ABUSE TRACKER

ITALIA
Corriere di Bologna

[RAVENNA – Giovanni Desio is no longer a priest. For the former pastor of Casalborsetti, the Ravenna coast, who is accused of having sex with some minors, the Holy See sent to the diocese of Ravenna the decree of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith by which he resigned from the clerical state and at the same timehe was given a dispensation from celibacy.]

RAVENNA — Giovanni Desio non è più prete. Per l’ex parroco di Casalborsetti, sul litorale ravennate, imputato per avere fatto sesso con alcuni minorenni, la Santa Sede ha trasmesso alla Diocesi di Ravenna il decreto della congregazione per la Dottrina della Fede mediante il quale lo ha dimesso dallo stato clericale e contemporaneamente gli ha dato la dispensa dal celibato. Su disposizione della Santa Sede — si legge in una nota della archidiocesi ravennate — il provvedimento canonico è stato consegnato direttamente dall’arcivescovo Lorenzo Ghizzoni nelle mani dell’interessato qualche giorno fa. L’invito dell’arcivescovo ai sacerdoti e ai fedeli — ha concluso la nota — è di pregare perché i tempi della pena e della cura siano efficaci e portino davvero a un rinnovamento e a una guarigione profonda.

DECISIONE DEFINITIVA — Dal punto di vista tecnico, la decisione non è impugnabile e può essere scavalcata solo da atti di clemenza. Desio, 53 anni, nato a Milano ma residente a Saronno (Varese) era stato sospeso a divinis poco dopo essere stato arrestato dalla polizia nell’aprile dell’anno scorso. Il Pm Isabella Cavallari che coordinava le indagini della squadra Mobile, ha già chiesto per lui nove anni di carcere in abbreviato. La sentenza è attesa per venerdì.

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
Huffington Post

Dennis Earl
Canadian writer and blogger

It’s been quite the honeymoon. Not too long after Pope Francis succeeded Benedict XVI in March 2013 to become the new head of the Vatican, reporters, pundits and even comedians began to sing his praises. Why, exactly?

Because he said things like, “I’m a sinner” and “If a person is gay and seeks God and has good will, who am I to judge?” and “The Lord has redeemed all of us, all of us, with the Blood of Christ: all of us, not just Catholics. Everyone!… Even the atheists. Everyone!”

But, as the old saying goes, talk is cheap. Pope Francis can present himself as a more compassionate pontiff all he wants. With over 40 years experience working within the stubbornly Conservative Catholic Church, the 78-year-old is no liberal. The reality is he is quite content maintaining the status quo.

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

UNITED STATES
National Catholic Reporter

[list of priests who signed the petition]

Michael Sean Winters | May. 12, 2015 Distinctly Catholic

Archbishop Vigano: Call your office! Friday, my colleague Soli Salgado and I published a news item about a petition signed by more than 850 priests urging the Synod on the Family to “stand firm on the Church’s traditional understanding of marriage, human sexuality and pastoral practices.” The petition, organized by a group called “Credo Priests” mimics one a few weeks ago engineered by conservative clerics in the United Kingdom. I am dumbfounded by this crass political ploy to put pressure on the synod.

As that story relates, I tried to contact the three sitting bishops who signed it: Bishop James Conley of Lincoln, Nebraska, Bishop Thomas Paprocki of Springfield, Illinois, and Bishop David Kagan of Bismark, North Dakota. I did not reach out to the two retired bishops who also signed the document, Bishop Robert Finn, formerly of Kansas City-St. Joseph, Missouri and Bishop Rene Gracida, formerly of Corpus Christi, Texas. Only Bishop Conley got back to me with a statement:

I signed the Statement of Belief to support American priests affirming fidelity to the doctrine of our faith regarding marriage and the family. The statement is intended to encourage the Synod Fathers as they proclaim freedom in Christ, through the grace of knowing and responding to the truth. This statement is signed by priests who love and support the Holy Father, in response to his universal invitation for dialogue in anticipation of the Synod. Like all Catholics, I pray for the Holy Father and the Synod Fathers, and I encourage all Catholics to learn from the good work of the Synod.”

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

CALIFORNIA
The Desert Sun

[with video]

Reza Gostar, The Desert Sun

PALM SPRINGS – A lawsuit filed Friday against The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, a church bishop and a missionary, claims a woman was repeatedly sexually abused when she was a teenager in Rancho Mirage and Palm Desert, and it was covered up.

The lawsuit, which was filed in Riverside County Superior Court in Palm Springs, contends that from July to November 1985, Jacqueline Tyler, then 13, was repeatedly abused by a missionary and that after a church bishop learned of the alleged abuse, her family was told to stay quiet and the bishop “made advance payment or partial payment of damages as an accommodation to plaintiff.”

It adds that as a result of the alleged abuse, Tyler gave birth to a son on June 30, 1986.

Tyler contends she was sexually abused at least once a week. And that after she became pregnant, the lawsuit claims that the missionary paid for her to go to New York, where he attempted to cause her to miscarry “by physically abusing her body.”

the lawsuit claims that the missionary paid for her to go to New York, where he attempted to cause her to miscarry “by physically abusing her body.”

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 Jody Porter, CBC News

A sexual abuse survivor wants a new documentary about his abuser, Ralph Rowe, to be a step towards reconciliation between aboriginal and non-aboriginal peoples in northern Ontario.

Joshua Frogg is one of an estimated 500 victims of the former Anglican priest who flew his own plane into remote First Nations in the 1970s and 80s. Rowe has been convicted of nearly 60 sex crimes.

Frogg’s own journey to healing from the abuse is chronicled in a new documentary, Survivors Rowe, that had a special screening at Lakehead University in Thunder Bay on Monday.

“People should be aware of why there is so much alcoholism, there’s so much drug use, there’s so much negative social impacts in our communities,” Frogg said. “It’s a result of issues that happened when we were children, issues of sexual abuse, issues of violence.”

A total of nearly 300 people in Thunder Bay saw the documentary, Survivors Rowe, at two separate screenings this week. It’s now off to Ottawa where some MPs will watch it. (Loud Roar Productions)

Frogg watched the film at a public showing in Thunder Bay on Saturday and joined the audience of about 100 people at the university on Monday.

“I thought it would get easier watching it, but it isn’t,” he said.

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

AUSTRALIA
ABC News

The Ballarat Centre Against Sexual Assault is expecting public hearings into child sexual abuse will inspire more victims and survivors to come forward.

The support agency will be providing extra services during the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse hearings, which have been scheduled to begin from May 19.

The centre’s manager, Shireen Gunn, is expecting more survivors of child sexual abuse to come forward as a result of the Commission’s visit.

“It has been a bit of a snowball effect of people coming forward and then hearing about others and feeling okay to come forward themselves,” she said.

Ms Gunn said while many survivors were looking forward to the chance to give evidence, the opportunity to speak out had made some victims feel anxious.

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.

MARYLAND
The Baltimore Sun

By Jonathan Pitts
The Baltimore Sun

To replace the bishop accused of driving drunk and killing a bicyclist in Roland Park last year, the Episcopal Diocese of Maryland has chosen a retired bishop who has made her own recovery from alcoholism central to her ministry.

Bishop Eugene Taylor Sutton, head of the Maryland diocese, announced the Rt. Rev. Chilton R. Knudsen — a former bishop of Maine, and a widely respected author and counselor in the field of addiction recovery — as assistant bishop at the church’s annual convention Saturday in Ellicott City.

Knudsen, who has roots in Maryland, will be Sutton’s second-in-command until the diocese selects a long-term replacement for Cook, who resigned as bishop suffragan of Maryland on May 1.

Cook, 58, faces charges including manslaughter, homicide by a motor vehicle while impaired, leaving the scene of a fatal accident, drunken driving and texting while driving in the Dec. 27 death of Thomas Palermo. She has pleaded not guilty and is scheduled to return to court next month.

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

AUSTRALIA
The Australian Jewish News

A SENIOR educator at the Adass Israel School told the Supreme Court of Victoria today she “felt like I was sitting on a bomb” when she discovered that Malka Leifer, the school’s head of Jewish Studies, might be sexually molesting students.

Sharon Ann (Chana) Bromberg, a teacher and chaplain at the school, told the court she received a phone call in August 2007 from a friend urging her to inquire whether Leifer “may have crossed any boundaries” with her female students.

Bromberg said her personal feeling after that phone call was that somebody was prepared to “stoop so low to get” Leifer. But when she confronted Leifer with this a few days later, Leifer said she had discussed her conduct with rabbis and all was in order.

The caller phoned again around 11 days before Leifer’s hasty departure for Israel, saying there was substance to allegations of sexual abuse based on a former student (the claimant) talking to a counsellor in Israel.

The caller called a third time to give Bromberg a young woman’s name to support the seriousness of the allegations.”I felt like I was sitting on a bomb,” Bromberg said.

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
Winnipeg Free Press

By: Ashley Prest

The result of Monday’s formal hearing regarding a sexual harassment complaint against Westminster United Church minister Robert Campbell is expected this week.

The hearing, commissioned by the United Church of Canada’s Winnipeg-based Conference of Manitoba and Northwestern Ontario, was conducted by an independent committee from the Toronto Conference regional body.

It followed a formal investigation and 27-page report by an impartial investigator completed in January 2015. The report, obtained by the Free Press, upholds the complaint and concluded Campbell’s “actions and comments amount to sexual harassment and is behaviour of a sexual nature that is known or ought to be known to be unwanted or unwelcome.”

Rev. Shannon McCarthy, executive secretary of the Conference of Manitoba and Northwestern Ontario, told the Free Press in an email Monday “the United Church of Canada takes all complaints seriously and has a process whereby we discern appropriate disposition of these matters.”

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.

KANSAS CITY (MO)
Kansas City Business Journal

Staff
Kansas City Business Journal

The Kansas City-St. Joseph Diocese racked up more than $3 million in legal bills for sexual abuse cases during the most recent fiscal year, The Kansas City Star reports.

A report from the Catholic diocese included legal costs for the fiscal year that ended June 30. That brings the total paid by the diocese on legal bills and settlements to $27 million in the past four years — not counting a $9.95 million settlement in October involving 32 victims, The Star reports.

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

UNITED STATES
Christian Catholicism

Jerry Slevin

Cardinal George Pell has indicated recently he expects that the upcoming Final Family Synod in less than five months will “massively endorse” the Catholic Church’s traditional teachings. Contraception, abortion and homosexual love would then remain “mortal sins”; women would remain second class Catholics; the Church would remain a clerical dictatorship; and children would continue at unsafe risks of priest sexual abuse, it appears, despite the pope’s carefully staged spin to the contrary. Unless Pope Francis convenes a full ecumenical council before retiring, which seems unlikely, Catholics will have to look to their democratically responsive national governments to press the Vatican to reform, see my “Two Years In, Pope Must Call Council As John XXIII Did“.

Elements of this dismal and disappointing forecast are echoed in well regarded veteran Vatican journalists’ recent reporting, including by Sandro Magister in “The Closed Door of Pope Francis” here,

[Chiesa]

and by Robert Mickens in “Merciless zealots in defense of life and truth“, here,

[National Catholic Reporter].

See also my pertinent remarks, “What Do We Now Know About The Real Goal Of Pope Francis?”.

Pope Francis, instead of making real and permanent reforms, will likely continue with his diversionary media distractions, like a gratuitous climate change encyclical, unnecessary foreign media junkets, and the like, while real issues are avoided. For example, it appears that Pope Francis’ solution for facilitating women’s exercise of their reproductive rights is more of the same as has recently been announced. The pope plans to send an army of globe-trotting priests — his “missionaries of mercy” — to absolve from eternal damnation women who have had abortions. Just what Catholic women need — another chance to share their intimate and stressful sexual histories in a dark confessional box with a celibate and strange guy who never changed a nappy, as Ireland’s former president, Mary McAleese, so well put it.

Of course, these priests may also have some linguistic and cultural challenges in the USA due to the local US priest shortage. Most likely, this “priest army” will consist mainly of “mercenary missionaries” bid for by US bishops in the Filipino, African and/or Indian “priest markets”, no? Is the pope for real here?

And as the pope allies himself increasingly with US Republicans and their “low tax” billionaire backers in next year’s US elections, the US political party that has prevented comprehensive US immigration reform, the pope also is offering a “fix” for some of the millions of undocumented US Latinos. Many of these desperate immigrants have “indigenous American” genes that led to their being discriminated against in Central and South American countries of their birth, and many of whom fled to the US to escape some of these residual and failed countries that had been dominated for centuries by the partnership of landed Hispanic descendants and a right wing Catholic hierarchy. The pope will give them a Hispanic saint, Fr. Junipero Serra, who in the 18th Century helped the rulers from Spain forcibly subjugate the indigenous Americans in California. Pope John Paul II beatified Fr. Serra a few weeks before George W.H. Bush’s was elected in 1988, and now Francis will canonize Fr. Serra this summer, apparently to enhance the presidential prospects of GWHB’s son, Jeb. Fr. Serra is almost a Bush Family patron saint, no? Again, is Pope Francis for real here as well? Please see my, A Mess: Mexico & Electing Bishops & Jeb Bush Too .

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.

MASSACHUSETTS
Patch

By DANIEL LIBON (Patch Staff)

From the Norfolk District Attorney’s Office:

A Norfolk County Grand Jury on May 7, 2015 indicted Nicholas Zemeitus, age 30, of Willard Street, Quincy, formerly of Nancy Road, Milton, on extortion and other charges.

Investigation into the alleged extortion, which involved a Sharon resident, began roughly one year ago.

Zemeitus was arrested shortly after 3 p.m. today, May 11, 2015, on a Norfolk Superior Court indictment warrant at his Quincy place of business by Sharon Police working with the Quincy Police Department.

Zemeitus faces seven indictments of Larceny over $250; two indictments of Receiving Stolen Property valued over $250, a single indictment of Larceny under $250 and one indictment of Extortion.

These indictments are the result of an extensive Norfolk County Grand Jury investigation, investigation by the Sharon Police Department Detective Bureau and Det. Scott Leonard, and the Massachusetts State Police Detective Unit – Norfolk District Attorney’s Office.

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.

MASSACHUSETTS
Jewish Daily Forward

Paul Berger
May 11, 2015

A 30-year-old suburban Boston man has been indicted on theft and extortion charges in relation to the abrupt resignation last year of a leading Conservative rabbi over allegations of sex with a teenage boy.

Nicholas Zemeitus, of Quincy, Massachusetts, is charged with eight counts of larceny, two counts of receiving stolen property and one count of extortion, the Norfolk district attorney’s office said..

The charges appear to be the culmination of a yearlong investigation that began shortly before last May when Rabbi Barry Starr stepped down from his pulpit at Temple Israel, in Sharon, Massachusetts. Allegations soon surfaced that over the previous two years Starr, a 64-year-old father of two, paid an extortionist between $200,000 and $480,000 not to expose Starr’s sexual relationship with a teenager.

Starr allegedly borrowed $50,000 from a congregant of Temple Israel, a Holocaust survivor, to pay part of the extortion money.

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
The Province

By Keith Fraser, The Province May 11, 2015

Freelance journalist Laura Robinson is dropping her lawsuit against the public relations company that represents John Furlong, but is proceeding with her main allegation that the former Vancouver Olympic CEO defamed her, a court was told Monday.

During a brief appearance in court, Bryan Baynham, a lawyer for Robinson, said that the parties had agreed to discontinue the case against the company TwentyTen Group, which was named as a third party in the lawsuit.

Baynham told B.C. Supreme Court Master Douglas Baker that he and Furlong’s lawyer were “very anxious” to get the case against his client scheduled for June 15 under way and to have a trial judge appointed.

Robinson alleges that she was defamed by public comments Furlong made in the wake of a September 2012 story she wrote for the Georgia Straight newspaper alleging he had physically abused a number of students he taught more than 40 years ago.

