ABUSE TRACKER

UNITED KINGDOM
Independent Catholic News

Wednesday, June 22, 2016

Cardinal Vincent Nichols has sent a message to the annual Anglophone Safeguarding Conference currently underway in Rome.

He stresses that although much has been done, there’s much more to do “in both the prevention and response to this crime.”

The Rt Revd Marcus Stock, Bishop of Leeds and Vice Chair of the National Catholic Safeguarding Commission, delivered the message to delegates at the event that runs from 20 – 23 June and is jointly hosted by the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of England and Wales and Kenya’s Conference of Catholic Bishops.

Describing the abuse of children and vulnerable people as a betrayal of trust and a “betrayal of the trust of faith”, Cardinal Nichols stresses that abuse “destroys a level of human trust but also destroys the trusting faith particularly of a child or of a vulnerable person, at any age. Their trust in God is shattered. And the essence of the mission of the Church is to offer and witness to the trustworthiness of the Word of God. Any form of abuse, and particularly of children, within the Church is therefore a betrayal of the very essence of the purpose and character of the Church. It is a most profound wound.”

The Cardinal goes on to make it clear that the primary focus and motivation of the Church’s work in the vital area of safeguarding must be set on those who have been deeply injured in their humanity, in their capacity to trust and relate to others, and in how they form trusting relationships:

“The wellbeing of the survivors of abuse, and our responsibility for what has been done, must drive us forward in this work of listening to them. It is that attentive listening which then enables us to respond more adequately to their needs and to create environments in which they are truly safe and supported.”

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UNITED STATES
Algemeiner

Eric Allen

Six weeks ago, I emailed Rabbi Mark Dratch, executive vice president of the Rabbinical Council of America (RCA), and published a detailed letter expressing my concern that the RCA was not doing nearly enough to protect Orthodox children from sexual assault.

The 2,000-word letter pointed out how the RCA hasn’t implemented or enforced four separate sets of child-safety resolutions that it has adopted over the last 23 years. I asked him to require that all RCA rabbis publicly prohibit from their synagogues, schools and yeshivas anyone convicted of a child sex crime. I wrote this letter in part because, in a phone call that I had with Rabbi Dratch 7 months ago, he told me that he wouldn’t commit to enforcing the RCA child protection resolutions or require rabbis to ban child sex offenders from Orthodox institutions.

He also told me in that phone call that publicizing the identities of convicted Orthodox child molesters was a “no-brainer” — yet the RCA still doesn’t do it.

I cited an essay that Rabbi Dratch wrote 10 years ago that advocates for abusive rabbis to be excommunicated and defrocked, yet the RCA, to my knowledge has never done so to an abusive rabbi.

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IOWA
Siouxland News

[with video]

BY TYLER MCGHEE TUESDAY, JUNE 21ST 2016

At just 12 years old, Tim Lennon says he was raped by Father Peter Murphey after the priest joined the Blessed Sacrament parish in 1960.

“That sadness, or depression, anger, they don’t leave,” said Lennon.

Lennon, who’s lived in California for years, was one of 12 in an Irish-Catholic family. His sister Cathy Frisch who lives in Dakota Dunes, says there was always something “different” about her brother compared to other kids.

“I do see some things that he went through in high school,” said Frish. “He’s pretty reclusive at times. It wasn’t that he didn’t have friends; he did go out, but it just didn’t seem like he was happy.”

Lennon believes it was his twin daughters turning 12 a few years ago, the same age he says he was molested that the memories started resurfacing, long after Father Murphy passed away in 1980. It was through newspaper ads Lennon posted in Father Murphey’s previous parish locations. Lennon says he learned he wasn’t the only one.

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IRELAND
i News

Katie Grant
Wednesday June 22nd 2016

The Bon Secours Mother and Baby Home is notorious for the hundreds of babies and children who died there. Katie Grant meets a group of former “Home Babies” who suffered unimaginable hardships and are determined to expose the truth about the church-run institutions

Marie* beams with pride as she describes her two adult children. Unlike her, they were well-educated, could read and write by the time they started nursery and grew up showered with love and affection. Her joy is plain to see. But the 64-year-old Irish émigré has been keeping a secret their entire lives. Marie was born in the Bon Secours Mother and Baby Home, an institution for unmarried mothers, and suffered years of abuse at the convent-run orphanage where she resided.

For decades Marie’s “impure” background was a source of enormous shame for her yet she yearned to be open with her children. In 2014, history caught up with her and the prospect of broaching the subject became unthinkable. “They love me so much that I think it would break their hearts,” she says.

Bon Secours: nearly 800 dead

Two years ago this month, an amateur historian went public with the terrible discovery she had made while researching Bon Secours, which operated in Tuam, Galway, between 1925 and 1961. Almost 800 babies and children had died at the home during that period, Catherine Corless revealed. Denied headstones and coffins, all the babies and children were interred in unconsecrated ground next to the home, she said. Her findings sent shock waves across Ireland.

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MAINE
Bangor Daily News

By Darren Fishell, BDN Staff

Posted June 21, 2016

PORTLAND, Maine — A federal judge has tossed out a jury’s $14.5 million verdict against a Freeport-based advocate for children sexually abused by clergy, finding the plaintiffs’ defamation case had a fatal flaw from the start.

U.S. District Court Judge John Woodcock ruled Monday that the federal court did not have jurisdiction over the complaint from Catholic brother Michael Geilenfeld and a nonprofit for which he worked because most of his life, assets and affairs are in Haiti and not his home state of Iowa.

In his opinion, Woodcock called the introduction of the late jurisdiction question “an extraordinary turn of events.”

“To say that the defendant raised this issue late is an understatement,” Woodcock wrote in the introduction to his opinion, “but unlike virtually any other legal issue, a court’s jurisdiction cannot be waived and may be raised at any time, even after a verdict and on appeal, because jurisdiction goes to whether the court can legally hear the case.”

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CANADA
The Telegram

Barb Sweet
Published on June 21, 2016

Several decades after a gesture of kindness to all Newfoundland orphans from an American serviceman, a former Mount Cashel orphanage resident’s eyes filled with tears Tuesday.

“He was just fantastic,” said the grieving man — not being named here because there is a publication ban on his identity due to the ongoing Mount Cashel civil trial.

The man was talking about Earl Chilton, who has nothing to do with the trial, but brought a bright spot to a dark time in the Avalon Peninsula man’s life back in the 1950s while he was a boy at the now infamous Mount Cashel orphanage and Chilton was stationed at the nearby American base Fort Pepperrell in Pleasantville.

The former orphanage resident received an email from Chilton’s family that the 89-year-old ex-serviceman had died Monday in Bowling Green, Va.

Chilton brightened the lives of hundreds of Newfoundland orphans through a fundraising effort to give them Christmas gifts — for some the only ones they ever had as children.

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NEW MEXICO
Wall Street Journal

By TOM CORRIGAN
Jun 22, 2016

The Roman Catholic Diocese of Gallup, N.M., on Tuesday won court approval of its plan to compensate clergy sexual abuse victims, paving the way for it to exit bankruptcy.

Following a hearing at the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Albuquerque, N.M., Judge David Thuma signed off on the $25 million plan, which is largely funded by contributions from the diocese, insurance carriers, parishes and sales of the diocese’s property.

The bulk of the funds will be used to compensate victims, according to Susan Boswell, the diocese’s lawyer. Fifty-seven victims filed claims against the diocese, though not all will receive a payout because of prior settlements.

“This is, monetarily, a good resolution for the abuse victims,” Judge Thuma said. “I think it’s more money that any of us thought could be raised in this case.”

In return for victim compensation, the plan provides legal protections for the diocese and the other contributors that will shield them from future lawsuits tied to past abuse.

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WASHINGTON (DC)
Washingtonian

By Harry Jaffe on June 21, 2016

Barry Freundel, the former rabbi of Georgetown’s Kesher Israel synagogue who pleaded guilty last year to secretly filming a women’s changing room at a ritual Jewish bath, was back in court Tuesday appealing his jail sentence. Freundel argued in DC’s Court of Appeals that the six-and-a-half year sentence he received last year on a slew of voyeurism charges was illegal and should be reduced to less than a year.

Freundel was sentenced in May 2015 on 52 counts, one each for the 52 women he admitted to videotaping without their permission before and after they prepared for the mikvah, a dunk in a bath that Orthodox Jewish women use for ritual cleansing and conversion. Freundel argued that the judge should have sentenced him for a single count of voyeurism, which would carry a one-year jail term.

Freundel’s lawyers made the same argument last May before DC Superior Court Judge Geoffrey Alprin, who heard the case and delivered the sentence. Alprin denied the motion to reduce the sentence. Freundel appealed.

The rabbi’s downfall, which will continue into next year as his victims pursue a civil case against him, has shattered DC’s Orthodox Jewish community. From humble origins in Brooklyn, Freundel, 65, became an authority in modern orthodoxy and rabbi to Kesher Israel, one of the most prominent synagogues in the District. He taught at Georgetown and Towson Universities, advised the White House on spiritual matters and became the country’s chief authority on Orthodox conversion.

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WASHINGTON (DC)
Forward

Julie Wiener
June 22, 2016

( JTA ) — An attorney for Rabbi Barry Freundel argued in a Washington, D.C., appeals court that the rabbi’s prison term for secretly videotaping women in his synagogue’s mikvah was too long.

The attorney argued Tuesday that the 6 1/2-year sentence handed down last year was illegal, The Associated Press reported . Freundel, a once-prominent modern Orthodox rabbi in Washington, had pleaded guilty.

According to the AP, the court “seemed likely to reject” the attorney’s argument that the sentence should have been limited to one year in prison. The website of the U.S. Attorney’s Office of the District of Columbia said it “will likely take several weeks to several months after the argument for the Court of Appeals to issue its decision.”

Freundel, 64, began serving his sentence in a Washington jail in May 2015. However, at his request the following month, the Superior Court of the District of Columbia recommended that he be transferred to a federal correctional facility either in Otisville, New York, or Miami.

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WASHINGTON (DC)
Baltimore Sun

JESSICA GRESKO

WASHINGTON (AP) — A once-prominent Orthodox rabbi’s argument that his sentence for secretly videotaping nude women at a Jewish ritual bath should have been limited to one year in jail seemed unlikely to sway a Washington appeals court at a hearing Tuesday.

Rabbi Bernard Freundel, a former Towson University professor, was arrested in 2014 after one of his recording devices was discovered at the National Capital Mikvah in Washington. Prosecutors found he filmed some 150 women using recording devices hidden in a clock radio, a fan and a tissue box holder, and he ultimately took a plea deal in the case and was sentenced to approximately 6 1/2 years.

Freundel acknowledged as part of the plea deal that from 2009 to 2014 he secretly recorded women in a showering and changing area of the mikvah, a ritual cleansing bath he worked to have built. A statute of limitations would have barred prosecutors from charging Freundel for every recording, and he pleaded guilty to 52 counts of voyeurism, a charge that carries up to a year in jail.

A judge sentenced him to 45 days on each count, running the sentences one after another.

On Tuesday, his lawyer, Jeffrey Harris, argued to a three-judge panel of the District of Columbia Court of Appeals that the sentences should have merged and run concurrently, meaning Freundel would have served 45 days.

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UNITED STATES
Frum Follies

Shayna Goldberg describes what is obviously Pogrow in a post on her brother-in-law’s FaceBook wall

I knew this rabbi. 18 years ago, I came to Israel for the year to study Torah in a seminary [Michlalah] where he taught. He lived on campus with his young family in the apartment right beneath mine. From the first time I met him, my overwhelming gut instinct was to stay away. There was something creepy about the way he knew all of our SAT scores by heart, even before we arrived. The way he knew exactly who was registered for an Ivy League college.

The way he pursued and initiated chavrutot with very specific girls. Never the weak ones. Only the “best and the brightest.” It felt like a kind of game for him. A challenge. Could he crack the toughest ones? Break them down and then rebuild them? By some, it was considered flattering if he chose you. And there were girls who were hurt and devastated because they didn’t make the cut.

Once he forged that connection, he was manipulative, he played mind games, and he fostered dependence and hero worship. He was sarcastic, biting, and cynical, and he used his sharp mind and his Torah knowledge in cunning ways. He was brilliant, absolutely brilliant. He knew Torah by heart, and of course his way of looking at things was always “right.” You could never really challenge his read or his understanding because he was held up by everyone as the ultimate talmid chacham. He had mastered Torah. And he was only 27.

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SWITZERLAND
swissinfo

By Simon Bradley

Victims of sexual abuse by Catholic priests in Switzerland may now seek financial compensation and other forms of reparation in cases that have exceeded the statute of limitations. This follows the launch of an independent sexual abuse commission. However, payments are likely to remain symbolic.

The fight against sexual abuse within the Catholic Church took a step forwards on Tuesday with the official launch of CECAR, a sexual abuse commission that is “neutral and independent of the authorities of the Catholic Church”.

CECAR is the result of almost six years’ negotiations and agreement between victims’ groups, parliamentarians and the Swiss Bishops Conference. The initiative is aimed at victims who were minors at the time of the incidents, but whose cases have encountered legal time limits.

