sex assault, one sexual interference with someone under the age of 16 years, and another charge of failure to comply with a summons.

Those charges stem from incidents alleged to have occurred in Alberta from 1975 and 1978.

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ST. LOUIS (MO)
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests

SNAP to Archbishop “Take priest’s passport”
Twice-accused cleric is a flight risk, victims say
Group urges that he NOT be put back on the job
Catholic officials should “come clean” about two cases
“Carlson should say where predator priest is living now,” SNAP says

What:
Holding signs and childhood photos at a sidewalk news conference, clergy sex abuse victims will prod St. Louis’ archbishop to

–keep a twice-accused cleric on suspension,
–disclose his whereabouts,
–take his passport so he can’t flee overseas, and
–publicly answer troubling questions about the cleric and his relationship to the archbishop.

They will also urge anyone who may have seen, suspected or suffered the twice-accused priest’s crimes to call “independent sources of help, like therapists, police, prosecutors or support groups.”

When:
TODAY, Thursday, June 18 at 2:00 p.m.

Where:
Outside the St. Louis Cathedral on Lindell at Taylor in the city’s Central West End

Who:
Three-four members of a support group called SNAP (the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests)

Why:
Yesterday, prosecutors dropped child sex abuse charges against a twice-accused archdiocesan priest with close ties to St. Louis’ top Catholic official but said they hope to re-file the case later. Even though a civil child sex abuse case against the priest is pending, church staff have hinted that the suspended cleric may be put back to work in a parish. SNAP opposes that potential move and wants church staff to take the priest’s passport to prevent him from fleeing the US.

Despite an official national church policy mandating “openness” in pedophile priest cases, Archbishop Robert Carlson refuses to reveal where Fr. Xiu Hui “Joseph” Jiang is living, why he had a bedroom in Carlson’s home and why Fr. Jiang followed Carlson from city to city (a highly unusual arrangement in the Catholic church). Carlson also refuses to address an allegation that Fr. Jiang admitted to a girl’s parents that he’d molested their daughter and that Carlson tried to get the parents to give him the $20,000 check that the priest reportedly left on their car windshield. SNAP wants Carlson to honor his pledges to be “transparent” and publicly disclose this information.

Carlson only real response to these accusations was an eight-page civil legal filing in which he calls “baseless” the charge that he tried to tamper with evidence. On five other charges, however, Carlson basically argues that he can’t be held responsible even if the allegations in the case are true. Carlson’s lawyers want the entire civil case tossed out.

The civil suit charges that Carlson “knew (Fr. Jiang) was dangerous to children before (a girl) was abused,” last summer, asked the alleged victim’s parents for a $20,000 check the priest had given them, committing “the criminal offense of attempted tampering with evidence,” because he reportedly suggested that the girl’s parents “return to him the check.” (The parents, however, had given it to police.)

SNAP says that Carlson is “opting to fight on the technicalities, not on the merits” and “ignoring his promises of openness while adopting maneuvers of defense that cloud, rather than clarify the situation,” as he has in dozens of other, older clergy sex abuse and cover up cases.

Fr. Jiang was arrested in June 2012 for repeatedly molesting a Lincoln County girl numerous times in 2012 (mostly in her home). He was charged with alleged child sex crimes and “victim tampering.” Those charges were dismissed in November 2013. In April 2014, he was arrested on charges of repeatedly molesting a St. Louis city boy between 2011-2012 (at a Catholic school). SNAP notes that it’s possible Fr. Jiang abused the boy while out on bond on charges of molesting the girl.

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

AUSTRALIA
Newcastle Herald

By JOANNE McCARTHY June 18, 2015

TERRY Skippen was 13 in 1960 when he was sexually abused in his classroom by Hunter Marist Brother Romuald, and 65 in 2012 when he became the first of Romuald’s victims to make a statement to police.

He told a judge last week he wanted to be identified to send a message to other victims of child sexual abuse – whether decades ago in institutions like the Catholic Church, or now, by a family member.

“I’m speaking to the media to plead with people who are victims of abuse not to live in silence,” Mr Skippen said.

“Please come forward, speak to someone, for the sake of yourself to get peace of mind and your families who have to live with the consequences of the abuse.”

Mr Skippen worked for Maitland-Newcastle diocese for decades, as a St Vincent de Paul Society finance committee member, parish administrative associate and diocesan finance committee member.

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UNITED STATES
Gallup

PRINCETON, N.J. — Americans’ confidence in the church and organized religion has fallen dramatically over the past four decades, hitting an all-time low this year of 42%. Confidence in religion began faltering in the 1980s, while the sharpest decline occurred between 2001 and 2002 as the Roman Catholic Church grappled with a major sexual abuse scandal. Since then, periodic improvements have proved temporary, and it has continued to ratchet lower.

Confidence Steadies Among U.S. Catholics

U.S. Protestants’ confidence in the church and organized religion also hit a new low this year, with 51% now saying they have a great deal or quite a lot of confidence in it. While confidence among U.S. Catholics is also at 51%, this represents a steadying after more than a decade of varying confidence during which their ratings reached as low as 39%.

Although confidence among Protestants has been sliding since 2009, Catholics’ has remained above 50% each of the last two years, the first time it has achieved this since 2003-2004. The leadership of the popular Pope Francis, including his recent initiative to hold high-ranking leaders of the Catholic Church accountable for their role in past child sex abuse scandals, may be a factor.

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UNITED STATES
WTSP

(USA Today) Americans have less confidence in organized religion today than ever measured before — a sign that the church could be “losing its footing as a pillar of moral leadership in the nation’s culture,” a new Gallup survey finds.

“In the ’80s the church and organized religion were the No. 1″ in Gallup’s annual look at confidence in institutions, said Lydia Saad, author of the report released Wednesday.

