ABUSE TRACKER

PENNSYLVANIA
Altoona Mirror

March 9, 2016

By Phil Ray (pray@altoonamirror.com) , The Altoona Mirror

Four representatives of the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, known as SNAP, on Tuesday called for an end to the statute of limitations for child sexual abuse offenses and asked the bishops of the Diocese of Altoona-Johnstown and other Pennsylvania dioceses to publish the names and photographs of clergy and other employees who have been identified as child predators.

Judy Jones, the assistant director of SNAP’s midwestern office in St. Louis, said, “There are many victims out there suffering in silence.”

SNAP invited area victims to attend a confidential meeting at the Bellwood-Antis Public Library on Tuesday evening. The SNAP representative said the meeting was held to allow victims to discuss the abuse they suffered while being consoled by other victims.

Pam Erdely, who said she was sexually abused at age 17 by a nun at Canevin High School in Pittsburgh, said she joined SNAP because she wanted to “stand in solidarity” with other victims and help them heal as a group.

At first she didn’t realize the magnitude of what had happened to her. She said it took time for her to realize that a crime had been commited and “that it wasn’t my fault.”

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WASHINGTON
Seattle Times

By Michael T. Pfau
Special to The Times

THE Catholic Church across America has been mired in scandal for nearly 20 years — since reports of widespread abuse of children by its priests first surfaced. The Seattle Archdiocese is no different.

As an attorney, I have represented hundreds of Catholics who were abused by priests, brothers and lay employees in Seattle and across Washington. My clients have been men and women, young and old, rich and poor, from both stable and troubled families. These survivors of abuse have a unique and important perspective on the actions of the Seattle Archdiocese with regard to how it handles complaints of abuse, and its claims of apology and accountability.

On Jan. 15, the Archdiocese released the names of 77 individuals who it deemed had been credibly accused of sexually abusing children. Almost immediately, survivors of abuse and their advocates began to call on the Seattle Archdiocese to release all of its files pertaining to the 77 abusive priests, nuns and clerics it identified.

The Archdiocese of Seattle maintains files and a “secret archive” regarding abusive priests in its ranks, including many of the 77 individuals it recently identified. Under canon law, which governs the Catholic Church, every bishop and archbishop is required to keep “secret files” that contain information regarding misconduct by his priests. The secret files include information regarding priests who are accused of sexually abusing children, including internal correspondence that often sheds light on how the church allowed the abuse to happen.

Each bishop and archbishop has the authority to make his secret files public. A number have exercised that authority and released the files regarding priests credibly accused of sexually abusing children, including the archbishop of Chicago, who oversees the third largest archdiocese in the United States.

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PENNSYLVANIA
Tribune-Review

BY BRAD BUMSTED | Tuesday, March 8, 2016

HARRISBURG — A deputy attorney general requested a grand jury investigation of child sexual abuse allegations against Altoona-Johnstown area Catholic priests in January 2013, but superiors turned him down, the Attorney General’s Office said Tuesday.

It was rejected about a year before a grand jury investigation was initiated based on a stronger case referred by Cambria County District Attorney Kelly Callihan, said Chuck Ardo, spokesman for Pennsylvania Attorney General Kathleen Kane.

Ardo confirmed that Deputy Attorney General Daniel Dye requested a grand jury investigation the month Kane was sworn into office based on a referral late the previous year from Callihan on a case involving child abuse allegations against the Rev. George Koharchik.

He was later called a “child predator” in a grand jury report released last week that found hundreds of victims had been abused by as many as 50 priests over 40 years in the Roman Catholic Diocese of Altoona-Johnstown. No one was charged as a result of expired statutes of limitations, deaths and reluctant witnesses. The grand jury investigation began in April 2014.

“There’s no question” the Attorney General’s Office could have used the 2013 referral from Callihan to launch a grand jury investigation, said Marci Hamilton, a professor at the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law in New York City. Why it did not do so remains unclear, she said.

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PENNSYLVANIA
The Intelligencer

Wednesday, March 9, 2016

By State Rep. Thomas P. Murt

First, it was Penn State. Then it was the Archdiocese of Philadelphia. Now, just when you thought that scandals involving the sexual abuse of children couldn’t get any worse, we learn about yet another one.

After a prolonged and extensive investigation, law enforcement professionals have uncovered literally mounds of evidence detailing countless cases of child sexual abuse and a multiyear cover-up by Roman Catholic Church officials in the Diocese of Altoona-Johnstown.

The diocese was found to have willingly protected priests who were known child molesters. Through church connections and pathetic public officials, the diocese protected the child-molesting priests from law enforcement and prosecution.

Perhaps the worst crime they committed was never taking subsequent action to protect children from these child-molesting priests. In the diocese, when a priest was found to have sexually abused a child, the normal protocol was to simply move the priest to another parish, offer a cash payment to the family and/or send the offending priest on retreat, only to have him returned to ministry in the future.

The grand jury report reads even more graphic, sickening and disgusting than the grand jury report that concerned the Archdiocese of Philadelphia. If you have the stomach for it, you can find it on the Internet. The link will caution you about the graphic nature of what you are about to read.

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OHIO
Vindicator

By LINDA M. LINONIS
linonis@vindy.com

YOUNGSTOWN

Monsignor John A. Zuraw, chancellor of the Diocese of Youngstown, responded Tuesday to issues raised by Road to Recovery, a New Jersey-based support group for victims of sexual abuse by priests and other clergy.

Robert Hoatson, support-group president, led a news conference Sunday near diocesan offices that included Barbara Aponte, mother of Luke Bradesky, a student from 1990-94 at John F. Kennedy High School in Warren and a victim of the late Stephen Baker, who abused a group of JFK students.

The Sunday news event was prompted by the release of findings by Pennsylvania Attorney General Kathleen Kane. That investigation of Altoona-Johnstown Diocese revealed former bishops covered up or didn’t respond to allegations of abuse by more than 50 priests from 1966 to 2011. Baker was implicated in some cases.

Baker was in the religious order of the Third Order Regular Franciscans, the monsignor explained. “Baker was not a diocesan priest under the bishop. He was a religious brother under a local religious superior,” he said. When the religious order’s ranks dwindled, members were reassigned.

“The diocese had no knowledge of Baker’s misbehavior until it learned of the alleged abuse,” Monsignor Zuraw said. In January 2013, letters from the bishop were sent to all students who attended JFK when Baker was a teacher, coach and trainer there seeking information on abuse. And in November 2013, questionnaires went to JFK teachers and staff asking questions on Baker’s behavior and how it might have put youth in danger. The response was that nothing was observed.

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PENNSYLVANIA
Daily Item

By Randy Griffith CNHI News Service

HOLLIDAYSBURG — Supporters of those who were abused by priests kept pressure on Roman Catholic church leadership Tuesday, calling for swift action against those identified in an investigation.

Protestors from the Survivors Network of those Abused By Priests, or SNAP, stood at the Altoona-Johnstown Diocese administration complex to push for changes following last week’s release of a scathing grand jury report by state Attorney General Kathleen Kane.

