ABUSE TRACKER

NEW YORK
Frum Follies

The New York Daily News, reported: “EXCLUSIVE: Brooklyn rabbi charged with teen sex assault gets 60 days in jail; DA ripped for offering light plea deal.”

While Rabbi Yoel Malik pled guilty to a single misdemeanor count of Sexual Misconduct, Oral/Anal Conduct (NYS PL 130.20.02) his charge sheet included another 52 misdemeanor counts and 24 felony counts of sex crimes with minors which the record shows the DA and the defendant agreed to have covered by the single misdemeanor plea.There were additional felony and misdemeanor charges that were dropped.

I get plea deal bargaining. They spare the victims the ordeal of a trial, save prosecution resources, and eliminate the risk of an acquittal. But an average of 2 days per felony sex crime? That was no deal; it was a giveaway, a travesty. The victims and justice were bamboozled and the public was endangered.

The DA defends this disgraceful trade of less than one day in jail per charge because the victims were “extremely reluctant to testify publicly.” Mind you, the DA doesn’t even say they refused. The DA may be exaggerating, though it is doubtlessly true they were reluctant and the DA knows why. The ultra orthodox community harasses and intimidates victims of sex crimes committed by orthodox Jews. The intimidation is extreme. They are just like the Mafia, street gangs, and drug cartels.

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.

DOMINICAN REPUBLIC
Dominican Today

Santo Domingo.- A hearing in a slander case set for Thursday next week could set a precedent in the Dominican Republic, pitting an ever stronger and outspoken media against the powerful Catholic Church.

Catholic priest Manuel Ruiz charged five prominent journalists with slander stemming from the sexual abuse scandals caused by the late bishop Jozef Wesolowski and priest Wojciech Waldemar Gil (Padre Alberto).

For more than five hours National District 8th Penal Chamber judge Teofilo Andujar heard the indictment from prosecutors and the defense claim of persecution, which cited three previous acquittals by other courts.

The journalists Marino Zapete, Altagracia Salazar, Diana Lora, Franklin Guerrero and Juan Tomas Dottin are charged with defamation and slander, but claim a violation of their right to free expression.

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
Boston Globe

By Mark Shanahan GLOBE STAFF FEBRUARY 26, 2016

One of the reasons critics like “Spotlight” so well is that director Tom McCarthy’s Oscar-nominated movie doesn’t let The Boston Globe off the hook. The film, about the newspaper’s Pulitzer Prize-winning series exposing the priest sex abuse scandal in the Roman Catholic Church, makes it clear that the Globe could have told the story sooner. But a piece published Friday in the Columbia Journalism Review raises similar questions about Boston TV stations.

Written by Terry Ann Knopf, a longtime lecturer in the BU Journalism Department and the author of the forthcoming book, “Boston: The Golden Age of Local Television,” the piece makes the case that local TV stations looked the other way because of close ties to the church. Dan Rea, who worked for more than 30 years at WBZ-TV, much of that time covering the church, had this to say to Knopf: “In retrospect, we did not take action. We circled the wagons.”

The piece also points out that Paul LaCamera, a former Channel 5 exec, served on the board of Catholic Charities, and the late Jim Thistle, a TV news director who toiled at four Boston TV stations, was on the board of the Boston Catholic Television Center and chaired the Boston Catholic Archdiocese Synod Subcommittee on Communications. “I’ve always been very proud of my association with Catholic Charities,” LaCamera told us Friday, saying his involvement with the organization had no bearing on Channel 5’s coverage. “The issue never came up.”

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
The Advocate

In a long-running case involving the Roman Catholic Diocese of Baton Rouge, a state judge declared unconstitutional Friday a provision of the Louisiana Chidren’s Code that requires priests — as mandatory reporters of suspected abuse — to report allegations of wrongdoing even if the information is learned confidentially in the confessional.

District Judge Mike Caldwell ruled in the case that the provision violates Father Jeff Bayhi’s constitutionally protected religious freedom rights because Bayhi would be kicked out of the Catholic Church if he ever disclosed what was said in a confession.

Bayhi and the diocese were sued in 2009 by Rebecca Mayeaux, who claims she told Bayhi in a 2008 confession — when she was 14 — that a 64-year-old parishioner of Our Lady of the Assumption Catholic Church in Clinton, where Bayhi was and remains pastor, was sexually abusing her. She alleges Bayhi told her to “sweep it under the floor and get rid of it.” The parishioner died in 2009.

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
Mercury

PATRICK BILLINGS
Police Reporter
Mercury

A FORMER Tasmanian priest has been linked to one of Australia’s most notorious and heart-wrenching missing persons cases — the disappearance of toddler William Tyrrell.

Convicted paedophile Derek Edward Nichols, 82, has emerged as another person NSW police have interviewed in the case that continues to baffle investigators and shock the nation.

William, often pictured in his beloved Spider-Man suit, vanished from his grandmother’s home in Kendall, NSW, in September 2014 when he was three.

Nichols, a former Anglican priest, who previously lived near William’s grandmother, was convicted of indecently assaulting a boy in Tasmania in 1987.

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
WBRZ

By: Brock Sues and Chris Nakamoto

BATON ROUGE – Judge Mike Caldwell ruled a part of the state’s children’s code requiring priests to be mandatory reporters of abuse that they learn during “priviledged conversations,” is unconstitutional today. The ruling means Priests don’t have to speak up if they learn children are the victims of abuse during confessions.

This is a topic that centers around a case nearly ten years old. Rebecca Mayeux claims she told Father Jeffrey Bayhi about abuse she endured at the hands of church parishioner, George Charlet Junior. She claims that happened when she was 14-years-old during a confession.

After today’s ruling, Father Bayhi exited the courthouse and called the Judge’s ruling a win.

“We’re just very happy when the court upholds religious liberties, they did that today so we’re very pleased,” Father Bayhi 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
Metro

ST. JOHN’S, N.L. — The lawsuit alleging abuse of residential school survivors in Labrador has been postponed as the parties continue to discuss an out-of-court settlement.

A news release from lawyer Ches Crosbie on Friday afternoon says progress has been made, but moving discussions through the federal process is complex.

The lawsuit alleges abuse and cultural losses at residential schools in Labrador.

The roughly 1,200 aboriginal plaintiffs were excluded from then-prime minister Stephen Harper’s apology in 2008.

They also didn’t receive part of a related compensation package that paid more than $4 billion to former students of aboriginal residential schools across the rest of Canada.

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
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests

Saturday, February 27 Events

San Jose

San Jose Diocesan headquarters, 1150 North First Street, San Jose, CA 95112

Saturday, February 27 at 11:00 am

Contact: Melanie Jula Sakoda 925-708-6175 melanie.sakoda@gmail.com, Tim Lennon 415-312-5820 tlennon@snapnetwork.org

Houston

Cathedral of the Sacred Heart, 1111 St. Joseph Parkway

Saturday, February 28 at 5:45 pm

Contact: John Sloan jsloan77@me.com 903-738-7444

Washington DC

Basilica of the Immaculate Conception, 400 Michigan Avenue NW

Saturday, February 27 at 5:45 pm

Contact: Barbra Graber barbragraber@gmail.com 540-214-8874, Bill Casey, b13909@comcast.net 703-568-3438

Saint Louis

St. Louis Cathedral, 4431 Lindell (near Taylor)

Saturday, February 27 at 5:30 pm

Contact: David Clohessy, davidgclohessy@gmail.com 314-566-9790

Sunday, February 28 Events

Oakland

Oakland Cathedral of Christ the Light, 2121 Harrison Street

Sunday, February 28 at 11:00 am

Contact: Melanie Jula Sakoda 925-708-6175 cell, melanie.sakoda@gmail.com, Tim Lennon 415-312-5820, tlennon@SNAPnetwork.org

Los Angeles

Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels, 555 W Temple Street

Sunday, February 28 at 10:45 am

Contact Barbara Blaine, 312-399-4747 bblaine@SNAPnetwork.org

Dallas

Cathedral of the Shrine of the Virgin of Guadalupe, 2215 Ross Avenue

Sunday, February 28 at 12:45 pm

Contact Carolyn Sellers

Washington DC

Cathedral of St. Matthew, 1725 Rhode Island Avenue NW

Sunday, February 28 at 12:15

Contact: Barbra Graber, barbragraber@gmail.com 540-214-8874, Bill Casey, b13909@comcast.net 703-568-3438

Miami

Cathedral of St. Mary, 7525 NW 2nd Avenue

Sunday, February 28 at 12:30 pm

Contact: Barbara Dorris bdorris@SNAPnetwork.org 314-503-0003, Charles Bailey clb747@yahoo.com 315-657-5073

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)
WTOP

By Neal Augenstein | @AugensteinWTOP
February 26, 2016

WASHINGTON — A federal judge sentencing a former D.C. police officer and pastor was barely controlling his anger at Darrell Best, who pleaded guilty to producing child pornography and sexually abusing two teenage girls.

“I have a hard time understanding how a man of God, when two girls come for help, your response is to have sex with them,” said U.S. District Court Judge Reggie Walton, his tone rising in disbelief.

Walton sentenced Best to 18 years at Butner federal prison, where he will get treatment designed for sexual offenders. When Best gets out of prison, he will be on supervised release for the rest of his life, and be required to register as a sex offender.

Best apologized to his victims, who were not present in the courtroom.

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

By Spencer S. Hsu February 26

A federal judge on Friday sentenced a former D.C. police officer and pastor to 18 years in prison for sexually abusing two teenage girls who attended his Southeast Washington church.

Darrell Best, 46, a 25-year D.C. police department veteran, pleaded guilty in October to one count of first-degree sexual abuse of a minor, one count of second-degree sexual abuse of a minor and one count of production of child pornography after he photographed one of the girls.

U.S. District Judge Reggie B. Walton handed down the sentence. Best admitted to separately abusing the girls, ages 16 and 17: one at his office at D.C. police headquarters and the other at his God-A Second Chance Ministry Church. One teen’s parents alerted police after the girl was confronted by Best’s fiancee, who found pictures of one of the victims on the officer’s phone, according to charging documents.

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
Advocate Tribune

By Scott Tedrick
News Editor

Posted Feb. 26, 2016

It was back in 2010 that a CNN Special Report used Granite Falls as the setting for a story involving an 82 year old priest, Francis Markey, who died in jail in 2012 while facing charges of raping a 15-year-old boy in Ireland 40 years ago.

According to a statement issued then by the New Ulm Diocese, Markey filled in at St. Andrews Catholic Church in Granite Falls during an approximately three month period during the spring of 1982. Over those three months, a community’s worst fears would be realized as CNN would bring to light the voice of an anonymous local resident living across the street from the church alleged that he was abused by Markey as a child.

This past week the story grew significantly more alarming as parishioners of St. Andrews Church received two additional letters signed by New Ulm Diocese Bishop John Levoir, dated February 5 and February 11, informing them of two other priests with a history of sexual abuse were assigned to the parish back-to-back during the 60s and early 70s.

The letters name Fr. Gordon Buckley, who served at the Church of St. Andrews in Granite Falls and the Church of St. James in Dawson, from 1963-69, as well as Fr. Charles Stark who was at St. Andrews from 1969-1971.

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
Columbia Journalism Review

By Terry Ann Knopf

FEBRUARY 26, 2016

ONE OF THE BEST THINGS ABOUT SPOTLIGHT, Tom McCarthy’s acclaimed film about The Boston Globe’s investigation of the city’s clerical sex abuse scandal, is its integrity. Vying for six Academy Awards in Sunday’s Academy Awards ceremony, the film chronicles The Globe’s crucial role in bringing the issue of abuse to light and exposing Cardinal Bernard Law’s part in the cover-up. The film also points the finger at The Globe itself for having been so late in coming to the scandal. More than once in the film, a question is posed to the reporters: “What took you so long?”

But what about the other media outlets at the time? Where were Boston’s crackerjack TV stations—especially the two dominant ones, Channel 4 (WBZ-TV) and Channel 5 (WCVB-TV), which, for many years, were regarded as the two finest in the country? Where were all the TV reporters?

Dan Rea, a former TV reporter who covered the Church, was among the town’s most versatile and tenacious reporters during his 31-year career with WBZ-TV. Referring to the sex abuse scandal, he said: “In retrospect, we did not take action. We (reporters) circled the wagons.”

At its core, Boston was a little too small, too inbred and incestuous. Though hundreds of heinous crimes were committed by pedophile priests against innocent children over the years, there was a collective silence in Boston and throughout the state. People wouldn’t talk; the Church wouldn’t act; and the media, including local TV stations, were nowhere to be found.

Part of the problem was cultural. Sexual abuse was among the taboos people rarely talked about, in Boston or anywhere. The idea that a man of God would violate an innocent child was beyond belief. For the victims and their families, denial was often the only way of coping.

Simple numbers were another factor. Catholics have long since made up the state’s largest religious group—53 percent in 1980. And, while falling to 44.9 percent as of 2010 (the last time a religious census was taken), Catholics are still the majority religion in the state.

Then there was the Bernard Law factor. Arriving in Boston in 1984 to replace the late Cardinal Humberto Medeiros, Law proved a more dynamic and ambitious figure than his predecessor—not only as a religious leader, but as an influential member of the establishment, dining regularly with Billy Bulger, the powerful Massachusetts Senate president. But his ties went far beyond state politics. As WBUR-FM reporter David Boeri, who covered the Catholic Church for years, said: “Here was a Cardinal in Boston who had Karl Rove on his speed dial. He was really wired to Washington.” …

With the lack of urgency operating at so many levels, it wasn’t until May 7, 1992, that Joe Bergantino, head of the WBZ-TV’s investigative unit, became the first reporter to expose an ex-priest named James Porter. Bergantino’s exposé and follow-up reporting became Boston’s first pedophile priest legal case, the first of many, with Porter sentenced to 18 to 20 years in a maximum prison.