Confidence, she said, “is a value judgment on how the institution is perceived, a mark of the amount of respect it is due.” A slight upsurge for Catholic confidence, for example, parallels the 2013 election and immense popularity of Pope Francis.

Overall, church and organized religion is now ranked in fourth place in the Gallup survey — behind the military, small business and the police — while still ahead of the medical system, Congress and the media, among 15 institutions measured.

“Almost all organizations are down but the picture for religion is particularly bleak,” said Saad.

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UNITED STATES
Church and State

By Betty Clermont | 7 June 2015
Daily Kos

The UN Committee against Torture “found that the widespread sexual violence within the Catholic Church amounted to torture and cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment.” After Vatican officials were called to Geneva in May 2014 to respond to tough questions like why the pope believed his responsibility for protecting children against torture only applied on Vatican property, the committee issued its report.

The members “ordered the Vatican to hand over files containing details of clerical sexual abuse allegations to police forces around the world, … to use its authority over the Roman Catholic Church worldwide to ensure all allegations of clerical abuse are passed on to the secular authorities and to impose ‘meaningful sanctions’ on any Church officials who fail to do so.” With the exception of a couple of staged PR events, the pope has refused to take any of these measures.

The Vatican had issued an “Initial Report” preparatory to the hearing. “Nowhere in the Holy See’s [the name of the Church’s global government] Initial Report under the Convention does it make any mention of the widespread and systemic rape and sexual violence committed by Catholic clergy against hundreds of thousands of children and vulnerable adults around the world. There is no mention of acts that have resulted in an astonishing and incalculable amount of harm around the world – profound and lasting physical and mental suffering – with little to no accountability and access to redress … [T]he Vatican has consistently minimized the harm caused by the actions of the clergy, through both the direct acts of sexual violence and Church officials’ actions which follow, such as cover-ups and victim-blaming. … The Holy See’s Initial Report to this Committee is itself evidence of the minimization of these offenses and the resulting harm.”

The Committee against Torture report came “after senior officials sought to distance the Vatican legally from the wider Church … saying priests were not legally tied to the Vatican but fell under national jurisdictions. But the committee insisted that officials of the Holy See – including the pope’s representatives around the world and their aides – have a responsibility to monitor the behavior of all under their ‘effective control.’”

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VATICAN CITY
Bolletino

[Laudato Si]

Your Eminences, Your Excellencies, distinguished guests, distinguished representatives of the media, all who are following by radio and television and on internet, ladies and gentlemen, dear friends,

First of all, I greet all of you warmly on behalf of the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace, which is honoured to have been called to assist the Holy Father in his teaching ministry by helping to prepare the Encyclical Letter Laudato si’.

A very cordial welcome to the presenters, who are:

– His Eminence, the Metropolitan of Pergamo, John Zizioulas, representing the Ecumenical Patriarch of the Orthodox Church, who will speak to us of the theology and spirituality with which the Encyclical opens and closes.

– Prof. John Schellnhuber, founder and director of the Postdam Institute for Climate Impact Research. He represents the natural sciences, with which the Encyclical enters into in-depth dialogue. Congratulations on his nomination as a full member of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences which also contributed significantly to the Encyclical.

– Prof. Carolyn Woo, President of Catholic Relief Services and former dean of the Mendoza College of Business at Notre Dame University. She represents the economic, financial, business and commercial sectors whose responses to the major environmental challenges are so crucial. …

The various issues treated in the Encyclical are placed within this framework. In the different chapters, they are picked up and continuously enriched starting from different perspectives (cf. n. 16):

* the intimate relationship between the poor and the fragility of the planet;
* the conviction that everything in the world is intimately connected;
* the critique of the new paradigm and the forms of power that arise from technology;
* the value proper to each creature; the human meaning of ecology;
* the need for forthright and honest debates;
* the serious responsibility of international and local policy;
* the throwaway culture and the proposal for a new style of life; and
* the invitation to search for other ways of understanding economy and progress – this last point being the topic of Prof. Carolyn Woo.

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UNITED STATES
Skip Shea

[Laudato Si]

Today the New York Times published an article titled Pope Francis, in Sweeping Encyclical, Calls for Swift Action on Climate Change by Jim Yardley and Laurie Goldstein which outlines a “radical transformation of politics, economics and individual lifestyles to confront environmental degradation and climate change” by Pope Francis in the latest papal encyclical (an official teaching document for members of the Catholic Church)

The article states:

Francis has made clear that he hopes the encyclical will influence energy and economic policy and stir a global movement. He calls on ordinary people to pressure politicians for change. Bishops and priests around the world are expected to lead discussions on the encyclical in services on Sunday. But Francis is also reaching for a wider audience when in the first pages of the document he asks “to address every person living on this planet.”

Even before the release, Francis’ unflinching stance against environmental destruction, and his demand for global action, had already thrilled many scientists. In recent weeks, advocates of policies to combat climate change have expressed hope that Francis could lend a “moral dimension” to the debate, because winning scientific arguments was different from moving people to action.

Francis believes, being the Pope and all, will add a moral dimension to help stir a global movement. There seems to be a real sense of urgency here.

Which is one of the best closing techniques of any good salesperson. For instance if you don’t buy the house now that other couple is about to put in an offer, if you don’t put on sunscreen you will die of skin cancer or if you don’t come to our church and worship our God you will spend eternity in Hell. Things like that.

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UNITED STATES
Christian Catholicism

Jerry Slevin

Please consider reading Pope Francis’ final Climate Encyclical here.

After a two year “honeymoon period”, more Catholics are increasingly questioning the actions of the media magnified Pope Francis. This is especially the case as the pope’s ongoing deeds continually fall short of his earlier words. Recent polls show US Catholics are less positive increasingly toward the pope on the environment and the priest sex abuse scandal. A global poll last year showed that most Catholics oppose the pope’s position on contraception and actually support birth control. And Irish Catholic voters recently overwhelmingly rejected the pope’s position on same sex civil marriage. Some see the pope’s “over-hyped” new encyclical on climate change (Climate Encyclical) as the pope’s desperate way of trying positively to change the subject from so much of the negative reporting he now steadily faces.