“We are here because we want Bishop (Mark) Bartchak to fire a nun who was in the grand jury report for being a victims’ advocate,” said Judy Jones, SNAP’s midwest associate director. “It turns out she was more of an advocate for the defense attorneys for the diocese.”

Jones also called for the removal of all members of the diocese Allegations Review Board and for the bishop to work with the attorney general’s office to select replacements on the board.

Jones singled out the Rev. Joseph Byrnes, a board member who refused to answer the grand jury’s questions.

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IOWA
Quad-City Times

Deirdre Cox Baker dbaker@qctimes.com

When Martin Amos was announced as the eighth bishop of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Davenport, it was two days after the diocese became the fourth in the United States to declare bankruptcy because of clergy abuse lawsuits.

Amos moved to Davenport from Cleveland, Ohio, city of his birth and his home for six decades. Weeks before he moved, he sat with a reporter from the Quad-City Times and promised he would work to promote healing among abuse victims and also to restore financial health to the diocese.

Ten years later, the diocese still is recovering from the bankruptcy, trying to meet the spiritual needs of nearly 100,000 Catholics in the 78-parish diocese that covers 22 counties in the southeast part of Iowa.

Amos knew of the bankruptcy decision before he left Ohio. He accepted the decision “with humility and concern for the survivors of abuse and for the diocese,” according to spokesman, Deacon David Montgomery.

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AUSTRALIA
Eureka Street

Neil Ormerod | 09 March 2016

There was an obvious irony in the timing of Cardinal Pell’s evidence to the royal commission last week, coinciding as it did with the awarding of the Oscar for best film to Spotlight, the searing expose of the Boston Church’s failure in relation to its own sexual abuse crisis.

The Commission put the spotlight on the Cardinal in relation to what he knew and did not know about the multiple cases of sexual abuse in the Ballarat diocese while he was a young priest working there.

This was not the Cardinal’s first evidence to the commission. He has been under considerable scrutiny over the John Ellis case and the Melbourne Response, his own attempt to deal with sexual abuse within the Melbourne Diocese.

The Ellis case in particular was very damaging, with contradictory evidence given by the Cardinal and key figures in his offices about who knew what and when. We are yet to see the findings of the commissioner, Peter McClellan, in relation to that conundrum.

The latest interrogation had a focus on the case of the out-of-control pedophile Gerald Ridsdale. Evidence has been received of person after person who seems to have had some knowledge of Ridsdale’s offending: bishops, priests (one of whom went on to become a bishop), religious and laity.

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NEW ZEALAND
Newshub

[with video]

Survivors and supporters of church sex abuse victims are renewing calls for a Royal Commission into sex abuse throughout New Zealand.

They say Australia is facing up to its past by having an inquiry, and New Zealand should too.

John* still has the scars on his hands where he was hit with a cane by Catholic school teachers.

Now in his early fifties, he also suffers from PTSD and anxiety as he was the victim of sex abuse for six years at Christchurch’s Maryland’s school from the age of six.

John, other survivors and their supporters, are now calling for a Royal Commission into New Zealand’s Catholic Church sex abuse.

Ken Clearwater, from Male Survivors of Sexual Abuse, says he’s been fighting for an independent inquiry since the Boston Globe uncovered huge abuse within the Catholic Church around the world, as seen in Oscar award-winning film Spotlight.

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INDIA
New Indian Express

KOCHI: The Christian priest accused in the Puthenvelikkara rape case exploited his position and sexually abused the minor girl for several months.

The chargesheet in the case, filed before the Special Court for cases related to atrocities and sexual violence against women and children, states that Fr Edwin Figarez, who was priest of the Puthenvelikkara Lourde Matha Church, sexually abused the 14-year-old victim for one-and-half year.

Meanwhile, Ajitha, the government doctor who has been named the fourth accused in the case, was booked under the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act (POCSO Act), in a first of its kind arrest in the State. According to the chargesheet, Ajitha failed to inform the matter to the police after learning about the sexual abuse of the minor girl. The doctor came to know about the crime when the victim along with her mother approached her for treatment, while the former was working at the Puthenvelikkara Community Health Centre.

In addition to Fr Figarez and Dr Ajitha, four others brothers and cousins of the priest have been included as accused on charges of harbouring the offender. Thrissur-native Fr Figarez, 41, had served in the church for about three years. Silvestar Figarez, 58, brother of Fr Figarez, is the second accused, while 54-year-old Stanli Figarez, another brother of the priest, is the third accused. His cousin Bencharin Figarez, 22, is the fifth accused, while relative Clarenz De Coutha, 62, is the sixth accused.

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PENNSYLVANIA
KSL

ALTOONA, Pa. (AP) — A grand jury report that found two former bishops helped cover up the sexual abuse of hundreds of children by more than 50 priests in a Pennsylvania diocese has prompted a sitting judge to resign from a Catholic school board and the current bishop to remove cathedral banners that celebrate former bishops.

Bishops James Hogan and Joseph Adamec, who headed the diocese from 1966 until 2011, were criticized by the report. Hogan died in 2005 and Adamec’s attorney has denied he did anything wrong.

Diocesan spokesman Tony DeGol said Bishop Mark Bartchak ordered the banners removed from the Cathedral of the Blessed Sacrament because he “feels this is a time of humility for the diocese and the focus should be on the victims of abuse.”

Meanwhile, Cambria County Judge Patrick Kiniry has resigned from the board of a Catholic high school. The grand jury report said Kiniry, a former prosecutor, helped Hogan transfer an alleged molester rather than pursue criminal charges in 1985. That priest, Francis McCaa, was described as a “monster” who fondled altar boys who were told to go without pants under their cassocks, according to the grand jury.

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CALIFORNIA
New York Times

The Carpetbagger
By CARA BUCKLEY FEB. 29, 2016

Everyone loves an underdog story, especially a surprise one, and ripples of delight over “Spotlight’s” win for best picture spread out from the Dolby Theater on Sunday night into the after-party beyond.

At the Governors Ball, the first stop for many on the post-Oscars party circuit, there was a discernible hop in many people’s steps — even in the ones who had not won. A relaxed, beaming Bryan Cranston (“Trumbo”) lolled outside the party’s entrance, chatting with Louis C.K., looking wholly unperturbed about losing the best actor Oscar to Leonardo DiCaprio for “The Revenant.” (Mr. Cranston had long acknowledged he wasn’t the favorite to win.) …

Next it was off to the Palihouse in West Hollywood, where the party for “Spotlight” was hitting a delighted fever pitch, so thrilled was everyone there for the film’s victory. The cast was not in attendance, but the writer and director Tom McCarthy was, and he was absolutely over the moon.

Laura Kim, of Participant Media, which produced the film, had just taken Phil Saviano, a survivor of clergy abuse whose story is depicted in “Spotlight,” to the emergency room. Before the Oscars, Mr. Saviano had suffered a blood clot that required he be hospitalized, but, against medical advice, had checked himself out to attend the ceremony, and afterward checked himself back in (reportedly he was faring well).

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PENNSYLVANIA
WJAC

HOLLIDAYSBURG, Pa.– Exactly one week after a gut-wrenching grand jury report that detailed decades of sexual abuse and a cover-up within the Altoona-Johnstown Diocese, a group rallies to support victims.