“Exceeding the statute of limitations does not wipe out suffering,” said Charles Morerod, the Bishop for Lausanne, Geneva and Fribourg at a news conference in Lausanne. He was one of the co-signatories of an accord in 2015 between the Catholic Church and the victims’ group SAPEC that led to the creation of CECAR.

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NEW MEXICO
Las Cruces Sun-News

Associated Press June 21, 2016

ALBUQUERQUE — Victims of clergy sexual abuse have approved of a plan for the Gallup Diocese to dole out millions of dollars in compensation.

The Albuquerque Journal reports that an attorney for 57 abuse survivors told a federal judge Tuesday that all had signed off on the plan.

Under the agreement, each claimant will receive roughly $350,000.

The Gallup Diocese is establishing a fund of between $21 million and $25 million for professional fees and settlements.

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MISSOURI
Washington Times

ST. LOUIS (AP) – A Kansas City, Missouri, man has filed a suit against the Archdiocese of St. Louis, saying he was the victim of repeated sexual abuse by a now deceased priest.

The St. Louis Post-Dispatch (http://bit.ly/28MkBVD ) reports that Tom Viviano alleges that Father Charles DeGuire forced him to perform oral sex on him multiple times at St. Aloysius Gonzaga and on a boat.

The Associated Press usually doesn’t name victims of sexual assault, but Viviano spoke publicly about the lawsuit at a press conference outside the St. Louis Cathedral Basilica on Tuesday.

The misconduct allegedly took place when Viviano served as an altar boy from fifth to eighth grade. DeGuire worked at the parish, which shuttered more than 10 years ago.

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CANADA
Edmonton Journal

JANET FRENCH

Published on: June 21, 2016

School children should learn in every grade how to prevent and report sexual abuse and assault, says the board chairwoman of Edmonton Catholic Schools.

The Catholic school board voted 6-1 Tuesday to push the Alberta government to include in its revamp of the K-12 curriculum annual lessons to empower children against sexual abuse.

“(Perpetrators) say, ‘This is our secret,’ and they scare the children, and they intimidate them, and the children don’t have the capacity to know what to do, who to talk to, who to trust,” board chair Marilyn Bergstra said.

Some public schools in the U.S. are required to teach sexual assault prevention thanks to Erin’s Law. The law is named for sexual assault survivor Erin Merryn, who pushed for states to pass the law requiring school districts to teach children to “tell on anyone who tries to touch their private parts.”

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GUAM
KUAM

Updated: Jun 22, 2016

By Krystal Paco

The attorney representing all of Archbishop Anthony Apuron’s accusers demands answers. In a letter addressed to Archbishop Savio Hon Tai Fai on Tuesday, Attorney David Lujan wants to know the status of the investigation into allegations made against Apuron. Archbishop Hon was appointed by the Vatican as an apostolic administrator while Apuron was placed on leave.

All of Apuron’s alleged victims were altar boys at Mount Carmel Church in Agat where Apuron was a priest at the time.

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UNITED STATES
The Open Tabernacle: Here Comes Everybody

Posted on June 22, 2016 by Betty Clermont

n 1990, there were 877 priests in the Archdiocese of Buenos Aires.

Typically, priests are selected for auxiliary bishop – the first rung up the hierarchical career ladder – from those who have distinguished themselves working for the (arch)diocese. For example, the new auxiliary bishop in Philadelphia had been coordinator and spiritual director of the archdiocesan seminary, an auditor and had served on three boards for the archdiocese in addition to heading five parishes

At the time he was chosen in 1992 as auxiliary bishop for the Archdiocese of Buenos Aires, Fr. Jorge Mario Bergoglio was assigned to the Jesuit Church in the city of Córdoba, 435 miles northwest of Buenos Aires, and had never held a position working for the archdiocese.

Additionally, like all Jesuits, Bergoglio had vowed to “never strive for or ambition any prelacy or dignity outside the Society.” He would become the only Jesuit to head the Buenos Aires archdiocese in its 400 year history and the only Jesuit pope of the Roman Catholic Church.

The Church in Latin America

Since the time of the Spanish and Portuguese conquistadores, prelates of the Church aligned with the mostly European-descent ruling class. However, in the early 1960s, the Latin American Episcopal Council, known by its Spanish acronym CELAM, helped push the Second Vatican Council (1962-65) toward a more progressive stance. At their 1968 conference in Medellin, Columbia, CELAM officially supported the liberation theology more fully developed by Gustavo Gutiérrez in A Theology of Liberation: History, Politics and Salvation.

The final document produced at Medellin declared: “The Church – the People of God – will lend its support to the downtrodden of every social class so that they might come to know their rights and how to make use of them.” Liberation theology was falsely characterized as “Marxist” because Gutiérrez had written: “Poverty is not inevitable; collectively the poor can organize and facilitate social change.”

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UNITED STATES
New York Magazine

By Catie L’Heureux

It’s hard to believe anyone could rape and brainwash so many people and get away with it for so long, but Victor Barnard did. The Minnesota religious cult leader convinced 150 people he was like God, invited them all to live on an isolated campground, and coerced the parents in the group into letting him rape their oldest daughters (his “maidens”) for years, all in the name of Jesus Christ.

Fifty-four-year-old Barnard fled the U.S. two years ago after two women accused him of abuse, sparking an international manhunt and landing him on the U.S. Marshals Service’s Most Wanted List. He was captured and held in Brazil for over a year until last weekend, when he was finally extradited back to Pine County, over an hour’s drive north of Minneapolis. On Monday, Barnard appeared in court for the first time, facing 59 counts of first- and third-degree sexual assault of minors from the two women who claim he raped them for years.

The judge set bail at $1.5 million. Prosecutors, who are preparing for Barnard’s next court appearance on July 5, say Barnard’s followers are now liquidating their assets to pay for his release.

How did this happen? Here, the horrifying story of Barnard’s cult, the “maidens” he allegedly assaulted, and how he might be brought to justice.

The cult: Before setting out on his own, Barnard was first a member of the Way International, a nondenominational Christian sect known for encouraging followers to interpret the Bible on their own terms. With tens of thousands of followers in 35 countries, the group fell apart in the mid-1980s. Its founder and his successor were both accused of brainwashing and having sex with female followers.

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MARYLAND
WJLA

[with video]

BY TOM ROUSSEY, ABC7 TUESDAY, JUNE 21ST 2016

CLINTON, Md. (ABC7) — A woman who says she was the victim of repeated sexual abuse by a pastor when she was 13 and 14 is speaking out to ABC7 — and now that pastor’s church has been ordered to pay $656,000 in damages for pain and suffering.

The alleged victim, who asked us to call her by her first name of Angel, says the sexual abuse happened in 2008. She says “Apostle” Jean Auguste took an interest in her from the time she and her mother joined Abundant Harvest Church, then in Clinton, Maryland when she was 12 years old.

When she was 13, Angel says Auguste invited her and her mother to live with him and his family. Angel says her mother had just left an abusive relationship.

A lawsuit alleges that during a time when all of the adults were out of the house except for Auguste, he entered Angel’s room, touched her inappropriately, then pressured her into losing her virginity by having sexual intercourse, telling her she would be cursed by God if she refused him.

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UNITED KINGDOM
Lexology

Bolt Burdon Kemp

Dino Nocivelli

United Kingdom June 21 2016

We are happy to report that one of our clients has recently succeeded in a compensation claim for injuries suffered at the hands of a Catholic priest for childhood sexual abuse.

Background – the abuse

Our client was sexually assaulted by his family priest Father Michael Smith from the approximate age of 15 to 17. This abuse took place at Corpus Christi Roman Catholic Church, Tonbridge, Kent where Smith was the parish priest.

Father Michael Smith was a constant presence in our client’s life from birth. He performed a number of religious ceremonies including his Baptism, First Confession, First Holy Communion and Confirmation. Our client also confessed to him on a number of occasions.

Our client and his family were an active member of the congregation and our client was made an altar server by Smith while still at primary school before he was employed to work at the church about 15 years old and this is when the sexual assaults commenced.

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NEW ZEALAND
The Aucklander

John Cousins
John is a senior reporter at the Bay of Plenty Times

The gritty realism of double Academy award winning movie Spotlight is a reminder of what can be achieved when the writers, director and cast stay resolutely true to the ideals of storytelling.

Spotlight would have failed the emotional test if it had succumbed to over dramatising the true story of how Boston reporters revealed the shocking extent of sexual abuse by priests.

Instead, the sure hand of co-writer and director Tom McCarthy delivered a gut-churning cinematic tour-de-force in which the grown-up victims of the sordid sexual predilections of priests helped grafting reporters from The Boston Globe’s Spotlight team to lift the lid.

Everywhere in Spotlight are glimpses of pathos and human frailty, balanced against the determination of the church’s hierarchy and their civilian allies to keep the sins of priests institutionalised.

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MISSOURI
St. Louis Post-Dispatch

By Ashley Jost St. Louis Post-Dispatch

ST. LOUIS • A Kansas City man filed suit Tuesday against the Archdiocese of St. Louis claiming he was the victim of repeated sexual abuse by a priest who has since died.

In his suit, Tom Viviano alleges that Father Charles DeGuire forced him to perform oral sex on him “on numerous occasions” at St. Aloysius Gonzaga and on a boat that the suit said DeGuire either owned or used.

The alleged misconduct took place when Viviano was an altar boy in fifth to eighth grade. DeGuire worked at the parish, which closed in 2005.

The lawsuit also alleges that a visiting priest was aware of the abuse and another priest participated, Viviano’s attorney Rebecca Randles said.

According to BishopAccountability.org – a website that has a database of Roman Catholic priests, nuns, brothers, deacons and seminarians who have been publicly accused of sexual abuse against children or possession child pornography – DeGuire is the 50th St. Louis priest accused of misconduct.

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NEW JERSEY
The Record

BY KIBRET MARKOS
STAFF WRITER | THE RECORD

A Passaic woman testified on Tuesday that her 14-year-old daughter told her a priest at a Catholic church in her neighborhood sat her on his lap and touched her inappropriately three years ago.

The mother, whose name is being withheld to protect her daughter’s identity, testified in Superior Court in Paterson that the family lived across the street from the St. Mary’s Assumption Church on Market Street, where The Rev. Jose Lopez was a priest.

The mother said her daughter started going to the church at a time when she was depressed and that she felt better once she started going regularly and met Lopez frequently.

She said Lopez was like a family member who was often invited to meals or other occasions at their home.

In 2013, however, Lopez told her that “he went too far” with her daughter but assured her that all he did was place her on his lap and hug and kiss her, she said. Lopez also told her that the police were involved and asked her not to say anything bad about him if investigators asked her about him, she said.

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PENNSYLVANIA
PennLive

By Ivey DeJesus | idejesus@pennlive.com

The Altoona-Johnstown Diocese on Tuesday confirmed it had placed on leave a predator priest named in two sex abuse lawsuits.

Tony DeGol, spokesman for the diocese, said Bishop Mark Bartchak had placed the Rev. Charles Bodziak on leave in January “as a precautionary measure” pending further investigations into multiple allegations of sexual misconduct, including child sexual abuse, leveled on the priest dating back more than 30 years.

Bodziak was removed from his assignment at St. Michael’s Church in St. Michael

Bodziak was on Tuesday named defendant in lawsuits filed in Blair County by two women who claim he molested them as children more than 40 years ago.

“His status has not changed, and the Diocese does not discuss any pending or current litigation,” Degol said.

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NEW MEXICO
Albuquerque Journal

By Maggie Shepard / Journal Staff Writer
Tuesday, June 21st, 2016

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — Victims of predatory priests and workers with the Diocese of Gallup have finally agreed to and won a multi-million dollar settlement for their claims, a federal judge ruled this morning.

U.S. Bankruptcy Judge David T. Thuma in May approved a plan for the payments, but the plan had to be approved by a vote among claimants.

James Stang, a Los Angeles attorney who represents 57 claimants in the case, said in May that he anticipated his clients would approve the proposed settlement.

And on Tuesday, Thuma announced in court in Albuquerque that the victims did approve the plan. The agreement will provide an estimated $350,000 per claimant, though amounts likely would vary depending on circumstances.

Thuma formally sanctioned the settlements before a courtroom filled with attorneys and some of the survivors.

The largest share – $11.55 million – will be provided by the Catholic Mutual Relief Society of America, a nonprofit that insures many Roman Catholic dioceses. Catholic Mutual insured the diocese from 1977 to 1990, when some of the abuses occurred.

The Diocese of Gallup will contribute $3 million and may have to sell its chancery offices in Gallup, subject to the terms of a loan agreement with a bank.

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CANADA
The Beacon

Barb Sweet
Published on June 21, 2016

None of the four John Does showed signs of lying during psychological testing, a New York forensic psychologist told the Mount Cashel civil trial this morning.

“I’m amazed,” said Alan M. Goldstein, remarking the consistency is something he has never seen before.

Goldstein evaluated the four former residents of Mount Cashel in 2009 and again this year, on behalf of their lawyers.