Pope Francis knows that in a few months he will make a critical visit to the USA, followed by his final “all celibate male bishops” Family Synod on updating the Catholic Church’s positions on sexual morality. Francis should know by now that the Synod will likely once again strongly oppose contraception and same sex marriage. Banning contraception contributes to global warming obviously, despite Pope Francis’ disingenuous efforts in the Climate Encyclical in effect to deny this. Pope Francis also seems to know that he must continue to try to avoid any US presidential or Congressional investigations into the Vatican’s longstanding priest child abuse cover up, as are presently underway in Australia, the UK and elsewhere.

Pope Francis faces many unfolding scandals, including those related to the priest child abuse and to bishops who appear to cover up the abuse, such as Cardinal George Pell of Australia, Archbishop John Nienstedt of Minneapolis (USA) and Bishop Juan Barros of Chile, and even to the scandal of alleged child abuse by former US House Speaker, Dennis Hastert , as well as to the pope’s major defeat by Irish voters.

The pope’s basic message in the Climate Encyclical, and in currently reaffirming therein the earlier encyclical of Pope Paul VI, Humanae Vitae, that banned the birth control pill in 1968, is that the world, especially Catholics, need to increase the number of humans by avoiding effective contraception, and then, to reduce global warming by having this resulting larger number of humans consume even less. That makes little sense, for the poor or anyone else. Once again, despite papal pontifications to the contrary, the Vatican is in effect sacrificing the poor, especially many millions of children and women, to maximize papal power and wealth tied to the papal claim of infallibility.

Pope Francis cleverly in his “over-hyped” Climate Encyclical seeks to preserve pro-actively and premptively the unique cornerstone of papal power since 1870 — infallibility. In the minds of millions of Catholics, infallibility has been essentially linked, after Pope Pius XI’s 1930 geo-politically motivated ban on birth control, to all subsequent popes’ opposition to effective family planning, including contraception, as “sinful”.

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UNITED STATES
PopeCrimes& Vatican Evils.

Paris Arrow

Concerning the resignations, below are our 3 REBUTTALS to the official letters of
– Archbishop Nienstedt
– Bishop Lee A. Piché, Auxiliary Bishop of Saint Paul and Minneapolis
– Archbishop Bernard A. Hebda, Apostolic Administrator of the Archdiocese of Saint Paul and Minneapolis

Vatican Empire PR campaign: Make Nienstedt and Piché disappear like chameleons

A chameleon changes color and blends in with its environment to deceive its captor’s eyes, and by making itself seemingly invisible, it avoids getting caught and gobbled up. Becoming chameleons are what Archbishop Nienstedt and Auxiliary Bishop Lee A. Piché are doing by resigning days after the Ramsey County Office of the Attorney laid criminal charges against the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis for which (as everyone already know) they are part of the guilty leaders responsible for the crimes.

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MINNESOTA
Legal Examiner

Posted by Joe Crumley
June 16, 2015

Hopefully no one will miss the approaching deadline for claims against the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis, August 3rd. In the confusion following the resignation of Archbishop John Nienstedt and his Adjutant Bishop yesterday, people may miss the August 3rd deadline. Almost none of the big stories mentioned this very important date.

Nationally renowned priest abuse attorney Jeff Anderson’s website details instructions. There are a number of key points:

• You must file a claim by August 3rd.
• Your privacy and confidentiality can be protected.
• Filing your claim can help you and help protect children.

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MINNESOTA
KTTC

Presbyteral Assembly gives Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis priests a chance to discuss current pressing issues, notably sex abuse scandals

ROCHESTER, Minn. (KTTC) — Just two days after Archbishop John Neinstedt’s resignation, and two weeks after word the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis would face criminal charges for allegedly failing to protect children against sexual predator priests, Neinstedt’s interim replacement came to Rochester to celebrate mass with the priests of the Archdiocese.

Pope Francis himself named Archbishop Bernard Hebda to the position of the Apostolic Administrator of Twin Cities diocese.

Hebda celebrated mass just after 11:00 a.m. on Wednesday morning with priests gathered at the Church of St. John the Evangelist in Rochester. Most priests, both active in the ministry and retired, gathered for the Presbyteral Assembly of the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis. This assembly happens every two years in Rochester, and it runs through Thursday.

The assembly is a time of fellowship, and a chance to discuss issues facing priests and their ministries. Reporters weren’t allowed inside the mass on Wednesday morning, and the priests we spoke with preferred not to talk specifics about their meetings.

It’s no question that there’s a lot of pain among leaders of the Church and the priesthood. The lingering question for so many is as follows: How do we move forward in the wake of the sex abuse scandals?

Thanks to the writings of two Minnesota priests in their church bulletins, just this past weekend, we have a better grasp of their thoughts and feelings in this Presbyteral Assembly.

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AUSTRALIA
Daily Telegraph

Sydney’s Jewish community taking action to detect child sex abuse in wake of Royal Commission findings

ROBBIE PATTERSON WENTWORTH COURIER JUNE 18, 2015

TWENTY prominent rabbis from across Sydney attended a seminar on child sex abuse at Jewish House in Bondi on Monday.

Rabbi Mendel Kastel, chief executive officer of Jewish House, said it was a direct result of the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse.

At the commission, disgraced Rabbi Yosef Feldman came under fire for his comments regarding child sex abuse “hype” and the need for paedophiles to receive greater leniency.

The former director of the Yeshiva Centre at Bondi also told the commission that he did not know it was illegal for a man to touch a child’s genitals when he had to deal with an abuse complaint in 2002.