Bergantino, now retired from the nonprofit New England Center for Investigative Reporting at Boston University, recently reflected on the media’s attitude of “see no evil, hear no evil” and, above all, “report no evil” at the time: “The Church was covered, in both print and television, the way we covered a sports team. When Rose Kennedy died, we brought in a priest to do the play-by-play at her Mass. The Church wasn’t covered the way we would cover the government … . And, because the Church was not transparent at the time, it was like covering the Kremlin.”

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.

OHIO
NBC4i

[with video]

COLUMBUS (WCMH)–Joel Wright, a former student at a Columbus seminary, was formally charged Wednesday in Southern California on charges he attempted to travel out of the country to rape underage children.

A grand jury indicted Wright on one count of attempting to cross state lines “with intent to engage in a sexual act with a person who had not attained the age of 12 years,” and a count of traveling, and attempting to travel, from Ohio to California and Mexico “for the purpose of engaging in any illicit sexual conduct with another person.”

Wright was arraigned on the charges Thursday and pleaded not guilty.

He could face up to 30 years and a fine for each individual charge. His mother, Teresa Poquette, did not want to comment but said her son was innocent.

In a criminal complaint filed last month, a special agent with the Department of Homeland Security said Wright engaged in frequent email communications, indicating his interest in sexually assaulting children between the ages of one and four.

Wright was also ordered by the grand jury to forfeit property, including two cell phones.

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 Catholic Review

February 12, 2016

The Archdiocese of Baltimore released the following statement Feb. 12.

The Archdiocese of Baltimore has learned of an allegation of sexual abuse of a minor against Father Jorge Antonio Velez-Lopez, T.C., 60, a member of the religious order known as the Tertiary Capuchins, who last served in the archdiocese in 2010. The alleged abuse began approximately in 2007 while Father Velez was assigned to St. John the Evangelist Parish in Columbia. The alleged victim was a parishioner at Resurrection of Lord in Laurel.

The allegation was immediately reported to civil authorities in Howard County, to the superior of Father Velez’s religious order, and to the Diocese of Alexandria, La., where Father Velez has most recently been serving.

After receiving permission from civil authorities, a representative of the archdiocese traveled to the Diocese of Alexandria to meet with Father Velez to discuss the allegations. At the meeting Feb. 11, Father Velez admitted to the allegations. The Archdiocese of Baltimore reminded Father Velez that he is not permitted to function as a priest or to minister in any capacity in the archdiocese. His authority to act as a priest in the archdiocese ended when he left service here in 2010. In accordance with archdiocesan policy, counseling assistance has been offered to all those affected.

Father Velez began working in the Archdiocese of Baltimore in July 2002 and served at St. John from 2003 to 2010. During this time he also ministered to members of the Spanish-speaking community in several other parishes, including Church of the Resurrection in Laurel, Holy Trinity in Glen Burnie, St. John the Evangelist Church in Frederick, Sacred Heart Church in Glyndon, and St. Joseph Church in Cockeysville

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
CBS Baltimore

BALTIMORE (WJZ) — The Archdiocese of Baltimore reports that a priest has admitted to allegations of abuse more than six years after it began.

According to The Catholic Review, an Archdiocese of Baltimore publication, the sexual abuse against a minor began in 2007 while now 60-year-old Jorge Antonio Velez-Lopez was assigned to St. John the Evangelist Parish in Columbia.

The alleged victim was a parishioner at Resurrection of Lord in Laurel.

The allegation was reported to local authorities in Howard County as well as to the superior father of Velez’s religious order and to the Diocese of Alexandria, La. where he was recently serving.

He last served in the archdiocese in 2010.

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 Brothers Sex Abuse – Pfau Cochran Vertetis Amala PLLC

Over the past eight years we have helped more than 20 men who survived abuse by Edward Courtney. This page describes a small amount of the evidence we have uncovered during those eight years.

Brother Manning: “I Recommend Him Highly”

Ed Courtney was removed from St. Laurence High School in 1974 because he was molesting students. Brother John Manning was the principal of St. Laurence at the time, and when we deposed Brother Courtney, he described how Brother Manning “called me in to talk, and he said there had been complaints and basically told me I was going to have to leave at that time.”

A year later, after the Christian Brothers transferred Courtney to O’Dea High School in Seattle (see below), the same Brother Manning wrote a formal letter of recommendation for Courtney so he could get his teaching certificate in Washington: “I recommend him highly.”

Edward Courtney: Assignments and Transfers

The Christian Brothers transferred Edward Courtney between at least six separate schools in New York, Illinois, Michigan, and Washington because he was abusing children and they knew he wouldn’t stop. Between the early 1960s and 1978, they transferred him between Sacred Heart in New York, then Brother Rice High School in Chicago, then Brother Rice High School in Michigan, then Leo High School in Chicago, then St. Laurence High School in Chicago, and then O’Dea High School in Seattle.

They then helped make him the principal of St. Alphonsus school in Seattle, where he was removed after one year because he kept abusing children. After they finally removed him from their private school system, the Christian Brothers wrote him letters of recommendation so he could continue teaching in public schools, where he kept abusing children for nearly another decade.

While we have many documents that reflect this egregious disregard for children, you can read one of the key documents that summarizes Edward Courtney’s transfers.

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
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests

For immediate release: Friday, Feb. 26

For more info: David Clohessy 314 645 5915 home, 314 566 9790 cell, davidgclohessy@gmail.com, Barbara Dorris 314 503 0003, bdorris@SNAPnetwork.org, Barbara Blaine 312 399 4747, bblaine@SNAPnetwork.org

Victims demand perp priest lists
Last year, 6 Catholic institutions in Minnesota did this
Last month, Seattle archbishop released 77 predators’ names
Another may do so next month; 30 bishops have taken this step
SNAP: “But at least 2,800 accused priests’ names remain hidden”
Group says some still are still near kids now as teachers, therapists, etc.
“Spotlight is still needed until church officials ‘come clean,’” victims feel

In fliers handed out this weekend to parishioners and in letters to the heads of the 20 largest US Catholic dioceses, clergy sex abuse victims will urge bishops to disclose the names of 2,800 accused predator priests whose identities they say are still hidden. They will also commend 30 prelates who have posted pedophile priests on their websites, urge employers and neighbors to “google search” ex-priests they know, and push for statute of limitations reform so more predators are exposed.

“We’re grateful for the attention being paid to the film ‘Spotlight,’ said SNAP outreach director Barbara Dorris. “But even now, US bishops are hiding the names of 43% of the accused predator priests. So clearly more ‘spotlights’ need to be shown on those who commit and conceal these heinous crimes so that kids can be protected.”

The events will take place this Saturday and Sunday on sidewalks outside churches in at least these cities: New York City, Dallas, Houston, Miami, San Jose, Oakland, LA/Orange County, Washington DC and St. Louis.

Last month, the Seattle Catholic archdiocese released a list of 77 child molesting clerics who worked there.

[OregonLive]

Over the last year or two, seven Minnesota-based church institutions did likewise (St. John’s Abbey, the Crosier Fathers, the St. Paul/Minneapolis Archdiocese and the dioceses of Crookston, Duluth, St. Cloud and Winona).

Next month, Yakima’ bishop may do the same.

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)
New York Daily News

BY GERSH KUNTZMAN NEW YORK DAILY NEWS Friday, February 26, 2016

News item: The Archdiocese of St. Louis has come out swinging against (wait for it!) the Girl Scouts.

The Girl Scouts, huh? The same badge-earning, cookie-selling, wholesome Americans who have been “helping girls discover their strengths, passions, and talents” for 104 years?

In a Feb. 18 letter to parishioners, Archbishop Robert Carlson accused the Scouts of “a troubling pattern of behavior” that includes “promotion of abortion rights” and “role models in conflict with Catholic values, such as Gloria Steinem and Betty Friedan,” support for “Amnesty International (and) OxFam,” “sex education,” and “inclusion of transgender and homosexual issues.”

The Girl Scouts, he concluded are “becoming increasingly incompatible with our Catholic values (and) the total well-being of our young women.”

Carlson has a point, I guess. His diocese has long had a different approach to the well-being of kids. In 2004, the Archdiocese settled 18 of 48 lawsuits against perv priests.

Two years ago, it settled another case against a priest who allegedly raped a girl for four years, starting when she was 5 years old.

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

AUSTRALIA
Broken Rites

By a Broken Rites researcher, article updated 26 February 2016

Since 1993, Broken Rites has been doing research about how Melbourne’s Catholic bishops harboured a number of sexually-abusive priests. In the mid-1990s, Broken Rites began exposing these priests. Now some of these priests, from the Broken Rites list, are being investigated by Australia’s national child-abuse Royal Commission. This article will point you to the original Broken Rites research about each of these priests.

Here are some of the names from the Broken Rites list (to read a Broken Rites article on each priest, you can click on any of the following names).

* Fr Peter Searson. For many years, the Melbourne church hierarchy knew that Searson was committing sexual offences against children in parish schools but it managed to protect him from police prosecution. Obstinately the church kept him in the ministry but eventually the hierarchy was forced to put Searson on “administrative leave” to protect the public image of the church.

* Fr Wilfred (Bill) Baker. Baker worked in parishes around Melbourne — and he committed sexual crimes against children while his superiors and colleagues looked the other way.

* Fr Nazareno Fasciale (pronounced Fah-SHAH-lay). Church leaders, including George Pell, participated in a glowing tribute to this priest, who was one of the worst paedophiles in the Melbourne diocese. In 1996, when Broken Rites exposed this (and other) church cover-ups, George Pell’s diocese went into damage control, hiring a public relations firm to announce the “Melbourne Response” (a forerunner of the church’s “Towards Healing” strategy).

* Fr Kevin O’Donnell. During O’Donnell’s life of crime, his superiors and colleagues looked the other way. In his final years, he even received public praise from one of his superiors, Bishop George Pell.

* Fr Ronald Pickering. The Melbourne church authorities protected Pickering for many years while he committed crimes against children in his parishes. Eventually he fled from Australia, evading justice. The Melbourne archdiocese then began sending retirement payments to Pickering at his new address in England but they didn’t give this address to the police.

* Fr David Daniel. The church authorities kept ignoring complaints about the crimes of this priest, but eventually some of these victims spoke to Victoria Police detectives — and the police then charged Father Daniel, thus ending the church’s cover-up.

* Fr Desmond Gannon. This is another example of how the church authorities protected a criminal priest for many years until some of his victims eventually spoke to Victoria Police detectives.

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
Sydney Morning Herald

February 26, 2016

Joanne McCarthy

Gold Walkley-winning Fairfax journalist Joanne McCarthy, whose reporting of church abuse cover-ups sparked the royal commission, reveals the moment in the movie Spotlight that left her in tears.

About the time Cardinal George Pell sits in a chair in the Hotel Quirinale in Rome on Monday to give evidence about his knowledge of child sexual abuse in the Catholic Church, celebrities will be climbing into limousines in Hollywood to attend the 88th Academy Awards.

Leonardo DiCaprio will be there, for his role in the violent historic action film The Revenant. George Clooney will be there too, because the Academy Awards wouldn’t be the Academy Awards without him.

Someone will wear Prada. Someone else will wear Tom Ford or Armani, Versace, Donna Karan, Calvin Klein or Dolce & Gabbana, and a few will be pilloried for looking a fright.

Tom McCarthy (no relation) will be there, nominated for best director and best original screenplay for his film Spotlight, about the Boston Globe’s exposure of systemic child sexual abuse and cover-ups within the Catholic diocese of Boston from a first article on January 6, 2002.

Pell will probably have finished giving evidence, in Rome, to the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse sitting in Sydney, when the best picture nominees are read out in Hollywood on Monday afternoon, Sydney time – a list that includes Spotlight. …

Watching Spotlight was like watching my life for the past 10 years.

The similarities were striking.

The Boston Globe editor Marty Baron, who initiated the investigation into the church’s handling of one paedophile priest, John Geoghan, was an outsider – a Miami Jew in a Catholic baseball-mad city.

I was, and remain, an outsider – a woman writing from home on the NSW Central Coast, 90 kilometres from Newcastle about the blokey Hunter Region. The outsider view was essential in both cases; to see with fresh eyes a culture linked with the church by tradition, where so many people in prominent positions grew up within the church.

I’ve met so many people like the victim and victim’s advocate Phil Saviano who spoke to the Boston Globe journalists. Saviano had documents to prove what he was saying, but he was labelled crazy because of his desperate passion for someone to see the church through the eyes of a survivor – not what the church said, but what it actually did behind closed doors.

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
news.com.au

AUSTRALIAN composer Tim Minchin has said Cardinal George Pell should “get on his knees and wash [the] feet” of the sexual abuse survivors travelling to Rome to meet him.

In a post on his Facebook page following the release of his song Come Home Cardinal Pell, the brains behind musical Matilda thanked the generosity of those who had bought the song and donated funds to survivors of abuse carried out by those within the church.

“I personally believe it would be appropriate for him to get on his knees and wash their feet,” he wrote.

“I have great admiration for the survivors and their loved ones who have campaigned for years to have their voices heard. They have fought against a hugely wealthy institution that has a vested interest in quieting and discrediting them.”