Four test case John Does represent about 60 former residents from the 1940s to ‘60s who say the Roman Catholic Episcopal Corp. of St. John’s should be held liable for physical and sexual abuse perpetrated by certain members of the lay order Christian Brothers.

The church contends it wasn’t involved in the orphanage’s operation.

Goldstein this morning finished up testifying about his reports on the four men in direct questioning by their lawyer Will Hiscock. He already testified about two of the men Monday.

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PENNSYLVANIA
PennLive

By Ivey DeJesus | idejesus@pennlive.com
on June 21, 2016

A priest who was named a child predator in a grand jury report on widespread clergy sex abuse in the Altoona-Johnstown Diocese was on Tuesday named as a defendant in a civil lawsuit filed by two women who claim he molested them as children.

The women filed the lawsuits in Blair County court against the Rev. Charles F. Bodziak, the diocese and several church officials.

PennLive does not name victims of sexual abuse, however, Renee Rice and Cheryl Haun, the plaintiffs in the lawsuit, have decided to be named by the media in their hope of helping other victims come forward, said their attorney Richard Serbin.

According to the lawsuit, Bodziak sexually abused the women – who are sisters – over a period of years beginning when they were between the ages of 7 and 9. The priest, the lawsuit states, allegedly plied the girls with alcohol to facilitate his crimes.

Bodziak was removed by Bishop Mark Bartchak in January in the wake of findings from a grand jury investigation launched by the Attorney General’s office into reports of widespread clergy sex abuse in the diocese. He was named a child predator in that investigation. No priests have been charged as a result of the grand jury report, as the statute of limitations had expired for each case mentioned in the investigation report.

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UNITED KINGDOM
Messenger

Cara Cunningham

A LANDMARK radio documentary about the crimes of jailed teacher Alan Morris has won Gold at the prestigious New York Festivals.

Former St Ambrose College pupil David Nolan made a documentary ‘The Abuse Trial’ for BBC Radio 4 back in January.

It focuses on the case of Alan Morris, the former deacon who was sentenced to nine years in prison in 2014 for a string of sexual abuses carried out on St Ambrose schoolboys between the 1970s and early 1990s.

The programme features interviews with victims, the police and the Crown Prosecution Service, as well as recordings of Morris’s police interviews.

It was presented by former journalist David, produced by Jo Meek and Sale resident and fellow former pupil, Phil Maguire, acted as executive producer.

The PRA Productions documentary was named Gold Radio Winner in the Information/Documentary competition at the New York Festivals International Radio Program Awards on Monday June 21.

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PENNSYLVANIA
Tribune-Democrat

By Dave Sutor
dsutor@tribdem.com

ALTOONA – Civil lawsuits have been filed in Blair County against a priest who was identified as an alleged sexual predator in a report issued by the Pennsylvania Office of Attorney General earlier this year.

Two female plaintiffs have accused the Rev. Charles Bodziak of molesting them, beginning when they were younger than 10, over a period of years, according to their attorney, Richard Serbin, who announced the lawsuits during a press conference Tuesday in his Altoona office.

They are sisters, now 47 and 48, who did not even know, as children, that the other was also allegedly abused by Bodziak, who reportedly facilitated his actions with alcohol, according to Serbin.

Along with Bodziak, the Roman Catholic Diocese of Altoona–Johnstown, former Bishop Joseph Adamec and Monsignor Michael Servinsky (executor for the estate of Bishop James Hogan) were also named as defendants.

“Three bishops were made aware of Father Bodziak’s sexual interest in children,” Serbin said.

“They knew that he was a child predator. Bishop Hogan, Bishop Adamek, and (current) Bishop (Mark) Bartchak all ignored the risk to children. He was moved from one parish to another within the diocese.”

Bodziak, who was born on Sept. 22, 1941, was suspended from his post at St. Michael Roman Catholic Church in St. Michael in January due to allegations he sexually abused children decades ago. He had been serving at St. Michael since 2010.

“Bishop Bartchak placed Father Bodziak on leave in January as a precautionary measure while the diocese re-examines an allegation of sexual misconduct involving minors against Father Bodziak dating back more than 30 years,” said diocese spokesman Tony DeGol.

“His status has not changed, and the diocese does not discuss any pending or current litigation.”

The abuse is alleged to have occurred when Bodziak was at St. Leo’s in Altoona, which was from 1973 and 1979-unknown, according to the grand jury report. It was one of at least a half-dozen parishes where Bodziak served.

“It’s sad for him just to be moved around from parish to parish and not be punished for anything he had done,” the older sister said.

Both cases fall outside the state’s current statute of limitations, which allows victims who were under the age of 18 when the abuse occurred to file civil charges until age 30. Serbin thinks this is a legal exception, though.

“Yes, the lawsuits can be brought forward,” Serbin said.

“The next question is, can the diocese assert as a defense the statute of limitations? The answer is yes. However, I believe the facts in this case fall within one of the exceptions that are permitted to extend the statute of limitations, specifically I have counts of fraud and withholding of pertinent information that was only known to the diocese.”

Criminal charges can be brought until age 30 for individuals born before Aug. 27, 2002, with the limit moving to age 50 for alleged victims born after Aug. 27, 2002.

Serbin said the sisters’ cases serve as examples why, in his opinion, the statute of limitations should be eliminated.

“It angers me that Father Bodziak will never have jail time, and they should. We’ve had to live with this our whole lives, and they just get to walk away,” the younger sister said.

Bodziak was among the more than 30 priests identified as accused child sexual predators in the grand jury report released by the attorney general.

The investigation into the diocese started when Cambria County District Attorney Kelly Callihan asked the AG’s office to look into allegations of sexual abuse made against Brother Stephen Baker, who, from 1992 until 2000, was assigned to what was previously called Bishop McCort High School.

The grand jury report alleged a woman reported in 2003 that Bodziak “repeatedly engaged in sexual intercourse with her” when, at age 16 in 1971, she was living in foster care in Lock Haven.

“We are saddened that these two girls were sexually abused by Father Charles Bodziak, but hopefully they are feeling a sense of relief for taking action to expose the truth and therefore protect others,” said Judy Jones of Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests.

“Let’s hope that any others who may have knowledge or may have been harmed by Father Charles Bodziak will find the courage to come forward and contact law enforcement no matter how long ago it happened.”

The Tribune-Democrat does not name the victims or alleged victims of sexual assault.

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MINNESOTA
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests

For immediate release: Tuesday, June 21, 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)

Now that Fr. Brian Lederer has escaped responsibility for his other child sex crimes, we urge prosecutors to renew their child pornography case against him. That’s the best way to keep this predators away from his prey.

The Duluth News Tribune reported yesterday that “Authorities also charged Lederer with possession of child pornography after recovering images of suspected child pornography from his computer. . “ and “Lederer could ‘potentially’ still be prosecuted on that pornography charge,” according to prosecutors.

We firmly believe this is a crucial step toward ensuring the safety of kids in the Duluth area.

We also believe that Duluth Bishop Paul Sirba should should turn over Fr. Lederer’s full personnel file to law enforcement agencies every place where the priest worked. He should personally visit every parish where Fr. Lederer ever was, even briefly, and beg anyone who may have information or suspicions about him to call police or prosecutors. He should send the same message through church websites, parish bulletins and pulpit announcements across the whole diocese.

This isn’t rocket science. These aren’t expensive, controversial or unprecedented moves. They are the least that a caring shepherd should do in this situation.

And if he refuses, priests and other church employees in northern Minnesota should step up and do all they can to seek out others who may have been hurt by Fr. Lederer.

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MISSOURI
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests

The 50th local St. Louis area abusive priest is sued
Cleric has never been accused or sued before
The victim, Tom Viviano, speaks publicly for 1st time
Two other priests, man says, saw but didn’t stop the crimes
SNAP to others: “Even if perpetrator is dead, it’s important to speak up”

WHAT:
Holding signs and childhood photos at a sidewalk news conference, a clergy sex abuse victim will speak for the first time publicly and disclose that

–his new child sex abuse and cover up case is being filed,
–it “outs” a never-before-accused local Catholic priest, and
–at least two other priests saw the abuse happened but did not stop it.

Leaders of SNAP will also
–note that this alleged priest is the 50th local predator priest to be publicly accused of child sex crimes,
— beg victims of predators – living or deceased – to NOT contact church or school officials, but instead to contact independent sources of help, like therapists, law enforcement and support groups, and
–urge St. Louis’ archbishop to post predator priests’ names on church websites, “for the safety of kids and the healing of victims.”

WHEN:
TODAY, Tuesday, June 21, 2016 at 1:30 p.m.

WHERE:
Outside the Catholic Cathedral, 4431 Lindell (near Taylor) in the city’s CWE

WHO:
A Missouri man and St. Louis native, Tom Viviano, who is filing a lawsuit and speaking publicly for the first time about the abuse he suffered, along with three-four members of an international support group called SNAP, the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAPnetwork.org)

WHY:
1) With the filing of this new case, 50 priests who work/worked or live/lived in the St. Louis archdiocese are now proven, admitted or credibly accused child molesters, according to an independent website called BishopAccountability.org.

Tom Viviano’s new civil child sex abuse and cover up suit accuses a now-deceased priest, Fr. Charles M. DeGuire, with repeatedly molesting a boy in the in the 1960s at St. Aloysius Gonzaga, a now-closed parish on the Hill in south St. Louis City. The crimes started in 1967 when he was roughly ten and in the fifth grade. The crimes happened on church grounds, in church buildings and a boat with other boys and two other clerics – a Fr. Kearnan and Fr. Morris or Morrisey – present.

The suit says at one point “an individual walked in on Fr. DeGuire’s abuse, finding (the boy) on his knees in front of (the priest) at the parish.”

Fr. DeGuire also worked at our Lady of Lourdes parish in University City. He has passed away and is believed to have retired in the 1970s after living at Regina Cleri in Shrewsbury.

St. Louis lawyers Tom Buckley and Gerald Noce (480 4160) represents accused Catholic officials.

Kansas City attorney Rebecca Randles (816 510 2704, Rebecca @randlesmatal.com) represents Viviano and has represented dozens of abuse victims across Missouri and Kansas. Several months ago, she represented a young woman settled her abuse case for $181,000 and her unusual “breach of contract” case for $82,000. It involved sexual exploitation by former president of St. Louis University president Fr. Daniel O’Connell, who SNAP believes lives in the Central West End now.

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PENNSYLVANIA
San Diego Union-Tribune

ALTOONA, Pa. (AP) — Two sisters have sued a Catholic priest, his central Pennsylvania diocese and two ex-bishops who supervised him, saying the cleric molested them repeatedly as girls — including one at her first Communion party.

The younger sister, who is now 47, said she met the Rev. Charles Bodziak at St. Leo Church in Altoona, where he was the parish priest, when she was in second grade. At the party her parents threw after her first Communion, Bodziak groped her buttocks and gave her an open mouth kiss, according to the lawsuit.

Bodziak, now 74, repeatedly molested the girl until she was in sixth grade, taking her on school trips where she was fondled, kissed and assured “that what he was doing was ‘OK’ because he was a priest,” her lawsuit said.

The lawsuit filed by her older sister, now 49, makes similar allegations against Bodziak, covering the time when she was 8 to 14 years old. She said Bodziak gave her wine on several occasions before molesting her. Bodziak assaulted her in the rectory after summoning her from school and molested her while she practiced the organ in church, according to her lawsuit.

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PENNSYLVANIA
We Are Central PA

[with video]

Altoona, Blair County, Pa.

Two more victims of child sexual abuse are now coming forward and they’ve filed a civil lawsuit against the Altoona-Johnstown Diocese.

Two sisters say they were molested by Father Charles Bodziak starting at only eight and nine years old.

They say Bodziak used alcohol to abuse them for years.

Renee Rice and Cheryl Haun are filing the civil suit, calling out the diocese as a whole, Bishop Joseph Adamec, Monsignor Michael Servinksy who is executor of the late Bishop James Hogan, and Father Charles Bodziak.

Attorney Richard Serbin says he expects the diocese will claim the statute of limitations has run out. But he says there are other factors to this case, like fraud, that would support the civil suit.

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PENNSYLVANIA
WJAC

ALTOONA — Two sisters have sued a Catholic priest, his central Pennsylvania diocese and two ex-bishops who supervised him, saying the cleric molested them repeatedly as girls – including one at her first Communion party.

The Diocese of Altoona-Johnstown declined comment on the allegations, and attempts to reach former Bishop Joseph Adamec and a representative for the late ex-Bishop James Hogan weren’t immediately successful.

Hogan was bishop when the Rev. Charles Bodziak allegedly molested the girls, who are now 47 and 49. Adamec was bishop when the diocese was allegedly notified of the abuse allegations.

Bodziak was suspended in January due to unspecified abuse allegations.

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NEW MEXICO
BishopAccountability.org

Summary of Case: George V. Rieffer was ordained for the Santa Fe archdiocese in 1939. He quickly rose to prominence in the archdiocese, holding many leadership positions throughout his career which included Assistant to the Archbishop early on, roles with the Marriage and Archdiocesan Tribunals, Archdiocesan Consultors, Dean, and ultimately, Vicar General. Rieffer was Rector of the Immaculate Heart of Mary Seminary 1945-50, and was elevated to Monsignor in 1948. He also pastored several parishes, including Immaculate Conception in Las Vegas NM 1950-67. Rieffer retired in 1980 and died in 1991.