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UNITED KINGDOM
Money Week

By: Chris Carter
18/06/2015

The discovery of the body of Roberto Calvi dangling from scaffolding beneath Blackfriars Bridge by a passer-by on the morning of 18 June 1982 had all the hallmarks of a Hollywood thriller.

Nicknamed ‘God’s banker’, Calvi was the chairman of Italian bank Banco Ambrosiano, in which the Vatican bank was a major shareholder. But the bank had been engaged in some very unholy activities, and by 1982, it was on the verge of collapse. The bank was £800m in the red, and owed money to the Sicilian mafia among others.

Calvi was “a brilliant financier”, The Independent wrote in 2005. “And though shy and socially gauche, he combined a lightening accountant’s brain with recklessness in a very Italian fashion”.

It was while in custody for illegal foreign currency dealings that Calvi tried to kill himself by slashing his wrists and taking an overdose. But he lived to be released on appeal, and on 11 June, a week before his death, he fled to London, taking with him a briefcase stuffed with incriminating documents.

Clearly not wanting to be found, he shaved off his moustache and checked into a nondescript £40-a-night hotel in Chelsea. Meanwhile, back in Italy, his secretary threw herself from a fourth-floor window. In her suicide note, she blamed Calvi for the bank’s demise, and Calvi was relieved of his duties as chairman.

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UNITED KINGDOM
Chronicle Live

BY WILL METCALFE

George Granville Gibson is accused of eight sex charges, some of which are said to have taken place in Consett, in the 1970s and 1980s

A former County Durham archdeacon has denied a string of historic sex offences dating back to the 1970s and 1980s.

George Granville Gibson, often known as Granville, appeared before Newton Aycliffe Magistrates’ Court on Wednesday facing eight allegations of historic sex abuse which are said to have taken place in Newton Aycliffe and Consett from 1977 to 1983.

The 79-year-old former Archdeacon of Auckland wore a charcoal suit with a blue shirt and pink tie and spoke to confirm his name, and enter not guilty pleas to all charges.

Gibson is alleged to have carried out four sexual assaults against a man aged 16 or over in Newton Aycliffe and Consett between 1977 and 1978.

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AUSTRALIA
ABC News

By Emily Laurence

Former Marist Brother Francis Cable has been sentenced to at least eight years’ prison for sex offences against 19 students at schools in Sydney and New South Wales’ Hunter region in the 1960s and 1970s.

The 83-year-old, also known as Brother Romuald, was given a maximum sentence of 16 years.

He had pleaded guilty to crimes against 17 boys in March, after a jury earlier found him guilty of 13 offences against two other boys.

More than 30 abuse survivors and supporters clapped and cheered as Judge Peter Whitford handed down the sentence in Sydney’s District Court.

Judge Whitford said Cable’s “abhorrent” and “cruel” offences over 15 years were motivated by sexual gratification.

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AUSTRALIA
Sky News

A Marist Brother has been sentenced to at least eight years in prison for sexually assaulting 19 schoolboys in NSW over a 15-year period.

Francis William Cable, known as Brother Romuald, was found guilty over four counts of buggery and 21 counts of indecent assault at Catholic schools where he taught in the Hunter region and Sydney between 1960 and 1974.

Victims and their supporters cheered and clapped in a Sydney court as Justice Peter Whitford handed down the sentence on Thursday.

In sentencing Cable, Judge Whitford said the 83-year-old systematically abused his position of power as a teacher and schoolmaster to prey on the schoolboys.

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AUSTRALIA
Sydney Morning Herald

June 18, 2015

Paul Bibby
Court Reporter

One of the state’s worst Catholic school paedophiles, who brutally raped and assaulted at least 17 vulnerable boys over the course of 15 years, is set to die in jail after being sentenced to a maximum of 16 years’ jail.

The victims of Francis William Cable and their relatives let out a cheer of vindication as the 83-year-old was sentenced in the Downing Centre District Court on Thursday.

Cable used his position as a technical drawing teacher and class master at the Marist Brothers Catholic school in Maitland and its sister school in the Sydney suburb of Pagewood to repeatedly abuse vulnerable students under his authority between 1960 and 1974.

The boys were repeatedly fondled, anally raped and forced to give the teacher oral sex.

Cable, known at the schools by his religious name, Brother Romuald, would threaten the students with physical violence, expulsion and social isolation if they reported his crimes, which he frequently justified by reference to quasi religious doctrine.

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AUSTRALIA
Daily Mail

The frail monster with a walking stick: Victims cheer as Catholic teacher is jailed for at least eight years for horrific abuse during 15-year reign of terror

By Belinda Grant Geary For Daily Mail Australia and AAP

A former Marist Brother has been sentenced to at least eight years in prison for sexually abusing 19 schoolboys in Catholic schools across New South Wales.

Francis William Cable, also known as Brother Romuald, was found guilty on four counts of buggery and 21 counts of indecent assault.

The 83-year-old preyed on school boys he taught at Marist colleges at Maitland, located in the Lower Hunter Valley, and Pagewood, located in Sydney’s eastern suburbs, between 1960 and 1974.

Victims cheered as Judge Peter Whitford handed down the sentence in Sydney’s District Court on Thursday.

According to the ABC, Judge Whitford said Cable’s ‘abhorrent’ behaviour was fuelled by a need for sexual gratification and that his ‘predatory conduct’ persisted because he failed to understand the impact his ‘cruel’ actions had on his young victims.

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AUSTRALIA
Sydney Morning Herald

Paedophile Francis William Cable: Victims speak out about horrific abuse at Marist Brothers schools

June 18, 2015

Paul Bibby
Court Reporter

From the top of the steps at Sydney’s Downing Centre court complex the past two-and-a-half years seemed “like an eternity” to Terry Kippen.

Moments before he had watched as Francis William Cable – one of the state’s worst Catholic school paedophiles – was slowly taken away by prison officers to serve a maximum 16-year prison term.