“To the many survivors of abuse from all over the country who have written to me since the song came out, thank you so much for taking the time. Your messages have made me smile and cry … and feel just so angry for you. Please know that you are 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.

AUSTRALIA
The Australian

Chip Le Grand
Victorian Chief Reporter
Melbourne

Victoria Police have searched church records kept by a parish in Melbourne’s west as part of an investigati­on into sex-abuse claims against cardinal George Pell dating back 55 years.

Father Rene Ramirez, whose Maidstone patch includes the old Braybrook parish, confirmed to The Weekend Australian that a police detective visited his pres­by­tery late last year to inspect surviving documents from the 1960s.

The search relates to an allegation first made against Cardinal Pell 16 years ago, when a former Braybrook altar boy accused Australia’s most senior Catholic of ­repeatedly molesting him at a church-run holiday camp at Phillip Island in either 1961 or 1962.

Cardinal Pell, nicknamed “Big George’’ by boys at the camp, was at the time a teenage seminarian at Corpus Christi College in Werri­bee, southwest of Melbourne. The allegation was examined and not upheld after a church disciplinary hearing before retired Supreme Court judge Alec Southwell.

The confidential hearing was conducted over five days in ­November 2002, with witnesses providing evidence under oath. An unpublished transcript of the proceeding has been made available to Victoria Police’s Sano taskforce, responsible for investigating historic­ and new claims of instit­utional child abuse.

In a finely balanced judgment, Mr Southwell found the complainant “gave the impression that he was speaking honestly from an actual recollection’’ but he weighed against this the historic nature of the allegations, “valid criticisms’’ of the complainant’s credibility, a lack of corroborative evidence and Cardinal Pell’s sworn denials.

“I find I am not satisfied that the complaint has been established,’’ the retired judge concluded.

The former altar boy who made the allegation, now a 67-year-old ­retired unionist and waterside worker who battled alcohol addiction and spent time in prison for drug offences, does not resile from his story about what happened at the summer camp.

However, when contacted by The Weekend Australian this week, he said he had not spoken to police and had no interest in reviving his claims against Cardinal Pell, who will provide further testimony to the child abuse royal commission from Rome next week.

It is understood that a focus of the police investigation is tracking down other former altar boys who attended the camp. About 42 boys attended from the Braybrook parish in 1961 and more the following year. Father Ramirez, who recently joined the Maidstone parish from The Philippines, said many Braybrook records from that ­period had been destroyed in a fire.

The potentially most important witness, a former altar boy and friend of the complainant named Michael Foley, died in a bar fight 17 years before the Southwell hearing. The complainant told the hearing that Foley was also molested by Cardinal Pell at the camp.

Another former altar boy, referred to as Mr Fitzgerald, told the hearing Foley warned him at the camp to “watch out for big George­”. Mr Southwell called Mr Fitzgerald a “patently honest witness’’ and accepted his evidence, against the objections of Car­dinal Pell’s barrister Jeff Sher QC.

Cardinal Pell, in a pre-emptive statement issued last Friday as the Herald Sun newspaper was preparing to publish details of a Sano taskforce investigation into multiple­ abuse claims against him, repeatedly described the Phillip Islan­d allegations as false.

“The Southwell report which exonerated Cardinal Pell has been in the public domain since 2002,’’ a statement released by Cardinal Pell’s office reads.

“The Victorian police have taken no steps in all of that time to pursue the false allegations made, however, the cardinal certainly has no objection to them reviewing the materials that led Justice Southwell to exonerate him. The cardinal is certain that the police will quickly reach the conclusio­n that the allegations are false.’’

Mr Southwell’s 15-page judgment makes no finding that the allegat­ions were false.

A lawyer involved in the 2002 hearing yesterday said the complainant presented as sincere.

“The complainant might have been mistaken, and he was testing his memory from a long way back, but he wasn’t making it up,’’ he said.

The character of the complainant came under sustained attack before and during the in-camera hearing, with supporters of the then Sydney archbishop leaking details of his criminal history to journalists.

Despite the complainant’s history as an illegal bookmaker, Painters and Dockers organiser and convicted criminal who served two years in jail for trafficking amphetamines, Mr Southwell did not believe he was a liar.

He at no point sought any form of payment from the church and ­despite “extensive inquiries’’ made on behalf of Cardinal Pell, no evidence of an ulterior motive was uncovered.

He confided in his wife in the mid-1970s about the alleged Phillip Island abuse, telling her he had been interfered with by “a big bastard called George’’.

The church ­became aware of the allegation 25 years later, after the complainant told his story to victims support group Broken Rites. The church referred the complaint to its national committee for professional standards. Due to the seriousness of the allegations, Mr Southwell applied a standard of proof comparable to that used in criminal trials.

Mr Sher told the hearing that an adverse finding “would be nothing short of disastrous’’ for Cardinal Pell and the church.

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UNITED STATES
ABC News

By MICHAEL ROTHMAN DAVID MILLER Feb 26, 2016

Note: This interview was conducted with past and present members of the Boston Globe Spotlight team, who were featured in the Oscar-nominated film “Spotlight.” Mike Rezendes, Walter Robinson and Sacha Pfeiffer are all still at The Globe and allowed ABC News access into the old Spotlight offices. Other members of the team and past members of Globe management not interviewed for this piece included Marty Baron, Ben Bradlee, Jr. and Matt Carroll, who made invaluable contributions to the story depicted in the 2015 film and over the years at The Globe.

It’s a little after 3 p.m. on a Wednesday as a clock ticks on the far wall of a dimly lit office off Morrissey Boulevard in Boston.

The room is a mess, it smells like mildew and there are old, yellowed newspapers everywhere sprawled out on rickety desks and the dirty floor. But there’s something else in this unassuming room that can’t be more than 400 to 500 square feet in size — there’s history, and lots of it.

As Sacha Pfeiffer sits upright in an old chair yanked from the manager’s unmanned office, where all the odds and ends have been tossed into, she flashes a knowing smile.

There’s something unique about her, and about Michael Rezendes and Walter Robinson — something you can’t quite put your finger on immediately.

Standing there in this tiny, cluttered room, having spoken with these journalists from the Boston Globe for more than five hours already, you’d never know this is where the iconic Spotlight team sat for years, where they most likely saved countless lives and helped even more people in their community with their research and reporting.

It’s a humble bunch, more so than you’d expect from Pulitzer Prize-winning journalists, who were just featured in an Oscar-nominated movie, boasting the likes of Mark Ruffalo, Rachel McAdams and Michael Keaton.

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NEW YORK
Daily Mail (UK)

By ANTON NILSSON FOR DAILYMAIL.COM

A Brooklyn rabbi accused of sexually assaulting several teenage boys was sentenced on Tuesday to 60 days in jail and six years on probation.

In 2013, Yoel Malik was charged with the sexual assault of four boys aged between 13 and 16.
He pleaded guilty of luring a child and sexual misconduct the following year, the New York Daily News reported Thursday.

As part of the plea deal, Malik, 36, underwent a sex offender class and other probation requirements, and the felony count of luring a child was subsequently dismissed, according to the Daily News.

Malik’s victims were students at the now-closed Satmar yeshiva in Borough Park, Brooklyn.
The rabbi was accused of fondling the boys and allegedly forced two of them to perform oral sex on him.

A Brooklyn hotel manager said he admitted Malik and a ‘tall boy’ into a room in January 2013, where the pair allegedly stayed for eight hours, according to Pix 11.

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NEW YORK
New York Daily News

BY REUVEN BLAU NEW YORK DAILY NEWS Updated: Friday, February 26, 2016

A Brooklyn rabbi charged with sexually abusing four teenage boys in a hotel was sentenced to just 60 days in jail and six years of probation.

Yoel Malik, 33, a member of the Satmar Hasidic sect, was given the generous plea deal after the victims were extremely reluctant to testify publicly, according to a law enforcement source familiar with the case.

In 2013, Malik was charged with 28 criminal counts and shamelessly blamed his underage victims for trying to seduce him, police sources said.

The boys were all students at Ohr Hameir, a now-shuttered Satmar yeshiva in Borough Park. The alleged victims were between 13 and 16 when the incidents occurred.

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ZIMBABWE
Manica Post

Lovemore Kadzura

THE Roman Catholic Church trainee priest who allegedly indecently assaulted a 17-year-old Kriste Mambo High School student during a church service committed suicide last week. Tatenda Brandon Masenga (23) who was a Carmalite brother at the institution took his life last Thursday in Marondera where he was staying at Plot Number 15, Esseydale Farm as part of his bail condition which barred him from residing at the school until the case was finalised.

Masenga who was in his sixth year was left with only a year to complete his priesthood studies, but his world crumbled after he was arrested in connection with the embarrassing charge of indecently assaulting an Upper Six student during a church service. Masenga is said to have gulped an unknown poison and died upon admission at Marondera Provincial Hospital.

His lawyer, Mr Leonard Chigadza told The Manica Post that Masenga looked very calm and composed when he engaged him. Mr Chigadza further added that from what Masenga had told him as his defence, the State’s case was weak and there were high prospects of an acquittal.

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AUSTRALIA
ABC News

By Stephanie Dalzell

A former New South Wales Catholic priest has been granted bail while he appeals against his convictions for child sex offences.

Robert Flaherty, 72, assaulted three boys aged between 11 and 15, in Sydney, and on the New South Wales south coast during the 1970s and 1980s.

However, he was only arrested in 2013 after the third victim complained to police.

Flaherty pleaded guilty to three counts of indecent assault but was also found guilty by a jury of two similar offences last September.

Flaherty was yesterday sentenced to two years and three weeks in prison, with a six-month non-parole period.

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AUSTRALIA
Herald Sun

Cardinal George Pell needs to acknowledge the Catholic Church got it wrong in handling child sex abuse by clergy, survivors say.

Ballarat-born Cardinal Pell should be leading church efforts to help victims, particularly in the Victorian regional city, Ballarat clergy abuse survivor Philip Nagle said.

“George is the one that should be standing up and saying ‘hey we got this wrong and this is what we’re going to do to fix it’,” Mr Nagle told AAP.

“Being the third most powerful person in the church, he has the power to do that.”

Mr Nagle is among a group of 15 survivors headed to Rome to be there when Cardinal Pell gives evidence about widespread abuse by clergy in the Diocese of Ballarat and the Melbourne archdiocese.

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AUSTRALIA
Daily Mail

By MATT OGILVIE FOR DAILY MAIL AUSTRALIA

British-Australian comedian Tim Minchin has penned another scathing piece directed at Cardinal George Pell.

In a letter published by The West Australian, Minchin praised the generosity of the Australian public who helped fund fifteen Australian child sex abuse survivors to fly to Rome to listen to Cardinal Pell give evidence at the Royal Commission into Institutional Child Sexual Abuse.

‘These incredibly brave men and women will sit in a room with George Pell while he gives evidence via video-link to the Royal Commission. We hope that he will look them in the eye and tell them everything he knew.

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NEW YORK
The Jewish Week

JTA

Rabbi Jonathan Rosenblatt, the New York spiritual leader who has been under fire for having sauna chats with boys in his congregation, reportedly has resigned from his Bronx synagogue.

Rosenblatt told the Riverdale Jewish Center on Wednesday that he will step down as senior rabbi, the Times of Israel reported Thursday. He has served in the post since 1985.

The decision was announced in an email letter sent to the synagogue membership on Wednesday evening signed by the synagogue’s president, Samson Fine, the Israel-based news website reported.

“Rabbi Rosenblatt has today informed RJC’s leadership that he intends to step aside from the Senior Rabbinate of the RJC,” the email read, according to the Times of Israel. “The Shul’s Board of Trustees was informed at this evening Board meeting and we anticipate discussing transition details the Board in the next two weeks.”

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NEW YORK
Tablet Magazine

By Sara Ivry
February 25, 2016

Jonathan Rosenblatt, the 59-year-old Orthodox rabbi who showered and took saunas with male congregants as young as 12 in the 1980s and 90s—a revelation that came to the fore last spring in a New York Times article—has announced that he’s leaving his pulpit at the well-to-do Riverdale Jewish Center.

This is a reversal of his decision of last summer to stay put in the face of calls to step down. At that time, Rosenblatt, the husband of a descendant of the Twersky and Soloveitchik dynasties and a great-grandson of the celebrated cantor Yossele Rosenblatt, apologized for his behavior.

“This is a crisis created by my own lapses of judgment,” the Times reported he said. “I have brought pain to people, shame to my family and I have caused a desecration of the divine name.” Contrition notwithstanding, he was said to think the demand for his resignation was disproportionate to what he’d done.

Many community members agreed and came to Rosenblatt’s defense, claiming that he served as a mentor to the boys in question and had engaged in meaningful conversations with them. Some 200 congregants signed a petition that he stay in place. Unsurprisingly, others found his behavior reprehensible, and left the synagogue in protest. According to the Times, at least half of the shul’s 700 members have defected; some have formed a break-away congregation, the Riverdale Minyan.

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NEW YORK
New York Times

By ANDY NEWMAN
FEB. 25, 2016

The prominent senior rabbi of a Bronx synagogue who drew scrutiny for having naked sauna chats with boys as young as 12 is stepping down.

The rabbi, Jonathan Rosenblatt, had fought hard to keep his job at the Riverdale Jewish Center after the publication of an article in The New York Times in May describing the sauna sessions, and many congregants rallied to his defense.

But hundreds of other members quit in anger over Rabbi Rosenblatt’s conduct and the synagogue leadership’s tolerance of it, forming a breakaway congregation.

The Riverdale Jewish Center, a Modern Orthodox congregation in the affluent neighborhood of Riverdale, has lost more than half its members since last year.