Clutching photos of innocent children, a small group rallied outside the diocese in Hollidaysburg asking for change.

“This biggest issue is the cover up and that needs to get stopped in order for kids to get help,” Judy Jones, SNAP’s Midwest associate director said.

The young faces are on photos are important. They are the faces of survivors at the age they were abused. Those in the photos allow SNAP, the Survivor’s Network of those Abused by Priests, show their faces and to tell their story about sexual abuse at the hands of church leaders. For protester Pam Erdely this mission is personal.

“I was sexual abused by a nun in my high school in 1972,” Erdely said.

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FLORIDA
Tampa Tribune

By Keith Morelli | Tribune Staff

PINELLAS PARK — For almost 40 years, a former student at the Mary Help of Christians School in Tampa kept his secret. To tell would have meant a life of shame and an afterlife in hell.

The man, whose name was not released because of the nature of the incidents that happened to him four decades ago, filed a lawsuit as John Doe on Tuesday against the Salesian Society, a Catholic order that operated the boarding school in the East Lake area of Tampa.

He spent his life wondering why he was singled out by Brother John Casula, who died in 1994. All those years the man believed he was the only one who suffered sexual abuse by the ordained brother.

He was only 12 years old at the time and the abuse continued until he was 14.

“This is something that has stayed with me for many years,” he said in the conference room of his attorney Tuesday afternoon.

– See more at: http://www.tbo.com/news/breaking-news/another-victim-of-sexual-abuse-suing-former-tampa-catholic-school-20160308/#sthash.kIi6IvoO.dpuf

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MASSACHUSETTS
Huffington Post

Joe Bergantino
Co-founder and executive director of the New England Center for Investigative Reporting

Terry Knopf makes an important point in her article in the Columbia Journalism Review about Boston news coverage of the Catholic Church: for years, many reporters — in print and broadcast media — did not cover the Catholic archdiocese in the same way they covered government or other big institutions. Their reverence and respect for the Catholic religion — in many cases, the religion of their childhood — blinded them to possible wrongdoing inside the institution itself.

But that changed on the first Thursday in May in 1992, 10 years before the Globe’s reporting depicted in the movie Spotlight.

The lead story on WBZ-TV’s six o’clock newscast that night was the I-Team’s investigative report on former priest James Porter. The story revealed that Porter, while a priest in southeastern Massachusetts in the 1960s, had molested large numbers of children, that the Catholic Church moved him from parish to parish knowing that he was a serial pedophile, that the Cardinal at the time was made aware of Porter’s crimes and did little or nothing to stop him, and that even law enforcement had turned a blind eye to Porter’s rampage.

In that story, viewers heard Porter’s voice for the first time. In a recorded phone interview, I asked him how many children he had molested. His answer, without a trace of remorse or emotion: “50 or 60, I guess.” Porter didn’t know that the statute of limitations was frozen the moment he left Massachusetts more than 20 years earlier. In 1993, Porter pleaded guilty to molesting 28 children and spent the rest of his life behind bars.

The I-Team’s May 1992 story unleashed a torrent of local and national coverage focused on Porter and other pedophile priests in Boston. Within days, I, along with investigative producer Paul Toomey, began getting phone calls about other priests including John Geoghan, the priest who was the focus of the Spotlight coverage 10 years later.

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MASSACHUSETTS
Eagle Tribune

HAVERHILL — The Rev. Frederick Sweeney, the beloved priest who blew the whistle on a fellow clergyman at St. John the Baptist Parish during the Catholic priest sex abuse scandal, has died.

Sweeney died peacefully Sunday, March 6, at Sancta Maria Nursing Facility in Cambridge, according to an obituary posted online by Boyle Brothers Funeral Home in Framingham.

A Worcester native, he was 88.

Sweeney was hailed by many as the priest who, along with the Rev. Dennis Nason of All Saints Parish, forced out former St. John’s Rev. Ronald H. Paquin amid allegations of child sexual abuse.

Nason, the founding pastor of All Saints Parish of Haverhill, died Oct. 4, 2010 at Merrimack Valley Hospice House in Haverhill after a battle with cancer. He was 71.

After pleading guilty in 2002 to raping and molesting an altar boy in Haverhill as many as 50 times from 1989 to 1992, Paquin was sentenced to 12 to 15 years at the Massachusetts Correctional Institution at Cedar Junction in Walpole. He was released last October.

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CONNECTICUT
NBC Connecticut

By Gabriella Iannetta

A former Connecticut priest plead guilty to providing a teenager with ammunition and explosives powder in 2012, the U.S. attorney’s office said.

Paul Gotta, 58, who was charged with seven counts of sexual assault two years ago, faces up to ten years in prison after pleading guilty to one count of willfully distributing an explosive material to an individual under the age of 21 years old, according to prosecutors.

In 2012, Gotta aided a 17-year-old with purchases thousands of rounds of ammunition and on two occasions purchased two pounds of explosives powder in East Windsor for the same teenager, according to court documents.

Gotta served as administrator of St. Philip Church in East Windsor and St. Catherine Church in Broadbrook until he left in 2012 after being accused of sexual abuse.

Gotta was indicted on six charges including aiding and abetting the unlawful transport of a firearm in interstate commerce, aiding and abetting the possession of a handgun by a juvenile, aiding and abetting the possession of ammunition by a juvenile, distribution of explosive material to an individual under the age of 21, aiding and abetting the attempted manufacture of a pipe bomb, and obstruction of justice but only plead guilty to one charge, prosecutors said.

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PENNSYLVANIA
PennLive

[with copy of the letter]

By Ivey DeJesus | idejesus@pennlive.com

The letter is dated Sept. 25, 2002.

It was written by an attorney whose clients, all of them victims of sexual molestation and rape at the hands of priests from the Altoona-Johnstown Diocese, were seeking some form of redress – either criminal charges or at the very least an investigation into their allegations.

The letter was addressed to three law enforcement officials: Cambria County District Attorney David Tulowitzki, who today is a county judge; Karen Arnold, then-assistant district attorney in Centre County; and Catherine Miller, then-assistant district attorney in Blair County.

The four-page letter detailed accounts from young men who said they had been molested or abused by six parish priests in the Altoona-Johnstown Diocese — some over the span of years. One young man was nine years old and serving as an altar boy at Holy Name Church in Ebensburg when Monsignor Francis McCaa began to molest him. The abuse lasted four years.

Richard Serbin, the attorney who wrote the letter to those three officials, never heard back from them.

Now, 14 years later, a grand jury investigation has found that the preponderance of law enforcement authorities to pass on allegations of clergy sex abuse further enabled more than 50 priests to molest hundreds of children over four decades across the diocese of Altoona-Johnstown.

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PENNSYLVANIA
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests

For immediate release: Tuesday, March 8

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)

Cambria County senior officials ignored reports of clergy sex crimes for over a dozen years allowing children to be needlessly placed at risk and we fear dozens upon dozens to be sexually assaulted. Attorney Richard Serbin first wrote county officials in 2002 about young men in six parishes who had been molested.