In a lawsuit filed in May 2016 Rieffer was accused of sexually abusing and raping a girl beginning in 1952, when she was 6-yrs-old. The abuse allegedly occurred many times in the rectory of Immaculate Conception parish. The girl was said to have been a parishioner and student of the parish school.

Born: September 13, 1912
Ordained: 1939
Retired: 1980
Died: September 7, 1991

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NEW YORK
LI Herald

By Rossana Weitekamp

The Rev. Frank Parisi, the pastor of Our Lady of Lourdes Church in Malverne for the past 11 years ago, announced in an open letter to parishioners last weekend that he had been accused of “inappropriate behavior with a minor” in an incident that occurred just over 20 years ago.

Parisi wrote that the allegations were presented to the diocese during the previous week, and that in accordance with diocesan policy, he had left his position at Our Lady of Lourdes. “I have voluntarily stepped away from active ministry until such time that these allegations have been investigated and I have been cleared of them,” he wrote. “I would ask you to pray for me during this difficult time.”

The letter, which was printed in the church’s weekly bulletin and read at each mass over the weekend, was met with audible gasps from those in attendance. Our Lady of Lourdes has a congregation of over 2,400 families from Malverne and the surrounding areas.

Bishop Andrzej Zglejszewski told the Herald on Monday that Monsignor Paul Rahilly, who retired in September, would be the church’s interim pastor. Rahilly led the congregation at St. Joachim Church in Cedarhurst for 20 years.

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NEW YORK
News 12

MALVERNE – A Catholic priest in Malverne is being investigated over claims of misconduct.

Father Frank Parisi worked at Our Lady of Lourdes church. It was announced in church last weekend that Parisi had stepped down amid allegations of inappropriate behavior with a minor.

The Diocese of Rockville Centre says the alleged misconduct reportedly occurred years ago and does not involve anyone from the parish.

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PENNSYLVANIA
NPR

June 21, 2016

Heard on Morning Edition

The bill would give sexual abuse victims more time to sue abusers. David Greene talks to state Rep. Nick Miccarelli, who voted for the legislation; then found out his parish wasn’t happy about it.

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MINNESOTA
The Catholic Spirit

Maria Wiering | June 20, 2016

The Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis is planning to sell a 94-year-old office building to the Cathedral Heritage Foundation and a separate limited liability company for $900,000 pending U.S. Bankruptcy Court approval. The archdiocese filed a motion for the sale and purchase agreement with the court June 20.

Located at 244 Dayton Ave. in St. Paul, the Dayton Building is the third and final building the archdiocese has sold of its Cathedral Hill properties. The sale includes a vacant lot at 250 Dayton Ave.

Joseph Kueppers, the archdiocese’s chancellor for civil affairs, said that the sale means the archdiocese “has sold all of our available real estate to marshal as many assets as we can for the victims [of clergy sex abuse], which has been our goal.”

In May 2015, the archdiocese listed for sale three buildings adjacent to the Cathedral of St. Paul that house its central corporation offices and the archbishop’s residence. The archdiocese sold the Msgr. Ambrose Hayden Center to the Minnesota Historical Society for $4.5 million in November. In April, it sold the chancery building and attached archbishop’s residence to a limited liability company owned by Premier Bank Chairman Donald Regan for $3,275,000. It also sold a residence near Northfield for $365,000 in February.

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PENNSYLVANIA
The Altoona Mirror

June 21, 2016

By Russ O’Reilly (roreilly@altoonamirror.com) , The Altoona Mirror

The Rev. Brian Saylor said that Bishop Guilfoyle Catholic High School officials suspended his privileges to attend school functions because of the celebrities he followed on social media and the racy photos they posted on their sites.

“While there was no ill-will intended, I should have realized under the current environment that exists how my innocent actions could be misinterpreted and viewed negatively by others,” Saylor wrote in a statement.

Acts of child molestation by dozens of diocesan priests, which had allegedly been covered up by church officials over the past 40 years, were enumerated in a statewide grand jury investigation report published in March.

Saylor’s mysterious suspension following that report concerned parents. Neither the high school nor Bishop Mark Bartchak explained the decision, and Saylor previously declined to comment. Some parents who spoke with the Mirror said they had concerns as Saylor prepares to become pastor of the diocese’s new middle school in the fall.

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AUSTRALIA
The Age

June 21, 201

Adam Cooper
Court reporter for The Age

A Catholic priest who raped a student at a notorious boarding school and then told the boy he disgusted him has been jailed for 8½ years.

Michael Aulsebrook, 60, on Tuesday became the latest of a string of priests who taught at Salesian College Rupertswood in Sunbury to be jailed for sexually abusing children, after he was found guilty in April of raping the boy in 1988.

The victim, who was a Year 7 student, was also raped by another priest at the school, David Rapson, in a separate incident that same year.

Aulsebrook is no longer a priest but was the boarding co-ordinator in 1988 and lured the boy to his office one night with the offer of playing computer games.

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UNITED STATES
The Good Men Project

I was reminded recently of an important lesson about trauma recovery. The teacher was the son of a friend, a young man who spoke at his bar mitzvah about the competing motivations of fear and hope.

The example he gave was based on a story from the Bible. I’ve never been a reader of the Bible and my appreciation of the young man’s wisdom had nothing to do with the religious aspects of the story, which I’d never previously heard. (My apologies in advance if I distort any details in the retelling).

What impressed me was his understanding, that for many who experience trauma, when visualizing happiness, fear is often a stronger force than hope – at least for a time. In my work with men, I’ve found this can be especially true for men who had unwanted or abusive sexual experiences in childhood, though it is also often the case for those who experienced physical and emotional abuse as well.

The prohibition imposed on boys at an early age against expressing emotions like sadness, fear, and vulnerability makes it particularly difficult to feel safe enough to address the range of negative feelings that often result from childhood abuse. The fear of shame,disbelief, or ridicule can outweigh hope and the belief that healing is possible. According to the story, after the Israelites escaped from slavery in Egypt they were stranded in the desert.

Moses sent out twelve “spies” to determine whether the land of Canaan could be conquered and become their new home. Ten of the twelve returned, overcome by fear of what they imagined would be necessary to successfully achieve the Promised Land. Some even thought it would be better to return to Egypt and the familiar experience of captivity rather than face the unknown. Only two, Joshua and Caleb, believed that happiness and success was worth the struggle. On that day, fear and despair prevailed

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PENNSYLVANIA
The Morning Call

Bill White

State Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Stewart Greenleaf, R-Montgomery, has been under steady fire since last week’s committee hearing on whether the statute of limitations reform bill for child sex abuse cases is constitutional.

Testimony focused on the part of House Bill 1947 that retroactively extends the statute for civil child sex abuse cases from 30 years old to 50. All but one of the five lawyers who testified at the hearing said that provision would be struck down by Pennsylvania courts because of the state constitution’s “remedies clause” and more than a century of court decisions and that it should be removed from the bill.

Critics have complained that Greenleaf rigged the hearing by not balancing it with more people who feel the retroactive provision is constitutional, including the Delaware state solicitor, who was on hand to testify about the way Delaware’s similar law survived a constitutional challenge.

Greenleaf pointed out that a University of Pennsylvania law professor also was prepared to testify to the bill’s constitutionality but ended up having a conflict and couldn’t attend. His written testimony was included in the record.

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KENTUCKY
BishopAccountability.org

Summary of Case: Freddie Byrd was ordained a priest of the Owensboro KY diocese in 1988. He worked in a number of parishes and, beginning in 1997, pastored several. He was a faculty member in the late 1980s at Owensboro Catholic High School, and at St. Meinrad Seminary in IN during the 1990s. In 2008 a 23-year-old man shot and killed himself outside of Blessed Mother parish, where Byrd was pastor. The man left a suicide note in which he said he experienced “pain and torment” because of sexual abuse in the Catholic church. He mentioned Byrd, and said of him, “I forgive you.” He did not name Byrd as an abuser. In June 2016 Byrd was suspended from ministry due to allegations that he had sexually abused a 17-year-old boy in 1983, prior to ordination.

Ordained: 1988

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MAINE
Portland Press Herald

[The judge’s ruling]

BY SCOTT DOLAN STAFF WRITER
sdolan@pressherald.com | @scottddolan | 207-791-6304

In a sharp turn of events, a federal judge dismissed a complex defamation case against Paul Kendrick of Freeport on Monday, nearly a year after a jury awarded a $14.5 million verdict against him.

Kendrick lost at trial in U.S. District Court in Portland last summer, but an appellate court in Boston issued a ruling in February that put the entire case in question by asking whether the case ever belonged in federal court.

U.S. District Judge John Woodcock Jr. answered that question by backtracking through more than three years of litigation to rule that the plaintiff in the defamation lawsuit, Michael Geilenfeld, wasn’t living in the United States when he filed his claim against Kendrick and therefore the case had no grounds to be heard in a U.S. court.

The ruling dismissing the case doesn’t mean that either side necessarily wins, but more likely that the case will continue on through appeal, further arguments and possibly another trial.

Kendrick was accused of defamation after he began a widely disseminated email campaign in January 2011 accusing Geilenfeld, the American founder of an orphanage in Haiti, of sexually abusing the boys in his care. Kendrick later widened the campaign to include Hearts with Haiti, the North Carolina charity that raised donations to fund the orphanage. Kendrick declined to comment Monday other than to point out that authorities in Haiti have closed Geilenfeld’s orphanage and brought new child abuse allegations against him based on statements by more former orphans.

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PENNSYLVANIA
PennLive

By PennLive Editorial Board

on June 20, 2016

The fate of a state House bill that would allow victims of sexual abuse to seek expanded civil and criminal redress could now rise or fall on language in the Pennsylvania Constitution that appears to bar the General Assembly from retroactively altering the statute of limitations in such cases.

The language in the bill, prompted in large part by the Catholic Church’s child sexual abuse scandal, was the topic of a three-hour hearing before the state Senate Judiciary Committee last week.

As PennLive’s Ivey DeJesus reported, lawmakers heard from five expert witnesses, only one of whom testified in support of the bill sponsored by House Judiciary Committee Chairman Ron Marsico, R-Lower Paxton Twp.

The bill would eliminate the criminal statute of limitations in such cases and expand the look-back in civil actions by an additional 20 years.

That’s hardly a balanced perspective. And it appeared to suggest – fairly or unfairly – that the Senate panel had its mind made up even before the badly needed legislation landed on its side of the Capitol.

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CANADA
The Telegram

Barb Sweet
Published on June 20, 2016

Sexual abuse they suffered at Mount Cashel broke one man and created a house of cards for another, a forensic psychologist told the Mount Cashel civil trial Monday.

Alan M. Goldstein of New York is the second such expert called by lawyers on behalf of four John Does who are test cases in the lawsuit against the Roman Catholic Episcopal Corp. of St. John’s.

The men represent about 60 claimants who say the Episcopal Corp. should be held liable for the physical and sexual abuse they suffered at the hands of certain members of the lay order Irish Christian Brothers during the late 1940s to early 1960s.

The church says it did not oversee the orphanage.

Goldstein’s testimony differs from New Mexico forensic psychologist William Foote in that by the time he got involved, there was more information for him to review. Foote evaluated three of the John Does in 2000, and Goldstein evaluated all four men in 2009 and spoke to them again this year.

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IRELAND
Irish Examiner

Tuesday, June 21, 2016

By Conall Ó Fátharta
Irish Examiner Reporter

More than 13,000 files from St Patrick’s Guild adoption agency have transferred to Tusla, the Child and Family Agency — almost three years after the agency ceased to operate.

The agency held approximately 13,500 adoption files — one quarter of all adoption files in the country. It closed in 2013, with the transfer expected to take between 12 to 18 months.

The Irish Examiner understands that issues around indemnity against any legal action taken by people seeking their records was a significant factor in the transfer delay.

Tusla declined to confirm it had been indemnified in respect of the records but it had “obtained the appropriate protection in respect of known potential issues”.

St Patrick’s Guild has been excluded from the Mother and Baby Homes Commission, despite the Irish Examiner revealing that the government was in 2013 informed that the agency had knowledge of “several hundred” illegal birth registrations.

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UNITED STATES/ISRAEL
Jerusalem Post

Meir Pogrow has taught at Yeshiva University High Schools of Los Angeles, the Michlahlah seminary in Jerusalem, and was head of the Kollel of Aish HaTorah in Jerusalem and Austin, Texas.

Rabbi Meir Pogrow, a prominent rabbi and educator living in Beit Shemesh, has been accused of misusing his authority and position for his sexual gratification by an ad hoc rabbinical court of senior rabbis in Israel and the US, which issued a warning notice instructing women to avoid all contact with the individual.

Pogrow is the founder of a website and study program called Master Torah, designed to aide the study of religious texts and retain the knowledge acquired.