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AUSTRALIA
The Guardian

Musician and comedian Tim Minchin says Cardinal George Pell should show contrition to survivors of child sexual abuse and “get on his knees and wash their feet” when he attends a public hearing of the royal commission in Rome on Monday.

Michin made the call in a statement posted on his website and comes after the viral success of his song, Come Home (Cardinal Pell), which has been viewed more than a million times since it was first performed on Channel Ten’s The Project.

A group of roughly 15 survivors and their supporters, including counsellors, will make their way to Rome on Saturday to attend the public hearing at the Hotel Quirinale, where Australia’s most senior Catholic is due to give evidence to the royal commission.

In the statement, Minchin says: “Even if his only crime was willful blindness, a personal act of acknowledgement and contrition from this man is profoundly important for survivors.”

Pell has consistently denied any wrongdoing. He told the royal commission in December that the Catholic church’s failure to deal with paedophile priests was shameful, but defended his own handling of abuse complaints.

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UNITED KINGDOM
Croydon Advertiser

By Tom Matthews | Posted: February 24, 2016

THE minister of a Coulsdon church ran a cult to brainwash women in his congregation into accepting bare bottom spankings as ‘God’s will’ to satisfy his sexual desires, a court has heard.

Howard Curtis, a married 73-year-old father of three, is said to have treated Coulsdon Christian Fellowship (CCF), of which he was the leader for decades, “more like his personal cult than a church”.

He denies at least seven sex attacks on three different women said to have taken place between 1991 and 2013.

Curtis, who became a minister of the Elim Pentecostal movement in the 1980s, but broke from the church when he was pastor of the CCF in Chipstead Valley Road, further denies child cruelty charges relating to three different youngsters, and a charge of causing actual bodily harm by spanking a babysitter.

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CALIFORNIA
ABC 30

By Corin Hoggard
Thursday, February 25, 2016

FRESNO, Calif. (KFSN) — Disturbing accusations from parents at a Fresno school. They claim an eight-year-old bully had sexual contact with their kids and the school didn’t do anything about it. A lawsuit filed this week accuses the school of basically sweeping the problem under the rug. But administrators said they did everything right.

The St. Anthony’s Campus didn’t feel like a safe place anymore to a couple boys as of a few months ago. The seven and eight-year-olds told their parents another boy bullied them, and the trouble included comments and acts of a sexual nature. The parents took it up with school administrators, and from there, ABC30 legal analyst Tony Capozzi said two things needed to happen. “Once the school is put on notice, one, they have to notify the police, and two, they should do something to make sure this doesn’t happen again.”

The parents feel neither of those things happened, so they filed a lawsuit accusing the school of negligence. Their attorney, Warren Paboojian, told Action News “The school failed to properly report it and conducted their own investigation, Which was inadequate.”

A Fresno police investigation is underway now, but how it started may be part of the lawsuit. “A parent called and it was a general complaint, possible child molest, inappropriate touching type complaint,” said Lt. Joe Gomez, Fresno Police Department.

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AUSTRALIA
Daily Review

BY DAILY REVIEW

Last week Tim Minchin caused more than a storm when he released his song Come Home (Cardinal Pell) viewed by more than one million people; he helped kickstart donations of more than $200,000 from 4,500 people for 15 victims of sexual abuse fly to Rome.

They fly out today to watch Cardinal George Pell give video-link evidence before the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse. He is giving evidence about about sexual abuse in the 1980s by priests in the Ballarat diocese.

Read Minchin’s unedited statement below:

***

“Many very serious questions remain about George Pell’s conduct as a leader of an institution that failed to curb decades of rampant child sexual abuse within its hallowed walls. This failure has resulted in hundreds of innocent people suffering lifelong emotional and physical damage. A shocking number have committed suicide.

Whilst his actions and appearance suggest a man in good health, Pell asserts that he is too ill to travel to Australia to answer these questions at the Royal Commission into Institutional Child Sexual Abuse.

And so today, thanks to the generosity of the Australian public, fifteen Ballarat Survivors will fly to Rome. They would not have been able to afford to do so without you.

These incredibly brave men and women will sit in a room with George Pell while he gives evidence via video-link to the Royal Commission. We hope that he will look them in the eye and tell them everything he knew.

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AUSTRALIA
SBS

Australia’s worst paedophile priest, Father Gerald Ridsdale, once lived with a young clergyman who is now Cardinal George Pell. As the Cardinal prepares to give evidence to the child abuse royal commission, two women break decades of silence to tell Debi Marshall about their ordeal in Ridsdale’s care – and their disappointment with Pell.

In 1973, a young Father George Pell, flushed with success from his recent studies in Rome and Oxford, returned to his home town of Ballarat and took up residence in the St Alipius presbytery; a place, it would be publicly revealed more than 20 years later, that was a paedophile’s paradise and a child’s nightmare.

His housemate that year was the tall, rowdy and popular parish priest, Father Gerald Ridsdale.

What the parents and parishioners who worshipped God and obeyed the sanctity of the church and its messengers did not know was that from early in his priesthood, Ridsdale was subject to a psychiatric report. He was already a serial child abuser who sodomised children at will, picking them off when and where his desires dictated: in front of a church altar, at the presbytery, or on camping or fishing trips.

When he hurt them, he ignored their cries for him to stop. If they persisted in making a racket, he beat them. Badly.

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CALIFORNIA
Courthouse News Service

By BIANCA BRUNO

SAN DIEGO (CN) – A former Ohio seminary student charged with planning to travel to Mexico to purchase children to sexually abuse pleaded not guilty to a raft of charges in Federal Court Thursday.

Joel Alexander Wright appeared before U.S. District Magistrate Judge Bernard Skomal. He pleaded not guilty to all felony charges including aggravated sexual abuse, travel with intent to engage in illicit sexual conduct and criminal forfeiture.

Wright faces 60 years to life in prison if found guilty on all charges, according to Assistant U.S. Attorney Alessandra Serano.

Federal authorities arrested the seminarian on Jan. 29 at the San Diego International Airport following a months-long sting operation by Homeland Security Investigations agents in San Diego.

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AUSTRALIA
The Courier

Feb. 26, 2016

When Cardinal George Pell likened the Catholic Church’s responsibility for child abuse to that of a trucking company in his last evidence to a child sex abuse inquiry, clergy abuse survivor Peter Blenkiron clenched his teeth so tightly he cracked his tooth.

For years Mr Blenkiron, who was abused by disgraced Christian Brother Edward Dowlan when he was 11, battled suicidal thoughts playing like a stereo in his head.

He says he is one of the lucky ones. He’s still here.

But he describes himself as a broken man looking for healing.

A dark history of abuse and rape has shattered lives across the Ballarat region and Mr Blenkiron has spent years searching for the light in the midst of darkness.

“There has to be an end to this all, there has to be hope for those still struggling and future children have to be protected, always,” Mr Blenkiron said.

Mr Blenkiron said the survivors’ trip to Rome was a small step for the damaged men of Ballarat making the journey and a huge step for Australia.

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RHODE ISLAND
Providence Journal

By Karen Lee Ziner
Journal Staff Writer

Posted Feb. 25, 2016

PROVIDENCE, R.I. — The Rhode Island Supreme Court heard arguments Tuesday in an appeal involving repressed memory claims of child sexual-abuse against the Roman Catholic Diocese of Providence. The claims brought by Helen L. (McGonigle) Hyde and Jeffrey Thomas in 2008 date to the 1960s, when they were both between 6 and 9 years old.

Hyde, of Connecticut, and Thomas, of Massachusetts, are jointly asking the court to reverse dismissal of their lawsuits against the diocese. A Superior Court judge found that the statute of limitations had elapsed.

Hyde and Thomas alleged that they were molested by the late Rev. Brendan Smyth, an Irish priest who served as pastor of Our Lady of Mercy in East Greenwich for three years. Smyth died in 1967, while serving a 12-year prison sentence in Ireland for admitted child sexual abuse.

The case in part hinges on whether repressed memory alone constitutes a form of “unsound mind”; or whether unsound mind also requires that a person be incapable of handling day-to-day affairs. The trial court determined the latter is necessary in order to stop the clock from ticking on the statute, as it relates to “non-perpetrator defendants.”

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OREGON
KATU

BY KELLEE AZAR, KATU NEWS FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 26TH 2016

An Oregon man using a pseudo name of “David Smith” is suing the Dominican Order and Holy Rosary Church in Northeast Portland.

Smith was an altar boy at the time. He alleges he was sexually abused by Father Emmerich Vogt.

“He was subjected to kissing, extended hugging, touching, something no kid should have to go through, especially with a priest,” Smith’s lawyer Kristian Roggendorf of Roggendorf Law said.

Also in the complaint are allegations of graphic sexual conversations.

“That can really mess with a child’s mind having to endure that day after day, year after year. For years and it’s really something that shouldn’t have happened,” Roggendorf said.

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AUSTRALIA
TVNZ

A group of Australian survivors of child sex abuse by Catholic clergy are flying to Rome tonight to watch Cardinal George Pell give evidence to Australia’s abuse royal commission.

Cardinal Pell, a former Ballarat priest and Melbourne archbishop who is now in charge of the Vatican’s finances, will give evidence about the church’s handling of abuse in the Ballarat diocese and Melbourne archdiocese on Monday.

Some other survivors and the parents of victims have already arranged private flights.

“He’s worked his way right through the hierarchy right up to the top of the Catholic Church so we really want to hear the truth about what happened,” Chrissie Foster, whose daughters were abused, told the ABC at Melbourne Airport this morning.

“It’s about time we saw some action out of the Catholic Church so maybe hearing the whole truth from him we might actually start to see some action.”

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AUSTRALIA
The Age

February 26, 2016

Melissa Cunningham

When Cardinal George Pell likened the Catholic Church’s responsibility for child abuse to that of a trucking company in his last evidence to a child sex abuse inquiry, clerical abuse survivor Peter Blenkiron clenched his teeth so tightly he cracked his tooth.

For years Mr Blenkiron, who was abused by disgraced Christian Brother Edward Dowlan when he was 11, battled suicidal thoughts, but he says he is one of the lucky ones. He’s still here.

Mr Blenkiron is among 14 Ballarat clerical abuse victims who will travel 16,000 kilometres to Rome this weekend to see Cardinal Pell give evidence once more to the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse.

The survivors will be in the room at the Rome’s Hotel Qurinale where on Monday Australian time, Cardinal Pell will take the stand to give evidence about his time as an adviser to former Ballarat bishop Ronald Mulkearns.

The trip follows a national crowd-funding campaign to help the survivors bear witness to Cardinal Pell’s evidence in Rome after the inquiry accepted a medical report which said the he was at risk of heart failure if he made the journey back to Australia.

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AUSTRALIA
Newcastle Herald

By JOANNE MCCARTHY
Feb. 26, 2016

IT is two days before an Australian royal commission questions a cardinal in Rome about child sexual abuse, and a Hunter man is thinking about how it all started, with the death of his son.

John Pirona’s suicide in July, 2012, after he was sexually abused by Catholic priest John Denham as a child and left a final note that ended with the words “Too much pain”, was the catalyst for the Newcastle Herald’s Shine the Light campaign for a royal commission.

His father Lou Pirona accepts John’s death provided the focus for a community that said enough was enough. The loss of one life came to represent the loss of many.

The Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse is the legacy of John Pirona and the thousands of others whose childhoods were devastated, Mr Pirona said.

He will watch a royal commission live stream of Cardinal George Pell giving evidence from Rome on Monday about what he knew about child sexual abuse in the Ballarat area of Victoria.

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TEXAS
The Baptist Standard

February 23, 2016
By KEN CAMP / MANAGING EDITOR

DALLAS—The Baptist General Convention of Texas Executive Board voted Feb. 23 to change the convention’s focus on clergy sexual misconduct. It will implement a sexual abuse prevention program and will eliminate its confidential file of clergy charged with misdeeds.

The board will provide training opportunities and web-based resources to strengthen Texas Baptist churches’ ability to avoid clergy sexual misconduct and to extend compassion when misconduct is alleged or proven true.

Resources and training initially will focus on protection for children. Later, the scope will expand to include adult-to-adult abuse.

Grew from internal review of policy

The recommendation from the board’s administration support committee to discontinue the clergy sexual misconduct file and to expand educational resources grew from an internal review of the BGCT policy and its effectiveness, said Rollie Richmond, BGCT director of human resources.

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AUSTRALIA
Daily Mail

By BELINDA CLEARY FOR DAILY MAIL AUSTRALIA

A church minister has taken on Cardinal George Pell and the Australian government’s treatment of refugees in one carefully worded sign.

The Melbourne Welsh Church’s Minister Sion Gough Hughes has publically questioned the government’s decision to fly refugee babies back to detention while failing to fly Cardinal Pell back to Australia to give evidence at the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse.

It reads; ‘Australia – where the government will try to put a sick baby on a plane, but not a sick Cardinal.’

The sign has gone viral online after being posted to Facebook on Monday.

Minister Gough Hughes told Daily Mail Australia the sign is less about Pell then it is refugees.
‘People have taken it to be about Pell, but he is innocent until proven guilty but I do believe he needs to turn up,’ he said.

‘He needs to come and tell the Royal Commission what he knows, we don’t know what he knows so that is the issue.’

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BELGIE
Het Nieuwsblad

[Appeal Court rejects complaint by victims of sexual abuse against the Holy See.]