For decades Cable had quietly gone about his daily life as Mr Skippen and 18 other men struggled to cope with the consequences of the horrific abuse he had inflicted on them at Marist Brothers schools in Newcastle and Sydney between 1960 and 1974.

But at the beginning of 2013 Terry broke his silence and went to police.

“I had to do something,” Terry said after Cable, 83, was sentenced on Thursday.

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NEW YORK
Albany Times Union

Chris Churchill

Colonie

Retired Archbishop Harry Flynn was supposed to be sunshine amid the dark clouds of the pedophile priest scandal.

The Schenectady native — a former pastor at St. Ambrose Parish in Latham and emeritus head of the Minneapolis-St. Paul Archdiocese — emerged decades ago as a national leader in reforming how the Catholic Church dealt with potentially dangerous priests.

But Flynn’s reputation has been tainted by a criminal complaint claiming that he and other leaders of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis did too little to shield victims from predator priests.

“We are alleging a disturbing institutional and systemic pattern of behavior committed by the highest levels of leadership of the Archdiocese of Saint Paul and Minneapolis over the course of decades,” said Ramsey County Attorney John Choi as he announced the criminal charges filed against the Minnesota diocese earlier this month. “The archdiocese’s failures have caused great suffering by the victims and their family and betrayed our entire community.”

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VATICAN CITY
National Catholic Reporter

Joshua J. McElwee | Jun. 18, 2015

VATICAN CITY
Pope Francis has clearly embraced what he calls a “very solid scientific consensus” that humans are causing cataclysmic climate change that is endangering the planet. The pope has also lambasted global political leaders for their “weak responses” and lack of will over decades to address the issue.

In what has already been the most debated papal encyclical letter in recent memory, Francis urgently calls on the entire world’s population to act, lest we leave to coming generations a planet of “debris, desolation and filth.”

“An outsider looking at our world would be amazed at [our] behavior, which at times appears self-destructive,” the pope writes at one point in the letter, titled: “Laudato Si’, on Care for Our Common Home.”

Addressing world leaders directly, Francis asks: “What would induce anyone, at this stage, to hold on to power only to be remembered for their inability to take action when it was urgent and necessary to do so?”

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AUSTRALIA
Newcastle Herald

By JOANNE MCCARTHY June 17, 2015

UP TO 30 perpetrators over four decades have molested children – including the children of priests – within the Anglican diocese of Newcastle, an emotional Bishop Greg Thompson said in an extraordinary interview after apologising to victims and the community on Wednesday.

Bishop Thompson marked his 500th day as head of the church in the Hunter by telling clergy ‘‘We can’t have mates looking after mates any more’’, and revealing some of the dark secrets being investigated by the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse.

‘‘Some of our photos of clergy on the walls are going to be difficult to hang on the walls after the royal commission,’’ he said.

‘‘What is being revealed is the shadow lives of some.

‘‘They had this sense of self-entitlement that meant they had sexual relations with children as if that was a part of the role.’’

Bishop Thompson spoke of the shock he experienced after hearing ‘‘how things were done’’.

‘‘It told me it wasn’t just about bad apples, but about how the system failed the victims,’’ he said.

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VATICAN CITY
Chiesa

Pages selected from the letter “Laudato si’” addressed by the pope to “every person living on this planet.” In parentheses, the numbers of the paragraphs from which the passages were taken

Selected by Sandro Magister

THE INCIPIT (1 and 2)

“Laudato si’, mi’ Signore” – “Praise be to you, my Lord”. In the words of this beautiful canticle, Saint Francis of Assisi reminds us that our common home is like a sister with whom we share our life and a beautiful mother who opens her arms to embrace us:

“Praise be to you, my Lord, through our Sister, Mother Earth, who sustains and governs us, and who produces various fruit with coloured flowers and herbs”.

This sister now cries out to us because of the harm we have inflicted on her by our irresponsible use and abuse of the goods with which God has endowed her.

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CANADA
CBC News

By Jason Proctor, CBC News

John Furlong’s lawyer claimed Wednesday journalist Laura Robinson tried to destroy the former Vancouver Olympics CEO’s reputation with a 2012 story about allegations of abuse at a Burns Lake Catholic school.

John Hunter’s cross-examination of the freelance reporter began in B.C. Supreme Court with a testy exchange.

“Your whole intention was to bring down Mr. Furlong, wasn’t it? he asked Robinson.

“That’s incorrect,” she replied.

‘Had the goods’

Robinson is suing Furlong for defamation in relation to statements he made in several responses to her Georgia Straight article. She says he implied she was unethical, cruel and motivated by a personal vendetta.

She claims to have suffered financial, emotional and physical damage.

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UNITED STATES
Sticking the Corners

June 17, 2015 by Jennifer Fitz

In yesterday’s installment in this series on preventing and stopping sexual abuse, I created three pairs of fictional scenarios. Scene A was a typical case of ordinary parish life mishaps; Scene B was covert sexual abuse. Today I want to explain how I crafted those pairs, and what the hallmarks of covert abuse were that I put into all the Scene B’s.

Let’s pause here and encourage you to read up on this subject elsewhere. My analysis below isn’t based on statistical modeling, and I don’t have academic credentials to hand you. This is just me taking what I’ve seen and heard, both from my own experience with sexual abuse cases (limited) and reading and listening to the accounts of others. I’m writing what I am not because I’m the world’s expert, but because this topic is so important that you can’t just sit around hoping someone more impressive will come along and answer all the questions. I hope they will. But meanwhile, we who’ve been in the trenches just share what we know.

So I write this because I know how difficult it is to put your finger on why something is not right when you are presented with a case of covert abuse, and how important it is to step in and act at this stage, before the child porn and the sodomy and the rape get going.