According to the Master Torah website, Pogrow has rabbinical ordination from several authorities, including from the Chief Rabbinate and is qualified as a rabbinical judge.

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AUSTRALIA
7 News

By Caitlin Guilfoyle – AAP on June 21, 2016

A predatory ex-Catholic priest has been jailed for drugging and raping a student after inviting the boy to play computer games in his office.

Michael Scott Aulsebrook, 60, was the boarders’ co-ordinator at Salesian College Rupertswood when he attacked the boy in the 1980s.

He lured the boy to play on his computer after lights-out and gave his victim a soft drink spiked with a sedative.

After raping him, Aulsebrook said: “Get out of my sight. You disgust me”.

He was found guilty of the rape, but also pleaded guilty to three counts of indecent assault against two other victims, one male and one female.

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MALAWI
Nyasa Times

June 21, 2016

Evangelical Association of Malawi (EAM), an umbrella mother body of 122 Christian denominations and organizations in Malawi, was amongst the few stakeholders that were awarded on Monday in Lilongwe for their steadfast and resilient efforts in strengthening child protection in Malawi under the Eye of the Child Annual Award.

The Church mother body was awarded the Eye of the Child Annual Award alongside other religious bodies like Muslim Association of Malawi, Malawi Council of Churches, Quadria Muslim Association and the Seventh Day Adventist by the Eye of the Child Annual alongside other religious bodies like Malawi Council of Churches.

“We would like to thank the Eye of the Child, the Ministry of Gender, FAWEMA, and other partners for recognizing us for our great work in child protection. This is an encouragement to us, and it gives us the energies and an opportunity to do more so that the child is protected both spiritually and socially.

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UNITED STATES
Raw Story

BRAD REED
20 JUN 2016

Catholic League President Bill Donohue on Monday gloated after he successfully helped kill a bill in the New York legislature that would have made it easier for sex abuse victims to bring cases against their accusers.

As The New York Daily News reports, Donohue sent out an email to supporters after the defeat of the Child Victims Act, an act that he said was designed “to rape the Catholic Church.” The bill would have extended the timeframe that victims can bring forward cases by five years and would have opened up a six-month period for victims to revive older cases.

“The bill was sold as justice for the victims of sexual abuse, when, in fact, it was a sham,” Donohue wrote in an email obtained by The New York Daily News. “[It was] a vindictive bill pushed by lawyers and activists out to rape the Catholic Church.”

Donohue’s accusation that the bill would have “raped” the church certainly seems in poor taste given that the bill was meant to help people who had been raped by Catholic priests.

Then again, Donohue is used to being intentionally provocative, such as when he suggested both Islamist radicals and murdered cartoonists both bore equal blame for the Charlie Hebdo massacre, or when he ripped Pope Francis for the grave sin of accepting the science behind climate change.

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UTAH
AOL.com

SALT LAKE CITY (KSTU) — Polygamist leader Lyle Jeffs has escaped custody, federal authorities confirmed to FOX 13.

A warrant was been issued for the Fundamentalist LDS Church leader’s arrest, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for Utah said Monday.

Jeffs was released from jail on June 9 while he was awaiting trial on food stamp fraud and money laundering charges. His lawyers successfully argued that with a delay in his trial sought by federal prosecutors, he should be released. The U.S. Attorney’s Office for Utah argued that Jeffs should remain in jail because he is a flight risk.

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CALIFORNIA
The Union Democrat

Published Jun 20, 2016

A district court judge on Monday postponed setting a new trial date for a woman whose conviction on charges of unlawful sex with a boy in her church youth group was overturned on appeal.

Ember Dawn Schlensker, 32, appeared before Judge Donald Segerstrom with her attorney, Michael Chastaine, of the Sacramento area.

Chastaine said he only recently became Schlensker’s attorney and asked for more time before a trial date is set.

Segerstrom rescheduled the hearing for 1:30 p.m. July 18 in Department 1.

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IRELAND
The Irish Catholic

by Cathal Barry
May 26, 2016

EXCLUSIVE

Maynooth has insisted that robust procedures are in place to handle complaints against seminarians after allegations of a gay culture in the seminary were made in an anonymous letter to the Irish bishops.

The letter – which allegedly named seven seminarians and two staff members – claimed that members of the seminary community had allegedly been involved in inappropriate behaviour of a homosexual nature.

The letter claimed that there was a gay subculture within the seminary and allegedly urged members of the Irish hierarchy to intervene as a matter of urgency to address the complaints made in the anonymous missive.

The correspondence – sent to the hierarchy’s executive secretary Msgr Gearóid Dullea – is said to have caused extreme divisions in the seminary community with one person using the word “poisonous” to describe the atmosphere in Maynooth as the academic year comes to an end.

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IRELAND
Irish Central

Dara Kelly @irishcentral June 21,2016

Ireland’s national seminary, St. Patrick’s College in Maynooth, has strongly denied its president’s just announced sabbatical is in any way connected to recent anonymous claims of a gay subculture in the Catholic seminary.

A statement published on the college’s website last week that said Monsignor Hugh Connolly “has advised the staff of his plans to take sabbatical leave for the academic year 2016-2017,” raised eyebrows because it coincides with the last year of his tenure as president of the national seminary, which currently has more than 60 men studying for the priesthood.

The statement continued, explaining that Connolly would remain as president until the completion of his term in the summer of 2017 and he would continue to exercise certain administrative duties throughout the year.

Connolly’s departure comes in the wake of controversial allegations made about life in the seminary. The Irish Catholic reported that an anonymous source had claimed in a letter to college authorities last year that some seminarians had been guilty of misconduct of a homosexual nature.

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ARIZONA
AZ Family

Updated: Jun 20, 2016

Posted by Phil Benson

PHOENIX (KPHO/KTVK) –
A former after-school care assistant has pleaded guilty to two counts of sexual exploitation of a minor

Lawrence Amaral appeared in Maricopa County Superior Court Monday. He originally faced 10 counts after he was arrested in October 2014.

A judge set sentencing for Thursday, Sept. 8 at 8:30 a.m.

Amaral worked as an after-school care assistant at St. Louis the King Catholic School.

He was taken into custody after deputies say several hundred images of child pornography were found on his home computer.

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NEW JERSEY
The Record

BY JEFF GREEN
STAFF WRITER | THE RECORD

POMPTON LAKES – A former pastor of St. Mary’s Catholic Church has been suspended by church leaders in Virginia, where he most recently served, over an allegation of child sexual abuse that predates his 15-year tenure in Pompton Lakes.

Rev. Kevin Downey was placed on administrative leave two weeks ago by the Diocese of Arlington, Va. In a statement, the diocese said Downey had recently been accused of abusing a boy in 1990, while he was vice president of development at Quincy University in Illinois.

Downey denies the accusation, the statement said.

Downey was an assistant priest at St. Mary’s in Pompton Lakes from 1993 to 1999, and he served as the parish pastor from 2002 to 2011.

Before he left New Jersey to become a pastor in Triangle, Va. in 2011, the staff of the Pompton Avenue church renamed part of the building Downey Hall in his honor.

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MINNESOTA
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priestso

For immediate release: Monday, May 16, 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)

We are thrilled that a judge has set a $15 million bail for the head of a religious sect who’s accused of child sex crimes.

[Fox News]

Victor Barnard was extradited from Brazil. We share the judge’s concern that a lesser bond might have enabled him to abscond again.

We hope every single person who saw, suspected or suffered crimes or cover ups by Barnard or others in his sect will call police, protect others, deter wrongdoing and start healing.

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ILLINOIS
Chicago Magazine

For decades, the people of Hinsdale gave little thought to the mysterious brick building in town. Then came a scandal.

BY BRYAN SMITH

The building, red bricked, colonnaded, crowned with a white cupola, sits on a grassy knoll in northwest Hinsdale. Unmarked, unremarkable, it barely registers as anything more than a garden-variety administrative headquarters of unknown provenance.

That isn’t to say that the decades-old property, situated on 223 acres in this Shangri-la of a western suburb of multimillion-dollar estates and country club splendor, has escaped notice over the years.

The sight of teenage girls walking arm in arm in a nearby park, identically dressed in chaste ankle-length skirts, red scarves knotted around their necks, and modest Mary Janes, and of teen boys seemingly stamped out on a Wonder Bread assembly line—always in dark suits, white shirts, and ties—drew the occasional stare.

“Everyone kind of thought it was very strange. Like, what do they really do there?” says one longtime Hinsdale resident. “They always seemed very secretive.”

Then, in 2014, came a scandal. Some of those same red-scarfed girls accused Bill Gothard, the charismatic leader of the Institute in Basic Life Principles—the ultraconservative Christian organization operating out of that Hinsdale building—of inappropriately touching them. Gothard stepped down after an internal probe. But since then, 18 former staffers, interns, and volunteers have joined in a lawsuit accusing him of “sexually, physically, emotionally, spiritually, and/or psychologically [abusing]” them. In many cases, the plaintiffs were underage at the time and had been recruited to work for the organization by Gothard himself. The suit also takes on IBLP, accusing it of initially covering up Gothard’s actions, which the plaintiffs claim took place “over the course of several decades.”

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MINNESOTA
KAAL

Dave Aeikens
Updated: 06/20/2016

Bail was set Monday for a man accused of sexually abusing girls who were followers in his alleged cult.
A Pine County District Court judge set conditional bail for 54-year-old Victor Barnard at $1.5 million and unconditional bail at $3 million.

The conditions include wearing a GPS, forfeiting his passport and not leaving Minnesota.

Barnard was extradited to Minnesota Saturday. He was arrested in Brazil about a year ago and is charged with 59 counts of criminal sexual conduct.

Prosecutors say Barnard was the leader of the River Road Fellowship in Finlayson, Minnesota. He is accused of molesting female minors during a 10-year period.

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MINNESOTA
Fox News

Associated Press

PINE CITY, Minn. – A judge set bail at $1.5 million Monday for a religious sect leader who’s charged with sexually abusing girls at a secluded compound in rural Minnesota.

Victor Barnard, 54, made his first state court appearance since his extradition from Brazil. U.S. marshals delivered him to the Pine County Jail on Saturday.

Pine County prosecutors charged Barnard in April 2014 with 59 counts of criminal sexual conduct for allegedly having sexual relationships with two girls in his “Maidens Group” at his River Road Fellowship compound near Finlayson, about 90 miles north of Minneapolis.

The U.S. Marshals Service put him on its most wanted fugitives list, and authorities finally caught up with him in a Brazilian resort town in February 2015. Brazilian authorities said he had arrived in Brazil in March 2012.

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MINNESOTA
Star Tribune

Associated Press JUNE 20, 2016

HIBBING, Minn. — A jury has acquitted a Hibbing priest accused of molesting four girls.

Jurors deliberated about two hours Monday before finding 30-year-old Brian Lederer not guilty on all counts.

Lederer was facing four counts of second-degree criminal sexual conduct and two counts of fourth-degree criminal sexual conduct, all felonies.

The alleged incidents happened during the 2014-2015 school year after hours at Assumption Catholic School. Prosecutors said another incident happened at a home and others on a school bus.

Lederer took the witness stand Friday to deny the allegations. The Hibbing Daily Tribune (http://bit.ly/28JuSxh ) reports he had no comment after his acquittal.

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FRANCE
L’Express

[The Lyon prosecutor on Monday gave Cardinal Philippe Barbarin and his accusers one month to make any requests for action or to comment on the record before deciding what action is to be taken regarding the investigation of the cardinal.]

Lyon – Le parquet de Lyon a donné un mois au cardinal Philippe Barbarin et à ses accusateurs pour formuler d’éventuelles demandes d’actes ou observations sur le dossier, avant de décider des suites à donner à l’enquête visant l’archevêque, a-t-on appris lundi de source judiciaire.

Cette décision a été signifiée vendredi aux avocats des mis en cause – le cardinal et d’autres responsables du diocèse – et des plaignants – des victimes d’un prêtre pédophile lyonnais – qui ont reçu copie intégrale de la procédure à cette occasion. Le délai court jusqu’au 18 juillet.

Le 8 juin, le cardinal Barbarin avait été entendu durant dix heures dans un commissariat lyonnais par les policiers de la Brigade départementale de protection de la famille, dans le cadre d’une enquête préliminaire pour “non-dénonciation” d’agressions sexuelles sur mineurs et “non-assistance à personne en danger” (et non “mise en danger de la vie d’autrui” comme évoqué jusqu’alors).

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MINNESOTA
Northlands News Center

By Ramona Marozas

Hibbing, MN (NNCNOW.com) — An Iron Range Catholic priest was cleared of all criminal sexual conduct charges in St. Louis County court in Hibbing, Minn., Monday.

In a multi-day trial, three girls testified against Father Brian Lederer, regarding six charges of criminal sexual misconduct, plus one count of possession of child pornography.

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VATICAN CITY
Catholic Culture

June 20, 2016

At an ordinary consistory on June 20, Pope Francis raised four cardinals from the rank of cardinal-deacon to that of cardinal-priest.