[PennLive]

Law enforcement could have and should have acted sooner. Call on prosecutors and police to come clean about their complicity in clergy sex crimes and cover-ups and to work harder than ever now to expose wrong doers in every way possible. They should also use their “bully pulpit” to prod more victims, witness and whistleblowers to come forward and try again to report these horrific crimes.

They should join growing chorus of voices pushing for a civil window in Harrisburg allowing cases to move forward on their merits rather than automatically being time barred.

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FLORIDA
Tampa Bay Times

Laura C. Morel, Times Staff Writer

TAMPA — A lawsuit claiming that a former student of the now-defunct Mary Help of Christians School was sexually abused by a teacher in the 1970s was filed in Hillsborough Circuit Court on Tuesday.

The case is the latest in a string of several lawsuits filed in the last decade alleging sexual abuse against Mary Help students. The lawsuit names the Salesians of Don Bosco, a religious order of brothers that dedicate their lives to helping children, which ran the boarding school until it closed in 2006.

According to the 26-page complaint, the victim, identified only as John Doe, started attending the boarding school at age 12 in 1976 when he met brother John Casula, the auto shop instructor.

“He was from a single parent family that lived in a very rough neighborhood in Tampa,” the complaint says. “His mother worked long hours and boarded him at the school for his safety, education, and religious training.”

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TEXAS/ARIZONA
Arizona Republic

AP

EDINBURG, Texas – Authorities say an 83-year-old Arizona man accused of killing a Texas teacher and ex-beauty queen when he was a young priest in 1960 is set to be extradited to Texas.

McAllen Police say its officers as well as members of the Texas Department of Public Safety Ranger Service expect to take John Feit into custody on Wednesday in Phoenix and fly him to South Texas. He will be booked into the Hidalgo County Jail in Edinburg.

A news conference is scheduled for 3 p.m. Wednesday in Edinburg after Feit’s return.

Feit was arrested in Scottsdale on Feb. 9 after he was indicted in Hidalgo County for the killing of Irene Garza, a 25-year-old school teacher.

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TEXAS
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests

For immediate release: Tuesday, March 8, 2016

Ted Cruz gives role to “victim hater”
He appointed clergyman to advisory board
That minister called a support group “evil-doers”
“They’re just as reprehensible as sex criminals,” TX preacher said
He heads Ft. Worth seminary and has been a national Baptist official

A presidential hopeful has named a prominent Baptist minister to an advisory board even though the clergyman once called a support group for clergy sex abuse victims “evil-doers.”

[Baptist News]

Texas Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) has tapped Paige Patterson, president of Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Ft. Worth, to the candidate’s Religious Liberty Advisory Council, despite Patterson’s calling the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAP) “just as reprehensible as sex criminals.”

The appointment came in the same week that “Spotlight” won two Oscars, including “Best Picture.” The film shows how SNAP played a helpful role in exposing more than 250 child molesting Boston area clerics.

“Patterson made a hurtful, mean-spirited and Trump-like effort to bully suffering victims into staying silent,” said SNAP director David Clohessy. “To equate child molesters to child sex abuse victims may be most vicious comparison possible.”

“In our 27 years, we’ve been insulted often, but virtually never with such vitriol from such a prominent and purportedly ‘Godly’ man like Patterson,” Clohessy said.

[Stop Baptist Predators]

At the time of Patterson’s remarks, SNAP had raised questions about his actions in the child sex abuse case of Darrell Gilyard, “a pastor whom Patterson had mentored,” according to Christa Brown of StopBaptistPredators.org. “By the time Gilyard was convicted on child sex charges in Florida, over forty young women and underage teens had made allegations against him. According to the Dallas Morning News, many of those claims had been reported directly to Patterson, but to no avail,” Brown wrote.

Cruz should reverse himself and oust Patterson from his panel, SNAP maintains.

Clohessy also urged victims of Baptist child molesters to ignore Patterson’s “self-serving sentiments” and speak up so that “kids will be safer and cover ups will be prevented.”

“We urge every single person who saw, suspected or suffered child sex crimes and cover ups in Baptist churches or institutions – especially at Patterson’s Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary – to protect kids by calling police, get help by calling therapists, expose wrongdoers by calling journalists, get justice by calling attorneys, and get comfort by calling support groups like ours. This is how kids will be safer, adults will recover, criminals will be prosecuted and cover ups will be deterred and the truth will surface.

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PENNSYLVANIA
Catholic Philly

BY CATHOLIC NEWS SERVICE

HOLLIDAYSBURG, Pa. (CNS) — Reminding people that God’s everlasting mercy “will always be greater than any sin,” Bishop Mark L. Bartchak of Altoona-Johnstown called upon parishioners to find peace in God as the diocese deals with the fallout of a grand jury report detailing hundreds of incidents of clergy sexual abuse.

“God has not abandoned us, nor will God forget any of us at this time or at any time,” he said in a letter to the diocese that was read at Masses the weekend of March 5-6.

The letter recalled the story of the prodigal son, the Gospel reading for weekend, in urging parishioners to remain faithful and not to abandon the church.

“No matter how much God experiences the heartache of a father, God our heavenly father keeps watching out for his children, even those who are separated from him and his church,” the letter said.

Bishop Bartchak said he had heard from people who felt betrayed and were considering leaving the Catholic Church in the days after the grand jury report was released March 1 by Pennsylvania Attorney General Kathleen G. Kane. He stressed, however, that embracing mercy is the call of God as Pope Francis teaches.

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OKLAHOMA
KTLA

An Oklahoma missionary who volunteered at a children’s home in Kenya was sentenced to 40 years in prison Monday for sexually assaulting three girls and a boy while working at the facility, according to court documents.

Matthew Lane Durham, 21, was sentenced to four decades in prison by Judge David L. Russell on four counts of “engaging in illicit sexual conduct in foreign places,” according to court documents.

“In a span of just 33 days,” prosecutors wrote to the court, Durham “raped three girls — ages 5, 9 and 15 — at least eight times. During that same time period, he sexually molested a 12-year-old boy twice.”

The prosecutors said that Durham “not only forcefully sexually abused these children,” but “he psychologically damaged them by taking advantage of their trust he received from the children.”

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OKLAHOMA
Watch Keep

Oklahoma missionary Matthew Durham sentenced to 40 years in prison for raping children at African orphanage

Matthew Lane Durham, 21, was sentenced to four decades in prison by Judge David L. Russell on four counts of “engaging in illicit sexual conduct in foreign places,” according to court documents.
“In a span of just 33 days,” prosecutors wrote to the court, Durham “raped three girls — ages 5, 9 and 15 — at least eight times. During that same time period, he sexually molested a 12-year-old boy twice.”

The region of the eastern African nation that Durham volunteered in has also been shaken, prosecutors say.

In a sentencing memorandum to the court in February, they wrote that Durham’s actions “have had a chilling effect on the lives of dozens of foreign volunteers in Kenya and elsewhere who must now live under the cloud of suspicion … there is a real perception among Upendo’s local Kenyan community that more pedophiles lurk among the volunteers, especially the male volunteers.”