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

MINNESOTA
Fox 9

by Tom Lyden

(KMSP) –
A St. Paul church is standing by their pastor even though he has been recently investigated by the White Bear Lake Police Department for sexually abusing teenage boys more than three decades ago, even admitting to having a sexual relationship with one of the boys.

After hearing about the troubles in the Catholic church, Eric Forseth googled Rev. Don Horner’s name out of curiosity and found something unexpected. Horner was in a position of trust, as the lead pastor at Eastside Lutheran Church in St. Paul. Forseth wondered how that could happen, given what he said happened to him 36 years ago when he was just 15 years old. The man said Horner fondled him twice, once on a hayride and another time at a church sleepover at First Lutheran in White Bear Lake where Horner was a youth pastor and music director.

TIMELINE: Rev. Don Horner

Forseth called Bishop — now former Bishop — Peter Rogness of the St. Paul synod of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, the ELCA. The Bishop said Forseth should file a police report. After doing so, White Bear Lake police conducted an investigation, which turned up three victims.

Admits to abusing 1 teen boy

When the police department contacted Horner, he made a personal visit to the station. While he didn’t remember Forseth, he admitted to abusing another 15-year-old boy who was a member of the youth group at First Lutheran in White Bear Lake.

Horner molested him in the sauna, the church office, at church camp and weekly throughout high school. A sexual relationship developed that continued through college and for a few years later. Horner was married the entire time to his wife and had three children. That victim no longer lives in Minnesota, but told Fox 9 over the phone he doesn’t believe in all these years anyone has ever called police. He said Horner would always shower special attention on one particular boy, segregating them from the others. The man believes there are at least three other victims, but doesn’t believe they want to come forward.

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 Jody Porter, CBC News

Male survivors of Ralph Rowe, one of Canada’s most prolific pedophiles, met in Thunder Bay, Ont., this week to see a new documentary about the former Anglican priest and boy scout leader who caused them so much pain.

Survivors Rowe tells the story of three of the estimated 500 victims who fell under the spell of the charismatic priest who flew his own plane into remote First Nations in northwestern Ontario in the 1970s and ’80s.

Other survivors who saw the documentary on Saturday said the film, directed by Daniel Roher, and the discussion around it will help with their healing, but they continue to seek justice for Rowe’s crimes.

“It brought back some memories while I was watching the movie,” said George Aquila Williams, who went out for a cigarette to avoid being too overwhelmed at the screening. “Like one of those guys was talking about how he [Rowe] would come into the room, and ask the kid to come to his blanket and lie down with him. It really bothered me.”

Williams said he was seven years old when Rowe first began abusing him. He became ashamed of who he was, and by the age of 14, he was struggling with addiction. Williams went to prison several times before he confronted his past and pushed for charges against Rowe.

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.

WASHINGTON (DC)
WUSA

WASHINGTON (AP) – A lawyer for a once-prominent Orthodox rabbi who pleaded guilty to secretly videotaping scores of women in a changing room of a Jewish ritual bath says he shouldn’t go to prison.

Bernard Freundel’s lawyer wrote in a court document filed Friday ahead of his May 15 sentencing that putting him behind bars isn’t necessary and that he should instead do community service. Prosecutors have recommended that Freundel spend more than 17 years in prison.

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.

WASHINGTON (DC)
Washington Post

[prosecutors 25-page memo]

By Keith L. Alexander and Michelle Boorstein May 11

The attorney for Barry Freundel, the once-influential Orthodox rabbi who secretly videotaped dozens of nude women as they prepared for a ritual bath, has asked a D.C. Superior Court judge to spare his client any prison time and instead impose a sentence of community service.

The 12-page memo was filed after prosecutors Friday sent their own memo to the judge requesting that Freundel, 64, be sentenced to 17 years in prison.

In the defense memo, attorney Jeffrey Harris stressed that Freundel has lost his livelihood and asked Senior Judge Geoffrey M. Alprin to sentence Freundel to work with the community.

Alprin can either adopt or reject the sentences suggested by the prosecutors or the defense, or craft another punishment.

“He has already been punished in that he has lost his employment as a rabbi and is never likely to be so employed again,” Harris wrote. “He has been publicly humiliated and his prior reputation as a Judaic scholar, teacher and counselor have been destroyed.”

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.

ISRAEL
YNet

Moshe Heller
Published: 05.12.15

A rabbi was detained last week following complaints that he had installed a camera in a men’s mikveh (ritual bath) in the ultra-Orthodox neighborhood of Sanhedria in northern Jerusalem.

The private mikveh on Avinoam Street had been deserted for several years after the neighborhood’s former rabbi, Yaakov Yeshaya Blau, banned the facility, claiming it was halachically unfit for immersion and purification.

But after the rabbi passed away two years ago, the neighborhood’s residents gradually began using the mikveh’s services again. Recently, rumors began circulating in Sanhedria that hidden cameras had been installed in the place, documenting the naked men during the ritual immersion.

After some of the men who visited the mikveh confirmed the suspicions, several complaints were filed with the police and investigators were dispatched to the facility. The rabbi was detained for questioning.

Shortly after the rabbi was released, ads were posted outside the ritual bath, warning visitors that the cameras are still being used.

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.

WASHINGTON (DC)
CBS Washington

WASHINGTON — A lawyer for a once-prominent Orthodox rabbi who pleaded guilty to secretly videotaping scores of women in a changing room of a Jewish ritual bath says he shouldn’t go to prison.

Bernard Freundel’s lawyer wrote in a court document filed Friday ahead of his May 15 sentencing that putting him behind bars isn’t necessary and that he should instead do community service. Prosecutors have recommended that Freundel spend more than 17 years in prison.

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

NEW YORK
Daily Caller

BLAKE NEFF
Contributor

Students at a Catholic university in New York are up in arms over their college’s choice of a Catholic cardinal commencement speaker.

Cardinal Timothy Dolan, archbishop of New York, is scheduled to be the commencement speaker next Sunday at Le Moyne College in Syracuse, N.Y. A petition drive, however, is seeking to have the school disinvite him, on the grounds that Dolan is “homophobic” and has been complicit in “sexual violence.”

“Over the years, Cardinal Dolan has been involved with sexual abuse scandals dealing with clergy of the church, homophobic comments and does not represent the ideals we have come to know Le Moyne to represent,” says the petition. “With the growing attention toward sexual assault on the Le Moyne campus, students have felt that keeping Cardinal Dolan as commencement speaker completely opposes what we have advocated against.”

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

NEW MEXICO
KOAT

[with video]

By Mike Springer

SANTA FE, N.M. —The soon-to-be archbishop of Santa Fe said he won’t tolerate sex abuse involving Catholic priests.

Bishop John Wester said he knows what it’s like to be on the frontlines against sex abuse. He’s met with victims and said one of the church’s main jobs is to protect children.

“I have very vivid memories of that, and we made great progress then in our own diocese and I know exceeding here,” Wester said.

But those who represent abuse victims aren’t convinced. They believe Wester’s record leaves much to be desired when it comes to cracking down on the problem.

“When abuse cases surface, or when abuse victims talk to church officials, Bishop Wester does the absolute bare minimum,” said David Clohessy, with the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, or SNAP.

Critics point to the case of Rev. Stephen Whelan. According to the Albuquerque Journal, Whelan was accused of abuse and sued.

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.

ARGENTINA
Notife

[Ilarraz victims again demanded that the process be accelerated.]

La defensa entregó como prueba una serie de cartas que Ilarraz envió a sus víctimas cuando estaba en el exterior.

Víctimas de los abusos del cura Justo José Ilarraz, volvieron a dirigirse públicamente a las autoridades que tienen a cargo la causa. En una carta enviada a ANÁLISIS DIGITAL, recalcaron la necesidad de acelerar el proceso y recordaron a la jueza Paola Firpo, quien dirige la instrucción, que “tiene en sus manos todos los elementos necesarios para procesar” al religioso. En el texto, se refirieron a una de las últimas medidas tomadas en la causa, a través de la cual la magistrada citó a tres víctimas para que reconozcan una serie de cartas -ofrecidas como prueba por la defensa-, que les había enviado el cura cuando se encontraba en el exterior.

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

MINNESOTA
Canonical Consultation

05/11/2015

Jennifer Haselberger

Those of you who regularly read this blog may recall that this past Wednesday, May 6, was the rescheduled Clergy Study Day for priests and deacons of the Archdiocese of Saint Paul and Minneapolis. The topics of the day were ‘Focusing on our Core Purpose as Church While Going Through Reorganization’ ( subtitled ‘Lessons Learned with the Archdiocese of Boston’), and ‘Revisioning the Next Chapter in the Life of our Archdiocese’.

Priests and deacons who would be in attendance were invited to submit questions in advance, and perhaps not surprisingly one question that came up was when and if the report by Green Espel into Archbishop Nienstedt’s personal conduct would be released to the public. To his credit, the Archbishop did respond to this question at the Study Day, although his answer raised more questions than it resolved.

I have heard from several sources that the Archbishop’s response to the question was to say that from the beginning he had removed himself from the investigation, entrusting it to the handling of his auxiliary, Bishop Piche. Therefore, according to Archbishop Nienstedt, it is out of his control as to whether the report is released or not- that question, like the investigation itself, is in the hands of Bishop Piche. Of course, as I have stated before, when I was interviewed by Greene Espel I was shown two documents- one from Nienstedt entrusting the investigation to Bishop Piche, and another from Piche entrusting the same to Father Daniel Griffith.

Regardless, the Archbishop’s response borders on the ridiculous. Are we truly to believe that he does not have the authority to release the report of an investigation which he himself authorized and which the Archdiocese which he governs paid for? If that is truly the case, who is running the show in Saint Paul?

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

AUSTRALIA
The Australian Jewish News

Adass Israel school will not contest allegations of sexual abuse by its former principal, the Supreme Court of Victoria heard today.

Barrister Christopher Blanden SC, representing the school in a lawsuit by a former pupil, told Justice Jack Rush in court this morning that the school will argue that it is not liable for the conduct of Malka Leifer, an Israeli educator hired by Adass in 2000 until her quick departure from Australia in 2008 after accusations surfaced she had molested several students, including the plaintiff.

In testimony today, Adass’s current principal Israel Herszberg said Leifer was hired by the congregation in 2000.

He said a group including three rabbis decided to stand her down after the allegations arose in 2008 and she subsequently resigned.

He said the congregation board had no choice except to pay her and her family’s air fares and costs of her move back to Israel as these were stipulated in her contract.

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

UNITED KINGDOM
Goucester Citizen

Former Bishop of Gloucester the Right Reverend Michael Perham can return to ministry in his retirement and bid a proper farewell to the city after a Church of England review into him was concluded.

Mr Perham stepped aside from his duties in Gloucester Diocese last July when an allegation of indecent assault was made against him from the 1980s. Police investigated and took no further action, at which point the Church of England launched its own review in accordance with its normal policy.

It has concluded that Mr Perham can take up Ministry with the church in his retirement.

Mr Perham said: “I am glad that the church process has concluded and that the outcome is clear and decisive.

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

UNITED KINGDOM
Gazette

Former Gloucester Bishop given clearance by church over allegations to take up ministry in retirement

by Stuart Rust, reporter covering Dursley, Cam, Sharpness, Slimbridge, Kingscote, Stone, Coaley, Berkeley, Uley, Woodford, North Nibley, Wotton-under-Edge, Kingswood, Stinchcombe and Cambridge

FORMER Bishop of Gloucester Rev Michael Perham has been cleared to take up ministry in his retirement following a church probe into a ceased police investigation.

In 2014 Mr Perham faced police investigation over allegations of indecent assault in the early 1980s.

In October last year it was announced that, following questioning by police, Mr Perham would face no further action over the allegations.

After the investigation the matter was reviewed by the Church of England. On Monday, May 11, news came from Lambeth Palace, the official London residence of the Archbishop of Canterbury in England, that the former Bishop had been cleared to take up ministry in his retirement.

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

UNITED KINGDOM
BBC News

The retired Bishop of Gloucester has been cleared for the ministry after an inquiry into alleged sex assaults.

The Right Reverend Michael Perham was questioned by police last year over two allegations of offences dating back three decades.

No action was taken and now the Church of England has ended its own internal inquiry.

“I am glad that the church process has concluded and that the outcome is clear and decisive,” said Bishop Perham.

“The Church has to be rigorous in its approach to safeguarding and, as I made absolutely clear from the start, its investigations had to be thorough to leave no doubt about its conclusions.”

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

UNITED KINGDOM
Bath Chronicle

The retired Bishop of Gloucester Michael Perham will return to the ministry in his retirement following a review by Lambeth Palace.

The Right Reverend Michael Perham was questioned by police last year over two allegations of offences dating back to the 1980’s.

The Church of England had its own internal inquiry and now Bishop Perham will be allowed to return to ministry.

A spokesperson for Lambeth Palace said this morning: “Following a police investigation concerning Bishop Michael Perham last year, which resulted in no further action, the matter was reviewed by the Church of England in accordance with its national safeguarding policy. With the full co-operation of the Bishop an independent risk assessment has been satisfactorily completed and as a result Bishop Michael will be able to take up Ministry in retirement, and the postponed farewells for him in Gloucester can now take place.

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

UNITED KINGDOM
Telegraph

By John Bingham, Religious Affairs Editor 11 May 2015

The former Bishop of Gloucester, the Rt Rev Michael Perham, has been given the green light to continue serving as a Church of England cleric after being cleared of indecent assault allegations.

Scotland Yard announced in October that the bishop would face no further action after inquiries into allegations involving a woman and a girl dating back to the early 1980s when he was a curate in London.

But he remained suspended from ministry pending an independent review and risk assessment ordered by the Church of England.

Bishop Perham was already set to retire at the time, and the Archdeacon of Hackney, the Venerable Rachel Treweek, had since been named as his successor. But services to mark Bishop Perham’s retirement were put on hold while the review took place.

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.

MICHIGAN
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests

For immediate release: Monday, May 11

Statement by Bill McAlary, Grand Rapids director of SNAP, the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests ( 616-514-0654, bllmack1@gmail.com )

Michigan lawmakers are considering reforming the archaic criminal statute of limitations on child sex crimes. We hope they do. But even more, we hope they reform the archaic civil statute of limitations.

[WOOD]

Civil statute of limitations reform enables victims to seek justice from both the predator and his/her employer. Criminal statute of limitations reform only deals with living predators. So it deters employers from acting callously, recklessly and secretively in child sex cases.

Civil statute of limitations reform enables the truth about corrupt institutions to be revealed.

Criminal child sex cases are tough to bring and win. Predators are smart, police are overworked, prosecutors are under-funded, predators are smart, evidence can be scarce and the burden of proof is very high.

Civil child sex cases are also tough to bring and win. But the burden of proof is lower. And victims can take action themselves, through civil suits, to expose those who commit and conceal child sex crimes.

So while we welcome efforts to reform Michigan’s predator-friendly criminal statute of limitations, we also urge lawmakers to reform Michigan’s predator-friendly civil statute of limitations too.

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

NEW MEXICO
Gallup Independent

Published in the Gallup Independent, Gallup, N.M., April 18, 2015

Officials won’t talk properties, sales

By Elizabeth Hardin-Burrola
Independent correspondent
religion@gallupindependent.com

GALLUP — Each day thousands of motorists on Interstate Highway 40 drive by the busy McDonald’s just off the interstate exit in Winslow, Ariz. Many stop by for a quick bite to eat but few likely know the property McDonald’s sits on is owned by a corporation in bankruptcy.

No, it’s not the McDonald’s corporation.

The Winslow property is owned by the Diocese of Gallup, now mired in bankruptcy court for 17 months, and it is just one of more than 270 parcels of land located on more than 190 properties in Arizona and New Mexico that the Gallup Diocese owns. That list includes a shopping center in Gallup, a large ranch in Northern Arizona, more than 60 subdivision lots outside of Grants, N.M., as well as houses, mobile home lots, vacant land and commercial property. And, of course, some church properties with actual churches on them.