GENT – De dagvaarding van de Heilige Stoel en de Belgische bisschoppen door slachtoffers van seksueel misbruik, is nietig. Dat heeft het Gentse hof van beroep donderdag beslist in een bevestiging van het vonnis van de rechtbank van eerste aanleg in Gent. Een veertigtal slachtoffers probeerde een groepsvordering in te dienen, maar krijgt opnieuw ongelijk.

De groepsvordering werd ingeleid door de advocatenassociatie Van Steenbrugge, Van Acker & Mussche en gebeurde in naam van slachtoffers van seksueel misbruik in de kerk. Het advocatenkantoor probeerde een collectieve vordering of “class action”-zaak in te stellen. De bedoeling van de klacht was om de aansprakelijkheid in hoofde van de Heilige Stoel, de Belgische bisschoppen en de hogere oversten te laten vaststellen.

Immuniteit

De eisers stelden dat ze allen slachtoffer waren van seksueel misbruik en dat ze schade leden door de nalatigheid van de kerkelijke overheid. De rechtbank van eerste aanleg in Gent besliste in 2013 dat de dagvaarding nietig was. Volgens de rechtbank kon één slachtoffer niet dagvaarden in naam van een hele groep slachtoffers en gold de immuniteit van de Heilige Stoel. Het hof van beroep in Gent oordeelde donderdag eveneens dat de Heilige Stoel staatsimmuniteit geniet en dat de vordering op “geen enkel concreet feit” gebaseerd is.

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NEW JERSEY
Road to Recovery

Leaders of the Salesian Priests and Brothers have refused to settle a childhood sexual abuse claim against one of their priests, Fr. Joseph Maffei, SDB, causing the victim, who was abused in Indiana, to be re-victimized. The victim is being denied justice.

One of the leaders of the Salesian Priests and Brothers, who is in charge of allegations of sexual abuse against Salesian Priests and Brothers, told advocate Dr. Robert M. Hoatson several weeks ago during a demonstration at a New Jersey church that the Salesians were settling the claim of the Indiana man. There has been no settlement and no talks of settlement

What
A demonstration and leafleting alerting the media, general public, parishioners, and school parents about the refusal of the Salesian Priests and Brothers, based in New Rochelle, New York, to settle a claim of sexual abuse of a child by a member of the Salesians of Don Bosco religious order, Fr. Joseph Maffei, SDB, when he was assigned to St. Dominic Savio Juniorate in Cedar Lake, Indiana

When
Friday, February 26, 2016 from 7:00 am until 8:00 am
Friday, February 26, 2016 from 1:00 pm until 2:30 pm

Where
FROM 7:00 – 8:00 AM
On the public sidewalk outside the headquarters of the Salesians of Don Bosco religious order and Salesian High School, 148 East Main Street, New Rochelle, New York 10801

FROM 1:00 PM until 2:30 PM
On the public sidewalk outside Don Bosco Preparatory School, 492 North Franklin Turnpike, Ramsey, New Jersey 07446

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

Why
The Salesians of Don Bosco religious order refuses to settle a sexual abuse claim against one of its priests, Fr. Joseph Maffei, SDB. Fr. Maffei’s victim is a former student of a Salesian Juniorate school in Indiana. One of the leaders of the Salesians told advocate Dr. Robert M. Hoatson during a demonstration at Our Lady of the Valley Church in Orange, New Jersey several weeks ago that the sexual abuse claim was being settled, yet no settlement talks have taken place since that time. Demonstrators will call on the Salesian Priests and Brothers to do the right thing, settle the sexual abuse claim of the Indiana man, and treat him fairly and justly.

Contact
Robert M. Hoatson, Ph.D. – Road to Recovery, Inc. – 862-368-2800 – roberthoatson@gmail.com

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UNITED STATES
Insurance Journal

By Rose French | June 18, 2007

The three companies that insure the majority of Protestant churches in America say they typically receive upward of 260 reports each year of young people under 18 being sexually abused by clergy, church staff, volunteers or congregation members.

The figures released to The Associated Press offer a glimpse into what has long been an extremely difficult phenomenon to pin down — the frequency of sex abuse in Protestant congregations.

Religious groups and victims’ supporters have been keenly interested in the figure ever since the Roman Catholic sex abuse crisis hit five years ago. The church has revealed that there have been 13,000 credible accusations against Catholic clerics since 1950.

Protestant numbers have been harder to come by and are sketchier because the denominations are less centralized than the Catholic church; indeed, many congregations are independent, which makes reporting even more difficult.

Some of the only numbers come from three insurance companies — Church Mutual Insurance Co., GuideOne Insurance Co. and Brotherhood Mutual Insurance Co.

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UNITED STATES
Vanrity Fair

BY JULIE MILLER

With all of the champagne and red-carpet ephemera spilling and swirling through Oscar season, it’s easy to forget the importance of film. But on Wednesday night, Vanity Fair reminded Hollywood of the medium’s potential with an intimate dinner honoring Spotlight, the powerful drama from Tom McCarthy that chronicles the Boston Globe’s Pulitzer Prize–winning investigation of the Catholic Church’s sex-abuse cover-up. The real-life reporters who attended the event, co-hosted by Barneys New York at the Chateau Marmont, cut through the Hollywood pomp to speak about meaningful matters highlighted in the best-picture candidate.

“It says such wonderful things about the importance of investigative journalism, which we very much believe in and which is in serious decline,” said Michael Rezendes, the reporter who is portrayed in the drama by Mark Ruffalo. “And also what it says about clergy sex abuse, an issue that we feel very strongly about, is so important.”

Rezendes joined cast members including Ruffalo, Rachel McAdams, Liev Schreiber, and Brian d’Arcy James at the event, and will be attending the Oscars come Sunday. But even at splashy, celebrity-attended affairs, Rezendes said that he always has the investigation and “the survivors in mind. But the attention the film is getting is all very validating. It’s wonderful.”

Because of Spotlight’s significant subject matter, Rezendes believes that the drama deserves the big best-picture prize come Sunday. “This is a movie about something that really, really matters. But it’s not a pill either. I think it’s incredibly entertaining and suspenseful and authentic.”

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MICHIGAN
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests

For immediate release: Thursday, Feb. 25, 2016

Statement by David Clohessy of St. Louis, Director of SNAP, the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (314 566 9790, 314 645 5915 home, davidgclohessy@gmail.com)

A predator priest, Fr. Louis Grandpre, has passed away. As best we can tell, Detroit Archbishop Allen Vignernon kept this quiet, denying abuse victims months of comfort. Vignernon seems incapable of handling any part of the church’s on-going abuse and cover up crisis with honesty and compassion. Shame on him for not letting parents, parishioners and the public know about this predator’s passing.

[Death Notifices]

In 2013, when Fr. Grandpre was finally exposed as a child molester, Vignernon was deceptive. He implied that this was the first allegation of wrongdoing against the priest. It wasn’t.

A private archdiocesan memo showed that Fr. Grandpre was also credibly accused of sexual harassment 15 years ago. How do we know the allegation was “credible?” Because a mediator suggested the victim be paid $160,000. And remember, that was almost 20 years ago.

[BishopAccountability.org]

It would have taken Vigneron minutes to approve and have his public relations team send out a news release about Fr. Grandpre’s death. That would have brought relief to those who worried, until now, that Fr. Grandpre might still be hurting children. That also would have shown that Vigneron takes seriously his repeated pledges to be “open” about predator priests.

Fr. Grandpre retired as pastor of St. Paul of Tarsus Parish in Clinton Township in 2003 but stayed in the parish. A decade later, in 2013, archdiocesan officials disclosed that he’d been credibly accused of molesting a child. We suspect he molested several kids.

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UNITED STATES
USA Today

Edward J. Burns February 25, 2016

It is important to state that the work of fostering a safe environment for children is a top priority and sacred responsibility of the Catholic Church.

In 2002, Pope John Paul II addressed sexual abuse in the Church and called it “a crime.” In light of this abuse, he said that “the Church herself is viewed with distrust.”

In a 2010 pastoral letter, Pope Benedict XVI said to bishops, “It cannot be denied that some of you and your predecessors failed, at times grievously, to apply the long-established norms of canon law to the crime of child abuse.”

This past September, Pope Francis, immediately after meeting with victims of sexual abuse, spoke to the bishops taking part in the World Meeting of Families in Philadelphia. He said, “I commit myself to ensuring that the Church makes every effort to protect minors, and I promise that those responsible will be held to account. Survivors of abuse have become true heralds of hope and ministers of mercy; humbly we owe our gratitude to each of them and to their families for their great courage in shedding the light of Christ on the evil sexual abuse of minors.”

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UNITED STATES
The Dallas Morning News

Pardon us for rooting for Spotlight, a movie about watchdog journalism, to take home the golden statuette for best movie at Sunday’s Oscars.

The critical acclaim for Spotlight has elevated great public service journalism from the anonymous drudgery of tedious record searches, endless interviews and sleepless nights to global prominence. And, we hope, it offers the public a small window into what inspires so many journalists to come to work each day.

The movie depicts how the Boston Globe took on the insular and powerful Roman Catholic Church in Boston to investigate allegations against defrocked priest John Geoghan, accused of molesting more than 80 boys. The Globe showed intense reporting courage and newsroom leadership to prove that the church was covering up sexual abuse.

The real investigation created angst in the Boston Globe newsroom as editors, executives and reporters worked to uncover a horrific story about Boston’s most powerful institution. Most people never bear witness to this internal challenge of journalism; Spotlight portrayed it so accurately.

Most of all, the film revealed the importance of vigorous reporting and how great watchdog work protects our democracy and those who live in it. And it shows that society-changing stories don’t just fall into a reporter’s lap.

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UNITED STATES
USA Today

The Editorial Board

February 25, 2016

Catholic Church drags its feet on accountability for sexual abuse scandal.

You can’t expect a movie, even one as riveting as Spotlight, to change the culture of a centuries-old institution like the Catholic Church. But perhaps the film, up for six Academy Awards on Sunday, can remind the church of its unfinished business in confronting a decades-long coverup of rampant child molestation.

The movie depicts an investigation by the Spotlight reporting team at The Boston Globe, which broke the news in January 2002 and brought international attention to a sickening scandal in Boston that has since engulfed the church around the world. In the United States alone, more than 17,000 victims have reported sexual abuse, going back as far as 1950, involving about 6,400 priests in 100 cities.

Yet, not once in the past 14 years has a single U.S. bishop, let alone a cardinal, been removed from ministry for a role in the scandal. Perhaps the church could not have prevented child molesters from entering the priesthood, but bishops and cardinals could have stopped the crimes of serial predators. Many children would have been spared had religious leaders done what you’d expect any decent person to do: Report alleged crimes to authorities and, at the very least, keep molesters away from children. Often, they did neither.

Reports of abuse were ignored. Predator priests were sent for “treatment,” then shuffled off to other parishes, often to molest again. When lawsuits threatened to blow the church’s cover, the cases were settled secretly.

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BELGIE
KRO-NCRV

[A court in Ghent today said Belgian bishops and other church officials can not be held jointly and liable for the damage to victims of sexual abuse. Forty victims had gone to court to recover damages jointly by church officials for negligence.]

Gent (BELGA/ANP) 25 februari 2016 – Belgische bisschoppen en andere kerkelijke hoogwaardigheidsbekleders kunnen niet hoofdelijk aansprakelijk worden gesteld voor de schade van slachtoffers van seksueel misbruik. Een veertigtal slachtoffers was naar de rechter gestapt om gezamenlijk schade te verhalen bij kerkelijke bestuurders wegens nalatigheid.

Het hof van beroep in Gent verklaarde de dagvaarding vandaag in navolging van het vonnis van de rechtbank in 2013 nietig. “Nergens wordt vermeld wie, waar of wanneer misbruikt werd”, aldus het hof. De beschuldiging is niet concreet en specifiek genoeg en de geestelijken weten dan niet waartegen ze zich moeten verweren, aldus het hof.

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MEXICO
El Popular

[The former priest Alberto Athie Gallo said the number of pedophile priests are still hidden.]

El activista y defensor de las víctimas de abuso sexual cometidos por sacerdotes católicos, Alberto Athié Gallo, aseguró que no se sabe el paradero del sacerdote Nicolás Aguilar, quien se ordenó en la década de 1970 en la diócesis de Tehuacán, región donde trabajó y tras ser señalado por abusos fue cambiado pero después regresó.

También dijo que el número de abusos sexuales cometidos por sacerdotes en territorio poblano es todavía un secreto que se resguarda en el poder que mantiene la Iglesia católica en Puebla, aunado a la colusión que existe con las autoridades civiles.

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ESPANA
El Mundo

[Psychologists say a boy who said he was abused by a teacher at an Opus Dei school was telling the truth.]

25/02/2016

Cuando el chico contó que a los 12 años su profesor le llevaba al despacho y bajaba las persianas, cuando explicó que le tocaba los muslos y le pedía que se masturbara, cuando relató que le hacía desnudarse y le manoseaba por todo el cuerpo, cuando recordó que le forzaba a sentarse en sus rodillas y todo lo demás, decimos, el chico no estaba con una fabulación de adolescente.

El chico estaba contando la verdad de un hombre.Eso es lo que sostienen las dos psicólogas y las dos médicos forenses que han explorado al alumno de 19 años.El informe definitivo encargado por el Juzgado de Primera Instancia e Instrucción número 5 de Getxo (Vizcaya) sostiene ahora que el chaval no miente.

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UNITED KINGDOM
Salisbury Journal

A RETIRED vicar has denied raping a schoolgirl more than 40 years ago.