This is me explaining the ingredients I put into my scenarios yesterday that, in my experience, are common characteristics of covert abuse:

1. Inappropriate Intimacy: Behavior Doesn’t Match Context

Covert abusers use normal situations as their cover-story for why they are so physically close to their victims. We know of many situations in which we come into close physical contact with another person, whether it’s in sports, or medicine, or day-to-day childcare. Physical touch in the form of a chaste hug, appropriate hand-holding, or other gestures of affection or solidarity are normal and healthy. Very young children need diapers changed or assistance potty-training, and often need to be held or carried. As a teacher or caregiver, you may have situations where you have to address sexual issues, such as finding sanitary pads for a student who’s surprised by her period or telling a young man to pull up his pants (underwear showing at the waist) or zip his fly.

The difference between abuse and normal care is that the abuser uses the excuse of a normal situation as a cover-up for abnormal behavior. Comparing the pairs of scenarios I wrote:

* It’s normal (though hopefully rare) for a teacher to have to respond to a fashion accident. It’s not normal for a teacher to physically touch a student’s chest or groin as part of “checking the dress code.”

* Normal physical contact in sports or games might involve holding hands, locking wrists, helping someone get up from the floor, correcting an athlete’s posture or position — but it doesn’t involve copping a feel.

* Normal first aid includes washing cuts or checking for other injuries, but if a kid comes to you with an ordinary scraped knee, you don’t need to do an inspection of the pelvis.

When you say goodnight to a child, your hands don’t go under the covers. When you are holding a child in the pool, your hands don’t go inside the swimsuit.

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CANADA
The Province

BY KEITH FRASER, THE PROVINCE JUNE 17, 2015

Freelance journalist Laura Robinson denied a suggestion by John Furlong’s lawyer on Wednesday that her intention in investigating him was to bring down the former Vancouver Olympic CEO.

Under questioning from lawyer John Hunter, Robinson also denied a suggestion that she was on a “campaign to discredit” Furlong when she investigated allegations Furlong had physically abused students more than 40 years ago.

The suggestions came during Hunter’s cross-examination of Robinson during her defamation trial against Furlong. She is alleging that Furlong defamed her after her story was published in the Georgia Straight newspaper in September 2012 outlining the physical abuse allegations. Furlong has denied those allegations.

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CANADA
Straight

by Carlito Pablo on June 16th, 2015

John Furlong sat in the back row as freelance journalist Laura Robinson told a courtroom how she suffered from the “unrelenting attack” unleashed by the former Vancouver Olympics CEO.

Her earnings dropped and her health weakened, the B.C. Supreme Court heard at the start of Robinson’s testimony in her defamation suit against the prominent figure.

“We felt that we needed to let the people know that Mr. Furlong had been conducting a campaign of untruths,” Robinson testified today (June 16).

Based on financial statements read out by Robinson’s lawyer, Bryan Baynham, in court, the writer had an income of more than $23,000 in 2012, including the fee she received from the Georgia Straight for an in-depth article on Furlong in that year.

In that piece, Robinson wrote about the omissions made by Furlong about his early years in Canada in his autobiography Patriot Hearts.

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CANADA
Owen Sound Sun Times

By Rob Gowan, Sun Times, Owen Sound
Wednesday, June 17, 2015

A high-profile trial that started in British Columbia earlier this week is of particular interest to some in Grey-Bruce.

The civil trial for journalist Laura Robinson, who lives in Southampton, began at B.C. Supreme Court in Vancouver on Monday and is scheduled to run for 10 days. The defamation case — in which Robinson is alleging that former Vancouver Olympics CEO John Furlong’s comments about a 2012 newspaper article she wrote damaged her reputation, career and health — has garnered national media attention.

“Certainly she is very well supported here,” said Maryann Thomas, who is owner of the Ginger Press Bookstore in Owen Sound and has known Robinson for decades. “Her work is very important work and there is a lot of local support for the work she has done in the past and is doing.”

Thomas said she has known Robinson for about 30 years and considers her both a friend and a professional acquaintance. Robinson, who once cycled and rowed at the national level and also competed in cross-country skiing, has been active locally with cross-country skiing and cycling groups, including teaching young athletes at Cape Croker.

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CANADA
The Province

Freelance journalist Laura Robinson denied a suggestion by John Furlong’s lawyer Wednesday that her intention in investigating him was to bring down the former Vancouver Olympic CEO.

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CANADA
Ladysmith Chronicle

By The Canadian Press

VANCOUVER – A freelance journalist says she exchanged scores of emails with John Furlong’s lawyer in the spring of 2012 but received no answers to her questions about Furlong’s past in Burns Lake, B.C.

Laura Robinson is suing the former Vancouver Olympics CEO for defamation over public comments Furlong made after she published an article alleging he abused students while teaching at a B.C. residential school over four decades ago.

She told the civil trial that Furlong’s lawyer, Marvin Storrow, issued a flat denial of the allegations but didn’t answer questions and instead demanded all the information she had collected on Furlong’s past.

Robinson says she eventually sent Storrow six of eight sworn affidavits from former students alleging abuse.

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CANADA
Ladysmith Chronicle

By The Canadian Press

VANCOUVER – A journalist who is suing former Vancouver Olympic CEO John Furlong for defamation says she was devastated and shocked after he implied she tried to extort money from him.

Laura Robinson has told a civil trial that she was deeply disturbed over remarks made by Furlong after her article was published in the Georgia Straight newspaper about his past in Burns Lake, B.C.

The story included allegations by former aboriginal students that Furlong had beaten them and used racial taunts while working as a physical education teacher in the late 1960s and 1970s.

At a news conference after the article was published in September 2012, Furlong said he had not received a single phone call from the newspaper and had also been told at one point that for a payment he could make it go away.