But will the Diocese of Gallup part with any of these non-religious commercial, ranch or residential properties to help fund a plan of reorganization and fund settlements with the clergy sex abuse survivors who filed claims against the diocese in U.S. Bankruptcy Court?

Susan Boswell, the lead bankruptcy attorney for the Gallup Diocese, did not respond to questions submitted to her about the diocese’s plans for its extensive property holdings. James Stang, the counsel for the Unsecured Creditors Committee, which represents the interests of clergy sex abuse claimants, also did not respond to a request for comment.

Courthouse notices

Under Chapter 11, Bishop James S. Wall promised the Gallup Diocese “will have the opportunity to present a plan of reorganization that provides for a fair and equitable way to compensate all those who suffered sexual abuse as children” by church workers in the diocese. He also promised to be “open and transparent” throughout the bankruptcy process and keep Catholics “informed as the process continues.” Early into the bankruptcy case, Boswell had indicated the Gallup Diocese would be appraising some property, particularly property not tied to the diocese’s religious mission.

But between the bishop’s Chapter 11 announcement in the fall of 2013 and the bankruptcy filing more than two months later, Boswell’s Quarles & Brady law firm filed notices in the county recorders’ offices in each Arizona and New Mexico county where the Gallup Diocese holds property titles. In Arizona that includes Apache, Coconino and Navajo counties. In New Mexico, that includes Catron, Cibola, Luna, McKinley, Rio Arriba, Sandoval, San Juan, Socorro and Taos counties.

Citing the authority of Roman Catholic Church canon law in documents filed in secular courthouses, Quarles & Brady claimed much of the property the Gallup Diocese holds title to really belongs to local parishes and not the diocese. According to the notices, the diocese “holds and at all times has held only bare legal title as trustee” for the local parish — “notwithstanding the manner in which title” is held.

One of those properties in Arizona is the parcel of land in Winslow where the McDonald’s is located.

Relying on the real estate mantra of “location, location, location,” the Winslow property should be a gold mine. It’s within yards of Winslow’s central interstate highway exit, a thriving Safeway shopping center is across the street, and an always busy Wal-Mart is located on the opposite side of the highway.

However, it appears chancery officials in Gallup — not parish officials in Winslow — have made a number of poor business decisions through the years. According to a lease agreement signed in the 1980s, the late Bishop Jerome J. Hastrich signed an agreement with G.B. Investment Co., which owns the Bashas’ supermarket chain, allowing the company to lease the property for more than 50 years — until 2042. Then Hastrich and G.B. Investment Co. leased part of the property to the Kmart Corp., which later filed for bankruptcy. The Kmart building now sits empty on the south side of the property, and the McDonald’s is the only viable business on the large commercial lot.

Contrary to the Quales & Brady courthouse notice, documents filed with Navajo County indicate that Gallup’s Roman Catholic bishops, who supposedly only hold “bare legal title,” have made all the decisions and signed all the documents pertaining to the Winslow property.

Ranch and shopping center

The G-Bar Ranch, also known as the Barth Ranch, located outside of St. Johns, Ariz., is another church property diocesan attorneys have claimed the diocese is holding in trust for the Catholic church in St. Johns. Apache County records list the property owners, under the mailing address of the Gallup chancery, as the Roman Catholic Church Diocese of Gallup and Priests Retirement Fund.
Boswell did not respond to questions about whether church officials have considered trying to sell the sprawling ranch to the nearby Navajo Nation, the Pueblo of Zuni, or the Salt River Project’s Coronado Generating Station. In addition, Boswell did not provide answers about who benefits from the ranch’s revenue, which reportedly includes gravel mining and grazing fees.

Boswell also did not respond to questions about how much revenue, generated from a downtown Gallup shopping center, is divided between the Diocese of Gallup and the Sacred Heart Cathedral. The property, located on West Aztec Avenue between Fourth and Fifth Streets, features a Lowe’s grocery and liquor store, a Subway sandwich shop and several other businesses. If sold, the commercial property would presumably generate a considerable sum of money to help fund the diocese’s plan of reorganization.

The property does, however, have an historic connection to the Sacred Heart Cathedral as it was the building site of the previous cathedral.

Appraisal request

Inexplicably, according to the court record, the only property the Diocese of Gallup has asked for court approval to appraise is property that is closely tied to the diocese’s religious mission.

In January, diocesan attorneys asked to appraise three landmark church properties in Gallup – the bishop’s chancery office, the Sacred Heart Retreat Center, and Sacred Heart School, formerly known as Gallup Catholic School. It also asked to appraise property in Thoreau, some of which St. Bonaventure Indian School and Mission claims does not belong to the diocese. Bankruptcy Judge David T. Thuma approved those appraisals.

Based on what has happened in other church bankruptcies, two of the Gallup Diocese’s nonprofit organizations, the Southwest Indian Foundation and the Catholic Peoples Foundation, are likely to “purchase” the Gallup property to help the diocese fund its reorganization. The conflict over the Thoreau property could possibly end up in litigation.

A status hearing in the bankruptcy case will be held at 10:30 a.m., Monday, at the U.S. Courthouse in Albuquerque. One of the subjects scheduled to be discussed will be the valuation and sales of property.

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

NEW MEXICO
Gallup Independent

Published in the Gallup Independent, Gallup, N.M., April 20, 2015

By Elizabeth Hardin-Burrola
Independent correspondent
religion@gallupindependent.com

ALBUQUERQUE — On the eve of a status conference in U.S. Bankruptcy Court Monday, the Diocese of Gallup’s own insurance company leveled stinging complaints about the diocese and its attorneys in a court document filed Friday.

The Catholic Mutual Relief Society of America and The Catholic Relief Insurance Company of America, collectively referred to as “Catholic Mutual,” filed the document, filled with nine pages of accusations that the Gallup Diocese has been uncooperative, and asked Bankruptcy Judge David T. Thuma to deny the diocese’s request to set mediation for claims settlement.

Instead, Victor R. Ortega, an attorney for Catholic Mutual, asked Thuma to order the parties to proceed to mediation “for the purpose of resolving information and coverage issues.”

Last fall, Susan Boswell, the lead bankruptcy attorney for the diocese, told Thuma that she expected mediation in the case to begin in late October or early November. With Catholic Mutual’s filing, it is apparent the Gallup Diocese and its own insurance company have been in conflict for several months. Catholic Mutual, which is a self-insurance fund of the Catholic Church in the U.S. and Canada, has been expected to contribute a sizeable amount of settlement money to the Gallup Diocese for survivors of clergy sex abuse.

Alleged roadblocks

According to Ortega, Catholic Mutual needs information from the Diocese of Gallup related to all submitted sex abuse claims and information relevant to the diocese’s “legitimate defenses” to such claims. That information, Ortega said, has not been forthcoming.

Referring to the diocese as the Roman Catholic Church of the Diocese of Gallup, Ortega said, “Given that Catholic Mutual is the principal provider of liability protection, it would seem obvious that RCCDG would want to cooperate with Catholic Mutual and provide all necessary information to increase the chances of a successfully (sic) mediation. The exact opposite has happened.”

Ortega said the diocese has given 57 clergy sex abuse claims to Catholic Mutual, but the insurance company “has been able to obtain only the most rudimentary information on all but six or seven” of the claims.

In addition, “for reasons unknown to Catholic Mutual,” Ortega claimed the diocese “has placed every conceivable roadblock in the path of Catholic Mutual’s quest for the vital and necessary information.”

‘Utterly insufficient’

According to Ortega, of the 57 clergy sex abuse claims, “only 15 claims appear to allege that acts of sexual abuse took place within Catholic Mutual’s coverage periods.” Catholic Mutual provided coverage for sexual abuse on an “occurrence basis” from Dec. 1, 1977, to July 1, 1990, he said, and it provided coverage on a “claims-made basis” from 1990 to the present.

One startling statement in Catholic Mutual’s document is that one recently filed claim alleges an incident of sexual abuse just last summer in July 2014. Bishop James S. Wall has made no public announcement about such a recent allegation nor has he announced a law enforcement investigation into that allegation.

Ortega said the remaining 42 claims allege acts of sexual abuse in years preceding the issuance of the first Catholic Mutual coverage certificate on Dec. 1, 1977. At issue is Ortega’s assertion that the Diocese of Gallup “has provided Catholic Mutual with almost no information relative to the 57 tendered claims.”

“It is respectfully submitted that this information is utterly insufficient to enable Catholic Mutual to make a reasoned determination of settlement values and to make a final coverage determination,” he said.

Warburton brouhaha

Another area of conflict is a brouhaha regarding legal files of Robert Warburton, the New Mexico attorney who was the Gallup Diocese’s lead counsel in clergy sex abuse claims prior to the Chapter 11 filing. In January, Ortega said, the diocese revealed the existence of 10 transcripts of interviews with alleged clergy abuse survivors that were not in the insurance company’s files.

Catholic Mutual requested copies of the files and requested an interview with Warburton without the presence of lawyers, Ortega said, “since Mr. Warburton services had been entirely paid for by Catholic Mutual and were not pursuant to any reservation of rights.” The diocese “flatly refused” to allow Warburton to be interviewed under those circumstances, he added, but promised to provide the files.

According to Ortega, the diocese and Catholic Mutual have since been in conflict over details pertaining to the insurance company’s requests for the files and the interview. On Wednesday, Ortega said, the diocese produced Warburton’s files, but they “appear to be heavily redacted and unaccompanied by any redaction log.”

Ortega accused the diocese of producing the redacted files just days ago so those files cannot be reviewed before Monday’s status hearing. He also accused the diocese of “time stalling” tactics “to set a schedule for a claims settlement mediation in which Catholic Mutual will have insufficient information to make reasoned determinations” in mediation talks.

Attorneys for the Diocese of Gallup did not file a response Friday.

In addition to having to sort through this conflict during Monday’s status conference, Thuma is expected to hear about investigations into other insurance coverage, possible claims against other third parties, real property valuation and sales, and potential litigation.

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

NEW MEXICO
Gallup Independent

Published in the Gallup Independent, Gallup, N.M., April 22, 2015

By Sherry Robinson
Independent correspondent

ALBUQUERQUE – Attorneys for the Diocese of Gallup and two of its insurers traded accusations and complaints during a hearing in U.S. Bankruptcy Court on Monday. But parties agreed to begin mediation in early June.

The three biggest points of disagreement were the diocese’s ability to satisfy requests for information, the incidents of abuse actually covered by insurance, and the determination of who is liable.

On Friday, Catholic Mutual filed a nine-page complaint stating that the diocese had been uncooperative, that it still needs information, and that only 15 of 57 claims fall under Catholic Mutual’s period of coverage. The insurer still needs information about all the sex abuse claims submitted, along with the diocese’s defenses to these claims. Instead of providing information, the diocese has instead erected roadblocks, the insurer said in its complaint.

Susan Boswell, attorney for the diocese, said during Monday’s hearing that her client had struggled from the outset of the bankruptcy filing in November 2013 to bring books and records up to date and to identify and obtain valuations of properties held by the diocese, which she said were mostly vacant land in Winslow, Holbrook and other locations in northern Arizona, as well as the Gallup area.

“It’s been quite a challenge to assemble records,” she said. “We’re trying to figure out a way to monetize that property. It’s not the easiest task. We’re trying to fund a mediated settlement and a reorganization.”

After retaining Insurance Archeology Group to reconstruct insurance records, it appears that Catholic Mutual and the New Mexico Property and Casualty Insurance Guaranty Fund are still the primary insurers, although the Franciscan Province of St. John the Baptist in Cincinnati (three of the offending priests were Franciscans) may contribute to a settlement. “We have worked with the Franciscans, who have provided significant information about the insurance coverage they may have,” Boswell said.

‘Offers and counter offers’

Jim Stang, attorney for the unsecured creditors’ committee and the representative of sex abuse claimants, said the diocese and committee have largely agreed what properties to include.

“To me, this is about getting to mediation and coming to mediation ready to make offers and counter offers,” Stang said. “We hope to do this the first two weeks of June. I don’t want to get another phone call saying one of the survivors has died. We started before Christmas offering information. The committee is ready to go forward and mediate a global resolution of case.” Boswell and Stang asked Bankruptcy Judge David T. Thuma to order these parties to mediation: the diocese, the committee, Catholic Mutual, New Mexico Property and Casualty, the Franciscans, the parishes of St. Johns and Sacred Heart Cathedral, and the Catholic People’s Fund.

Responding to Catholic Mutual’s complaint, Boswell said: “We tendered all 58 claims filed in the case … We understand they may cause consternation when claims are submitted for incidents that occurred before coverage. We had a duty to submit those claims. We understand the insurers’ need for information on each claim. We tried to elicit as much information as possible.”

Also at issue are the legal files of Robert Warburton, a New Mexico attorney who defended the diocese before the bankruptcy filing. Catholic Mutual wants to interview Warburton and see his files, but the diocese refused, according to the complaint. On Wednesday the diocese produced the files, heavily redacted. Boswell said of the Warburton files that there is attorney-client privilege, “and the client asserts that privilege.”

Attorney David Spector explained that the Catholic Mutual Relief Society of America and the Catholic Relief Insurance Company of America, referred to as Catholic Mutual, are the Catholic church’s self-insurance fund in North America, which “tries to help dioceses in these situations,” said Spector. Catholic Mutual has covered the Gallup Diocese in different forms since 1977, and there are claims before and after coverage the certificates of coverage.

The diocese cops an ‘attitude’

“This situation is a little unique,” Spector said. “We rarely see a situation where a diocese takes the attitude of this one. Catholic Mutual is not ready to resolve 57 or 58 claims, when 42 are pre-certification claims. We can’t resolve this when 75 percent of claims are subject to dispute.”

In addition, Catholic Mutual has been unable to investigate the 57 claims because the diocese hasn’t provided all the requested information, and some of the information was heavily redacted.

“We don’t want to go to war with the debtor or the credit committee, we just want information,” Spector said. “It’s gotten kind of petty.”

Stang said 15 claims were properly within the coverage period of Catholic Mutual, and that the creditors’ committee has recommended to the diocese that mediation be confined to the 15.

Edward Mazel, attorney for the New Mexico Property and Casualty, said, “The Catholic Mutual statement of Friday is eerily similar to our own experience.” His client picks up obligations of defunct insurance companies and is the successor to the Home Insurance Company, which insured the diocese from 1965 to 1977, when it went out of business. “We tried to analyze documents to the extent we were able,” Mazel said. He asked for priest files in December and didn’t receive them until last week.

Boswell responded that “the diocese doesn’t have the personnel nor are records organized in a way that makes it easy to produce records on request. I understand the need for information.”

When it became clear that the diocese was willing to drop its demand that Catholic Mutual mediate all 57 claims, the parties resolved to mediate.

Retired bankruptcy court judge Randall Newsome is willing to mediate the case pro bono, but he has made it clear the parties must be ready to negotiate in good faith and not use the mediation to gather information.

“We need to get this case done,” Boswell said. “We’ve spent considerable time and money providing information to third parties to get people to the point of sitting down with a mediator.”

Judge Thuma asked Boswell to prepare a mediation order and scheduled a hearing next Monday.

Still unanswered is the question of liability for the Diocese of Corpus Christi, which previously employed Father Clement Hageman.

“Corpus Christi is hardest,” Stang said. “There are lots of disputes about whether Corpus Christi should be held liable for Father Hagerman, the main perpetrator in about one-third (18) of the claims. He hurt a lot of people. We think Corpus Christi should be at the mediation too.”