Each of the new cardinal-priests has been a cardinal-deacon for ten years, having received their red hats from Pope Benedict XVI in March 2006; and each is above the age of 80 and thus ineligible to participate in a papal conclave. They are:

* Cardinal William Levada, the retired prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith and, prior to that, Archbishop of San Francisco;
* Cardinal Franc Rodé, the retired prefect of the Congregation for Religious and, prior to that, Archbishop of Ljubljana, Slovenia;
* Cardinal Andrea Cordero di Montezemolo, the former archpriest of the Roman basilica of St. Paul Outside-the-Walls and a veteran Vatican diplomat; and
* Cardinal Albert Vanhoye, the French Jesuit who is former rector of the Pontifical Biblical Institute.

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CANADA
The Telegram

Barb Sweet
Published on June 20, 2016

Becoming an orphan doesn’t have to mark a person for life, a forensic psychologist told the Mount Cashel civil trial in Newfoundland Supreme Court.

Alan Goldstein of New York said the loss of a parent is unforgettable, but he said if a child — who loses both parents or is unable to be cared for by the surviving parent — is placed in a facility that is safe, they can thrive.

Goldstein was called to testify — as an expert on the impact of child sexual abuse among causes of impairment — by lawyers for a group of former residents of the Mount Cashel orphanage during the 1940s to early ’60s.

They say the Roman Catholic Episcopal Corp. should be held liable for physical and sexual abuse they suffered at the hands of certain members of the lay order Christian Brothers at Mount Cashel.

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NEW YORK
New York Daily News

KENNETH LOVETT
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS
Monday, June 20, 2016

ALBANY — The gloating head of the Catholic League on Monday ripped into the “victims’ lobby” he says is out to “rape” the Catholic Church over the issue of child sex abuse.

In a vitriolic message emailed to his supporters, Catholic League President Bill Donohue celebrated the defeat of the Child Victims Act that would have made it easier for kid sex abuse victims to seek justice.

“The bill was sold as justice for the victims of sexual abuse, when, in fact, it was a sham,” Donohue wrote.

He blasted the legislation as ”a vindictive bill pushed by lawyers and activists out to rape the Catholic Church.”

And he described bill’s sponsor Assemblywoman Margaret Markey (D-Queens) as “the principal enemy of the Church.” He gleefully pointed out that Markey was wrong when she previously told the Daily News, which he also ripped for its campaign on the issue, that the measure would come to the floor for a vote before the end of the legislative session.

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MINNESOTA
Grand Forks Herald

By John Myers

HIBBING — Catholic Priest Brian Lederer was found not guilty Monday of all six charges against him of inappropriately touching young girls.

A jury of six men and six women deliberated less than two hours before returning the verdict in State District Court after a four-day trial.

Lederer, 30, the former priest at Blessed Sacrament Parish and Assumption Catholic School in Hibbing, was charged in May, 2015 with four counts of second-degree criminal sexual conduct and two counts of fourth-degree criminal sexual conduct. The charges stem from allegations by four girls, age 11-13 at the time, that Lederer touched them inappropriately.

The most serious charges against Lederer carried a potential penalty of up to 25 years in prison.

Lederer had been on administrative leave by the Roman Catholic Diocese of Duluth pending the outcome of the legal process.

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GUAM
Guam Daily Post

Louella Losinio | Post News Staff

An undisclosed number of individuals have contacted the Concerned Catholics of Guam since the group’s advertisements soliciting victims of sex abuse by members of the clergy came out last month.

More alleged victims have been contacting CCOG since the appearance of the ads in local media. Dee Reyes Peredo, one of the points of contact named in the ads, said: “There are victims who are not readily willing to come forward because of pain, embarrassment.”

She added that some of those who have contacted the organization would talk about others that they know have been abused or whom they have witnessed being abused.

The names are different but the stories are the same all over, she said.

Peredo confirmed that calls have been coming from different villages across the island. “There’s numbers,” she said, adding that there are those who are trying to come forward but still trying to gather the strength to do so from people who support them.

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KYRGYZSTAN
Radio Free Europe

By RFE/RL’s Kyrgyz Service
June 20, 2016

A Kyrgyz imam has been detained for questioning in southern Kyrgyzstan after being accused of sexually abusing a 10-year-old boy.

The Jalal-Abad regional police department’s spokesman, Myktybek Turdubekov, told RFE/RL on June 20 that the 58-year-old imam was detained after a woman from the village of At-Basar filed a complaint alleging that her son had been regularly raped by the imam.

Authorities did not release the name of the imam and did not immediately file charges against him.

Turdubekov said the detained imam could face rape charges in the case.

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NEW YORK
Catholic League

Bill Donohue comments on a New York abuse bill that failed:

The bill was sold as justice for the victims of sexual abuse, when, in fact, it was a sham: the proposed legislation that failed to make it to the floor of the New York State legislature in the wee hours of Saturday (the session that began on Friday ended at 5:00 a.m. the next day), was a vindictive bill pushed by lawyers and activists out to rape the Catholic Church.

The principal enemy of the Church, Assemblywoman Margaret Markey, was confident that her bill would pass. On May 30, she told her allies at the discredited Daily News—the paper broke every tenet of journalism in its war on Catholicism—that “there is a strong movement in our house to bring [the bill] to a vote in the next few weeks.” On June 5, she told her buddies, “I really think we have a chance of getting this bill passed.”

If the statute of limitations were lifted on offenses involving the sexual abuse of minors, the only winners would be greedy and bigoted lawyers out to line their pockets in a rash of settlements. The big losers would be the poor, about whom the attorneys and activists care little: When money is funneled from parishioners to lawyers, services to the needy suffer.

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INDIA/AUSTRALIA
The Wire

BY MASOOMA RANALVI ON 18/06/2016

Khatna has been practiced by generations of Bohra families in secrecy and silence but now women are speaking up.

On June 9, Judge Johnson of the Supreme Court of New South Wales in Australia passed a landmark judgment. Shabbir Vaziri, a senior Bohra priest, was sentenced to 11 months in jail for promoting, perpetuating and enforcing the practice of female genital mutilation (FGM) in the community. This was the first case in history in which Bohras, including a mother and a nurse, were prosecuted for conducting FGM on two small girls. The four-year-long trial concluded with the sentencing verdict, at which jail time was handed out to the priest, while a much more lenient sentence of home detention was enforced on the mother of the two girls and the 80-year-old nurse who performed the procedure. Clearly, the judge differentiated between the mother and nurse, who were forced to perpetuate the practice and the priest – a representative of the clergy – who actively enforced the continuation of FGM in the community.

Just over a month before the verdict, on April 15, the community’s religious head, the Syedna Muffadal, spoke about a subject that had never before been spoken about openly. In a public sermon in Mumbai, he said:

“It must be done. If it is a man, it can be done openly and if it is a woman it must be discreet. But the act must be done. Do you understand what I am saying? Let people say what they want… What do they say? That this is harmful? Let them say it, we are not scared of anyone.”

Those who attended the sermon were certain that this was a reference to khatna, or female genital mutilation (FGM), even though the term was not used. This is because FGM is the only practice that is practiced secretly on women. The sermon was a crystal clear exhortation to the community to practice khatna, even if there is opposition to it.

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UNITED STATES
Frum Follies

An Israeli rabbinical court issued a ruling (6/14/16; 8 Sivan 5776) denouncing 46-year-old Rabbi Meir Pogrow for sexual misconduct with women (see image below). The court ruling which I hope to translate in full was signed by Rabbis Menachem Mendel Shafran (Bnei Brak, Israel; a Hasidic posek on the Bais Din of R. Karelitz), Chaim Zev Malinowitz (Beit Shemesh, Israel; the dominant Yeshivish rav in Beit Shemesh), and Gershon Bess (Los Angeles, CA; a product of the Lakewood BMG constellation of yeshivas). The ruling was written as a set of directives to Meir Pogrow about restrictions the Beit Din is imposing on him.

The ruling was followed by a Public Danger Warning with a synopsis of the ruling in Hebrew and English telling the public to avoid Pogrow in all sorts of roles. The advisory to females focused on any sort of interaction. The advisory section addressed to males spoke of not using his website or learning from him. He was explicitly called a rasha (evil person), a status with halachic implications. For example, one does not console a rasha in mourning.

The danger warning is undated but was in circulation by 6/20/16, within about a week of the original ruling.The warning was signed by two members of the rabbinical court (Rabbis Malinowitz and Bess) and three additional signers:

* Rabbi Mordechai Willig (a prominent member of the faculty of the RIETS rabbinical seminary of Yeshiva University),
* Rabbi Yitzchak Berkovits (Sanhedria, Jerusalem and Previously with Aish Hatorah as Rosh Kollel), and,
* Rabbi Elimelech Kornfeld (Ramat Beit Shemesh, Israel, the son-in-law of the Ner Israel Rosh Yeshiva, R. Aaron Feldman).

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GUAM
Guam Daily Post

PICKET LINE: About three dozen protestors walk a picket line in front of the Dulce Nombre de Maria Cathedral Basilica yesterday just before the 9:30 a.m. Mass. The protestors continue to demand the resignation of Archbishop Anthony Apuron, particularly in light of recent accusations that the archbishop sexually abused altar boys when he was a parish priest in Agat four decades ago. Frank Whitman/Post

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DEUTSCHLAND
Katholisch

[The Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Munich and Freising on Monday provided detailed information on its financial situation. Accordingly, the assets at the end of 2015 were just over 5.52 billion euros. This is the highest amount that has been released in a German Catholic diocese.]

München – 20.06.2016

Das Erzbistum München und Freising hat am Montag erstmals umfassend Auskunft über seine Finanzsituation gegeben. Demnach belief sich das Vermögen seiner sechs größten Rechtsträger Ende 2015 auf gut 5,52 Milliarden Euro. Das ist die höchste Summe, die ein deutsches katholisches Bistum bisher veröffentlicht hat.

Das Erzbistum Köln hat ein Vermögen von 3,42 Milliarden Euro (2014) ausgewiesen, die Erzdiözese Paderborn eines von rund 4 Milliarden Euro, wobei der Erzbischöfliche Stuhl und das Domkapitel noch nicht erfasst sind.

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GUAM
KUAM

Updated: Jun 20, 2016

By Krystal Paco

Now four individuals have surfaced in recent weeks accusing Archbishop Anthony Apuron of rape or molestation. While decades have passed since the alleged incidents, many have questioned why the victims waited so long to come forward. Here’s what medical professionals have to say.

Experts call the condition “delayed disclosure”. Maresa Aguon explained, “We get people who come in decades after the abuse has occurred. Something prompts them to come forward. Something prompts them to tell somebody.” As program manager for Healing Hearts Crisis Center, Guam’s only crisis center since 1993, in light of recent accusations made against the archbishop, she says victims will often wait before reporting, especially because Guam is such a small island community.

“A lot of times these children are abused by somebody in power or by somebody that they love and trust. They understand these complexities. Even as children as young as 10 to 12 years old, they understand certain things such as if I come forward, people may not believe me. Sometimes they’re told explicitly that nobody’s going to believe them,” she explained.

This appears to be the case for most of Apuron’s accusers: Roy Quintanilla, Walter Denton, and Roland Sondia. They are joined by Doris Concepcion, whose son Joseph “Sonny” Quinata who was on his deathbed over a decade ago when he confided in his mother he, too, was a victim. Each of the surviving victims reported trusting Apuron, who was a priest at Mount Carmel Church in Agat at the time of the alleged incidents.

Each of the men has expressed no interest in prosecuting Apuron, but instead have demanded he step down as head of the Agana archdiocese as well as make a public apology.

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IRELAND
Irish Independent

Greg Harkin
PUBLISHED
20/06/2016

A Catholic bishop has said the Church has probably gone too far in its apologies but is in a better place because of it.

Bishop of Elphin Kevin Doran (62) also says the Church is one of the safest places in society as a result of the abuse scandals.

And he says there are still some priests who avoid children altogether as a result.

Dr Doran also spoke of how he believes Ireland has lost some of its spirit of volunteerism because of State intervention.

The Dubliner was appointed to his diocese – which covers parts of counties Sligo, Roscommon, Galway and Westmeath – two years ago.

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PENNSYLVANIA
The Altoona Mirror

June 19, 2016

While the Altoona-Johnstown Catholic Diocese should not resort to poorly thought-out, knee-jerk reactions regarding concerns brought to its attention, there are significant matters – such as current concerns over the status of two parochial school leaders – that should not be hanging unresolved.

In light of the rampant, decades-long child sex abuse scandal and cover-up exposed earlier this year, parents of children enrolled in Catholic schools of the diocese, as well as other diocese parishioners, are right in expecting expeditious diocesan response to new issues having tentacles construed as relating to the scandal, as well as issues perceived as having an indirect tie.

The fact that parents and parishioners haven’t gotten a response regarding the two school leaders in question is cause for dismay and raises questions about the pace at which the diocese is trying to heal from the sordid scandal revelations that seriously damaged its reputation.

That pace does not qualify as only a local concern. It deserves interest all the way up to the Vatican.

The scandal has caused many Catholics to question their faith and their clergy and has negatively impacted financial support from some loyal parishioners, who during their adult lives, have opened their wallets and pocketbooks generously on behalf of their church and diocese.