Fredrick Williams, 74, of Central Street, Ludgershall, pleaded not guilty to nine sexual abuse charges at Salisbury Crown Court on Friday, all relating to the same girl.

He stands accused of raping the girl, who cannot be named for legal reasons, twice between September 1971 and June 1974.

The remaining seven charges relate to other sexual acts allegedly carried out between January 1971 and June 1974.

In the dock at Salisbury Crown Court, Mr Williams requested a hearing-loop to help him follow proceedings.

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UNITED STATES
Reveal: The Center for Investigative Reporting

By Heidi Hirvonen / February 25, 2016

The release of “Spotlight” – the Oscar-nominated film chronicling The Boston Globe’s groundbreaking investigation into child sexual abuse among Catholic priests – has refocused attention on problems in the church and trumpeted the importance of investigative reporting.

This week’s episode of Reveal goes behind the scenes with the real Globe reporters to learn more about how the story broke in 2002 – and what happened after the credits rolled.

CULTURE OF SECRECY LEAVES DOOR OPEN FOR SEX ABUSE

Right now, we’re learning a lot about another religion with a history of hiding child sexual abuse. The themes in our new episode parallel Reveal reporter Trey Bundy’s ongoing investigation into abuse among Jehovah’s Witnesses. Taken together, the two religions share a series of troubling themes and tactics.

Abuse allegations stifled from the top

The Globe’s reporting didn’t just reveal crimes; it shed light on a series of cover-ups by high-ranking Catholic Church officials. In one dramatic example, a priest who had been accused of molestation and rape more than 130 times was not disciplined. Rather, he was reassigned by then-Cardinal Bernard Law to a new parish, with disastrous consequences.

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AUSTRALIA
ABC News

By Rachael Brown

A group of church abuse survivors will take off from Melbourne today for Rome, to be in the same room as Cardinal George Pell as he fronts the child abuse royal commission.

They had hoped the Cardinal would visit the Victorian city of Ballarat, a site of clerical abuse in the 1960s and ’70s, but a heart condition has prevented him leaving the Vatican.

For some, travelling 16,000 kilometres to watch what will be broadcast to Australia via video-link is about taking some power back.

Others feel it will be harder for the Cardinal to fudge facts if victims are staring him in the eye when he faces the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse.

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UNITED STATES
The Jewish Week

02/25/16

Amy Sara Clark
Deputy Managing Editor

Sam Kellner’s defamation suit against The Jewish Daily Forward lives to fight another day.

Manhattan Supreme Court Judge Debra A. James denied the newspaper’s motion to dismiss in a decision issued today, ruling that Kellner is a private person, not a public figure as The Forward had argued. The distinction is key because that means Kellner only needs to show that The Forward acted negligently rather than with actual malice.

The subject of the suit, brought by Kellner in November 2014, is an article written by Paul Berger, “Sam Kellner’s Tangled Hasidic Tale of Child Sex Abuse, Extortion and Faith,” and a tweet, mistakenly referring to Kellner as a convicted extortionist. According to Kellner’s complaint, the tweet went uncorrected by the paper for six days after they were alerted to the error.

The Forward sought to have the case dismissed on the grounds that the article was opinion, and thus protected speech. It also argued that the mistaken language of the tweet was inadvertent and not intended to defame Kellner.

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NEW YORK
Jerusalem Post

The suspect, an unnamed twenty-year-old haredi man who is said to come from a prominent family, turned himself in earlier this week after the NYPD released security camera footage of him.

A police investigation into an ultra-orthodox man believed to have attempted to abduct a Brooklyn teenager was closed this week after the victim stopped cooperating with police due to communal pressure, the Daily News reported on Wednesday.

The suspect, an unnamed twenty-year-old haredi man who is said to come from a prominent family, turned himself in earlier this week after the NYPD released security camera footage of him. The suspect accosted the fourteen year old girl in the Midwood neighborhood of Brooklyn last Tuesday, attempting to physically restrain her and demanding that she come with him until confronted by a third party.

Despite the suspect turning himself in, however, police sources who spoke with the New York newspaper asserted that no further probe into the matter is in the works as the family of the victim “stopped cooperating with the cops.”

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AUSTRALIA
Starts at Sixty

As they readied to board a plane to Rome to face Cardinal George Pell, church abuse survivors shared their thoughts, fears and hopes about the long trip to Italy.

A group of ten victims will leave today, accompanied by a small support team of counsellors and doctors who will help them through to difficult proceedings.

The group hope that by forcing Pell to face them in person as he gives his testimony, he will be compelled to give honest and factual responses to the Inquiry’s questions.

One of the survivors making the trip is David Ridsdale, who told the royal commission he phoned Pell in 1993 to tell him that his uncle Gerald Ridsdale was abusing him.

Instead of helping him and reporting Gerald to the police, Pell tried to silence David.

“What we’re hoping for is the same we’ve given, which is just truth,” David told the ABC.

“I guess it will with a part of the story, because it was the phone call I made to Cardinal Pell which set my trajectory on this very public path I’ve found myself, which was never my intention and something that was very difficult for me to have come to grips with.

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AUSTRALIA
SBS

AAP

There is huge international interest in what Cardinal George Pell has to say about the sexual abuse of children by clergy in the Ballarat region of Victoria when he gives evidence from a conference room at the elegant Hotel Quirinale in Rome.

By virtue of his position – head of the Secretariat of the Economy – Dr Pell is the third most powerful member of the Catholic Church bureaucracy.

This, combined with his request to give evidence by video-link, by itself would have been enough to swing the spotlight towards the Vatican.

However, international media interest has been further boosted by news an Australian crowd funding effort raised the money for abuse survivors to go to Rome to be in the room when the cardinal appears on Monday.

Hope are high the painstaking approach to questioning taken by the child sexual abuse royal commission will get beyond rhetoric and shed light on how the Vatican hierarchy handles abuse by Catholic clergy.

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AUSTRALIA
The Guardian

David Marr
Thursday 25 February 2016

Cardinal George Pell is bold. Priests have told the royal commission into institutional responses to child sexual abuse over and over again that they knew something was going on back then and now regret doing little more than passing the awful news up the line.

They left it to others.

That’s not Pell’s position. He says he knew nothing – nothing while he was a priest in Ballarat about the paedophiles around him, and little about these men and their victims in his years as an auxiliary bishop in Melbourne.

He was never in the loop. No one warned him. No one complained to him. He didn’t read that letter or this report. It never came up at meetings. There’s nothing in the minutes. There’s nothing in the files.

According to the cardinal, he rose through the ranks in a state of nearly perfect ignorance while – as he now acknowledges with remorse – systematic cover-ups allowed paedophile priests to prey on innocent children.

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AUSTRALIA
The Age

February 25, 2016

Chris Johnston

The Christian Brothers hired a private investigator in 1995 to “dig up dirt” on victims of a notorious paedophile priest in Ballarat.

The Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse was told today the private investigator, Glynis McNeight, of Ballarat, visited two victims of Brother Ted Dowlan at home just before Dowlan was charged by police for historical sex crimes against boys.
Ted Dowlan.

The object of the exercise, the commission heard, was for the Christian Brothers’ legal team – from a small firm in Ocean Grove – to find out what kind of witnesses the victims would be in court and whether, according to counsel assisting the commission Stephen Free, they would be “easily torn apart in the witness box”.

One victim Ms McNeight visited ended up crying and agitated and she reported to the law firm – which was being paid by the Christian Brothers – that the victim was “nervous” and “excitable” and was prone to tears and bad language. He would have “no credibility” as a witness, she wrote.

The investigator, who called herself an “inquiry agent”, asked Victoria Police for details of the victims but police refused. A policeman involved in the investigation warned her that she could pervert the course of justice.

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CALIFORNIA
Hollywood Reporter

2/24/2016 by Ben Zauzmer

The winners that a mathematical model predicts in the top eight categories favor Leonardo DiCaprio and Brie Larson, but Sylvester Stallone may have to sweat it out.

The Revenant is twice as likely as Spotlight to take the big prize of best picture at Sunday night’s 88th annual Oscars. Leonardo DiCaprio and Brie Larson are, statistically speaking, assured the top acting awards. But while many are predicting a Sylvester Stallone victory in the best supporting actor category, that race is still looking like a close call.

That, at least, is how my mathematical predictions are looking for the big night.

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UNITED STATES
National Catholic Reporter

Donna B. Doucette | Feb. 25, 2016

The critically acclaimed movie “Spotlight” could receive a Best Picture Oscar this Sunday. The film about how The Boston Globe investigated and brought to light clergy sexual abuse of children and its cover up in the Boston archdiocese has brought renewed awareness to the scandal worldwide.

But many Catholics have had a heightened sense of the crisis all along. Some of those Catholics — determined to remain faithful while addressing the scandal — formed Voice of the Faithful only a couple of months after the Globe’s sensational January 2002 story appeared.

VOTF continues its work nearly a decade and half later because the scandal remains — “a mass psychological dysfunction hidden in plain sight, which has stretched back decades or even centuries and will, unchecked, do precisely the same in the future,” according to Peter Bradshaw’s “Spotlight” review in The Guardian.

Amid the passionate indignation the scandal created, VOTF grew rapidly to comprise an international membership. Key to members is to remain faithful Catholics and to help redress and prevent scandal by changing the way the Church operates.

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UNITED STATES
ProPublica

by Stephen Engelberg
ProPublica, Feb. 25, 2016

There’s a moment in almost every movie when people in the audience who really know the line of work depicted on screen cry out in frustration and say: “Oh, come on!” “Absurd.” “Never happens.”

Over the decades, Hollywood screenwriters have taken liberties with every imaginable profession and craft, from doctors to lawyers to spies to police detectives. Rocky Balboa survives punches that would decapitate an ordinary boxer. The car chases in The Bourne Identity defy physics. John McClane, the hard-boiled cop in the Die Hard series, displays a supernatural ability to evade bullets.

Journalism movies have had their share of utterly improbable moments. In the 1994 film “The Paper,” the city editor of a New York City tabloid gets into a fist fight with his female boss as he tries to stop the presses. (Not a great career move.) More recently, the first season of HBO’s television series The Newsroom showed a producer landing a series of astounding scoops in the first hours after the explosion of the Deepwater Horizon. The reporter’s information came from miraculously well-placed sources – a sister who worked at Halliburton and a close friend who happened to be a junior BP executive attending all the key crisis meetings.

All of this makes “Spotlight,” the film based on the Boston Globe’s investigation of the Catholic Church, a remarkable achievement. The movie, which has been nominated for six Academy Awards including best picture, vividly captures the mix of frustration, drudgery and excitement that goes into every great investigative story. Where liberties were taken, and there were a few, they are in line with the realities of the news business.

One of the most credible aspects of the movie is the cluelessness with which the reporters begin their quest. As is often the case, the Globe’s group of reporters, known as the “Spotlight” Team, have no idea of the size and scope of what they’re trying to examine. At first, they stumble around, lacking the most basic information about how the church bureaucracy worked.

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UNITED STATES
Variety

Sacha Pfeiffer
@SachaPfeiffer

No good can come from getting involved with Hollywood.

That was my firm conviction when a pair of producers approached me and my Boston Globe Spotlight team colleagues seven years ago with what seemed a fanciful proposal: that one of our past projects, on the Catholic Church’s cover-up of clergy sex abuse, could become an intriguing film.

I was highly wary. Never mind that the grim topic would likely have little appeal to mainstream audiences. Never mind that our jobs are hardly cinematic — we make phone calls, review documents, collect data — and were unlikely to be compelling on screen.

Beyond that, I feared for our personal lives, the loss of privacy, the inevitable sensationalism as reality morphed into screenplay. I envisioned fictionalized interoffice affairs — the Hollywoodization of our lives.

But my colleagues had fewer reservations, and were persuaded by Blye Faust and Nicole Rocklin’s pitch: They told us they wanted to make a movie that would celebrate journalism at a time when the newspaper industry is in great financial peril.

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UNITED STATES
TCPalm

By Paul Janensch

My choice for best picture of 2015 is “Spotlight.”

This extraordinary movie shows us how reporters and editors at The Boston Globe exposed the sexual abuse of children by Catholic priests in the Boston area.

We’ll find out if it wins the Oscar for best picture when ABC brings us the Academy Awards at 8:30 p.m. Sunday.

I was the editor of another newspaper that informed the public of sexual abuse by priests. More on that angle later.

“Spotlight” already has won a number of awards after receiving rave reviews. Even the Catholic News Service called it “illuminating.”

The movie takes its name from the Globe’s Spotlight investigative team, which began looking into sex-abuse cases in 2001 under then new editor Martin Baron and despite the opposition of Cardinal Bernard Law, who covered up the scandal.

Not only a gripping drama, “Spotlight” is the most accurate movie portrayal of how good journalists do their work since “All the President’s Men.” …

Ten years before the Globe’s disclosures, I was the new editor of the Telegram & Gazette in Worcester, Massachusetts, west of Boston.

Soon after I started, I learned that priests in the Worcester diocese had sexually abused minors but the offenses were kept secret. We started investigating.

Men who said they had been victims as boys consented to be interviewed. They asked not to be named. I already had established a policy that anyone quoted in a staff-written story must be named and persuaded the men to let us identify them.

We published several stories about such cases on Page 1 under restrained headlines.

A monsignor who was executive assistant to the bishop called me to say that I, a Mass-going Catholic, was a disgrace to the church.

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ROME
Religion News Service

Rosie Scammell | February 25, 2016

ROME (RNS) Police in Spain have arrested a fugitive businessman accused of swindling pensioners from the U.S. and elsewhere out of millions of euros with the backing of a Catholic priest who worked at the Vatican before retiring to the Canary Islands.