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MASSACHUSETTS
The Herald News

Brian Fraga
Herald News Staff Reporter
June 17, 2015

STATEMENT OF THE FALL RIVER DIOCESE IN RESPONSE TO THE LAWSUIT FILED AGAINST FORMER BISHOP DANIEL A. CRONIN

June 16, 2015

A lawsuit has been filed in a Massachusetts Court against Hartford Archbishop Emeritus Daniel A. Cronin alleging negligence on his part while serving as Bishop of the Fall River Diocese for failure to supervise a priest against whom allegations of abuse have recently been made.

In July 2012 two adult males alleged that they were abused as minors by the Reverend Monsignor Maurice Souza during the late 1970s and early 1980s while they were parishioners of St. Anthony Parish in East Falmouth where Monsignor Souza served as pastor from 1977 to 1986. Monsignor Souza died in 1996 at 83 years old.

Archbishop Cronin was Bishop of Fall River from December 1970 through January 1992 when he was transferred to the Hartford Archdiocese. He retired from that post in 2003.

As noted previously the claims of abuse against Monsignor Souza were first brought to the attention of the Fall River Diocese in July 2012; this was 20 years after Bishop Cronin had left the area. No other allegations of abuse or inappropriate conduct against Monsignor Souza had ever been brought to the attention of the Fall River Diocese nor have any other claims been made since then.

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MINNESOTA
KSTP

By: Cassie Hart

The man named interim leader of the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis in the wake of John Nienstedt’s resignation has met with Catholic priests in the state.

Archbishop Bernard Hebda joined several hundred priests in Rochester Wednesday. The Star Tribune reports he celebrated Mass with the priests, but didn’t address the media as he walked to a downtown Rochester hotel.

In an interview Monday with the archdiocese’s newspaper, The Catholic Spirit, Hebda says he’ll split his time between the archdiocese and his current assignment in New Jersey, but the archdiocese is suffering so intends to give it the bulk of his energy.

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MASSACHUSETTS
Boston Herald

Wednesday, June 17, 2015

By: Bob McGovern

A former Bay State bishop is being sued by two men who say he negligently oversaw a priest who allegedly sexually abused them repeatedly for nearly a decade.

Former Bishop of the Fall River Diocese Daniel A. Cronin is being accused of failing to appropriately supervise the late Rev. Monsignor Maurice Souza. Paul Andrews and Daniel Sherwood, the two men who brought the suit, say they were abused as minors by Souza while they were parishioners of St. Anthony Parish in East Falmouth more than 30 years ago.

Cronin went on to become the Hartford Archbishop before retiring from the position in 2003.

“Archbishop Cronin failed to protect innocent children and as a result these children, who are now adults, have suffered life-lasting serious harm,” attorney Mitchell Garabedian said. “One has to wonder how many children were sexually abused by Monsignor Souza and why proper supervision did not take place.”

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CANADA
CKNW

Vancouver, BC, Canada / (CKNW AM) AM980
Marcella Bernardo
June 17, 2015

The defamation trial between journalist Laura Robinson and former Vancouver Olympics CEO John Furlong went into its third day on Wednesday.

Robinson continues her testimony, explaining how she mapped out a story suggesting Furlong abused teenagers more than four decades ago.

She is still under direct examination by her lawyer Bryan Baynham. Her cross-examination is slated to start later Wednesday.

Her 2012 article in the Georgia Straight newspaper claimed Furlong beat First Nations students when he taught at a private Catholic school in Burns Lake.

Furlong responded with his own accusations the story was not true and Robinson was a shoddy reporter with a personal vendetta.

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FLORIDA
WFTV

[with video]

SEMINOLE COUNTY, Fla. — Channel 9’s Tim Barber was in court Wednesday where a Winter Springs pastor dodged up to five years in prison.

Deputies said the Rev. Cesar Chin accepted a plea deal after investigators said he covered up years of sexual abuse by one of his church members.

“Mr. Chin will withdraw his previously entered plea of not guilty and enter a plea of guilty,” Chin’s defense attorney said in court.

Chone admitted to covering up the sexual abuse, but he will not serve prison time.

Deputies said Chin knew for more than a year that one of his church members was sexually abusing several kids. Instead of calling 911, the pastor tried counseling the member, authorities said.

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MINNESOTA
Minnesota Public Radio

Jon Collins Jun 17, 2015

The Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis is seeking to hire a former federal prosecutor to fend off criminal and civil charges filed against the archdiocese in Ramsey County earlier this month.

The hiring of Joseph Dixon III of the Fredrikson & Byron law firm would cost the cash-strapped archdiocese about $400 an hour, which Dixon said in an engagement letter “represents a substantial discount” over his normal rates. The assistance of a second associate at the firm would cost the

The archdiocese is asking the bankruptcy court to allow the expenses in order to protect its assets from repercussions of the Ramsey County charges.

“The County Attorney Actions are directed against the Archdiocese as an entity, rather than against any individuals within the Archdiocese organization, and require immediate response by the Archdiocese,” according to documents filed by the archdiocese Tuesday. “The County Attorney Actions may affect the availability to the estate of insurance coverage for claims based on the same facts.”

The archdiocese is also arguing that a conviction in the criminal case could increase the archdiocese’s liability in claims related to clergy abuse.

“The criminal action against the Archdiocese could have serious repercussions on the estate’s finances, which relies on the goodwill and support of parishioners,” the archdiocese argues in the court filings.

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ST. LOUIS (MO)
St. Louis Post-Dispatch

By Lilly Fowler

Criminal charges against the Rev. Xiu Hui “Joseph” Jiang – a Roman Catholic priest with close ties to Archbishop Robert Carlson who has been twice accused of sexual abuse – have been dismissed.

In a statement, prosecutors within the St. Louis Circuit Attorney’s Office said they had on Tuesday dismissed the charges against Jiang, saying only that “the state is unable to proceed at this time.”

“The statute of limitations in this case does not run (out) for another 35 years. The office remains hopeful that charges will be refiled in the future,” read the statement.