Altoona-Johnstown Bishop Mark L. Bartchak ought to be sticking to his pledges of transparency and about cleaning up remaining issues directly or indirectly related to the scandal. Regarding the two school officials, his onging silence is contrary to that promise, duty and expectation.

It came as a shock to Altoona-Johnstown parishioners that past diocesan leaders had used millions of dollars of their contributions for payments to abuse victims, with the intent of ensuring their silence. Now, the non-reaction of the diocese regarding the two school leaders at the center of the current concerns has again raised the issue of silence.

Parishioners and school students’ parents are justified in being disturbed about that.

The two school leaders, Sister Donna Marie Leiden and the Rev. Brian Saylor, have been labeled “unwelcome” at Johnstown’s Bishop McCort Catholic High School and Altoona’s Bishop Guilfoyle Catholic High School.

Leiden, currently the diocese’s education director, was principal when two child molesters – one a priest and one a teacher who was studying to become a church deacon – preyed on more than 80 McCort students.

Saylor, pastor of the diocese’s new Altoona middle school, a member of the school’s board of trustees and former teacher, is the subject of concern for recent social media activity contrary to the prohibition of school-affiliated adults contacting students on a personal social media account.

Saylor also is involved with the diocese’s youth summer camp.

Guilfoyle and McCort currently are independent of the diocese and its bishop, but Bartchak is a member of the board of trustees for both Catholic educational facilities. As a trustee, he was party to the decision to ban Saylor, according to BG President Joe Adams.

Although the Leiden-Saylor issue wasn’t in the public spotlight until recent days, Altoona area parochial school parents reportedly have been waiting for weeks for a statement from Bartchak on Saylor’s status, and the Bishop McCort community has been waiting for the same about Leiden.

It’s important that the bishop’s silence end quickly.

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AUSTRALIA
Sunshine Coast Daily

Rae Wilson | 20th Jun 2016

A FORMER Anglican priest must serve three more months in jail after pleading guilty to molesting a fourth altar boy while acting for the church.

Barry John Greaves, 79, was jailed in 2009 for sexually abusing three altar boys when he was working as an Anglican rector for the Boonah and Harrisville districts in the early 1980s.

Judge Gilbert Trafford-Walker heard those boys, aged between 11 and 16 at the time, were forced to engage in mutual oral sex and masturbation with Greaves.

Today, Brisbane District Court heard Greaves encouraged a 13-year-old boy to get his mother’s permission to travel from Cunnamulla to Thargomindah to be his altar boy during a mass between December 11, 1969, and December 20, 1970.

Judge Tony Moynihan said Greaves indecently dealt with the teen in a shower in a granny flat behind the church and it was fortunate the boy refused to get into a sleeping bag him afterwards.

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IRELAND
Irish Examiner

Monday, June 20, 2016

By Conall Ó Fátharta
Irish Examiner Reporter

People who lived or worked in 27 County Homes will not be able to give evidence to the Mother and Baby Homes Commission.

The Commission has been tasked with examining the treatment of unmarried mothers and their babies between 1922 and 1998 in 14 Mother and Baby Homes, as well as “a representative sample of County Homes”.

The Commission has now settled on four County Homes for this sample — St Kevin’s Institution (Dublin Union), Stranorlar County Home, Co Donegal (St Joseph’s), Cork City County Home (St Finbarr’s) and Thomastown County Home, Co Kilkenny (St Columba’s).

The Commission said the four homes selected “best met the criteria” of serving a similar function to Mother and Baby Homes, “having regard to factors such as the number of relevant births, the duration of such operations, and the typical length of accommodation period of these mothers and children”.

However, with regard to people who lived or worked in Ireland’s approximately 27 other County Homes, the Commission said that, “at present”, it “does not intend to take evidence from people who were resident in other County Homes.”

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FLORIDA
Tampa Bay Reporter

ODESSA – A youth pastor has been accused of having a sexual relationship with a juvenile member of his church, according to the Hillsborough County Sheriff’s Office.

Samuel Armand Sutter, 26, of 11506 Fountainhead Drive, Tampa, was charged with five counts of lewd and lascivious behavior with a victim aged 12 to 16 and five counts of unlawful sexual activity with a minor, according to deputies and Hillsborough jail records.

Deputies said that, Sutter began a sexual relationship with the female minor in October, when he was the youth pastor at the church the victim attends. The relationship escalated to numerous sexual encounters. The victim admitted the relationship after her mother found sexual pictures, videos and text messages exchanged between Sutter and the girl. The girl’s mother contacted deputies. The sexual encounters occurred primarily at Sutter’s home, but also happened twice in the ladies restroom at Openwater Church, 15612 Race Track Road, Odessa, deputies said.

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FLORIDA
Tampa Bay Times

TAMPA — A youth pastor at Openwater Church in Odessa was arrested Saturday and charged with sexual battery on a juvenile, according to the Hillsborough County Sheriff’s Office.

Samuel Armand Sutter, 26, of Tampa faces five counts of lewd and lascivious behavior with a victim aged 12 to 16, and five counts of sexual battery.

Sutter “began a sexual relationship” with a girl who attends Openwater Church in October 2015, deputies said in a news release. Their relationship “escalated to numerous sexual encounters,” mostly at Sutter’s home but twice in the women’s bathroom at the church on Race Track Road, deputies said.

The victim’s mother found photos, videos and texts of a sexual nature on her daughter’s phone, deputies said, and the daughter told her mother about the relationship. The mother then called the Sheriff’s Office.

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NEW YORK
New York Daily News

KENNETH LOVETT
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS
Sunday, June 19, 2016

ALBANY – A political action committee created by an upstate investor and child sex abuse survivor has its first target – state Sen. Kemp Hannon.

Gary Greenberg said his Fighting for Children PAC is endorsing Democrat Ryan Cronin’s challenge to Hannon (R-Nassau County).

Greenberg said he chose to target Hannon first for his stated opposition to a bill to make it easier for child sex abuse victims to seek justice.

“It’s black and white; if you’re not going to support the bill, then you’re for the predators,” Greenberg said.

The PAC will donate a maximum $11,000 to Cronin’s campaign, recruit volunteers to help him, and organize protests in the district against Hannon’s opposition to the Child Victims Act.

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PENNSYLVANIA
Philly.com

A bogus hearing staged by the Pennsylvania Senate Judiciary Committee last week suggested some members are determined to protect the Catholic Church and insurance companies instead of securing justice for the victims of pedophiles and the institutions that protect them.

Considering a bill passed by the House that would give abuse victims more time to file criminal and civil claims, the committee limited testimony to the question of the measure’s constitutionality. That was interesting given that committee Chairman Stewart Greenleaf’s law firm represented the Norbertine Fathers, a religious order that was sued by abuse victims, and opposed a similar statute-of-limitations bill in Delaware on constitutional grounds. Greenleaf (R., Montgomery) says he had nothing to do with the case, but he didn’t disclose the potential conflict before it was revealed by the Inquirer’s Maria Panaritis.

Greenleaf and the rest of the committee heard testimony from four lawyers who argued that the bill would run afoul of the state constitution and one who disagreed. Attorney General Kathleen Kane’s top aide, Bruce Castor, the former Montgomery County district attorney who made a secret deal not to prosecute Bill Cosby for sexual assault, was among those arguing that it’s unconstitutional. Making the spectacle more bizarre, Kane herself – who was stripped of her law license amid criminal charges that she leaked confidential grand jury information – urged the Senate to pass the bill anyway.

Kane has sanctimoniously declared war on child abusers, but when she had a chance to make a lasting impact on the problem, she took a dive by presenting this confounding dual opinion. If the bill isn’t constitutional, Kane’s office should be working with the Senate to help it pass constitutional muster.

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IRELAND
Irish Times

Conor Lally

The convicted paedophile Eamon Cooke helped a woman to launch a campaign against the Catholic Church seeking compensation over clerical child sex abuse while he himself was abusing children.

The Irish Times understands Cooke then used his relationship with the woman, without her knowledge, to get access to children so he could abuse them.

The woman was abused for years as a child and Cooke befriended her and assisted her campaign for justice when she believed the church had promised to assist her but then failed to do so.

Cooke died earlier this month after being linked by a witness to the disappearance, presumed murder, of Dublin schoolboy Philip Cairns, who went missing in 1986.

Gardaí have identified a number of sites that may be searched in a bid to find the remains of the boy, who was 13 when he disappeared. One of the sites is in Co Sligo at a house Cooke was linked to, and there are at least four other sites in south Dublin and north Wicklow.

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NEW YORK
Forward

Sam Kestenbaum
Matt H. Wade

Barring an eleventh hour deal, New York’s legislature prepared to end its session without passing a bill that will make it easier for child sex abuse survivors to seek justice as adults — legislation that advocates have been pushing for a decade.

By June 17, the bill’s backers were still pushing for a vote in the State Assembly on a modified version of the bill. But the Senate hadn’t scheduled a vote, leaving little chance that Governor Andrew Cuomo would be signing a bill into law.

This comes after months of campaigning to reform New York’s sexual abuse statute of limitations, which is among the shortest in the nation. A coalition of activists and survivors, many from Jewish communities who say they were molested at yeshivas and Jewish day schools, support a bill to give child sex abuse survivors more time to file charges. The governor had publicly announced his support for reform in broad terms, but did not back a specific bill.

“The bill is dead,” said Gary Greenbatt, a New York investor and sex abuse survivor who had been supported the legislation.

Under New York law, someone who is abused as a child has until the age of 23 to bring a civil lawsuit to court. The Child Victims Act, as this legislation is known, seeks to both lift time limits for victims to file civil suits and provide a one-year “look back” window during which past victims who have already exceeded the statute of limitations could go to court. Assemblywoman Margaret Markey introduced the Child Victims Act a decade ago.

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PENNSYLVANIA
Lancaster Online

Editorial

THE ISSUE

Earlier this month, Lancaster County religious leaders from a mix of Christian denominations added their names to a letter to the state Senate Judiciary Committee. They urged quick passage in the Senate of House Bill 1947, which was approved overwhelmingly in the state House in April. The bill would abolish the statute of limitations for future criminal cases of child sexual abuse, and extend by 20 years the time for victims to bring civil suits against their assailants and an agency whose negligence enabled the abuse. Victims would have until age 50 to initiate civil cases under the bill. The proposed law would be retroactive, meaning victims now 30 to 50 years old could still bring civil suits. The retroactive provision in the bill is strongly opposed by the Pennsylvania Catholic Conference — the public affairs arm of the Catholic dioceses in this state — and the Insurance Federation of Pennsylvania. The Senate Judiciary Committee held a hearing on the bill last Monday.

We applaud the more than two dozen local Christian leaders who have taken a public stand on the side of victims of childhood sexual abuse.

They include the Rev. Dr. Carol Lytch, president of the Lancaster Theological Seminary; Beth Kuttab, president of Lancaster Interchurch Peace Witness; and ministers and deacons from Brethren, Episcopal, Mennonite, United Methodist, Lutheran and United Church of Christ churches.

The letter they signed, which was circulated by the Pennsylvania Coalition Against Rape, called the sexual abuse of a child “a great sin, as well as a crime,” and asserted that “survivors deserve the opportunity to seek justice and hold those who harmed them accountable.”

We hold this view, too.

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UNITED STATES
National Catholic Reporter

Mary Gail Frawley-O’Dea | Jun. 20, 2016

Editor’s note: This is Part 4, the conclusion of “Hell, hope and healing,” an NCR four-part series on sexual abuse. You can read the series introduction, Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3, which are also available at the feature series page Hell, hope and healing.

When someone decides to embark on healing from adverse childhood experiences (ACEs), and/or when concerned loved ones of a survivor want to help that person begin to heal, it can be confusing to know how to start. This last article in the series focuses on finding the best healing resources.

It is a slice of all the resources available to someone and does not represent either endorsement or rejection of any particular source. Many of the resources listed here provide links to still other sources of information or help.

Best first responders

The sad truth is that abusive families or institutions are unlikely ever to consistently put the interests of children before their own, no matter how many laws are passed or promises made. We are the best hope of preventing child abuse and responding to it quickly when it occurs.

If enough of us believe that every child is our child, that we are responsible for the safety of every child we know, we can be the most effective instruments of change.

If we believe, with Pope Francis, that churches are field hospitals, then we are the nurses, paramedics, doctors and, of course, the patients in our own communities. Any one of us can pick up the phone at any time if we know or suspect a child is being abused or neglected. It’s anonymous and it is the right thing to do. Here’s how to do it:

Childhelp National Child Abuse Hotline (1-800-4-A-Child). This is a number every one of us should memorize. Although each state has its own laws regarding child abuse reporting, any person can anonymously report known or suspected child abuse to the hotline and they will contact appropriate local investigative authorities within 24 hours. It is easy. Use it. Use it if you know or suspect that a priest, a teacher, a bus driver, your best friend’s husband, your next-door neighbor or, yes, your own Uncle Louie is abusing or neglecting a child.