Daryl Diesing, attorney for the Corpus Christi Diocese said: “Father Hageman was discharged from Corpus Christi. It was not kept a secret. We don’t feel the court has jurisdiction over Corpus Christi. There is no way we are close enough in our discussion that we should be dragged into mediation.”

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.

MEW MEXICO
Gallup Independent

Published in the Gallup Independent, Gallup, N.M., April 28, 2015

By Sherry Robinson
Independent correspondent

ALBUQUERQUE — U.S. Bankruptcy Court Judge David T. Thuma Monday ordered into mediation 10 parties to the Diocese of Gallup bankruptcy reorganization.

Retired bankruptcy Judge Randall J. Newsome, who has offered to mediate at no fee, will set the time and location of the mediation but it will begin no later than July 15, the order said.

The parties ordered to participate are the diocese, the unsecured creditors committee, New Mexico Property and Casualty Insurance Guaranty Association, The Catholic Mutual Relief Society of America, The Catholic Relief Insurance Company of America, Province of St. John The Baptist of the Order of Friars Minor (Franciscans), Sacred Heart Cathedral in Gallup, St. John the Baptist in St. Johns, Catholic Peoples Foundation (a diocese fund-raising arm), and St. Bonaventure Indian Mission and School.

The order also provides that results of the mediation will be nonbinding unless the parties agree otherwise, communications during the mediation will be confidential, and none of the parties can compel the mediator to testify or be deposed. Thuma also ordered the parties to cooperate in discovery and depositions before mediation.

Thuma had asked Susan Boswell, attorney for the diocese, to prepare an order during a hearing a week earlier. Attorneys for insurers criticized her draft for departing from the court’s own standard mediation orders. Boswell said she included language about a binding agreement because “I don’t want to see people backpedaling on the settlement.”

David Spector, attorney for The Catholic Mutual Relief Society of America and The Catholic Relief Insurance Company of America (Catholic Mutual), objected to “imposing plenipotentiary powers on the mediator,” which allows him to enter any order, and added that mediations work best when the mediator tries to bring parties together without acting as judge.

Edward Mazel, attorney for New Mexico Property and Casualty, agreed.

Jim Stang, attorney for the unsecured creditors’ committee and the representative of sex abuse claimants, said, “We feel very strongly that you should order the parties to mediate as of a certain date. Given the number of parties and the level of communication or noncommunication, we need an order.”

Spector argued that he had to find an appropriate attorney to take depositions from 15 claimants and then to depose those claimants. Said Stang, “Catholic Mutual has been the insurer in more sex abuse cases than any other insurer. They should be able to find an attorney (quickly) to take depositions.”

Spector proposed that mediation begin in September. Stang responded, “Waiting until September is just torture. That’s the way it will feel to my folks.”

After Boswell and the insurance lawyers snipped at each other about what information was provided when and who requested what, Stang said, “Sometimes you’ve just gotta pick up the phone.”

Thuma said he had worked on the form proposed by Boswell. He said he didn’t believe that deposing 15 claimants would take all summer. He said the parties should be willing to cooperate in discovery and ready to mediate, and if not, he would settle disputes.

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

NEW MEXICO
Gallup Independent

Published in the Gallup Independent, Gallup, N.M., May 2, 2015

Bishops who served in the Diocese of Gallup have a long history of keeping secrets from its members and the public.

Bernard T. Espelage, who served from 1940 to 1969, and Jerome J. Hastrich, who served from 1969 to 1990, both allowed priests who served in other dioceses and who had been disciplined or had been sent to centers specializing in treating priests accused of child molestation to be transferred to the Gallup Diocese. None of this was reported to the members of the congregation that they were assigned to serve and many have now been named as committing the same crimes in this diocese.

Donald Edmond Pelotte, who served from 1990 to 2008, kept many priest sex abuse cases secret as he did aspects of his personal life that became public during his last couple of years of his administration.

James Sean Wall, the current bishop, promised members of the diocese and the public when he was appointed in 2009 that he would be more open about allegations of misconduct by priests. Within months of that promise, however, the diocese once again began keeping these matters under wraps.

Given the position of the bishops of this diocese on the subject of priest sexual abuse, we shouldn’t have been surprised when the diocese’s insurance company, Catholic Mutual, filed a complaint in a federal bankruptcy court recently charging the diocese with failure to provide them information about sex abuse cases in this diocese. The prevailing attitude seems to continue to be to sweep these kinds of cases under the rug in the hopes that they are never made public.

We have learned to expect this type of behavior from diocese leaders which is why we have used every source we have been able to find to bring these cases out in the open.

We have found a lot of them but we also believe that there are others that the diocese has managed to keep secret.

And we were especially shocked to find out from recent filings in the diocese’s bankruptcy case that there are allegations of an incident of sexual abuse that occurred just last summer.

This hasn’t been made public and we can’t help but wonder if the diocese has violated laws that require diocese officials to make these kinds of allegations known to law enforcement authorities.

Since the diocese is still keeping these kinds of things secret, we can’t help but wonder if there have been more current cases that are being swept under the rug. Is the diocese continuing to turn its back on the safety of the children it has pledged to protect?

Another aspect of the diocese’s internal affairs has been made public in light of the recent bankruptcy filings and that is how much money the church is spending in legal fees dealing with the recent sexual abuse cases filed by a number of sex abuse victims.

The diocese is facing spending millions of dollars to defend these lawsuits but the interesting thing is that it that there is a good possibility that it will spend even more in legal fees in connection with those cases.

It would seem to us that the diocese would have been better off both financially and morally if it treated these suits as a chance to show how serious it takes these kinds of charges and how it wants to be open and fair to those who it failed to protect in the past.

Sadly, this is not happening and what we continue to see is a diocese that refuses to accept its share of blame for allowing this to occur.

In this space only does the opinion of the Gallup Independent Editorial Board appear.

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.

MARYLAND
ABC 7

[with video]

By Kevin Lewis May 11, 2015

ROCKVILLE, Md. (WJLA) – A distinguished Montgomery County private school is on edge after police arrested a longtime employee on charges of child sex abuse.
Continue reading

Julio Cruz, 58, of Rockville, is accused of inappropriately touching, and in one case, having sexual intercourse with his niece, then just 10-years-old.

According to charging documents filed in Montgomery County District Court, Cruz molested the girl, now 20, on four separate occasions during the summer and fall of 2005. The alleged incidents occurred inside of his home and car. …

ABC 7 News has learned Cruz worked as a maintenance technician at the Charles E. Smith Jewish Day School in Rockville since 2001. He was assigned to the Lower School located along the 1900 block of Jefferson Street in Rockville. Although the alleged abuse took place off-campus, school leaders are taking the criminal case very seriously.

In a letter home to parents, Head of School, Rabbi Mitchel Malkus wrote, “Given the nature of the charges, we felt it was important to make you aware of the situation and the actions the school has taken… [We] immediately suspended Mr. Cruz. He has not been on campus since his arrest and he is no longer permitted on campus.”

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
Herald Sun

Senior rabbi Zvi Telsner on committee that helped accused sex predator flee Australia, court told

A SENIOR rabbi accused of covering up sex crimes at Yeshivah College formed part of a committee that helped accused sex predator Malka Leifer flee Australia, a court has heard.

Mrs Leifer fled Australia just days after the Adass Israel School committee of management was told of allegations she abused at least three sisters and a string of other girls.

Yeshivah Centre chief rabbi Zvi Telsner was on Monday named as a member of a panel that decided to terminate the former Adass Israel School principal’s employment and help her flee Australia in 2008.

It comes as Mrs Leifer was on Monday night expected to fight an application for her extradition from Israel to face criminal charges here.

But the federal Attorney-General’s media department thwarted attempts to cover the case by refusing to tell media when or where it would be heard.

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.

BELGIEN
Luxemburger Wort

[Belgian Church needs a fresh start]

Seine Amtszeit stand zu keiner Zeit unter einem guten Stern. Von einem „großen Missverständnis“ war gar die Rede; Torten flogen. Brüssels Erzbischof André Léonard wurde nicht Kardinal – und könnte nun bald abgelöst werden.

Er selbst macht kein Hehl aus der Sache. „Ich hoffe nicht, dass mein Amt um ein paar Jahre verlängert wird“, sagte Andre Joseph Leonard kürzlich in einem Interview mit dem Privatsender VTM. Er wolle auch gar nicht bleiben, bis ein Nachfolger gefunden sei. Leonard ist Erzbischof von Mechelen-Brüssel, Vorsitzender der Belgischen Bischofskonferenz und Militärordinarius für Belgien. Am Mittwoch (6. Mai) wurde er 75 Jahre alt; eine Altersgrenze, an der Bischöfe dem Papst ihren Amtsverzicht anbieten. Dass Franziskus diesen schon bald annehmen könnte, ist nicht unwahrscheinlich.

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.

DEUTSCHLAND
Freitag

Kath. Internate Fünf Jahre “Aufarbeitung” des Missbrauchs in katholischen Internaten – so skandalös wie der Missbrauch selbst. Jetzt bleiben die Schüler weg. Aus ganz anderen Gründen?

Ein Blog-Beitrag von Freitag-Community-Mitglied Ulrich Lange

Deutschlandfunk ist auf facebook. Und fragt die Community: Eltern lassen “weniger leicht los” – Ist das die Erklärung für den Schülerschwund in den Internaten?

Verlinkt wird auf ein DLF-Interview von Sandra Pfister mit dem Vorsitzenden des Verbandes Katholischer Internate und Tagesinternate (V.K.I.T.), Dr. Christopher Haep, ausgestrahlt am 05.05.2015 in der Sendereihe “Campus und Karriere”, das der Header folgendermaßen auf den Punkt bringt:

>> Vielen deutschen Internaten kommen die Schüler abhanden. Aber schon vor den Missbrauchsskandalen hätte bei den Internatsschulen ein “Umbruchprozess” begonnen, betonte der Vorsitzende des Verbandes katholischer Internate, Christopher Haep, im DLF. Der Schülerschwund habe sowohl mit dem Ausbau der Ganztagsbetreuung als auch mit einem veränderten Verhalten der Eltern zu tun: Sie ließen “weniger leicht los”. <<

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.

NORTHERN IRELAND
Belfast Telegraph

11 MAY 2015

Paedophile priest Father Brendan Smyth will be the subject of a focused investigation as part of a public inquiry into historical child abuse in Northern Ireland.

The serial child molester frequented Catholic residential homes and was convicted of more than 100 child abuse charges.

Retired judge Sir Anthony Hart is leading one of the UK’s largest inquiries into physical, sexual and emotional harm to children at homes run by the church, state and voluntary organisations.

He said the inquiry will: “Examine issues arising from the actions of Fr Brendan Smyth in a number of homes in Northern Ireland, actions which have been described by a number of witnesses who have already given evidence to the Inquiry.”

The Historical Institutional Abuse (HIA) inquiry has extended its work to cover three more state-run institutions; Hydebank Young Offenders Centre in south Belfast and former homes at Fort James and Harberton House, Londonderry.

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

NEW YORK
WSYR

[with video]

Syracuse (WSYR-TV) – Controversy about a commencement speaker!

Some students at Le Moyne College are angry that Cardinal Timothy Dolan, the leader of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of New York will be speaking at graduation next weekend.

There are allegations, that while Dolan was Archbishop of Milwaukee, he moved money into a fund to protect priests involved in sexual abuse scandals.

The cardinal has denied these claims, but Le Moyne students say he’s not fit to be their speaker.

“It’s just because there’s so many questions dealing with this. And we had so many different cases of sexual assault being addressed on our campus. I felt it was a bit hypocritical for Cardinal Dolan to be our commencement speaker. There’s certain details that need to be clarified for me to be okay with this,” says Krystal Wilson, Le Moyne student.

Wilson along with another Le Moyne student created an online petition.

They’ve already gathered more than 600 signatures.

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.

ROME
Chiesa

Since the end of the 2014 synod, he has spoken dozens of times on abortion, divorce, and homosexuality. But he hasn’t said a single word more in support of the “openness” demanded by the innovators

by Sandro Magister

ROME, May 11, 2015 – The second and last session of the synod on the family is approaching, and the temperature of the discussion keeps going up.

The latest uproar is over an onslaught of the German bishops, who now take as a given, in the “cultural context” of their local Church, substantial changes of doctrine and pastoral practice in matters of divorce and homosexuality:

Nothing new, in this. Most of the bishops of Germany have for some time been entrenched in positions of this kind, even before Cardinal Walter Kasper opened fire with the memorable introductory talk at the February 2014 consistory of cardinals, in support of communion for the divorced and remarried:

The new development is another. And it has as its protagonist Pope Francis.

Until the synod of October 2014, Jorge Mario Bergoglio had repeatedly and in various ways shown encouragement for “openness” in matters of homosexuality and second marriages, each time with great fanfare in the media. Cardinal Kasper explicitly said that he had “agreed” with the pope on his explosive talk at the consistory.

But during that synod the resistance to the new paradigms showed itself to be much more strong and widespread than expected, and determined the defeat of the innovators. The reckless “relatio post disceptationem” halfway through the assembly was demolished by the criticism and gave way to a much more traditional final report.

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

AUSTRALIA
The Age

May 11, 2015

Adam Cooper and Cameron Houston

One of David Rapson’s victims screamed at the paedophile priest as he was led away after being jailed for at least nine years for sexually abusing students at two Victorian schools.

“Hope you die in jail, you dog,” the man yelled as the former Catholic priest was led into custody moments after he was jailed for 12 years and one month by a County Court judge on Monday.

Rapson, who was this year found guilty in trials of abusing six boys between 1976 and 1990, must serve nine years and four months in prison before he is eligible for parole.

The 61-year-old was this year found guilty of five charges of rape and six counts of indecent assault, related to attacks on six students at two schools. The boys were aged between 11 or 12 and 16 at the time, and Rapson was deputy principal during some of his offending.

Judge James Parrish described the former priest as a “ruthless sexual predator” for the way he lured children to his office with cigarettes, alcohol, lollies and the chance to play computer games, before assaulting them. He assaulted others in the school’s infirmary, the court heard.

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.

NORTHERN IRELAND
UTV

The Historical Institutional Abuse Inquiry has been extended to include three more state-run organisations and the actions of notorious paedophile priest Father Brendan Smyth.

The inquiry, set up in 2013 and chaired by Sir Anthony Hart, has been examining 13 institutions and the child migration scheme to Australia.

On Monday, Sir Anthony announced an extension to his remit to include Fort James and Harberton House in Londonderry, which have both closed, and Hydebank Young Offenders’ Centre in south Belfast

He said: “Today we wish to announce that we are adding three more institutions to the list, and one individual, bringing the total of homes and matters to be investigated to 18.

“Fort James and Harberton House, both statutory homes in Londonderry, will be dealt with together in module five which will take place next month.

“It will be followed by module six which will examine issues arising from the actions of Fr Brendan Smyth in a number of homes in Northern Ireland, actions which have been described by a number of witnesses who have already given evidence to the inquiry.

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.

NORTHERN IRELAND
Belfast Live

11 May 2015 By Maurice Fitzmaurice

Pervert priest Brendan Smyth is to be subjected to a specific section as part of a massive inquiry into institutional sex abuse.

The Historical Institutional Abuse Inquiry also announced on Monday that three new institutions – Hydebank Wood Young Offenders’ Centre in Belfast and Fort James Children’s Home in Ardmore Road and Harberton House Assessment Centre in Irish Street both in Derry – are also to be looked into.

HIA Chairman Sir Anthony Hart said the extra parts to the large-scale probe will bring “the total of homes and matters to be investigated to 18”.

He said Module 6 “will examine issues arising from the actions of Fr Brendan Smyth in a number of homes in Northern Ireland, actions which have been described by a number of witnesses who have already given evidence to the Inquiry”.

Smyth died of a heart attack in prison in August 1997, just a month into a 12 year prison sentence for a raft of offences against children.

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.