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NEW JERSEY
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests

For immediate release: Tuesday, March 8, 2016

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

A new bishop has been picked to head the Metuchen diocese (where there are at least 13 publicly accused predator priests). We are not optimistic about his handling of child sex abuse and cover up cases.

http://www.bishop-accountability.org/AtAGlance/lists.htm

Msgr. James Checchio has been in Rome for at least a decade. Sadly, the mindset of most Catholic officials in Rome, when it comes to the safety of children, is distressing.

We have seen no evidence that Checchio has done or said anything noteworthy to protect kids and deter cover ups by exposing those who commit or conceal heinous crimes against children.

The last two heads of the seminary which Checchio, now-Cardinals Edwin O’Brien and Timothy Dolan, have been anything but open and compassionate about this continuing crisis.

So we are disappointed in Checchio’s promotion.

Roughly 30 US bishops have posted predator priests’ names on their websites. Sadly, Metuchen is not one of them. We hope this will be Checchio’s first move in Metuchen.

His second move, we hope, will be to put a New Jersey Catholic cleric who was just charged with having and watching child porn into a treatment center.

Br. John B. Spalding is accused of endangering the welfare of a child and possession and viewing of pornographic material, primarily child pornography. He’ll soon return to Rhode Island, where he’s from. That’s wrong. His Catholic supervisors should insist he live far away in a professionally run facility so kids will be safer. Why let him live among unsuspecting families and vulnerable children?

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MISSOURI
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests

For immediate release: Tuesday, March 8, 2016

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

The dispute over these so-called “religious objection” laws – here and elsewhere – involves more than adults with differing beliefs. It also involves innocent young kids and wounded adult victims who suffer when claims of “religious freedom” are used to protect clerics who commit and conceal heinous child sex crimes.

[New York Times]

Time and time again, in civil courts across the US, unscrupulous church officials cite Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA) laws to block child sex abuse lawsuits and prevent records about child molesting clerics from being disclosed. These self-serving church officials – fixated on protecting their careers, comfort and reputations – exploit these laws to make sure their reckless and callous decisions to hire, promote, transfer and protect child predators are not exposed or scrutinized.

We urge every lawmaker to resist pressure to vote for these bills. We applaud the legislators who are filibustering now in Missouri. And we urge judges to help make sure that these laws don’t help corrupt church officials keep hiding their complicity in child sex crimes.

Remember: In the US, we adults are free to believe whatever we want. But we’re not free to do whatever we want, especially when the safety of precious children and vulnerable adults is at stake.

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TEXAS
KRGV

MCALLEN – McAllen police and DPS troopers are expected to travel to Arizona to take custody of a suspect in a 1960 murder case as early as tomorrow.

John Feit is accused of killing Irene Garza. She was last seen on April 16, 1960 at Sacred Heart Church in McAllen. Her body was found five days later. Feit was a priest at the time.

A grand jury indicted him in the murder last month. (Related Link: Ex-Priest Arrested for 1960 Murder)

Feit currently lives in Arizona. He waived his right to an extradition hearing.

Once Feit arrives in Hidalgo County, he’ll be booked into the Hidalgo County jail, pending his arraignment. Hidalgo County officials are planning a press conference for tomorrow at 3 p.m.

For now, Feit is being held at the Lower Buckeye Jail in Arizona.

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TEXAS
Valley Central

Former Priest John Feit — the man long suspected of killing McAllen beauty queen Irene Garza — may return to McAllen on Wednesday to face the murder charge against him.

Investigators plan to take custody of Feit on Wednesday, according to news releases from the McAllen Police Department and Hidalgo County District Attorney’s Office.

District Attorney Ricardo Rodriguez, Sheriff Eddie Guerra and McAllen police Chief Victor Rodriguez plan to hold a news conference 3 p.m. Wednesday at the Hidalgo County Courthouse.

Irene Garza vanished on April 16, 1960, after driving to Sacred Heart Catholic Church in McAllen for confession. Days later, volunteers pulled her body from an irrigation canal.

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PENNSYLVANIA
Attorney General Kathleen G. Kane

3/8/2016

HARRISBURG — Attorney General Kathleen G. Kane today announced approximately 150 calls have been made in the last week to a hotline established for people to provide information relating to the Diocese of Altoona-Johnstown.

The hotline — 888-538-8541 — is being manned by investigators who worked directly on the Office of Attorney General’s two-year investigation of the Diocese.

That investigation included the use of a statewide investigating grand jury. After reviewing evidence and testimony, the grand jury issued a 147-page report that detailed the sexual abuse hundreds of children endured over a period of at least 40 years. Dozens of religious leaders and priests assigned to the Diocese of Altoona-Johnstown were responsible for the abuse and some were instrumental in covering it up, the grand jury found.

“The victims need to be heard,” Attorney General Kane said. “In many cases, they have waited years to speak about the abuse they suffered. We want to assure them that they will be taken seriously.”

The hotline went live last week on the same day that Attorney General Kane released the grand jury’s report. The hotline is being manned from 8 a.m. to 9 p.m.

Many calls have been placed by victims, including numerous senior citizens, who had yet to speak with investigators. Many stated they were abused by religious leaders associated with the Diocese. Their calls have further confirmed the findings in the grand jury’s report.

Investigators answering the calls also are working to connect victims with counseling and therapy assistance. Investigators have encouraged victims to contact the Pennsylvania Coalition Against Rape, which works to put victims in touch with counseling and therapy services.

PCAR maintains a statewide listing of service providers for victims of sexual abuse and domestic violence. Victims also are encouraged to call 888-772-7227 to find a local rape crisis center.

None of the criminal conduct outlined in the grand jury’s report can be prosecuted at this time. That is because of the statute of limitations being expired, abusers being deceased or because traumatized victims are unable to testify in a court of law.

Nonetheless, Attorney General Kane stressed the investigation of this matter is ongoing. The Attorney General’s investigators will pursue new investigative leads as they become available.

One call could change everything,” Attorney General Kane said. “The right information could create a new lead for our investigators. That is why it is so important for those with information to reach out to us.”

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PENNSYLVANIA
ABC 27

By Myles Snyder
Published: March 8, 2016

HARRISBURG, Pa. (WHTM) – The state attorney general’s office says it has received about 150 calls since the release of a grand jury report that found widespread child sexual abuse in the Altoona-Johnstown diocese.

Attorney General Kathleen Kane’s office said many of the calls to a hotline established last week were from victims, including numerous senior citizens previously unknown to investigators.

Kane’s office said many callers reported they were abused by religious leaders associated with the diocese.

The grand jury’s 147-page report alleges hundreds of children were abused by priests and other religious leaders assigned to the diocese for at least 40 years, and that two former bishops worked to cover up the crimes.

Kane said last week that none of the crimes in the grand jury’s report can be prosecuted, partly because of the state law that sets a time limit on filing most criminal charges.

However, she said the investigation is ongoing and prosecutors will pursue new leads as they become available.

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PENNSYLVANIA
York Daily Record

Brandie Kessler, bkessler@ydr.com March 8, 2016

In the week since a grand jury report detailed decades of sexual abuse in the Altoona-Johnstown diocese, about 150 calls from victims and others have been made to a hotline, according to Pennsylvania Attorney General Kathleen Kane’s office.