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UNITED STATES
Emes Ve-Emunah

I am not inclined to dwell on stories of sexual abuse. Not because I don’t think they are serious issues. Of course I do. They are perhaps among the most serious issues affecting Orthodox world. Sex abuse is as much a part of Orthodoxy as it is in the rest of the world. Experts in the field generally testify to that effect.

The argument against such thinking has always been that a Torah based life will preclude such behavior… that our sense of ethics and morality will hold sway over us. While that may generally be true, we are not the only ones that have a moral code or lead lives based on biblical values.

The reason the statistics are likely be the same is because being a sexual predator has nothing to do with the moral code of the community from which a predator comes. I believe it is a mental illness known as obsessive-compulsive disorder combined with the desire to satisfy abnormal sexual urges.

In the case of sexual predators it is the inability to control impulses of a sexual nature. So that someone that might otherwise be an exemplary individual – even a pillar of the community – will act on those impulses when no one is looking. They develop patterns of behavior that seek out victims to satisfy those urges and find ways to keep their victims quiet. Thus they can be walkinh around in a community for years, getting tons of respect and accolades galore while they secretly satisfy their abnormal sexual urges in private. Until they are caught.

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GUAM
Pacific Daily News

Jojo Santo Tomas, jsantotoma@guampdn.com June 20, 2016

Protesters filled the walkway in front of the Dulce Nombre de Maria Cathedral-Basilica on Sunday morning, marching as they have at different locations around Guam for the last few months.

The protests have called for Archbishop Anthony Apuron to resign as head of Guam’s Catholic church. And while the initial protesters mostly accused Apuron of mismanagement, the last few weeks have been all about sexual abuse accusations stemming from incidents more than 30 years ago.

The protesters have usually been members of organized church groups such as the Concerned Catholics of Guam and Laity Forward Movement, but many people have joined the protests on personal accord – such as Jose Okada of Dededo.

Okada said that although he’s not a member of any group, he came to Hagåtña Sunday because he wanted to show that he too, wanted Apuron’s resignation. His words were spiked with Chamorro inflection as he shared the thoughts that were once restricted to family.

“Before, I was just … you know, his attitude, nai? And then, things started coming out that he was abusing kids!” Okada said. “So that’s why I’m really here, for him to just get out, adai, step down, ‘sa we don’t need a bishop that is in there that is molesting kids.”

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GUAM
Pacific Daily News

Jasmine Stole , jstole@guampdn.com June 19, 2016

After a fourth person came forward Wednesday accusing Guam Archbishop Anthony Apuron of molesting him almost 40 years ago, apostolic administrator Archbishop Savio Hon Tai Fai said that necessary steps would be taken to present the matter to the Holy See.

But what those steps are have not been made public. A canon lawyer also said there’s little known about how bishops accused of abusing minors are investigated.

Roland Sondia, 54, said Wednesday that Apuron molested him one night when he was a 15-year-old altar boy and Apuron was then a parish priest, both serving for Our Lady of Mt. Carmel Church in Agat.

The Agat resident recited the alleged events of the night in 1977 at a press conference last week, standing before his family and the media on the steps of the pastoral center at the Dulce Nombre de Maria Cathedral-Basilica in Hagåtña. He said he told Apuron to stop when Apuron rubbed his private parts, but Apuron persisted. Sondia said he then broke away from Apuron and left the rectory in Agat in the middle of the night.

In recent weeks, two other men, Roy Quintanilla and Walter Denton, have publicly and directly accused Apuron of sexually abusing them when they were altar boys. Doris Y. Concepcion, mother of a former Agat altar boy, also has accused Apuron of abusing her now deceased son.

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GUAM
Pacific Daily News

Bill Pesch June 19, 2016

We, as a community, are finally having a conversation that we should have had years, if not decades, ago. That conversation centers around child sexual abuse within a religious setting. Because of recent events, we are currently focused on the Catholic church and more specifically on the allegations pending against Guam’s top Catholic leader, Archbishop Anthony Apuron. I am hopeful, as are others, that over the next few weeks and months this conversation will be broadened to include what legal action can be taken against any and all child sexual abusers who hold religious positions and those in leadership positions who did little or nothing to stop the abuse.

In approaching this topic, let’s be honest with ourselves. The allegations of sexual abuse within the Catholic church on Guam should come as no surprise to most of us, especially those of us over the age of 50. In a private setting, most of us will admit that we know one or more minors who were allegedly abused by priests or deacons. Many of the alleged abuses occurred years ago and almost all went unreported and unpunished.

Cultural, familial and religious constraints often prevented the minors from telling family and friends about the abuse. Unfortunately, often when they did confide in an adult, the adult insisted the matter remain secret. Seemingly, in the few cases of abuse that were brought to the attention of church officials, the alleged offender was simply transferred away from Guam to another unsuspecting parish. As a result, the abuse continued.

A famous paraphrase aptly summarizes this situation: “We have met the enemy, and he is us.” We certainly aren’t alone in this dilemma. This pattern of abuse, silence, and cover up has frequently been repeated in Catholic parishes throughout the United States, and many other countries as well.

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UNITED KINGDOM
Telegram

Polly Dunbar
19 JUNE 2016

For more than 60 years, Sylvia Woosley kept a terrible secret. When she finally spoke publicly last week about the sexual abuse she suffered from the age of 10 at the hands of the late Sir Clement Freud, her words hinted at the corrosive guilt and shame she had carried with her all that time: “I want to die clean.”

Now in her late seventies, Sylvia decided to break her silence in an ITV Exposure programme, aired last Wednesday. She watched it at the home of David Henshaw, its executive producer. “Afterwards, I asked her how she felt, and she said, ‘I just feel very happy’,” he says. “She looked 10 years younger. She was very eloquent, talking about how it was the child in her who wanted to be heard and believed, and when that finally happened, she felt a huge sense of relief and peace.”

Many watching may have wondered, why now? But strikingly sad as Sylvia’s story is, it is not uncommon for abuse victims appear to wait until their twilight years to reveal their experiences – the thought of taking their suffering to their grave finally outweighing the pain incumbent in unburdening themselves.

“We get calls from people as old as 90, some of whom have never told anybody about what they went through as children – not even their closest family members,” says Pete Saunders, chief executive of the National Association for People Abused in Childhood (NAPAC). “The average time for a victim to speak out is 22 years after the last incidence of abuse, but it can be much, much longer.

“Towards the end of people’s lives, they often reflect back and feel a need to address unresolved issues. Victims can realise what happened to them was an absolute disaster which clouded everything in their lives.”

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DEUTSCHLAND
Evangelisch

Antragsstau beim Fonds Sexueller Missbrauch: Von mehr als 4.500 Anträgen von Opfern sexuellen Missbrauchs bis Ende März seien erst 66 komplett abgearbeitet worden, berichtet das Hamburger Nachrichtenmagazin “Der Spiegel”.

Antragsstau beim Fonds Sexueller Missbrauch: Von mehr als 4.500 Anträgen von Opfern sexuellen Missbrauchs bis Ende März seien erst 66 komplett abgearbeitet worden, berichtet das Hamburger Nachrichtenmagazin “Der Spiegel”. “Die derzeitige Bearbeitungsdauer beträgt circa 13 Monate”, heiße es in einer Antwort des Familienministeriums auf eine kleine Anfrage der Linksfraktion.

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DEUTSCHLAND
MissBiT

Das Verfahren wurde von der Staatsanwaltschaft wegen Verjährung eingestellt. Aber die Staatsanwaltschaft informierte auch das Bistum über die Ermittlungen. So eine Information ist vorgesehen, wenn eine Tat zwar nicht strafrechtlich geahndet wird, aber disziplinarrechtliche Schritte gegen den Beschuldigten denkbar sind. In der bischöflichen Personalkommission, in der die Meldung der Staatsanwaltschaft bekannt gegeben wurde, saß auch der damalige Trierer Bischof Reinhard Marx. Das bestätigt die Pressestelle des Erzbistums München-Freising, wohin Marx 2008 gewechselt ist.

Vom Bistum Trier will niemand zu dem Fall ein Interview geben. Schriftlich lässt man wissen: “Das Bistum Trier hat seinerzeit nach den damals gültigen Leitlinien gehandelt. Diese haben noch nicht, wie dies die späteren Leitlinien von 2010 bzw. 2013 tun, vorgesehen, dass in den Fällen, da die staatlichen Ermittlungsbehörden einen Fall nicht aufklären können, die Kirche eigene Ermittlungen anstellt.” – Kirchenrechtler Bier widerspricht: Schon die ersten Leitlinien der Bischofskonferenz zum Vorgehen bei Missbrauch durch Geistliche hätten ein anderes Vorgehen erfordert: “Es heißt konkret in den Leitlinien von 2002: ‘Jede Verdachtsäußerung wird umgehend geprüft.’

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DEUTSCHLAND
WDR

[Abuse allegations disappear in secret archives. The diocese of Trier has initiated a canonical preliminary investigation against a priest on suspicion of sexual abuse. Apparently very late: The allegations were in the diocese in 2006.]

Von Christoph Fleischmann

Das Bistum Trier hat wegen des Verdachts auf sexuellen Missbrauch eine kirchenrechtliche Voruntersuchung gegen einen Priester eingeleitet. Offenbar reichlich spät: Die Vorwürfe waren im Bistum schon 2006 aktenkundig – und auch der Bistumsspitze bekannt.

“Er hat mich am Wochenende eingeladen zu sich. Da hatte ich nichts dagegen – wusste ja nicht, was der vorhat. Bin halt mit zu ihm, freitags abgeholt, 16 Uhr, und sonntags wiedergebracht in das Heim.” Was Michael W. – nennen wir ihn so – erzählt, hätte man im Bistum Trier schon 2006 zur Kenntnis nehmen können. Vorausgesetzt, man hätte sich an die eigenen Regeln gehalten und sich schon damals für eine Akte der Staatsanwaltschaft Saarbrücken interessiert. Denn die hatte damals gegen einen Priester im Bistum ermittelt und das Verfahren wegen Verjährung eingestellt. Darüber wurde das Bistum, dem damals Reinhard Marx vorstand, heute Vorsitzender der Deutschen Bischofskonferenz, auch informiert. Aber es geschah nichts.

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MASSACHUSETTS
The Sagamore

Chloe Jepsen, Staff writer
June 18, 2016

The movie “Spotlight,” which was directed by Tom McCarthy, won the Academy Award for Best Picture this past year. It follows “The Boston Globe’s investigative journalism team,” as it investigated and reported on widespread sexual abuse in the Catholic Church. The team, known as “Spotlight,” was led by editor Walter Robinson and included reporters Michael Rezendes, Matt Carroll and Sacha Pfeiffer, who were played by Michael Keaton, Mark Ruffalo, Brian d’Arcy James and Rachel McAdams, respectively.

The Sagamore conducted a Q&A with Robinson about the original investigation and his thoughts on the movie interpretation of it:

Q: How close was the Spotlight movie to what you actually did?

A: It was very close. It’s not a documentary, and, obviously, it’s not a transcript. It’s a dramatization. Here’s the best way I can explain it: you and I are having a conversation right now, and if we weren’t taping it, but it was an important conversation, and somebody came to us and said ‘I’m doing a movie and one of the scenes is going to be that conversation,’ you would tell the person what transpired. It might be thirty seconds of your recollection, and then the person would call me and say, ‘Tell me what happened when you two talked,’ and I would recall what happened. Then, the person writing the movie would go off and write a scene. None of the words coming out of the mouth of the actor playing you or the actor playing me would be what we actually said because even we don’t remember the exact words. But the question is would it faithfully capture what actually happened? The film very accurately captured what happened in real life.

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RHODE ISLAND
NBC 10

BY MARIO HILARIO; NBC 10 NEWS SATURDAY, JUNE 18TH 2016

Providence, RI — Rhode Island lawmakers burned the midnight oil, and then some, to wrap up the 2016 legislative session.

The General Assembly officially wrapped up the year after 6:00 a.m. Saturday.

The Senate passed the State’s nearly nine billion dollar budget just after 1:30 a.m., and there were still many pieces of legislation left to tackle for both Senators and Representatives. …

One piece of legislation that also passed related to schools, would add educational institutions to the State’s mandatory reporting requirements to ensure schools report allegations of abuse to the Department of Children Youth and Families. The bill’s sponsors say it closed a loophole that came to light with the revelation that decades of alleged abuse at St. George’s school in Middletown was not reported to authorities and there was no law requiring the school to do so.

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NEW YORK
New York Daily News

KENNETH LOVETT
DAILY NEWS ALBANY BUREAU CHIEF
Saturday, June 18, 2016

ALBANY — In the end, state lawmakers protected the predators.

The state Legislature ended the 2016 legislative session about 5 a.m. Saturday without acting on legislation to help survivors of child sex abuse.

An all-night session to wrap up up the legislative year did not lead to a last-minute miracle that victims and advocates were hoping for.

“The survivors were thrown a tattered raft in this stormy session,” said Kathryn Robb, an advocate and sexual abuse survivor.

Gary Greenberg, an upstate investor who was sexually abused as a child in 1966, said survivors won’t forget when every seat in the Legislature is up for election.

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