NORTHERN IRELAND
Derry Journal

The Historical Institutional Abuse Inquiry is to investigate two additional state-run institutions in Derry.

The inquiry has already investigated St Joseph’s Boys’ Home, Termonbacca, and Nazareth House Children’s Home at Bishop Street in Derry.

However, Fort James Children’s Home at Ardmore and Harberton House Assessment Centre in Irish Street in the city’s Waterside are also now to be examined.

Both establishments were controlled by the former Western Health and Social Services Board and have since closed.

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.

NORTHERN IRELAND
BBC News

The Historical Institutional Abuse Inquiry is to investigate three additional state-run institutions.

There will also be a separate examination of the activities of paedophile priest Brendan Smyth.
The inquiry has been investigating 13 institutions to date.

However, Hydebank Young Offenders Centre in south Belfast and two former homes in Londonderry – Fort James and Harberton House – will now also be examined.

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

NEW YORK
The College Fix

by NATHAN RUBBELKE – SAINT LOUIS UNIVERSITY on MAY 11, 2015

Le Moyne College president calls the student activism a ‘great call for celebration’

It seemed a perfect choice: A Catholic university inviting one of the church’s top leaders – the archbishop of New York – someone who even voted in the last papal conclave, as its commencement speaker.

But some at Le Moyne College see it differently.

Students at the Jesuit college, located in Syracuse, N.Y., are calling for Cardinal Timothy Dolan – leader of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of New York – to be disinvited as the college’s commencement speaker.

A petition posted two weeks ago on Change.org titled “Change Le Moyne’s Commencement speaker 2015” implored the college’s administration to disinvite Dolan, stating “the graduating class of 2015 and the graduates, along with staff and other students, do not approve” of Dolan.

As of Sunday night, the petition had 613 signatures. That’s at a college with only 2,800 undergrads and 800 grad students.

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.

NORTHERN IRELAND
Care Appointments

Press Association

Northern Ireland’s public inquiry in to child abuse is to investigate three more state-run institutions, the chairman said.

The Historical Institutional Abuse (HIA) inquiry has extended its work to cover Hydebank Young Offenders Centre in south Belfast and former homes at Fort James and Harberton House, Londonderry.

Another section will focus on issues arising from the actions of paedophile priest Brendan Smyth, a serial child molester who frequented some Catholic residential homes, according to HIA chairman Sir Anthony Hart.

He is heading what was the UK’s largest probe into child abuse and has been investigating homes run by religious orders of nuns and brothers.

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

AUSTRALIA
The Guardian

Australian Associated Press

Sunday 10 May 2015

A paedophile priest dubbed a “sadist” by his victims has been jailed for at least nine years for luring schoolboys to his office with video games, cigarettes and alcohol before sexually abusing them.

Former Catholic cleric David Edward Rapson, 61, was found guilty of sexually abusing six boys at two Victorian boarding schools in the 1970s and 1980s.

In 2013 Rapson was jailed for 13 years, but was bailed 12 months later when the Victorian court of appeal quashed his rape and sexual assault convictions.

He was found guilty in three new trials in February and March this year.

In sentencing on Monday, county court judge James Parrish described Rapson as a sexual predator who took advantage of the trust he had as a teacher and spiritual adviser.

He said some of the aggravating circumstances of the abuse against the boys, who were aged between 11 and 16 at the time, bordered on sadistic.

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
Daily Mail

Pedophile priest who lured young school boys in with alcohol, cigarettes and video games is jailed for nine years for ‘sadistic’ crimes

By SARAH DEAN FOR DAILY MAIL AUSTRALIA and AAP
PUBLISHED: 21:24 EST, 10 May 2015 | UPDATED: 21:24 EST, 10 May 2015

A pedophile priest dubbed a ‘sadist’ by his victims has been jailed for at least nine years for luring schoolboys to his office with video games, cigarettes and alcohol before sexually abusing.

Former Catholic cleric David Edward Rapson, 61, was found guilty of sexually abusing six boys at two Victorian boarding schools in the 1970s and 1980s.

Rapson was in 2013 jailed for 13 years, but was bailed 12 months later when the Victorian Court of Appeal quashed his rape and sexual assault convictions.

He was found guilty in three new trials in February and March this year.

In sentencing on Monday, County Court judge James Parrish described Rapson as a sexual predator who took advantage of the trust he had as a teacher and spiritual adviser.

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

AUSTRALIA
ABC News

Paedophile priest David Rapson has been sentenced to 12 and a half years in prison for the rape and indecent assault of six boys in Victoria during the 1970s, 80s and 90s.

The Melbourne County Court heard the boys were as young as 11 or 12 when Rapson abused them at the Catholic boarding school he taught at.

The judge described Rapson as a “sexual predator seeking sexual fulfilment at the expense of young boys”.

He said Rapson displayed “cruelty and violence bordering on being sadistic”.

Rapson will be eligible for parole in 2023.

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
Herald Sun

SHANNON DEERY HERALD SUN MAY 11, 2015

A PERVERTED priest who plied young boys with cigarettes and alcohol before raping them has been jailed for at least nine years.

David Edwin Rapson, 61, was today sentenced to a maximum jail term of 12-and-a-half years for the second time over the assault of a string of young boys.

As he was marched out of court by prison staff a victim yelled to him: “I hope you die in jail. Dog”.

In 2013 Rapson was jailed for 13 years for his crimes but was released on appeal after serving just a year of that sentence.

He was ordered to face new trials and was last month he was found guilty of five charges of rape and six of indecent assault after four secret County Court trials.

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.

KANSAS CITY (MO)
The Kansas City Star

By JUDY L. THOMAS
jthomas@kcstar.com

The Kansas City-St. Joseph Diocese paid more than $3 million in legal fees on sexual abuse cases in the past fiscal year, raising the total litigation costs to more than $10 million since one of its priests was charged with producing child pornography four years ago.

The figures, published in a diocesan report covering the year ending June 30, 2014, don’t include legal costs incurred after that date associated with a $9.95 million settlement in October involving 32 victims, some of whom alleged abuse going back several decades. The diocese said last week that those numbers weren’t yet available.

Even without those figures, the diocese has paid more than $27 million in settlements and litigation costs related to priest sex abuse cases in the past four years.

A recent report released by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops shows that the Kansas City diocese isn’t alone. Since 2004, the Catholic Church nationwide has paid nearly $3 billion in costs related to the sex abuse scandal, according to an annual survey by the Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate at Georgetown University.

In fiscal 2014, dioceses and religious orders spent $119 million on settlements to victims, therapy and attorneys’ fees, the survey found.

More than half of those payments — 53 percent — were settlements to victims, with legal fees accounting for an additional 24 percent. The remainder went toward support for offenders and therapy for victims and offenders.

The church also spent nearly $32 million on safe environment training programs, background checks and other protective efforts.

The survey was included in an annual audit of how dioceses are complying with the requirements that U.S. bishops established in their 2002 Charter for the Protection of Children and Young People.

The survey found that the number of priest sex abuse cases in the church continues to decrease. More than 80 percent of the 294 credible allegations of abuse reported in the past fiscal year dated back more than 25 years, with most occurring from the 1960s to the 1980s.

Though the report showed positive progress, “we must remain ever vigilant in the protection of children,” Archbishop Joseph Kurtz of Louisville, Ky., president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, said in a news release last month.

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.

WASHINGTON (DC)
A Jewish Feminist

Posted by Elana Sztokman on Saturday, 09 May 2015

Convicted of recording 52 women naked in the mikveh, with another 100 women who are past the statute of limitations…. Untold emotional, psychological and spiritual damage to the women….. victims who can no longer step foot in synagogue, who can no longer trust rabbis, who no longer want to be Jewish, who are reliving nightmares of abuse, who do not want to go the mikveh, whose marriages are strained, whose identities are in question…… Below is a detailed description of the crimes of Barry Freundel. Read it and tremble.

SUPERIOR COURT FOR THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA CRIMINAL DIVISION – MISDEMEANOR BRANCH
UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
Case No. 2014-CMD-18262 Hon. Geoffrey Alprin
Sentencing Date: May 15, 2015
V.
BERNARD FREUNDEL
UNITED STATES’ MEMORANDUM IN AID OF SENTENCING

The United States of America, by and through its attorney, the United States Attorney for the District of Columbia, respectfully submits this memorandum in aid of sentencing. The defendant, Bernard Freundel, is before the Court for sentencing after pleading guilty to 52 counts of Voyeurism, in violation of 22 D.C. Code §§ 3531(6) and (c), involving surreptitiously videotaping 52 separate women. In light of the extraordinary scope of the defendant’s crimes, the premeditation and planning involved, the substantial abuse of the defendant’s position of exceptional trust, and the severe impact on the victims, the United States submits that a sentence of 208 months of incarceration would serve the interests of justice in this case. In support of its recommendation, the government relies on the following information.

FACTUAL AND PROCEDURAL HISTORY
Between approximately 1989 and October 2014, the defendant, Bernard Freundel, was the sole rabbi of Kesher Israel Congregation, located at 2801 N Street, NW, Washington, D.C. The defendant also taught courses on ethics at Towson University for approximately five years, and seminars on Jewish law at Georgetown Law Center since the early 1990s. The defendant’s influence was felt not only within Washington D.C., but around the world. For years, the defendant was a leader in an effort to establish uniform standards for conversions to Orthodox Judaism in the United States, and to ensure that many American conversions would be accepted by Israel. At one time, his reputation was that only his conversions would be guaranteed to be deemed valid by the Chief Rabbinate of Israel. As a result, people came from all over the region and the globe to study with the defendant and convert with him as their sponsor.

In 2005, a Jewish ritual bath (known as a “mikvah”) opened at 1308 28th Street, NW, Washington, D.C. Known as the National Capital Mikvah, the building is located across a courtyard from Kesher Israel.’ A mikvah is used primarily by Orthodox Jewish women for monthly spiritual purification and by individuals as the final step in the Orthodox Jewish conversion process. The use of the mikvah and many of its attendant rituals and blessings are prescribed by Jewish text and tradition. As an initial matter, immersion in a mikvah is regarded as an intensely private and spiritual experience. As noted in a community impact statement from former members of Kesher Israel who used the Mikvah, a mikvah is regarded as “the most sacred space for Jewish women.” As described in the same community impact statement, Jewish law requires users to fully cleanse their body before immersion in the mikvah, so users take a bath or shower, remove all clothing, jewelry, makeup, nail polish, clean under their fingernails, and even remove their contact lenses before immersing, as doing so represents the complete absence of barriers between the user and the water. The user wraps herself in a sheet before immersing and then removes the sheet entirely as she immerses in the water. During a conversion to Judaism, three rabbis and a female attendant are present. With steps carefully choreographed to protect the modesty of the candidate, the rabbis stand in the doorway and turn to watch the candidate as his or her head immerses fully under the water.

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

UNITED STATES
Christian Catholicism

Jerry Slevin

President Obama surprised three mothers with calls to wish them a Happy Mother’s Day. “I know how tough it is to raise kids and do right by them, and if it hadn’t been for my mother, I certainly wouldn’t be here,” Obama said. A nice gesture, but not enough. As a husband and father, Obama knows much more than childless priests about the uniqueness and vulnerability of children and the role of parents in protecting them. He also knows that USA moms, as well as moms from Chile, Ireland, the UK, the Philippines, Australia, Germany and almost everywhere else, want leaders like him, Germany’s Angela Merkel, the UK’s David Cameron, et al., to curtail child abuse in religious organizations whose lay members are in practice unable to bring their nefarious leaders to account.

In tribute to his own remarkable mother and to his admirable wife, First Lady Michelle, Obama must stand up to the “media created” (and thereby popular) Pope Francis and his subservient US bishops, including NY’s Cardinal Timothy Dolan, to protect innocent children and poor women in the USA and abroad from the Catholic Church hierarchy’s continuing, yet biblically unsupportable, assault on children and women.

The UK’s Cameron, and his “top cop”, Teresa May, recently began to stand up in a big way with a new investigation panel to review clerical child abuse, and Cameron even challenged the pope over free speech on widely watched US/CBS’s “Face the Nation”. Cameron’s unexpected political victory recently showed that standing up to clerical misdeeds is good politics, as well as the right thing to do. And even Merkel took it directly to the pope recently, see my Merkel Has Long Talk With Pope – About What ?. What is Obama afraid of here? When will he follow the lead of the UK’s Cameron, Germany’s Merkel, Ireland’s Enda Kenny, Australia’s Julia Gillard, et al.? Are US children and mothers less precious? Obama takes out minor terrorists 10,000 miles away with drones, but the leader of the world largest child abusive organization gets a special invitation to the White House. Shameful,no ?

Apparently coordinated with the US political advisers to Pope Francis and several US cardinals, including NY’s Timothy Dolan, who are exploiting terrorist attacks on Christians, US Republican presidential candidates recently blasted, with their election campaign “talk tough” theatrics, Islamic State outrages, but offer few specific fixes. Apparently the 1,000,000 plus dead, and $4 trillion plus wasted on an Iraq War that the Vatican in practice supported, has taught neither US Republican hawks nor their opportunistic Catholic hierarchy supporters very much. See here,

[Reuters]

Dolan, who “polls” well with “low tax” US billionaires and Goldman Sachs investment bankers, is now even facing resistance from brave Catholic college students, many opposed to priest child abuse and bishops’ cover-ups and homophobic crusades, at a New York Jesuit university, Le Moyne, with their petition here on Change.org (SIGN IT NOW PLEASE), and related anticipated civil disobedience seeking to reject prominent New York’s Cardinal Dolan as their graduation speaker, in light of his evident child protection and homophobic failures, see here, Catholics Revolt: Jesuit Grads Shun Dolan As Goldman Sachs Bankers Woo Him.

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.

MALTA
Times of Malta

Sunday, May 10, 2015, 07:06

Four new clerical sex abuse claims have come to light since Archbishop Charles Scicluna took over as head of the Maltese Church three months ago.

Speaking during a question and answer session with Times of Malta’s newsroom, Mgr Scicluna said the new claims were all being looked into by the Church’s newly set up Safeguarding Commission. Some have already been handed over to the police for investigation. While all of the cases were “serious”, he said, only one involved minors.

Mgr Scicluna touched upon a number of issues ranging from his resolute stand on racism to reforms to the Church Tribunal. He drew a line in the sand saying he would rather close Church schools than have them abandon their Catholic ethos and admitted that, today, the Church was just one voice among many in Malta.

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/ISRAEL
Herald Sun

Israeli court bid to extradite former principal accused of molesting girls at Melbourne’s Adass Israel School

SHANNON DEERY HERALD SUN MAY 11, 2015

THE fight to extradite a former Melbourne principal accused of molesting a string of young girls will continue in an Israeli court today.

Eight months after Malka Leifer was arrested in Israel at the request of Australian police, authorities are expected to outline her alleged offending in a bid to force her return to Melbourne.

If the extradition is granted, it is expected Mrs Leifer could be charged with dozens of rape and indecent assault offences.

The mother of eight has been accused of molesting students while principal of ultra orthodox Adass Israel School in Elsternwick between 2001 and 2008.

Among her alleged victims one has launched a civil suit against the former principal and the school in the Victorian Supreme Court.

The woman, now in her 20s, told the hearing last week the principal was a respected community leader who turned into a sexual predator after taking a special liking to her.

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
Broken Rites

By a Broken Rites researcher (article updated on 10 May 2015)

Catholic priest David Edwin Rapson used computer games, soft drinks, alcohol and cigarettes to lure boys (as young as 12) into his office at a Catholic boarding school before he sexually abused them, a Melbourne court has been told. After two years of hearings which finished in 2015, Rapson (now aged 61) was convicted of serious child-sex crimes. Now he is locked up, awaiting the amount of his jail sentence which is due to be announced on Monday 11 May 2015.