“We’re getting calls from all over the country,” said Chuck Ardo, spokesman for the office. People from as far as California have called. He noted that the calls have mostly come from victims of sexual abuse who have a connection to the Altoona-Johnstown diocese and who have moved out of the area.

He said none of those calls that he knew of came from people saying they were abused within the Harrisburg diocese, which includes, York, Adams, Franklin and Lebanon counties, among others.

Many of the people are elderly, Ardo said, so the statute of limitations for them has expired. Still, their calls are important. It broadens the office’s investigation, which is ongoing, he said.

And, victims who call are put in touch with services.

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PENNSYLVANIA
PA Homepage

By Eyewitness News | enews@pahomepage.com, Jayne Ann Bugda | jbugda@pahomepage.com

Published 03/08 2016

HARRISBURG, DAUPHIN COUNTY (WBRE/WYOU) A special hotline received more than 150 calls since last week’s report of alleged sexual abuse by priests in a Central Pennsylvania Diocese.

According to a grand jury report, many of those calls are from victims themselves.

Attorney General Kathleen Kane announced on Tuesday the fallout continues after the Diocese of Altoona-Johnstown was cited in a grand jury repor

The investigation detailed hundreds of cases of abuse over the past four decades.

Members of the “Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests” (SNAP) are also lending their support to victims today.

They plan to rally this afternoon outside the Altoona-Johnstown Diocese headquarters.

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PENNSYLVANIA
WITF

Written by Brandie Kessler, York Daily Record | Mar 8, 2016

(Undated) — When a grand jury last week issued a report alleging child sexual abuse over four decades by more than 50 priests in the Altoona-Johnstown diocese, the grand jury said Pennsylvania’s statutes of limitations for child sex crimes needs to change.

Although the abuse alleged in the grand jury report included rape of a child and other alleged acts by priests, a news release from the attorney general’s office said none of the criminal acts can be prosecuted, in part because the statute of limitations has passed.

In Pennsylvania, the statute of limitations for criminal and civil charges vary. For criminal charges, a victim of child sexual abuse who turned 18 years old after Aug. 27, 2002, has until their 50th birthday to report the abuse. The statute of limitations for anyone who had their 18th birthday on or before Aug. 27, 2002, has already expired, since the law allows them to report only until their 30th birthday.

For civil charges, child victims have only until their 30th birthday to file, regardless of when the abuse occurred.

Advocates say that’s a problem for a number of reasons.

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AUSTRALIA
The Australian

MARCH 8, 2016

Tessa Akerman
Reporter
Melbourne

The child sex abuse royal commission is likely to recommend changes to Catholic Church governance and canon law to target vulnerabilities exposed by the hearings in the Ballarat diocese, an academic says.

La Trobe University lecturer Timothy Jones said there could be room for further changes ­regarding mandatory reporting and oversight of bishops. “There was no simple recourse when a bishop wasn’t willing to act,” he said. “I think one of the biggest problems that emerged was the lack of review of bishops’ decisions, but also a sort of secrecy with which matters of that kind are supposed to be held which is at the heart of protecting abusers.

“(It’s) enshrined in canon law; until there’s strong evidence of an offence, a priest’s reputation is privileged.”

The inquiry heard evidence in Ballarat that then bishop Ronald Mulkearns knew of offending priests and moved them between parishes without calling police.

Mr Jones said there had been a greater centralisation in the church in recent decades and an increase in Vatican authority.

Serious crimes are now referred to the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, which instructs bishops on how to act.

Western Sydney priest John Doherty said canon law had been updated in 2001, so that an ­accusation against a cleric must be referred to the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith after a preliminary investigation by the bishop’s appointee.

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PENNSYLVANIA
Philly.com

MARCH 8, 2016

by Helen W. Mallon

Just days after the Oscar for Best Picture went to Spotlight, the movie detailing how the Boston Globe pursued the child sexual-abuse scandal and cover-up by the local archdiocese, a similar story was reported out of Western Pennsylvania. A grand jury investigation into the Archdiocese of Altoona-Johnstown revealed that hundreds of children were sexually abused by priests over a span of 40 years. And, once again, church officials were accused of participating in a massive cover-up.

It’s mind-numbing. But this problem isn’t limited to the institutionally sanctioned abuse within the Catholic Church. You may not realize it, but someone you see on a daily basis may have been sexually traumatized as a child. The National Child Traumatic Stress Network reports that “as many as one out of four girls and one out of six boys will experience some form of sexual abuse before the age of 18.” Most of these victims will later lead ordinary, private lives as adults. But others will be known only by their destructive coping mechanisms or psychiatric diagnoses, their histories obscured by outrageous behavior. And still other victims will become lightning rods for speaking out.

Most child sexual abuse is done by someone the victim knows and trusts, someone who is already an integral part of the victim’s family or community. It can be an enormous challenge for parents when someone they hold in high regard — perhaps a beloved family member — is linked to such a heinous crime. Children, especially young ones, don’t make this stuff up, but to collude in silencing a child is a simple matter. Facing the truth and seeking justice can be psychologically devastating and legally complicated, fracturing once-solid relationships.

As Spotlight attests, most perpetrators are not the suspicious, antisocial losers we want them to be. This crime thrives behind a wholesome public persona — witness former Penn State coach Jerry Sandusky.

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PENNSYLVANIA
StateCollege.com

About 150 calls have been made to a hotline to report information related to abuse by religious leaders in the Altoona-Johnstown Diocese, Pennsylvania Attorney General Kathleen Kane said today.

The phone line, manned by investigators from the attorney general’s office, was established last week when a 147-page grand jury report was released detailing child sexual abuse by dozens of priests over at least 40 years and allegedly concealed by diocese leaders. The report included priests who served at State College and Bellefonte churches.

“The victims need to be heard,” Kane said. “In many cases, they have waited years to speak about the abuse they suffered. We want to assure them that they will be taken seriously.”
Kane said many of the calls have been placed by individuals who had not previously spoken with investigators and said they were abused by religious leaders in the diocese. Numerous calls were from senior citizens.

The hotline — 888-538-8541 — is answered by investigators from 8 a.m.-9 p.m.

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ESPANA
Nacion

[Three professors of the Catholic Congregation of the Marist in Barcelona confessed to sexually abusing his students, one of the biggest scandals of pedophilia in this country which is unaccustomed to such cases.]

Barcelona. AFP. Tres profesores de la Congregación católica de los Maristas en Barcelona confesaron haber abusado sexualmente de sus alumnos, en uno de los mayores escándalos de pederastia en este país, poco acostumbrado a dichos casos.

“No sé por qué razón lo hice (…). Era como un juego de críos”, confesó a una de sus víctimas uno de los docentes, en un video grabado con cámara oculta y difundido este lunes por el diarioEl Periódico de Cataluña.

Según el relato de la víctima, no desmentido por el presunto agresor, esta fue violada en decenas de ocasiones en los años 80, cuando él tenía entre 8 y 14 años. Los hechos ocurrieron en la Escuela Marista Sants-Les Corts, epicentro del escándalo.

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ITALIA
Il Fatto Quotidiano

[Father Luciano Massaferro was sentenced to seven years in prison for abusing minors but the Vaticans wants to give him absolution and assign him as chaplain in a convent.]