Prosecutors had charged Jiang with two felony counts of first-degree statutory sodomy. The case involved a young boy at St. Louis the King School, the elementary school at the St. Louis Cathedral Basilica.

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MINNESOTA
Star Tribune

Associated Press JUNE 17, 2015

ST. PAUL, Minn. — In a story June 16 about the resignation of Archbishop John Nienstedt of the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis, The Associated Press reported erroneously that Jennifer Haselberger was an archivist in the church. Haselberger, who accused church leaders of covering up allegations of clergy abuse, was a canon lawyer for the archdiocese.

A corrected version of the story is below:

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DEUTSCHLAND
Berliner Morgenpost

[Jesuit Father Mertes: Church must consistently enlighten on abuse]

Der Jesuitenpater Klaus Mertes hat die katholische Kirche aufgefordert, Fälle von sexuellem Missbrauch in den eigenen Reihen weiter konsequent aufzuklären.

„Prävention setzt voraus, dass aufgeklärt wurde“, sagte er am Montag bei einer Fachtagung zu sexualisierter Gewalt in der katholischen Kirche in Hannover. „Erst die Aufklärung deckt Fehler auf.“ Wenn hier nicht weitergearbeitet werde, verliere die Prävention ihre Glaubwürdigkeit.

Mertes, heute Direktor des Internats St. Blasien im Schwarzwald, hatte 2010 als damaliger Leiter des Canisius-Kollegs in Berlin die Aufklärung von Missbrauchsfällen in der katholischen Kirche ins Rollen gebracht. Die Berliner Morgenpost hatte die Missbrauchsfälle damals publik gemacht. An dem Gymnasium hatten sich zwei Padres hundertfach an Schülern vergangen. Danach waren zahlreiche weitere Fälle ans Licht gekommen, weil sich immer mehr Betroffene meldeten, die von Priestern oder Ordensleuten in Deutschland sexuell missbraucht worden waren, teilweise bereits vor Jahrzehnten.

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DEUTSCHLAND
Katholisch

[“Sunlight is the best disinfectant” – as described at the beginning of the last century Louis Brandeis, Judge at the United States Supreme Court, the benefits of transparency and openness for the community. This is an insight that has taken a long time to catch on in the church.]

Bonn – 17.06.2015

“Sonnenlicht ist das beste Desinfektionsmittel” – so beschrieb am Anfang des letzten Jahrhunderts Louis Brandeis, Richter am obersten Gerichtshof der USA, den Nutzen von Transparenz und Öffentlichkeit für das Gemeinwesen.

Das ist eine Einsicht, die in der Kirche sehr lange gebraucht hat, bis sie sich durchsetzen konnte. In der Aufdeckung sexuellen Missbrauchs in der Kirche taucht ein Motiv immer wieder auf: Den Opfern wurde nicht geglaubt, Kritik von außen war Angriff, Kritik von innen “Nestbeschmutzung”. Kurz: Man glaubte, die Institution durch “Diskretion” zu schützen. Heute nennt man die Dinge auch in der Kirche beim Namen und spricht selbstverständlich von “Vertuschung”. Selbst Bischöfe und Nuntien sind nicht sakrosankt und müssen sich verantworten, wenn sie im Verdacht stehen, selbst Täter zu sein oder Täter gedeckt zu haben, weil sie den Ruf der Institution über den Schutz von Opfern gestellt haben.

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DEUTSCHLAND
Katholisch

[Bishop Stephan Ackermann of Trier said the Catholic Church must emphasize the importanceof prevention work regarding sexual abuse of minors.]

Bonn – 17.06.2015

Fast tragisch-prophetisch muten seit vergangener Woche einige Sätze an, die der Trierer Bischof Stephan Ackermann Anfang des Jahres formulierte. Zur Bilanz von fünf Jahren Missbrauchsaufarbeitung in der katholischen Kirche betonte der Bischof, wie wichtig die Präventionsarbeit sei.

Experten mahnten, dass dabei ein Aspekt besonders berücksichtigt werden müsse: Die Vorbeugung von Gewalt von Kindern untereinander. Das werde künftig eine viel stärkere Rolle spielen, so der Missbrauchsbeauftragte der Deutschen Bischöfe.

Inzwischen ist sein Satz von der Realität eingeholt worden. Wie in der vergangenen Woche bekannt wurde, kam es in einer katholischen Kindertagesstätte im Mainzer Stadtteil Weisenau über einen längeren Zeitraum zu sexuellen Übergriffen, Androhung von Gewalt und Erpressung unter Kindern. Fast alle der 55 Schutzbefohlenen waren betroffen. Die Einrichtung wurde vorübergehend geschlossen, allen Erziehern gekündigt. Generalvikar Dietmar Giebelmann entschuldigte sich bei den Eltern.

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ST. LOUIS (MO)
Belleville News-Democrat

BY JIM SALTER
Associated Press

ST. LOUIS

The St. Louis circuit attorney’s office has dismissed charges against a priest accused of sexually abusing a boy in a Catholic school bathroom, but it left open the possibility that it could refile the charges in the future.

Circuit Attorney Jennifer Joyce’s office released a statement Wednesday announcing the dismissal of two felony counts against the Rev. Xiuhui Jiang. He was charged last year with twice abusing a boy under the age of 14 between July 2011 and August 2012 at a school in St. Louis.

Jiang’s attorney, Paul D’Agrosa, said the allegations were false and the charges never should have been filed. He said Jiang is hopeful that the Archdiocese of St. Louis will reinstate all of his priestly privileges, which were suspended after the allegations surfaced.

A spokesman said the archdiocese will have a statement later.

The statement from Joyce’s office said charges were dismissed “for reasons that the state is unable to proceed at this time.” But it noted that the charges wouldn’t reach their statute of limitations for 35 years.

“The Office remains hopeful that charges will be refiled in the future,” the statement said. A spokeswoman for Joyce declined to comment further.

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