Rapson, who was the school’s vice-principal at one stage, also gave some of his victims a drink of drug-laced chocolate-milk or lemonade to make them sleepy before he sexually abused them, the court was told.

However, if boys complained about Rapson’s abuse, they tended to merely tell Rapson’s colleagues and friends in the priesthood, some of whom might be offenders themselves. And the church does not arrest any priests or Brothers — only the police do this.

It was some of the victims, not the church authorities, who finally brought Rapson to justice.

These victims were of various ages, from 12 to 17, and they were not all in the same years at school. These were not Rapson’s only victims. They are merely the ones who, eventually (as adults), took the opportunity individually of having an interview with detectives from Victoria’s Sexual Crimes Squad, without knowing that other victims were initiating similar police action.

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

NEW MEXICO
ABQ Journal

By Olivier Uyttebrouck / Journal Staff Writer
PUBLISHED: Sunday, May 10, 2015

As the newly appointed bishop of Salt Lake City in 2007, John C. Wester found himself leading 300,000 Utah Catholics, about 80 percent of whom were Spanish speakers.

Wester decided to get busy learning Spanish.

“When I came here, I got a tutor and started working in earnest,” said Wester, who on April 27 was named the archbishop-elect of Santa Fe. “I love the language. For me, it’s not a chore.”

Today, Wester can carry on a basic conversation and celebrate Mass in Spanish, said Martin Alcocer, who publishes a Spanish-language magazine in Salt Lake City. …

As auxiliary bishop from 1998 to 2007, he took a leading role in dealing with the clerical sex abuse scandal in which the Archdiocese of San Francisco settled 101 abuse claims and paid $68 million in settlements from 2003 to 2011, according to news reports.

Wester met regularly with sexual abuse victims and participated in the 2002 meeting in Dallas when the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops drafted a zero-tolerance charter to protect children from sexual abuse by priests.

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.

LOUISIANA
American Press

By Johnathan Manning / American Press

Defense attorneys for a former Calcasieu priest accused of sex crimes have asked a judge to rule that evidence of allegations of other crimes not be entered into evidence during trial.

Mark Anthony Broussard is to stand trial Sept. 21 on allegations that he molested and raped boys while serving as a parish priest between 1986 and 1991. He is facing five sex charges, including two counts of aggravated rape.

Broussard was indicted on 224 counts of sexual abuse, but the charges were amended first to 10 counts then to five counts after it was found that the statute of limitations had expired on five of the charges.

Defense attorneys Tom and Dan Lorenzi have filed two motions, one asking Judge David Ritchie to order that mention of the other five counts be impermissible and another asking that certain parts of Broussard’s interview with Calcasieu sheriff’s detectives be redacted.

“(Broussard) has no prior criminal history and the introduction of these alleged ‘other crimes’ will serve no purpose other than to prejudice the jurors into attaching a nationally perpetuated stigma onto defendant,” reads one motion.

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.

LOUISIANA
Houston Chronicle

LAKE CHARLES, La. (AP) — The attorneys for a former Calcasieu Parish priest accused of molesting young parishioners are asking a judge to stop prosecutors from telling a jury about allegations of other crimes.

Mark Anthony Broussard is to stand trial Sept. 21 on five counts that he molested and raped boys while serving as a parish priest between 1986 and 1991.

Broussard was originally charged with 224 counts of child sexual abuse, but some charges involving one of the boys were too old to prosecute.

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.

WASHINGTON (DC)
Failed Messiah

Prosecutors Have Videootapes Of Married Former Top Modern Orthodox Rabbi Having Sex With Several Women

…In a 25-page memo, prosecutors attacked Freundel’s credibility as a religious leader and said he lived a “double life.” Prosecutors said they found videos of the rabbi, who is married, having sex with several women.…”

Above: Rabbi Barry Freundel

In an updated version of its Friday afternoon report, the Washington Post adds:

…In a 25-page memo, prosecutors attacked [Rabbi Barry] Freundel’s credibility as a religious leader and said he lived a “double life.” Prosecutors said they found videos of the rabbi, who is married, having sex with several women.

In another part of the memo, prosecutors wrote of a woman videotaped by Freundel who had been a victim of domestic abuse for more than 10 years. Freundel offered her support, even setting her up in an apartment away from her husband. Yet, un­beknownst to the woman, Freundel placed recording devices in the apartment’s bedroom and bathroom, according to the memo.

Prosecutors said Freundel used an “elaborate” cataloguing system to identify each video of his victims by number and included the women’s names or initials.

“He used his position of trust to take advantage of a place of peacefulness, spirituality, and privacy, deceiving women into attending, and surreptitiously recording his congregants, students, and potential converts ­naked,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Amy Zubrensky wrote in the memo.

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

NEW MEXICO
ABQ Journal

By Olivier Uyttebrouck / Journal Staff Writer
PUBLISHED: Sunday, May 10, 2015

Archbishop-elect of Santa Fe John C. Wester said he remains in contact with victims of clerical sexual abuse in San Francisco and considers some to be friends.

It is unlikely that Joseph Piscitelli counts himself among them.

In 2006, a California jury awarded Piscitelli, 59, a $600,000 civil award for sexual abuse he experienced as a teenager at the hands of a priest who served as a teacher and vice principal at a Catholic high school in Richmond, Calif.

The priest, the Rev. Stephen Whelan, later worked at a church with an attached grammar school owned by the Archdiocese of San Francisco.

Piscitelli said that, in 2003, shortly after he filed a lawsuit alleging the abuse, he met with Wester, then-auxiliary bishop of San Francisco, and urged the archdiocese to remove Whelan from duties at Saints Peter and Paul Church in San Francisco.

“Here’s a guy that I know is a rapist, that I’m suing for sexual molestation, who is working with kids at a Catholic Church in San Francisco,” Piscitelli said of Whelan.

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)
Berger’s Beat

FR. JAMES J. PAVLIK, one of six alleged wrongdoers who worked at the Cathedral on Lindell, has passed away. (The others: Fr. James Gummersbach; Fr. Chester Gaiter; Fr. Bryan Kuchar; Fr. Xiu “Joseph” Jiang (who currently faces criminal charges) and K.C. Bishop Robert Finn (who was convicted last year of refusing to report a pedophile priest). Archdiocesan staff admit that Pavlik was accused of sexual misconduct in 1994, was secretly suspended in 2000 and exposed for child sex crimes by SNAP in 2003. Like Fr. Norman Christian, another local predator priest, one of Pavlik’s relatives has reportedly spoken out about his alleged crimes and supported his victims.

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.

CINCINNATI (OH)
Enquirer

[Father Tarlton files – Jeff Anderson & Associates]

Dan Horn, dhorn@enquirer.com
May 9, 2015

Soon after the Rev. Allen Tarlton asked for a job with the Archdiocese of Cincinnati in 1969, church officials got a confidential letter about him from his abbey in Minnesota.

Tarlton had a problem, the letter said. He’d been treated a few years earlier at a facility that catered to priests with sexual issues, including those who sexually abuse kids.

Treatment was successful, the letter said, and Tarlton was ready to “prove his value as a priest.”

Archdiocese officials were convinced. They offered Tarlton a job – and a prayer.

“I join with you in praying that any past difficulty that Father Tarlton may have had may not manifest itself again,” an official in the chancellor’s office wrote back to the abbey.

That prayer would go unanswered. Tarlton, a Cincinnati native, spent the next several decades drinking heavily, flouting church rules and, by his own admission, engaging in sex with men and students.

Sometimes the sex took place in bath houses and public restrooms, Tarlton said in a statement he wrote in the early 1990s. Once, he said, he and another priest in Cincinnati had a “kind of orgy” with a 17-year-old boy from the church choir.

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.

CHILE
Cooperativa

[About 200 opponents of Bishop Juan Barros marched Friday through the center of the city to demand the resignation of the bishop because victims of priest Fernando Karadima accuse him of having witnessed and covered up the crimes of the former pastor.]

Cerca de 200 osorninos opositores al obispo Juan Barros, marcharon este viernes por el centro de la ciudad para pedir la renuncia del religioso, esto debido a que las víctimas de Karadima lo acusan de haber presenciado y encubierto los crímenes del ex párroco.

Con la convocatoria llamada la “Marcha de los paraguas negros”, los manifestantes, encabezados por el movimiento local de laicos, se reunieron cerca de las 20:00 horas en la Plazuela Yungay, trasladándose hasta el frontis de la Catedral de Osorno, instancia en la que aprovecharon de reunir firmas para solicitar la presencia de un visitador apostólico en la diócesis con el fin de revisar el caso.

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

NEW YORK
Times Herald-Record

Editorial

Posted May. 9, 2015

Perhaps the most positive thing that can be said at this time about the removal of a priest in Pine Bush because of sex abuse allegations involving a 19-year-old male parishioner is that the Catholic Church appears to be dealing with it as a matter of serious public concern rather than an internal matter to be concealed, covered-up or denied.

Decades of secrecy by the Church regarding sex abuse of young males by priests have been exposed through thousands of allegations worldwide. A new pope has made it clear that, not only priests who are guilty of abuse, but also bishops who cover up for them will be held accountable, removed from their positions of trust. The message of Pope Francis is that there is no longer any room for prideful embarrassment, only definitive action to deal with the allegations openly and as swiftly as possible.

Did this happen in Pine Bush?

Certainly, the Archdiocese of New York has been more open and forthcoming with information on the allegations than in the past. Having removed Kevin Gallagher last summer from the Infant Saviour Parish in Pine Bush, following reports from friends of the young man, the archdiocese in February sent a letter to parishioners advising them that Gallagher – despite the strong recommendation from the archdiocese that he not do so – had returned to Pine Bush.

The letter said that Gallagher “does not currently have ‘faculties’ to serve as a priest – that is, he does not have an assignment, he is not permitted to publicly to function as a priest, and he should not present himself as a priest.”

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

CALIFORNIA
My News LA

POSTED BY DEBBIE L. SKLAR ON MAY 9, 2015

The Archdiocese of Los Angeles said Saturday it had never heard of allegations by a man — who just sued the church over claimed sexual abuse by a priest — until the lawsuit was filed this week.

An Archdiocese spokeswoman, Monica Valencia, told City News Service today that the allegations are news to the church.

She said the priest named in the lawsuit — the Rev. Christopher Cunningham — was reassigned from his parish church in Covina “due to management issues not related to misconduct.

“The Archdiocese received allegations of improper conduct concerning Father Cunningham in August, 2005,” the spokeswoman told CNS. “According to Archdiocesean policy, an announcement concerning the allegations was made at the parish, informing the parish community.

“Father Cunningham took a leave of absence and has not been in the ministry since,” Valenica said.

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
Australian Government – Attorney General’s Department

Job no: 492743
Work type: Full time
Location: Barton, ACT, Sydney, NSW
Classification: SES Band 2

The Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse is undertaking an enquiry into how institutions with a responsibility for children have managed and responded to allegations and instances of child sexual abuse. The Commission’s role is to investigate where systems have failed to protect children, and make recommendations on how to improve laws, policies and practices to prevent and better respond to child sexual abuse in institutions.

The Chief Executive Officer reports the Chair of the Royal Commission, and administratively to the Deputy Secretary, Civil Justice and Legal Services Group, with regards to the ongoing strategic and operational objectives to ensure that the six Royal Commissioners have the necessary support and resources available to enable them to meet the terms of reference established in the seven Letters Patent (Commonwealth and State issued).

The Chief Executive Officer performs a major and high profile role in providing ongoing support to the Commissioners and Senior Counsel, including through public and private hearings, and ensuring the efficient and effective running of the Office of the Royal Commission.

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

UNITED STATES
Christian Catholicism

Jerry Slevin

It surely is a hectic time for NY’s Cardinal Dolan. Although demoted as a “power player”, in effect, by Pope Francis, he seems busy still. The lawyers defending his “burial” of the Milwaukee archdiocese’s excess cash in a cemetery trust appear to be seeking to terrorize further the desperate priest sexual abuse survivors there seeking some minimal justice. And Dolan’s former criminal subordinate from St. Louis, Bishop Robert Finn, has now been sacked by the pope.

Dolan is also busy pleasing his “low tax” billionaire donors by boosting the right wing US Republican election campaign’s push for another Middle East military invasion, advocated also by Pope Francis, to “protect Christians”. This includes Dolan’s hyping of convicted felon and Iraq War booster, Scooter Libby’s Hudson Institute’s latest seeming warmongering presentation. And busy Dolan has also recently confirmed his NY parish closing “cost cutting” plans, as he simultaneously spends almost $200 million on refurbishing his NY mansion and cathedral. He recently confirmed that his NY archdiocese’s parish closing program will shrink the number of NY parishes by over 20 % to 296 parishes from 368 recently. At the same time, NY Jesuit college students are protesting strongly Dolan’s plans to speak at their upcoming graduation, although he is welcomed to speak to cheering investment bankers at Goldman Sachs. What is wrong with this picture in the name of God?

Is Pope Francis watching this? Does he even care? Apparently not! Please see my pertinent remarks, “What Do We Now Know About The Real Goal Of Pope Francis?”. Meanwhile, Pope Francis will soon visit NY to bless Dolan’s “hardly Christian” efforts before moving on to the Philadelphia Archdiocese, evidently the USA’s Priest Pedophile Paradise, to bless Archbishop Chaput’s and Cardinal Rigali’s misdeeds there. Francis has also just signaled he will not wait for the Final Synod in October to reject changes in the Catholic Church’s unbiblical, unwarranted and harmful approach to women’s reproductive options. He will instead designate some priests to offer women forgiveness for daring to sin by trying to regulate the number of children the pope so often encourages them to breed. Thanks for nothing, Pope Francis! Keep up the guilt generation and control of poor women and couples, and watch another 30 million + US Catholics leave the Church, no?

Dolan and Pope Francis are not fooling everyone. Dolan is now facing his own coming USA revolt — just when the pope is getting ready for his visit to the USA in September. This USA revolt has already begun with brave Jesuit students, many opposed to priest child abuse and bishops’ cover-ups and homophobic crusades, at a New York Jesuit university, Le Moyne, with their petition here on Change.org (SIGN IT NOW PLEASE), and related anticipated civil disobedience seeking to reject prominent New York’s Cardinal Dolan as their graduation speaker, in light of his evident child protection and homophobic failures, see here, Catholics Revolt: Jesuit Grads Shun Dolan As Goldman Sachs Bankers Woo Him.

Lawyers representing Dolan’s former Milwaukee archdiocese in bankruptcy proceedings indicated that they will continue to play hardball to protect some or all of more than $55 million that the archdiocese under Dolan “buried in a trust fund” for the care of nine cemeteries it operates. Francis LoCoco, the lead lawyer for the archdiocese, reportedly indicated during a recent bankruptcy court hearing that if the bankruptcy judge decides against leaving the cash in the cemetery trust, as LoCoco indicated the abuse survivors want, the subsequent litigation could be even more protracted, and therefore even more expensive.

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

NEW YORK
Wall Street Journal

By MELANIE GRAYCE WEST
Updated May 8, 2015

St. Thomas More, a Roman Catholic church on Manhattan’s Upper East Side, won’t be closed by the Archdiocese of New York, a decision announced on Friday that marks a reversal from an earlier proposal.

The parish is one of about 40 in Manhattan, Staten Island, Westchester County and parts of the Catskills region that received final word on their future as part of a broad reorganization that church officials say is necessary to meet the modern needs of the church.

Most of the decisions on mergers and closures were announced in November, and those affected churches have begun combining or closing. Friday’s decisions finalized secondary proposals that had been in limbo for months.

In total, the archdiocese, which represents about 2.8 million Catholics, will shrink to 296 parishes from 368. Those remaining parishes will have 331 buildings used for Mass and sacraments.

In an interview on Friday, Cardinal Timothy Dolan, the archbishop of New York, said there is sufficient time to complete all of the mergers by the Aug. 1 deadline. At that point, some parishes will stop holding Mass, he said.