Il 29 dicembre 2009 don Luciano Massaferro, conosciuto come don “Lu”, parroco della chiesa di San Vincenzo di Alassio, comune in provincia di Savona, fu arrestato con l’accusa di aver compiuto abusi su una minorenne, chierichetta della Chiesa. Dopo essere stato condannato definitivamente a 7 anni e 8 mesi di carcere, il sacerdote avrebbe dovuto lasciare la cella nell’estate del 2017 ma grazie agli sconti per buona condotta è uscito quasi un anno e mezzo prima. In totale ha scontato 3 anni in carcere e 1 anno ai domiciliari dopodiché è stato affidato in prova ai servizi sociali.

I giudici, fino alla Cassazione, lo hanno riconosciuto colpevole, ma per don Lu i processi non sono finiti: manca l’ultima sentenza, quella del processo canonico. In caso di assoluzione il sacerdote potrà tornare a fare il prete, a tutti gli effetti. Secondo quanto riportato dal Secolo XIX, l’ipotesi più accreditata è proprio quest’ultima: monsignor Guglielmo Borghetti, infatti, ai collaboratori avrebbe detto che “si va verso l’assoluzione“. Il vescovo coadiutore di Albenga, scelto a gennaio dello scorso anno da Papa Francesco dopo i gravi e numerosi scandali all’interno della diocesi ligure, secondo il quotidiano genovese, ha promesso a “don Lu” anche un alloggio e un lavoro in caso di assoluzione. Così presto il sacerdote potrà riprendere la sua vita così com’era prima della condanna. L’intenzione della Curia sarebbe quella di farlo diventare cappellano in un convento.

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ITALIA
Rete L’Abuso

[Don Mauro Inzoli, leading member of Communion and Liberation, is accused of abuse of eight children but the Vatican continues to be opaque on the issue.]

Via al processo a don Mauro Inzoli, esponente di spicco di Comunione e liberazione, accusato di violenze su otto bambini. Ma il Vaticano continua a essere poco trasparente

di Federico Tulli

Ricordate don Mauro Inzoli? Sebbene a giugno 2014 fosse stato «invitato» dalla Congregazione per la dottrina della fede «a una vita di preghiera e di umile riservatezza, come segni di conversione e di penitenza» per gli «abusi su minori» affidati alla sua cura, il 17 gennaio 2015 fu immortalato sorridente al convegno organizzato dalla Regione Lombardia per tutelare i valori «della famiglia tradizionale». L’ex parroco di Crema, esponente di spicco di Comunione e liberazione, fondatore del Banco Alimentare e dell’Associazione della fraternità, si godeva lo spettacolo in seconda fila. Davanti a lui sedevano il governatore Roberto Maroni e il predecessore, Roberto Formigoni, di cui, Inzoli, si dice sia stato il confessore. Condannato – si fa per dire – dalla Santa Sede «alla pena medicinale perpetua» per lo Stato italiano era un uomo libero. Il 9 marzo le cose potrebbero cambiare.

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ITALIA
Tuscia Web

[“Don Dino has had intercourse with minors”]

Roma – Non solo foto hard, don Dino ha anche avuto rapporti con minori. Il tribunale del Riesame conferma le ipotesi della procura di Roma, secondo quanto riportato dal quotidiano “Il Tempo” di Roma.

L’ex parroco di Montecalvello, al secolo Placido Greco, era stato arrestato lo scorso maggio nell’inchiesta sul giro di baby prostituti della stazione Termini nell’operazione Meeting point (L’arresto di don Dino: video 1 – video 2).

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DEUTSCHLAND
Kloster St. Benedikt Damme

Presseerklärung der Abtei Münsterschwarzach und des Priorats Damme: Im Jahr 2014 erfuhr die in der Abtei Münsterschwarzach seit 2003 bestehende Arbeitsgruppe zur Aufarbeitung und Prävention sexueller Gewalt von Hinweisen, dass es in den Jahren 1966 bis 1974 im Bereich des Internats Damme zu Fehlverhalten durch einen Pater gekommen sei. Die Rede war von Grenzverletzungen sowie möglichem sexuellen Missbrauch. Da der Pater bereits verstorben war, konnte er selbst nicht mehr dazu befragt werden. Mitbrüder, die damals im Internat Damme tätig waren, konnten die Hinweise nicht bestätigen. Auch der mehrfache Kontakt mit ehemaligen Schülern erbrachte keine verwertbaren Verdachtsmomente.

vergrößern

m Rahmen eines Treffens mit ehemaligen Internatsschülern von Damme im November 2015 konkretisierte sich der Verdacht gegen den Pater. Betroffene oder Zeugen eines massiven Fehlverhaltens oder Missbrauchs durch den Pater haben sich bislang jedoch bei uns nicht gemeldet.

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DEUTSCHLAND
NDR

[In order to determine whether pupils of a Catholic boarding school were abused in Damme (Vechta County) in the 60s and 70s, the Benedictine Order has decided on an unusual step. A letter has been sent to all former students of the now closed school regarding abuse from 1966 to 1974 by a certain priest. The alumni are asked to report possible abuse.]

Um zu klären, ob in den 60er- und 70er-Jahren Schüler eines katholischen Internats in Damme (Landkreis Vechta) missbraucht wurden, hat sich der Benediktiner-Orden zu einem ungewöhnlichen Schritt entschlossen. Er ist für die mittlerweile geschlossene Schule zuständig und hat nun allen ehemaligen Schülern einen Brief geschickt, die zwischen 1966 und 1974 von einem bestimmten Pater misshandelt worden sein könnten. Darin werden sie aufgefordert, einen möglichen Missbrauch zu melden.

Möglicher Täter ist verstorben

“Das ist ein ungewöhnlicher Schritt, den wir so das erste Mal tun”, sagte dazu der Missbrauchs-Beauftragte des Ordens im bayerischen Münsterschwarzach, Pater Christoph Gerhard. Anlass für diesen Schritt seien Gerüchte, denen der Orden bereits seit zwei Jahren nachgehe, ohne konkrete Hinweise oder Namen von Betroffenen erhalten zu haben. Man wolle Aufklärung, auch, um mit den Betroffenen über Formen der Hilfe und Unterstützung zu reden, sagte Pater Christoph. Der mögliche Täter, der damals das Internat in Damme aufgebaut hat, kann nicht mehr zur Verantwortung gezogen werden – er ist bereits vor elf Jahren gestorben.

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PENNSYLVANIA
Washington Times

ALTOONA, Pa. (AP) – A grand jury report saying two former bishops helped cover up the sexual abuse of hundreds of victims by more than 50 priests is continuing to cause fallout in a central Pennsylvania diocese.

Members of the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests plan a rally outside diocesan offices on Tuesday afternoon.

Meanwhile, Bishop Mark Bartchak has ordered banners of all former bishops removed from the diocese’s Cathedral of the Blessed Sacrament. Bishops James Hogan and Joseph Adamec, who headed the diocese from 1966 until 2011, were criticized by the report. Hogan died in 2005 but Adamec’s attorney has denied he did anything wrong.