Christian Ventisette was stopped at Madrid airport after an international arrest warrant was issued for the French-Italian businessman, Italy’s financial police said Wednesday (Feb. 24).

Ventisette is accused of scamming more than 250 investors out of around 30 million euros ($33 million) in an international operation involving an Argentine priest.

The retired cleric, the Rev. Patrizio Benvenuti, was put under house arrest in Italy earlier this month. He previously worked at a Vatican tribunal and currently has residency in the Canary Islands, a Spanish archipelago off the west coast of Africa.

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UNITED KINGDOM
The Guardian

Jane Martinson and Jamie Grierson
Thursday 25 February 2016

Serious failings at the BBC allowed Jimmy Savile and Stuart Hall to sexually abuse nearly 100 people without detection for decades, according to two damning reports published on Thursday, which insisted that the corporation still had lessons to learn from the affair.

Dame Janet Smith, who started the independent inquiry in October 2012, found that despite what had happened with Savile and Hall in previous years, those worked at the BBC were still worried about reporting potential abuse and taking on the broadcaster’s stars.

She concluded that “an atmosphere of fear still exists today in the BBC possibly because obtaining work in the BBC is highly competitive and many people no longer have the security on an employment contract”.

It was incumbent on the BBC to examine its culture today, Smith added, particularly when it came to the continued fear of speaking out and its attitudes towards “the talent”, or on-air stars.

In total, Savile sexually assaulted 57 females and 15 boys from the late 1950s to the middle of the last decade. Three incidents of rape and attempted rape took place on BBC premises, Smith said, and the youngest victim to whom Smith spoke was eight yearsold at the time of the offence.

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UNITED KINGDOM
The Guardian

Sandra Laville
Thursday 25 February 2016

A hierarchical organisation, overseeing a climate of fear, where the overriding concern is to protect reputation rather than investigate the sexual abuse of children and young people.

Remind you of anyone? Today it is the BBC taking the onslaught as Dame Janet Smith’s report highlights decades of sexual abuse carried out by Jimmy Savile under the noses of senior managers – whom Smith kindly clears because they “generally did not hear rumours”.

But the BBC can take depressing comfort from overwhelming evidence that it was not and is not alone in its failures. The Church of England, the Catholic church, leading private schools, local authorities in Oxford, Rotherham, Rochdale, Derby, the police service and numerous other institutions in British public life have all exhibited these same traits.

When a senior police officer first revealed the scale of Savile’s offending three years ago he noted the entertainer had been “hiding in plain sight” for decades. But the likes of Jimmy Savile, albeit of varying degrees of recidivism, have been hiding in plain sight across many British institutions and within society for years.

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NEW YORK
The Riverdale Press

By Shant Shahrigian
Posted 2/25/16

Rabbi Jonathan Rosenblatt is “stepping aside from the Senior Rabbinate” of Riverdale Jewish Center (RJC), according to a Wednesday email from the president of the synagogue to congregants obtained by The Press.

The move follows a 2015 report in The New York Times that described the rabbi’s years-long habit of taking boys to a sauna naked, prompting some members of RJC to leave the institution.

It was not immediately clear what role, if any, Rabbi Rosenblatt would maintain at RJC. The email from RJC President Samson Fine reads in full:

“Update Regarding Rabbi Rosenblatt’s Plans

“Dear Congregants,

“Rabbi Rosenblatt has today informed RJC’s leadership that he intends to step aside from the Senior Rabbinate of the RJC. The Shul’s Board of Trustees was informed at this evening’s Board meeting and we anticipate discussing transition details with the Board in the next two weeks.

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AUSTRALIA
Border Mail

By Tim Barlass
Feb. 26, 2016

A 72-year-old former Sydney Catholic priest given six months to a year to live has been sentenced to two years and three weeks in jail for sexual assault against teenage boys.

Father Robert Flaherty, who committed the offences in the 1970s and 1980s was allowed to remain seated in the dock at the Downing Centre court with his walking stick in front of him as the sentence was announced.

He had previously pleaded guilty to three charges against two boys but was found guilty in a jury trial last September for two offences committed against an altar boy at the priest’s Mollymook holiday home.

Sentencing Judge Richard Cogswell, SC, said that Flaherty’s age and health together with the impact of a prison sentence must be reflected in the non-parole period.

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FRANCE
Metro

PROCES – Quatre hommes âgés de 46 à 61 ans étaient jugés ce mercredi par le tribunal correctionnel de Paris pour avoir escroqué, tenté d’escroquer ou recelé des biens provenant d’une escroquerie commise à l’encontre de prêtres. 158 hommes d’églises se sont faits avoir entre 2009 et 2012 pour un préjudice environnant les 300 000 euros.

Seule une victime était présente dans la salle ce mercredi. Au total, ils sont pourtant 158 prêtres à avoir fait les frais, entre 2009 et 2012, d’une vaste escroquerie commise par quatre hommes âgés de 46 à 61 ans.

Le tribunal correctionnel les a condamnés ce mercredi à des peines allant de six mois de prison avec sursis à quatre ans de prison ferme pour les faits qui leur étaient reprochés. Jugés pour escroquerie et tentative d’escroquerie, Michel, 59 ans – absent à l’audience pour raisons de santé – et Jacky, 61 ans, ont été condamnés respectivement à quatre ans et deux ans de prison ferme (peine aménageable pour le dernier). Karim, 52 ans, et Denis, 46 ans – lui aussi absent pour raisons de santé – ont eux été condamnés à six mois de prison avec sursis pour recel de bien provenant de l’escroquerie.

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FRANCE
International Business Times

BY JESS MCHUGH @MCHUGHJESS ON 02/25/16

A Paris court on Wednesday sentenced a French man to four years in prison for swindling 158 priests out of 300,000 euros, or approximately $330,286, local media outlets reported. The man, identified only as “Michael,” said the multiple-year scam was vengeance for having been sexually abused by a priest as a child.

Michael, 59, claimed he was abused as a child by a priest or possibly multiple priests who worked for Les Orphelins D’Auteil, a nonprofit foundation for orphans. He later took his allegations to the diocese of Troyes, in the region where the alleged sexual abuse occurred, and then all the way to the Vatican. An official inquest from the Vatican found that the priests in question were deceased.

Available reports do not clarify whether Michael discovered his abusers were dead before or after he began his lucrative scam. The scam included targeting elderly priests by soliciting donations for a Christian charity. He would gain their trust by saying that they had baptized his child or by using their first names before he asked for their donations. Other versions of his story included saying he was a recently released convict and needed money to get back on his feet.

Michael was sentenced to four years in jail for his scheme and three other accomplices, including a friend identified as “Jacky”, were sentenced for their participation and handed sentences ranging from six months to two years. Jacky was an avid gambler and took over the scam when Michael went to jail in 2010. As an active gambler, Jacky told the court he stole money from the priests for gambling, not out of revenge.

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ROME
The Tablet (UK)

25 February 2016 | by Christopher Lamb

Benedict XVI made strenuous efforts to clean up one of the Church’s worst abuse scandals, Pope Francis has said, while hinting that his predecessor was prevented from taking tougher action.

During an in-flight press conference returning home from Mexico, Francis was asked about the case of Fr Marcial Maciel, the Mexican founder of the Legionaries of Christ, who sexually abused numerous seminarians.

He was also a drug addict, maintained relationships with two women and fathered up to six children, two of whom he was accused of abusing.

Despite this, he founded a successful and extremely wealthy religious order, which included a lay branch, Regnum Christi, and was close to Pope John Paul II and senior figures in the Vatican.

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AUSTRALIA
Latin American Herald Tribune

BANGKOK – Former Catholic bishop Ronald Mulkearns said Thursday when he had to tackle child abuse cases involving priests in his diocese in Australia, he knew it was wrong but was not sure if it was a crime, local press reported.

Mulkearns, 85, made an appearance through video-conference at the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse, which is investigating responses from religious, public and educative institutions to pederasty in recent decades in Australia.

The former bishop of Ballarat diocese (1971-1996), in the southeastern state of Victoria, said he never directly asked priests if they had abused minors, but knew about it through reports from psychologists, according to ABC news.

At least 14 priests were denounced in 130 cases of child abuse from the 1960s to the 1980s, and many of the victims committed suicide due to the trauma.

Gerald Francis Ridsdale, one of the abusers, was sentenced to eight years in 2014 for several cases of pedophilia, including one involving his own nephew, between 1961 and 1981.

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NEW YORK
Times of Israel

BY RAOUL WOOTLIFF AND JTA February 25, 2016

Following a tumultuous year of sexual misconduct allegations and a community effort to bring about his ouster, Rabbi Jonathan Rosenblatt told his New York synagogue Wednesday that he would step down as community rabbi.

The decision was announced in a letter sent to the members of the Riverdale Jewish Center by its president, Samson Fine.

“Rabbi Rosenblatt has today informed RJC’s leadership that he intends to step aside from the Senior Rabbinate of the RJC,” the email read. “The Shul’s Board of Trustees was informed at this evening Board meeting and we anticipate discussing transition details the Board in the next two weeks.”

The Riverdale Jewish Center had decided to keep Rosenblatt in place despite protests over reports of sauna chats with naked boys revealed in an exposé in The New York Times in May 2014.

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UNITED KINGDOM
Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse

22 February

The Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse has today announced March preliminary hearing dates for three further investigations, in addition the hearing on 9 March in Lord Greville Janner:

The Anglican Church
Lambeth Council
Cambridge House, Knowl View and Rochdale

The Preliminary Hearing on allegations of child sexual abuse involving the Anglican Church will take place on the morning of Wednesday 16 March, in Court 73 of the Royal Courts of Justice.

The Preliminary Hearing on allegations of child sexual abuse involving Cambridge House, Knowl View and Rochdale will take place in the afternoon of Wednesday 16 March, in court 73 of the Royal Courts of Justice.

The Preliminary Hearing on allegations of child sexual abuse involving children in the care of Lambeth Council will take place on the morning of Thursday 24 March, in Court 73 of the Royal Courts of Justice.

As previously announced, the Preliminary Hearing into allegations of child sexual abuse involving Lord Greville Janner and the institutional responses to those allegations will take place on Wednesday 9 March, in Court 73 of the Royal Courts of Justice.

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WALES
Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse

24 February

The Chair of the Inquiry Hon. Dame Lowell Goddard DNZM today met with eight Welsh victim and survivor groups at the Sexual Assault Referral Centre in Cardiff Royal Infirmary. Also at the meeting was Inquiry Panel member, Professor Sir Malcolm Evans, and Michael May and Lucy Duckworth from the Inquiry’s Victims and Survivors’ Consultative Panel (VSCP).

At the meeting were representatives from Rape and Sexual Assault Support Centre Wales, New Pathways, Seren, Survivors Trust Cymru, Stepping Stones, North Wales Sexual Assault Referral Centre, Cyfannol Women’s Aid, and Ynys Saff Cardiff and Vale Sexual Assault Referral Centre.

The visit marks the next step in the Inquiry’s work in Wales. During the course of the meeting, the Chair discussed the Truth Project and set out plans for the opening of the Inquiry’s Welsh office, which will be located in Cardiff. She also launched the Welsh version of the Inquiry’s website

Hon. Dame Lowell Goddard said,

“I would like to thank the representatives of the Rape and Sexual Assault Support Centre Wales, New Pathways, Seren, Survivors Trust Cymru, Stepping Stones, North Wales Sexual Assault Referral Centre, Cyfannol Women’s Aid, and Ynys Saff Cardiff and Vale Sexual Assault Referral Centre for taking the time to talk to me about their work and to Ynys Saff SARC for hosting our meeting today. Every single day these organisations work incredibly hard, supporting victims and survivors of child sexual abuse right across Wales.

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WALES
Wales Online

The judge investigating the child sexual abuse scandal in Britain has met Welsh victims’ groups ahead of the establishment of the inquiry’s dedicated office in Wales.

Dame Lowell Goddard is leading the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse, which was set up by the Home Secretary after wide-ranging abuse was revealed following the Jimmy Savile scandal .

The New Zealand judge will look into whether institutions in Wales and England failed to protect youngsters from sexual abuse.

And she has urged victims from any “city, town or village” to get in touch with the inquiry.

Her remit also includes demanding accountability for any past failings and will give recommendations to ensure similar failings are avoided in future.

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UNITED STATES
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

‘Spotlight’ 4 stars

Pittsburgh native Michael Keaton stars in the story of how the Boston Globe discovered a conspiracy to cover up clergy sexual abuse of children.

On his first day in 2001, editor Marty Baron (Liev Schreiber) orders the staff to look at defrocked priest and accused sexual predator John J. Geoghan and what the archdiocese did or did not know and do about him.

The task falls to the four-person Spotlight team — editor Walter “Robby” Robinson (Mr. Keaton) and reporters Mike Rezendes (Mark Ruffalo), Sacha Pfeiffer (Rachel McAdams) and Matt Carroll (Brian d’Arcy James) — which normally picks its own projects.

Mr. Keaton plays a member of the Globe investigative team as though he had been working in newsrooms all his life and reminds us he can shine in an ensemble as well as a leading role.

“Spotlight,” which nails the details about how reporters dress, eat and work, treats this investigation as a suspenseful detective story. But it never loses sight of the young people harmed by pedophile priests, the church that figuratively and literally looms large throughout, and the mandate to keep pursuing the story when other editors might have been satisfied with far less much earlier.