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

NEW YORK
Roman Catholic Archdiocese of New York

Parish List 1 – Masses and Sacraments celebrated at both churches
Parish List 2 – Masses and Sacraments to be celebrated at the designated parish church; the other church may be used on special occasions.

The Archdiocese of New York today announced the last decisions reached by Cardinal Timothy Dolan for the final 16 proposed parish mergers that have been under consideration and deliberation by the parish clusters and the archdiocesan planning board over the last year-and-a-half. These 16 proposals arose during the Making All Things New pastoral planning process, and in November the cardinal requested additional input and honest response of the clusters and the advisory committee before making any decisions about these parishes. After the clusters and advisory committee completed their work, the Priest Council of the archdiocese reviewed their responses and offered their own counsel to the cardinal for his consideration.

As a result of this long process of consultation and review, the cardinal has decided that 31 parishes will merge, resulting in 14 new parishes (some mergers involve more than one parish). In 11 of these 14 newly formed parishes, two church buildings will be used, with one church designated as the parish church and the other site used for Masses and sacraments. There will be six churches where Masses and sacraments will no longer be celebrated on a regular basis.

There were two other proposals, one each on Staten Island and in Harlem, where, following this period of consultation and review, the cardinal has decided there will be no merger.

Today’s announcement brings to a conclusion this phase of the Making All Things New pastoral planning process. Cardinal Dolan said, “From the beginning, this process has been about helping the archdiocese to better accomplish the work of evangelization and outreach, preach the Gospel, perform works of charity, and educate people in the faith, all of which is at the heart of the Church’s mission. For too long we have been in the business of maintaining buildings and structures that were established in the 19th and early 20th centuries to meet the needs of the people of that time, but which are not necessary to meet the needs of the Church and its people as it exists today.”

Because of Making All Things New, the archdiocese has also identified several potential areas for increased pastoral ministry and growth, including:

* The Franciscan Friars of the Renewal undertaking ministry in the Newburgh area to work with the underprivileged, and immigrants, in that area;

* The Claretian Fathers expanding their ministry in White Plains;

* Franciscan Friars, headquartered on Todt Hill on Staten Island, possibly taking on new ministry;

* A new church facility for Saint Francis Xavier Cabrini on Roosevelt Island that will allow all of their services to be centralized in one expanded location;

* Identifying areas for housing to serve people with autism and other disabilities;

* The need for an expanded church for Saint Mary Parish in Washingtonville;

* Careful evaluation of the need to move Saint Michael Parish to the Hudson Yards in Manhattan;

* An expanded apostolate and new facilities to minister to and with the Latino community in the archdiocese.

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

NEW YORK
Crain’s

The Roman Catholic Archdiocese of New York is merging 31 of its parishes into 14 new parishes as it concludes a reorganization process that has already seen dozens of churches shuttered.

Under the plan announced Friday, Mass will no longer be celebrated on a regular basis at six parish churches in Manhattan, the Bronx and Dutchess and Orange counties.

The archdiocese announced in November that 112 parishes were being consolidated into 55.

The latest round of mergers will take effect Aug. 1.

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.

CHICAGO (IL)
Chicago Tribune

By Lisa Black
Chicago Tribune

A priest who rebelled against his superiors in the Chicago Greek Orthodox Church by supporting his parish’s pursuit of a criminal investigation into another clergy member will leave his position at the end of June.

The Rev. Angelo Artemas, who formerly led Sts. Peter and Paul Greek Orthodox Church in Glenview, confirmed that he was recently released from his duties at Annunciation Greek Orthodox Church in Milwaukee “after two years of frustration” and will join a parish based out of Atlanta.

“After two years of fighting for this parish … I have given up,” said Artemas, after informing congregants of his pending departure.

The priest said he and his congregation have been under intense pressure from leaders of the Greek Orthodox Metropolis of Chicago since members of his Milwaukee church raised concerns in 2013 about their former priest, the Rev. James Dokos.

Dokos, who also served at Sts. Peter and Paul, was eventually charged with felony theft over his alleged mishandling of a $1.2 million trust fund that was left to the Milwaukee church. He is awaiting trial.

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

UNITED STATES
The Open Tabernacle: Here Comes Everybody

Posted on May 8, 2015 by Betty Clermont

“The Vatican, a 10 billion euro treasure – Investments in property, stocks, gold, hard currency,” is the title and lede of an article published last July by Italian journalist, Emiliano Fittipaldi, based on information obtained from one of the experts Pope Francis appointed to help him “reform” Vatican finance.

Pope Francis has verbally struck out against unfettered capitalism and the “idolatry of money.” Yet he has appointed immoral experts working on behalf of the global plutocracy to maintain and grow his treasure. He can do this without scruples because, like all bishops upon their elevation to cardinal, he swore to put the good of the Church above all else. “I, _____, of the Holy Roman Church, Cardinal of _____, promise and swear from this hour hence as long as I live….to try in every way to assert, uphold, preserve, increase and promote the rights, even temporal, the liberty, honor, privileges and authority of the Holy Roman Church.”

After the Vatican’s last monarchical ally, the Austro-Hungarian Empire, was defeated in World War I, Church leaders embraced fascism. Communism is atheistic and democracy is a dangerous ideology for prelates whose power depends on unquestioning obedience.

Since then, millions have suffered and died because the Church has protected, endorsed and provided financial support, services and cover to fascists and other right wing dictators, terrorists, politicians and financiers. The quid pro quo is that these secular leaders will advance the influence and wealth of the Church.

Pope Pius XI’s coffers were empty when Mussolini offered him the equivalent of a billion dollars in today’s money if the Catholic Church would enthusiastically back his dictatorship. More importantly, Il Duce also created a sovereign state placing the pope and his men outside and above all civil law.

Pius XI placed the windfall from his 1929 treaty with Mussolini in the hands of the financial genius, Bernardino Nogara. With the full knowledge of Popes Pius XI and XII, Nogara built an economic partnership with Mussolini and invested the pope’s money without regard to moral constraints such as a country’s culpability in World War II. So close was the Vatican to the Axis, the Allies intentionally fed the churchmen incorrect strategic information knowing it would reach the Italians and Germans. In addition to the Church’s direct involvement in the slaughter of Orthodox, Roma and Jewish Croatians, the Vatican’s investments and diplomatic support for the Axis made them participants in the deaths, misery and displacement of millions.[1]

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.

RHODE ISLAND
Roman Catholic Diocese of Providence

In January 2013, Reverend Barry M. Meehan, a priest of the Diocese of Providence, was removed from all active ministry after the Diocese received credible accusations regarding alleged sexual misconduct. A separate accusation involving sexual contact with a minor, also deemed credible, was received in July 2013.

In November 2014, Father Meehan was arrested and charged with five (5) counts of first-degree sexual assault.

Following a thorough review of the circumstances, the Holy See (Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith) has authorized Bishop Tobin to dismiss Reverend Barry M. Meehan from the priesthood.

In accord with the Church’s law and procedures regarding sexual misconduct by clerics, especially for violations described in the Code of Canon Law (Canon 1395, §2, and Canon 277), Bishop Tobin formally imposed that dismissal upon Barry Meehan, effective May 7, 2015.

Barry Meehan retains the right to appeal this action.

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.

RHODE ISLAND
WPRI

By Shaun Towne
Published: May 8, 2015

PROVIDENCE, R.I. (WPRI) — A Rhode Island priest charged with five counts of first degree sexual assault has been defrocked.

Barry Meehan was dismissed from the priesthood Thursday, according to the Roman Catholic Diocese of Providence.

Police said he was assigned to St. Mary’s in Cranston when one assault happened, then at St. Augustine’s in Providence when the others took place.

Meehan was removed from active ministry in 2013.

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.

VIRGINIA/TEXAS
WRIC

RICHMOND, Va. (WRIC) — New details are coming to light in the case prosecutors plan to present against former ROC pastor Geronimo “Pastor G” Aguilar. Aguilar faces 8 felony counts of sexual assault on two young girls in Texas when he was their youth pastor in the 1990s.

Ahead of Aguilar’s upcoming trial in Fort Worth next month, more accusations of sex with parishioners, abortions and sexually transmitted diseases have suddenly been revealed.

8News has learned the state of Texas is trying to introduce information about other alleged crimes and alleged wrong-doing in the trial against the former mega church pastor.

Aguilar’s attorney in Texas has filed a motion to exclude this newly-revealed information from the trial. She argues that unless the state can prove it, it’s not admissible.

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.

VIRGINIA/TEXAS
Christian Post

By Leonardo Blair , Christian Post Reporter

Already facing eight felony counts of sexual assault of two young girls in Texas, disgraced ex-pastor and founder of the Richmond Outreach Center megachurch in Richmond, Virginia, Geronimo “Pastor G” Aguilar, is alleged to have engaged in much more abuse of his young parishioners than previously reported including paying for abortions and passing on a sexually transmitted disease.

A WRIC report noted Monday that the state of Texas is trying to introduce the new information about these alleged crimes and wrong-doing in the trial against the former megachurch pastor expected to get underway next month.

“In one case, it’s alleged he (Aguilar) paid for a parishioner to have an abortion and be moved to Michigan. The court documents also state that he allegedly passed on a sexually transmitted disease during affairs with church members,” said the report.

It also noted that: “While serving as head of the ROC Church in 2010, newly-revealed accusations say Aguilar touched the breasts and genitals of a 16-year-old Richmond girl who was a babysitter for his children.”

More than 120 witness have been reportedly identified to testify against Aguilar. A pre-trial hearing was expected to happen on Friday to discuss the inclusion of the new details against the former pastor but his lawyer is fighting to have the information excluded.

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

NEW YORK
The Long Island Catholic

Msgr. Charles A. Guarino, whose extensive priestly service found him repeatedly in important settings during historic moments for the Church, died on May 2. He was 74.

Born in Brooklyn on June 14, 1941, Charles Guarino was ordained to the priesthood on May 27, 1967. He was educated at Cathedral Prep and College, and completed his studies for the priesthood at St. Bernard’s Seminary in Rochester. …

Monsignor Guarino had been one of two canon lawyers sent by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops to assist the Congregation in handling cases of clergy sex abuse from English-speaking countries.

“I am happy for the experience,” he told TLIC at the time, both for the opportunity to be able to help the Church deal with “this painful chapter in our history” and also for the “privileged moment” to be in Rome for two pontificates – those of John Paul II and Benedict XVI — “two pivotal moments in the history of the Church.” In fact, just before St. John Paul II’s death, Msgr. Guarino had made a pilgrimage to Poland “to walk in the footsteps” of the man he said would be remembered as “John Paul the Great.”

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

CALIFORNIA
Contra Costa Times

Stephanie K. Baer
POSTED: 05/08/2015

A former Covina priest who was removed from the church by the Archdiocese of Los Angeles in 2004 because of his “emotional instability” allegedly sexually abused at least two children in the parish prior to his removal, according to a lawsuit filed Thursday.

The complaint alleges that the Rev. Chris Cunningham sexually molested a 12-year-old boy at St. Louise de Marillac Catholic Church from 2001 to 2002 and states that the Archdiocese failed to inform parishioners about the allegations.

Cunningham, the church and the Archdiocese are named defendants in the case. The plaintiff, who is now 25 years old, is not identified and was one of at least two victims of the priest’s sexual abuse, said Anthony DeMarco, an attorney for the plaintiff.

“The Archdiocese was especially sneaky in the way that they handled this case,” DeMarco said in a statement. “Despite all of their promises of transparency, Cardinal (Roger) Mahony refused to tell parishioners about the allegations in 2004.”

Then, in 2013, Archbishop Jose Gomez “quietly released” Cunningham’s name on a list of accused priests but neglected to notify the parishes where Cunningham had worked, DeMarco said.

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.

WASHINGTON (DC)
JTA

(JTA) — Prosecutors have asked a Washington, D.C., Superior Court judge to sentence Rabbi Barry Freundel to 17 years in prison for videotaping dozens of nude women at a ritual mikvah bath.

Freundel, former spiritual leader of the prominent Washington Orthodox synagogue Kesher Israel, pleaded guilty in February to 52 counts of misdemeanor voyeurism. He is due to be sentenced May 15. In addition to prison time, Freundel could be ordered to pay tens of thousands of dollars in fines.

The rabbi, now 64, was arrested last October and charged with six counts of voyeurism after investigators found hidden cameras in the National Capital Mikvah’s shower room and in his home. He was fired from Kesher Israel, the congregation he had led for 25 years and which abuts the mikvah, soon after his arrest.

Bethany Mandel, who converted to Judaism under Freundel and has been outspoken about problems with Orthodox conversion oversight, told the Washington Post that the rabbi’s prison sentence should send a message to other would-be offenders.

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.

WASHINGTON (DC)
The Baltimore Sun

By Alison Knezevich
The Baltimore Sun

Prosecutors are recommending a 17-year prison sentence for a rabbi and former Towson University professor who admitted he secretly videotaped dozens of women at a Jewish ritual bath known as a mikvah.

Rabbi Barry Freundel is scheduled to be sentenced in D.C. Superior Court on May 15. In February, he pleaded guilty to 52 counts of voyeurism.

An attorney for Freundel could not immediately be reached for comment on Friday.

Each of the voyeurism counts carries a maximum penalty of up to a year of incarceration and a fine of up to $2,500.

In a sentencing memorandum filed Friday, prosecutors recommend four months of incarceration for each count — a total of 208 months — calling that “reasonable and just punishment for this severe conduct that falls on the extreme end of the voyeurism spectrum.”

In the court filings, prosecutors describe in detail how Freundel allegedly abused his power and exploited women’s trust in him, causing deep trauma when the women learned of his actions.

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.

WASHINGTON (DC)
NBC Washington

Prosecutors recommended a prominent Orthodox rabbi who pleaded guilty to 52 counts of voyeurism serve a 208-month sentence.

Bernard “Barry” Freundel is due in court for sentencing May 15.

In addition to his guilty plea, Freundel did not dispute prosecutors’ claims he taped an additional 100 women. He could not be charged in those cases because they happened earlier than the three-year statute of limitations.

The case stunned D.C.’s Orthodox community, particularly because the women were taped while taking ritual baths associated with rites of family purity and conversion at the National Capital Mikvah, a ritual bathhouse affiliated with Freundel’s former synagogue.

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.

WASHINGTON (DC)
Washington Post

Prosecutors seek 17-year sentence for D.C. Rabbi convicted of voyeurism

By Keith L. Alexander and Michelle Boorstein May 8

Prosecutors have asked a D.C. Superior Court judge to impose a 17-year prison sentence for Barry Freundel, the once-influential Orthodox rabbi who secretly videotaped dozens of nude women as they prepared for a ritual bath.

Freundel, 64, was arrested in October on charges that he videotaped six women in the nude while he was at Kesher Israel synagogue in Georgetown. Prosecutors said a review of his computer equipment revealed that many more women had been recorded by Freundel as they prepared for the bath known as a mikvah — used as part of a purification ritual by people converting to Judaism and by married women as a way to sanctify sex.

Freundel ultimately pleaded guilty to videotaping 52 women, and the punishment proposed by prosecutors would translate to four months for each victim. The longtime rabbi had recorded about 100 additional women, prosecutors have said, but those alleged crimes occurred outside the three-year statute of limitations. The videotaping occurred between 2009 and 2014.

Sentencing is set for May 15 before Judge Geoffrey M. Alprin, and dozens of the victims — including several who will fly in from Israel — are scheduled to attend. The judge can adopt or reject the prosecutors’ recommended sentence.

In a 25-page memo, prosecutors attacked Freundel’s credibility as a religious leader and said he lived a “double life.” Prosecutors said they found videos of the rabbi, who is married, having sex with several women.

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

UNITED STATES
National Catholic Reporter

Michael Sean Winters | May. 8, 2015

A group of U.S. clergy is circulating a statement addressed to the delegates who will meet in Rome in October for the Synod of Bishops on the family, urging them to “stand firm on the Church’s traditional understanding of marriage, human sexuality and pastoral practices.”

The statement was crafted by Credo Priests, a group organized by Fr. Jerry Pokorsky, pastor at St. Michael Catholic Church in Annandale, Va. Pokorsky did not return a phone call requesting an interview.

The Credo Priests are asking other U.S. priests, diocesan and those of religious orders, to sign the statement, which is available at www.credopriests.org. About 850 priests had added names to the website by Friday afternoon.

Among the signers are five U.S. bishops: Bishop Thomas Paprocki of Springfield, Ill.; Bishop David Kagan of Bismarck, N.D.; Bishop James Conley of Lincoln, Neb.; Bishop Robert Finn, formerly of Kansas City-St. Joseph, Mo.; and Rene Gracida, retired bishop of Corpus Christi, Texas.

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.

VATICAN CITY
ABC News

VATICAN CITY — May 8, 2015

Associated Press

Pope Francis’ sex abuse commission has taken another step with the publication of its statutes outlining its mission to protect children from predator priests.

The statutes, signed by the Vatican secretary of state and made public Friday, make clear the commission’s aim is to propose new initiatives to Francis to compel bishops and religious superiors to better protect children. With that priority, the commission has been authorized to evaluate the effectiveness of existing child protection programs in individual parishes, dioceses, religious orders and national bishops’ conferences.

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.

MONTANA
KPAX

[with video]

MISSOULA –
A week ago, the Catholic Diocese of Helena posted the names of the priests and nuns accused of sexual and physical abuse in Montana from the 1930’s through the 70’s. It was part of a settlement made between the church and those who accuse it of years of abuse by its clergy.

The first name on that list was a priest who served around Western Montana for years. But it was his time as the priest in Philipsburg that still haunts a Missoula man.

The Catholic Diocese of Helena recently published the names of the priests and nuns accused of sexual and physical abuse in Montana from the 1930’s through the 70’s. It was part of a settlement made between the church and those who accuse it of years of abuse by its clergy.

“You know, it was something I was able to block out in my mind and life for so many years that when I do focus on it and everything, I revert back to that age,” the victim, Chuck, said.

Back to when he was 11 or 12 growing up in Philipsburg. He was one child in a large family being raised by a single mother. Back then, the church was there to help families like his, and Father James Barry was there to help.

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.

KENTUCKY
WLKY

FRANKFORT, Ky. —A former Roman Catholic priest serving a prison sentence for sexual abuse has lost an appeal of his conviction.

The Kentucky Court of Appeals this week upheld James Schook’s conviction on three counts of sodomy and one count of indecent or immoral practices. The charges stemmed from abuse suffered by a teenage boy in the 1970s.

Schook also lost a bid for an early release through shock probation in December. He had also sought several delays to his criminal trial because he is battling terminal skin cancer.

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

CALIFORNIA
San Gabriel Valley Tribune

By Stephanie K. Baer, The San Gabriel Valley Tribune
POSTED: 05/08/15

A former Covina priest who was removed from the church by the Archdiocese of Los Angeles in 2004 because of his “emotional instability” allegedly sexual abused at least two boys in the parish prior to his removal, according to a lawsuit filed Thursday.

The complaint alleges that Father Chris Cunningham sexually abused a 12-year-old boy at St. Louise de Marillac Catholic Church from 2001 to 2002 and that the Archdiocese failed to inform parishioners about the allegations when he was reassigned to church in Ventura.

Cunningham, the church and the Archdiocese are named defendants in the case.

“The Archdiocese was especially sneaky in the way that they handled this case,” said Anthony DeMarco, an attorney for the unidentified victim, in a statement. “Despite all of their promises of transparency, Cardinal (Roger) Mahony refused to tell parishioners about the allegations in 2004.”

Then, in 2013, Archbishop Jose Gomez “quietly released” Cunningham’s name on a list of accused priests but neglected to notify the parishes where Cunningham had worked, DeMarco said.

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
Herald Sun

LUCIE MORRIS-MARR HERALD SUN MAY 09, 2015

FROM the outside, the red-brick St Alipius Presbytery, with its clean white metalwork and gothic features, looks pretty in that whimsical way many enjoy in historical properties.

But in just over a week, when the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse begins its public hearings in Ballarat, very far from pretty echoes of its past will be recalled.

We will learn anew that for many, perhaps hundreds, in Victoria this house is a haunting reminder of the terror, the vile and damaging abuse, inflicted on them within its walls.

It was the early 1970s. They should have been enjoying a carefree childhood. They should have been safe. Protected. And above all, cared for by the staff of the St Alipius school, church, and presbytery.

But instead, they were caught up in what turned out to be the worst paedophile ring cver recorded in Australia.

Many of them were raped, fondled and molested on a daily basis by four of the male teacher Christian Brothers.

And leading this twisted, abusive victory charge was the man their parents trusted the most: the Father of St Alipius Catholic Church, Gerald Francis Ridsdale.

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.

KENTUCKY
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests

For immediate release: Wednesday, May 6

Statement by Barbara Dorris of St. Louis, Outreach Director of SNAP, the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests ( 314 862 7688 home, 314 503 0003 cell, SNAPdorris@gmail.com )

Now that he’s lost his appeal, convicted child molester Fr. James Schook should give it a rest, do his time, stop re-victimizing his victims and let them heal without more desperate, self-serving legal maneuvers.

[San Antonio Express-News]

And it’s time for Louisville Archbishop Joseph Kurtz to cut off funds for the proven predator’s lawyers, if he hasn’t done so already.

(Just days ago, across the river, Springfield IL Bishop Thomas Paprocki admitted he’s paying the legal bills of a suspended, disobedient, credibly accused predator priest, Fr. Robert “Bud” DeGrand.

[Journal Courier]

Finally, it’s time for Kurtz and his priests to aggressively seek out and offer help to others who were hurt by Fr. Shook and are suffering in shame, silence and self-blame.

We hope this decision brings comfort to Fr. Schook’s victims. And we hope that every single person who saw, suspected or suffered crimes by Fr. Schook or cover ups by his church supervisors will come forward, expose wrongdoers, call police, protect kids and start healing.

It’s also worth noting that a top Louisville Catholic official, Brian Reynolds, misled police about the Fr. Schook case:

[SNAP]

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.

MILWAUKEE (WI)
National Catholic Reporter

Marie Rohde | May. 8, 2015

MILWAUKEE Lawyers representing the Milwaukee archdiocese in bankruptcy proceedings indicated that they will continue to play hardball to protect some or all of more than $55 million that the archdiocese shifted into a trust fund for the care of nine cemeteries it operates.

Francis LoCoco, the lead lawyer for the archdiocese, said during a bankruptcy court hearing Wednesday that if the judge rules against maintaining the cemetery trust as he said the other side wants, the subsequent litigation could be protracted.

“Let’s spend the money,” LoCoco said. “Let’s litigate the cemetery trust [issue] completely. Candidly, at that point it becomes cheaper, more efficient and easier to us to litigate every abuse survivor claim. … [Do] they want us to start sending dozens and dozens of notices to every single abuse survivor and their family members and their doctors?”

In March, a federal appellate court ruled that the cemetery trust fund was not protected by the First Amendment or the federal Religious Freedom Restoration Act.

The Chapter 11 bankruptcy was filed nearly four and a half years ago and has accrued at least $16 million and perhaps more than $20 million in legal fees. A dozen lawyers representing the archdiocese, several insurance companies, the cemetery trust and Archbishop Jerome Listecki were in court for Wednesday’s hearing; nine other out-of-state lawyers joined via telephone conference call.

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

CALIFORNIA
My News LA.com

A young man who alleges he was sexually abused by a pastor at the Catholic Church he attended in Covina sued the Archdiocese of Los Angeles.

The plaintiff, identified only as John CJ Doe, alleges child sexual abuse and negligence. The Los Angeles Superior Court suit filed Thursday also names as defendants the Rev. Christopher Cunningham and St. Louise de Marillac Church.

The suit seeks unspecified damages.

“Plaintiff is one of two known victims of Father Cunningham’s child sexual abuse,” the suit alleges.

A archdiocese spokeswoman did not immediately reply to an email seeking comment.

The suit states that the plaintiff was abused in 2001 and 2002 when he was 12 and 13 years old. Cunningham was 42 when he was reassigned to Assumption Catholic Church in Ventura in 2004, according to published reports at the time.

Supporters of Cunningham sent 8,000 letters to the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Los Angeles pleading not to oust their pastor, the prior reports state. They protested at Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels in downtown Los Angeles and held meetings to come up with a plan to save Cunningham, according to the earlier media accounts.

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.

KENTUCKY
San Antonio Express-News

FRANKFORT, Ky. (AP) — A former Roman Catholic priest serving a prison sentence for sexual abuse has lost an appeal of his conviction.

The Kentucky Court of Appeals this week upheld James Schook’s conviction on three counts of sodomy and one count of indecent or immoral practices. The charges stemmed from abuse suffered by a teenage boy in the 1970s.

Schook also lost a bid for an early release through shock probation in December. He had also sought several delays to his criminal trial because he is battling terminal skin cancer.

Last week, the victim in the criminal case and another man sued Schook in civil court, though the allegations were sealed by a judge.

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

UNITED STATES
Christian Catholicism

Jerry Slevin

The Vatican’s pervasive obsession with secrecy and spin, often tolerated by a mostly captive media that is dependent on Vatican sources for “news crumbs” and invitations to ride on the papal plane during exotic and unnecessary papal trips, requires Catholics seeking the full truth at times to try themselves to draw the most plausible inference from known facts. Put simply, official Vatican explanations and media apologists “analysis” of them are often misleading or incomplete, in my view as an experienced international lawyer. Once again, this Vatican’s media manipulation tactics were just confirmed, this time by longtime “Vatican insider journalist”, Robert Mickens, in his recent Letter from Rome . As Mickens indicates, the pope avoided a photo op with the world’s leading female archbishop, who is also Sweden’s Primate, a former Chicago theology professor, a Christian advocate for contraception access and acceptance of same sex marriage and a top expert on the moral implications of climate change. Yet the pope craftily exploits photo ops daily with the likes of the Harlem Globetrotters and other sports and Hollywood celebrities. Why the misogynistic papal discrimination? See my pertinent remarks, “What Do We Now Know About The Real Goal Of Pope Francis?”.

Why did Pope Francis really sack Kansas City USA Bishop Robert Finn in the manner and at the time the pope did? It is becoming clearer now that the pope’s priorities were mainly (1) to protect himself from the expanding revolt over his own blunder with Chilean Bishop Barros that was seized upon by at least four lay members of the pope’s “go slow’ abuse commission, and (2) to avoid undermining the pope’s strong push to help elect next year a “Vatican friendlier” US president, preferably another Bush and certainly not another Clinton! Francis evidently was not made pope by frightened cardinals to protect “expendable bishops” like Finn. But “who is to judge” which bishops or even cardinals are expendable? For important background on the pope’s urgent Chilean bishop mess and his ties to the broader Chilean priest sexual abuse situation, as well as his Chilean cardinal connections, please see intrepid Jason Berry’s comprehensive description, “Chilean cardinals close to pope stained by abuse cover-ups“, here,

[National Catholic Reporter]

Finn was a “somebody” among the US Catholic hierarchy. He had longtime key backers, thought once to be powerful in Rome, including his former St. Louis USA bosses, Cardinals Justin Rigali, Timothy Dolan and Raymond Burke. He also had his Opus Dei connections. That’s history now. Indeed, Dolan is facing his own coming USA revolt just when the pope is getting ready for his visit to the USA in September. This USA revolt has already begun with brave Jesuit students, many opposed to priest child abuse and bishops’ cover-ups and homophobic crusades, at a New York Jesuit university, with their petition here on Change.org (SIGN IT NOW PLEASE), and related anticipated civil disobedience seeking to reject prominent New York’s Cardinal Dolan as graduation speaker, in light of his evident child protection and homophobic failures, see here, Catholics Revolt: Jesuit Grads Shun Dolan As Goldman Sachs Bankers Woo Him .

Despite originally indicating reportedly that the lay abuse commission members would have access to the pope, the pope has apparently reversed himself. He has, in effect, jammed his lay members with his new “statutes” for his “go slow” advisory abuse commission headed by a weak O’Malley, and infamous Cardinal Law’s former canon lawyer, Fr. Robert Oliver. Importantly, the commission’s new statutes (two years’ late incidentally) specify: “§ 3. Proposals submitted to the Holy Father by the Commission must be approved by a majority of two-thirds of the Members.” (emphasis mine). The commission’s clerical members, subservient to the pope, can now block, by a “one third plus one” vote, lay members’ access to the pope. Of course, the lay members can and likely will go public to the media as they think necessary in good conscience, as they already have. The commission’s “statutes” seem more for the continued “protection of bishops” than for the “protection of minors”, it appears! Predictable, no? We waited two years for this? Shameful! See here the full Statutes of the Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors.

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

UNITED STATES
Religion News Service – Rhymes with Relgion

Boz Tchividjian | May 8, 2015

And the King will answer them, ‘Truly, I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of these my brothers,you did it to me.’

Spending much of one’s life navigating the dark underbelly of Christendom can at times create a deep sense of discouragement and hopelessness. Perhaps that is why I always look forward to graduation.

This weekend, I have the distinct privilege of watching my seventh graduating class walk across the stage to receive their law degree on they’re way to becoming the new generation of lawyers. Though this means having to say many difficult “good-byes” to amazing students who I now call friends, it also is a sweet reminder from God that there is much hope in this next generation.

I am reminded that it is this next generation who is stepping forward to openly acknowledge and talk about the epidemic of child abuse and its devastating impact upon the abused. I am reminded that it is this next generation who is stepping forward to reject the deadly silence that for too long has defined Christendom’s approach and response to so many forms of abuse. I am reminded that it is this next generation who is no longer satisfied with just words when it comes to the safety of children and the comfort of survivors. I am reminded that it is this next generation who is crossing the road to give of themselves to the abused and the marginalized that lay alone and dying.

For the past seven years, God has given me a glimpse of how this next generation as I’ve spent my days teaching the lawyers of tomorrow. I am continuously amazed at their passion when it comes to issues related to child protection. Let me provide two small but powerful examples. For the past two years, my law students have sponsored and organized child protection symposiums during Child Abuse Prevention month, which bring together experts from various professions to focus on successful multi-disciplined approaches to combatting abuse both inside and outside of faith communities. These events have been some of the best attended symposiums ever held at our school with most of the attendees being students…the lawyers, police officers, counselors, pastors, etc. of this next generation. There is hope.

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

ILLINOIS
Effingham Daily News

People have repeatedly asked me where I come up with the ideas for my column. I reply that I have no shortage of topics, thoughts, things to write about; that’s how my mind is wired. The problem is focusing on one particular thing; one specific topic.

I also have no shortage of suggestions for what I should write about. In the past year, numerous people have called me and stopped me to suggest a topic for a future column. “Hey,” they say, “why don’t you write about (fill in the blank)?”

Over the past year, and especially in the past few days, people have suggested I write about the events centering on the Catholic parishes in Sigel, Neoga, Green Creek and Lillyville. They want me to weigh in on the situation involving the Rev. Robert “Bud” DeGrand.

On Saturday, Father Bud was permanently removed from his pastoral duties at those four parishes. The announcement was made by Bishop Thomas John Paprocki. I won’t go into all the details of why, and what brought it about; that has been well documented already. (See “Bishop permanently removes area priest as pastor,” EDN, May 4.)

It really is not my place to comment on the situation. I am not a parishioner at any one of those churches. I don’t attend any Catholic church. And, though I was baptized Catholic, I am not a practicing Catholic. I have my reasons.

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.