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UNITED STATES
Sky News (Australia)

A victim of abuse by a Catholic priest, whose story is the focus of the Oscar contender Spotlight, says the Vatican is still failing to tackle the scandal.

Phil Saviano was repeatedly assaulted, along with several school friends, by a priest in their small home town near Boston in the 1960s.

He revealed his abuse in the 1990s and a decade later handed the dossiers of information to the Boston Globe’s ‘Spotlight’ investigations team.

Their work uncovered evidence that the church in Boston was aware of abuse by dozens of priests and had sought to keep it quiet.

The movie Spotlight, starring Michael Keaton, Mark Ruffalo and Rachel McAdams, is regarded as a favourite to land the Academy Award for Best Picture at Sunday’s ceremony.

Mr Saviano, who still lives in Boston, told Sky News he has been disappointed by the Vatican’s response to the now-global scandal.

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CANADA
The Peterborough Examiner

By Jason Bain, The Peterborough Examiner
Wednesday, February 24, 2016

A former city youth pastor given a 90-day intermittent sentence last year for historical sexual assault will face trial again late this year for outstanding charges of administering a stupefying substance and administering a noxious thing.

Clifton Pelley, 50, appeared in Peterborough Superior Court of Justice on Wednesday where the non-jury trial expected to last between seven and 10 days was scheduled to begin Dec. 5 in Lindsay, with pre-trial motions set for Sept. 26 and assignment court Oct. 17.

The outstanding charges relate to another alleged victim in the case who was not part of Pelley’s non-jury trial, which took place from Oct. 20 to 28, 2014.

A judicial pre-trial, where lawyers from both sides meet before a judge to narrow the scope of a case, usually behind closed doors, was also completed Wednesday – even though Pelley did not have a lawyer formally on the record.

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ISRAEL
Australian Jewish News

Criminals across the world will be watching the case of Malka Leifer very closely. Not because they are necessarily interested in her alleged crimes or have any direct connection to the former Adass head teacher, but because if she can avoid extradition she might set a precedent others will try and follow.

Leifer, who is living in Israel, is fighting an extradition order to return to Australia and face charges relating to child sexual abuse allegations.

So far, she isn’t resisting the order on its merits or by claiming that she has asylum in Israel or by asking for more time to prepare her defence. Her team is simply stating that she has crippling panic attacks before her court appearances that prevent her from showing up.

As a result, the process is facing delay after delay after delay.

And pleading for his client’s health to be taken into account, her lawyer requested last Friday that the case be dismissed, asking the court, “Why are we doing this to her?”

The answer is very simple. Leifer is wanted by Victorian police to face 74 counts of sexual assault.

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COLORADO
Western Slope Now

[with video]

The Senate is seeing two bills involving domestic violence and sexual assault after the House passes both with enormous support.

House Bill 16-1260 wants to double the statute of limitations to report sexual assault from 10 years to 20.

House Bill 16-1066 takes aim at habitual domestic violence offenders, creating their fourth offense open to a class five felony charge, should the prosecute choose.

“”I had two Colorado Women who shared with me their story of being drugged and assaulted by Bill Cosby.” Rep. Rhonda Fields said, a Democrat representing Aurora.

She wrote a previous bill that was killed aiming to eliminate the statute completely. Fields said that bill would have been a stretch.

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AUSTRALIA
Coffs Coast Advocate

Chris Calcino | 25th Feb 2016

BOTH sides of New South Wales politics have backed legislation removing the statute of limitations on civil child abuse claims.

The bill is moving through the lower house and attracting support from all corners.

However, Labor Member for Prospect Hugh McDermott claimed the government was playing politics with the issue.

Mr McDermott used his maiden speech to parliament last year to pay tribute to his mother, who was abused after being taken from her parents and sent to Bidura Children’s Home as a small child.

“I do express my disappointment that a similar bill was put forward by the Opposition last year, and the government decided to oppose that bill,” Mr McDermott said.

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UNITED STATES
USA Today

Maeve McDermott, USATODAY February 25, 2016

Before Liev Schreiber donned wire-framed glasses to play Marty Baron in Spotlight, the newspaper editor was already a legend in his own right, from spearheading the Boston Globe’s investigation of the Catholic Church to winning Pulitzer Prizes at nearly every other paper he’s edited, most recently as the executive editor of the Washington Post.

On Thursday night, Baron discussed the Oscar-nominated film — that he’s seen “eight times,” if anyone’s counting — in a wide-ranging conversation at American University, discussing everything from the film’s impact on abuse survivors and the shocking details uncovered by screenwriters to his opinion of the Revenant.

He loves Schreiber’s portrayal

Baron had nothing but praise for Schreiber, who he’ll presumably meet again when they both travel to the Oscars on Sunday. “He’s a fantastic actor,” he said, joking, “Since the movie came out people say he looks like me.”

He’s been approached by abuse survivors sharing their stories for the first time

“It’s resonated with abuse survivors in an incredible way,” Baron said, sharing an anecdote about an 82-year-old man who, after watching Spotlight at a screening, shared his own account of abuse for the first time.

“He said he’d tried twice to see this movie and couldn’t make it past the parking lot of the theater. He saw it at this screening … he’d never told anyone, never spoken to anyone about it before. He talked about how it’d stayed with him his entire life. He said, ‘All I want to say is thank you,’ and that was incredibly moving, and then he walked back to his family.

That sort of thing has happened at a lot of events I’ve been at … abuse survivors encouraged to come forward and talk about the abuse they suffered.”

And newspapers who’ve changed their minds about investigative reporting

It’s hard to come away from Spotlight and not feel reinvigorated about the role of journalism. Apparently, this extends to journalism execs.

“I’ve heard from publishers saying they are rededicating themselves to investigative reporting,” Baron said.

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AUSTRALIA
ABC News

By Stephanie Dalzell

A former Catholic priest has been sentenced to more than two years in prison for child assault offences in New South Wales dating back to the 1970s.

Robert Flaherty, 72, assaulted three boys in their early teens in Sydney and at Mollymook, on the state’s south coast, during the 1970s and 1980s, but was only arrested in 2013.

A complaint was first made in 1972, however instead of being referred to police, Flaherty was transferred to a parish in Ryde.

The former priest pleaded guilty to three offences of indecent assault, but was also found guilty by a jury last September of two further offences.

He appeared at Sydney’s Downing Centre court and sat impassively as his sentence was handed down.

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ROME
ABC News

By Europe bureau chief Lisa Millar

Cardinal George Pell’s private secretary has sent an email to colleagues in Rome asking for them to attend a royal commission hearing beginning at 10pm (local time) on Sunday in Europe.

A copy of the email, seen by the ABC, was sent out to Fathers and Seminarians saying Cardinal Pell would be pleased if they could provide support with their presence at the hotel.

It tells them to register with the Royal Commission.

The note appears to come from Cardinal Pell’s private secretary, Father Mark Withoos.

Father Withoos confirmed he sent a private email to priest friends of the Cardinal who had made inquires about how they might help when he gave his video evidence.

The email has now been seen by several seminarians, clergymen and media representations, and the ABC is aware that there have been conversations with Father Withoos about gathering support.

The email says there will be at least 15 victims and advocates from Australia, and possibly others who might arrive from elsewhere in Europe, as well as a large media “cohort”.

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AUSTRALIA
The Guardian

Australian Associated Press
Wednesday 24 February 2016

A Victorian bishop says he tried to protect the church’s reputation and ensure pedophile priests did not offend again but regrets he did not handle it differently.

Ronald Mulkearns, the bishop of Ballarat from 1971 to 1997, said he retired early because he was not handling the problem of a number of cases of pedophilia in the diocese as well as he should have.

“I certainly regret that I didn’t deal differently with pedophilia,” he told the child abuse royal commission on Thursday. “We had no idea, or I had no idea, of the effects of the incidents that took place.”

The commission has heard Mulkearns knew about priests who abused children and moved them between parishes, also sending some for treatment.

The counsel assisting the commission Gail Furness SC put to the bishop that he chose to protect the church’s reputation over protecting children in the way he dealt with the abuse complaints.

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AUSTRALIA
news.com.au

Megan Neil
AAP

Prayers couldn’t help Gerald Ridsdale, he needed jail or castration, a psychiatrist says.

Hard-core sexual deviants like pedophile priest Ridsdale had significant personality disorders, had no concept of empathy and were masters of deception, former Franciscan priest and psychiatrist Dr Peter Evans said.

“They are far more difficult to treat. They need to be in jail,” Dr Evans told the child abuse royal commission.

If the hard-core deviants were not in jail they would need medical castration, the use of medication to suppress their sexual drive for as long as it took for them to learn to control their behaviour, he said.

“It’s very difficult to treat them out of jail. It’s almost impossible to stop them acting out.”

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AUSTRALIA
The Age

February 25, 2016

Chris Johnston

John Skewes was sitting at home in Ballarat on Thursday, reading about all the allegations against and proven crimes by Catholic clergy in the regional city he has lived in all his life.

As a victim of abuse himself – not once but twice, although not by Catholics or Christian Brothers – Mr Skewes, 66, decided to drive to the Nazareth House nursing home, a grand Victorian building beside Lake Wendouree. This is where former Ballarat bishop Ronald Mulkearns lies in palliative care, looked after by nuns. He is 85. Today he was giving evidence by video link to the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse.

There John met two women, Gabby Short and Wendy Dyckhoff, holding a quiet vigil outside the nursing home. Both spent time there as children when it was an orphanage and was ruled by notorious paedophile priest Gerald Ridsdale, the chaplain. The women say orphanage girls were sexually, physically and emotionally abused by him. Bishop Mulkearns shuffled priests, including Ridsdale, between parishes, where they continued to offend.

But it was too much for Mr Skewes, who says the “high level of anxiety” in Ballarat while the royal commission rolls through town triggers his own anxiety, and when he got to Nazareth House, he broke down and cried in the women’s arms. He had trouble speaking and forming words. His acute anxiety – caused by the abuse he suffered as a child – literally renders him speechless.

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AUSTRALIA
Daily Mail

By TANG LI FOR DAILY MAIL AUSTRALIA and AAP

A long-time Victorian Catholic bishop has apologised for moving pedophile priests among parishes to avoid scandalising the church.

In his apology, he said he’s sorry and regrets not doing his job very well in handling pedophilia in the Ballarat diocese.

But retired bishop Ronald Mulkearns, 85, denies trying to cover up widespread child sex abuse.

Bishop Mulkearns knew about pedophile priests whom he sent for treatment and moved among parishes, the child abuse royal commission has heard.

The 1971-97 Ballarat bishop admitted he wanted to protect the reputation of the church but told the inquiry he was trying to stop further offending.

Counsel assisting the commission Gail Furness SC said Bishop Mulkearns covered up the conduct of pedophile priests.

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AUSTRALIA
Canberra Times

February 25 2016

Christopher Knaus

A child abuse campaigner has urged Australian governments to follow the ACT’s proposed mandatory disclosure scheme, saying it would have saved children like him from being molested at the hands of a Marist brother decades ago.

Damian De Marco, named ACT Local Hero of the Year for his campaigning, is set to speak at a NSW Ombudsman’s conference in Sydney on Friday, where he will praise the ACT’s “courageous” plans to prevent institutional child sexual abuse and urge other states and territories to follow suit.

That scheme would see organisations with responsibility for children legally required to report any allegations of abuse or neglect to a new independent statutory authority, which would then handle complaints, denying institutions the chance to deal with them internally.

Chief Minister Andrew Barr confirmed on Thursday that he would seek to raise the issue of a consistent, strong national approach to reportable conduct at the next Council of Australian Governments meeting.

“Our children deserve to be protected wherever they live. Some jurisdictions, such as NSW, already have similar measures in place,” Mr Barr said.

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AUSTRALIA
The Standard

By MELISSA CUNNINGHAM
Feb. 25, 2016

A FORMER Ballarat Bishop who presided over decades of paedophile priests says he is “terribly sorry” for not taking the mounting allegations of sexual abuse of children seriously, admitting the situation was out of control and he did not know how to handle it.

“I wish I had of done things differently in that time,” he told the Royal Commission into Child Sexual Abuse on Thursday.

“I really didn’t know what to do or how to do it.”

Appearing via video link from a Nazareth House nursing home,terminally ill Bishop Mulkearns, 85, said he could not have comprehended the gravity of damage the sexual abuse of children by clergy would caused.

“In those days, it’s a long time ago but we really didn’t know how quite to deal with these things,” he said.

“Well I didn’t anyway.”

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.

HAWAII
Hawaii News Now

By Keoki Kerr

SALT LAKE, OAHU (HawaiiNewsNow) –
A longtime Catholic school teacher accused of molesting dozens of boys in three states for decades is living on Oahu, but his name and those of priests accused of sexual misconduct are not listed in the state’s sex offender registry.

Catholic schoolteacher brother Edward Courtney is accused of sexually abusing more than 50 boys from New York to Chicago to Seattle over three decades.

“Sadly, while bad, it’s not alone. There are other priests who have molested hundreds of kids,” said Michael Pfau, a Seattle-based attorney who has represented hundreds of alleged victims of Catholic clergy and teachers, including 52 men in the Courtney case.

In 2013, Courtney, 81, moved to Oahu and now lives in an apartment on Likini Street in Salt Lake.

But you won’t find Courtney’s name or that of any priests accused of sexual molestation in Hawaii’s Sexual Offender Registry, because they were never convicted of a crime.

“Because the criminal statute of limitations expired for most of these sex crimes, very very few Catholic priests, brothers and other clerics went to jail,” said Pfau, who represented 52 men who sued Courtney, claiming he abused them when they were 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.