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NEW YORK
Frum Follies

Last night the Board of the Riverdale Jewish Center met and then sent an email to members announcing the resignation of Rabbi Jonathan Rosenblatt. This follows a week of uncertainty as reported last week by Gary Rosenblatt (no relation) in the New York Jewish Week (‘Sauna’ Rabbi Stepping Down; Or Is He?/ Riverdale leader’s surprise statement unclear about intentions and timing.)

The Rabbi has been a source of controversy for years because he regularly took underage minors to saunas gawking at their naked bodies while talking to them at length. His conduct finally erupted into public view when the New York Times reported on the controversy.

At first the board voted to seek an end to his employment but the executive committee overrode the board. This led to an exodus of many members some of whom formed a new prayer group. Membership is down and the RJC is suffering financially. The impact was felt by the board when the new dues year started on January 1. I suspect the shortfall, rather than moral considerations drove the board to reverse course and seek Rosenblatt’s resignation.

It is not clear if this measure will be enough to placate disaffected members. While Rosenblatt will not have any official role going forward according to the email message (i.e., he is not being made rabbi emeritus) the letter does not censure him in any way and speaks of him still being welcome.

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PENNSYLVANIA
We Are Central PA

Bellwood, Blair County, Pa.

Nearly a week after a devastating Grand Jury report revealed decades of sexual abuse, covered up within the Altoona-Johnstown Diocese, groups are coming together to help victims.

Tonight in Blair County will be a self-help group for victims to attend.

The group organizing the meeting is called SNAP which stands for “Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests”.

Victims, family members, and supporters are welcome to attend from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m. in the Antis Public Library in Bellwood.

Based in Chicago, SNAP was founded in 1988 and now has nearly 30,000 members.

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NEW YORK
Frum Follies

First posted on 3/8/13

Text of Statement to Hearings of the New York State Assembly, Committee on Sexual Abuse, March 8, 2013 by Rabbi Yosef Blau, mashgiach ruchani (spiritual adviser) at the Rabbi Isaac Elchanan Theological Seminary (RIETS) of Yeshiva University. The Committee hearing were devoted to the Child Sex Abuse Act (CSA) to extend the Statute of Limitations for filing criminal and civil cases beyond the current limit of age 23. The CSA is also know as the Markey Bill after its sponsor, Assemblywoman Margaret Markey.

Thank you for giving me this opportunity to speak on behalf of survivors of abuse who suffer from the present statute of limitation; this statute prevents them from starting criminal and civil proceedings against their abuser and those who covered up and protected him.

My name is Rabbi Yosef Blau. For more than two decades I have been supporting and advocating for survivors of abuse, particularly within the Orthodox Jewish community. During these years my understanding of the trauma and its ongoing consequences has grown from conversations with the survivors and reading the literature. Most of the people who have contacted me are adults who are first confronting abuse that occurred during their childhood.

Twenty three and a half years ago I was part of a rabbinical court that dealt with an accusation of slander. A young man accused a rabbi [Boruch Lanner], who worked as an educator and youth leader, of sexually abusing teenagers; that rabbi sued the young man. Naively we restricted testimony to events that had taken place during the last ten years. Few victims came forward and they found it difficult to testify. Soon after, I received a number of letters from survivors clearly describing acts of abuse done to them by this rabbi fifteen and twenty years earlier. Only as adults, having had extensive therapy and in many cases a supportive spouse, were they able to openly confront their abuser. When they were adolescents he seemed all-powerful.

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FRANCE
National Secular Society (UK)

08 Mar 2016 13:25

Vatican officials face prosecution in France over failure to report sex abuse priest to police

Senior Vatican officials are facing investigation in France over the “non-reporting of crime” and endangering lives, following allegations that clerical sex abuse was not reported to the police.

Father Bernard Preynat was indicted in January 2016 for the alleged abuse of Scouts between 1986 and 1991 and admitted that he sexually abused young Scouts in 1986-1991 in the group which he had run for twenty years.

Prosecutors have now ordered an investigation into senior figures over their “failure to report a crime” after Preynat’s victims said top officials in the Catholic diocese of Lyon, including its Archbishop Cardinal Philippe Barbarin, had failed to report the priest to the police, as required under French law.

In addition, Preynat’s own lawyer told the judge that “the facts had been known by the church authorities since 1991”.

According to AFP, the Vatican had earlier given Cardinal Barbarin its backing, saying it had confidence he would deal with the matter “with great responsibility”. A source close to the cardinal claimed, “Cardinal Barbarin … quite rightly suspended Father Preynat after meeting a first victim and taking advice from Rome, and this, even before a first official complaint was made”.

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PENNSYLVANIA
The Guardian (UK)

Joanna Walters in Ebensburg, Pennsylvania
@Joannawalters13
Tuesday 8 March 2016

One of Brian Gergely’s fellow altar boys had a code he would use to signal danger in the room where they and the priest prepared for mass.

“He would say ‘red buttons’, and that was the alert that the priest was coming up behind you, and we would try to get away from him, running around the desk in the middle of the room where he kept the chalices, the host and the wine,” said Gergely, 46.

Gergely was 10 at the time.

The priest was Monsignor Francis McCaa, a commanding figure in the small Pennsylvania town of Ebensburg in his black cassock with the red buttons, and one of dozens of Catholic leaders named in a devastating report issued last week by a state grand jury detailing appalling child sex abuse in his diocese and a systematic cover-up by the church.

“I was standing in the sacristy and he pinned me to the desk. I was just a little guy,” Gergely said. McCaa assaulted him there and also while the boy gave confession, at the Holy Name church where his family worshipped.

“My parents were patrons,” Gergely said. “They were going door to door raising money for the church. The community put Monsignor McCaa on a pedestal.”

Other priests named in the report worked in the past at the school, where Gergely recalls being subjected to tough corporal punishment.

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PENNSYLVANIA
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests

Victims blast Altoona Catholic officials
Bishop should fire a nun and his abuse advisors
Grand jury showed “victims advocate” is a sham
SNAP: “Saying ‘sorry’ is wrong without clear changes”
Group wants outreach about “sadistic yet ignored teacher”
And victims say Bartchak’s letter on Sunday was “pure public relations”

WHAT:
Holding signs and childhood photos, clergy sex abuse survivors and their supporters will demand that Altoona’s Catholic bishop

–fire a nun and his abuse panel,
–work with the Attorney General to pick replacements, and
–disclose more about a high school librarian who is named in last week’s grand jury report – but has been ignored by news media even though he downloaded “hundreds of pages of violent child rape stories and chats” and was on the job for eight years.

They will also urge the bishop to

–move quickly in posting predators’ name on his diocesan and church websites,
–include their photos, whereabouts and work histories, and

And the group will urge any who saw, suspected or suffered clergy sex crimes or cover ups in Altoona to come forward now to secular authorities, not church officials.

WHEN:
Tuesday, March 7 at 1:00 p.m.

WHERE:
On the sidewalk outside the Altoona-Johnstown diocese headquarters, 927 S. Logan Blvd. (corner of Hawthorne St.) in Hollidaysburg, PA

WHO:
Two-three members of a support group called SNAP (the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests), including a Pittsburgh woman who is the organization’s local volunteer director

WHY:
1) Last week, Pennsylvania’s Attorney General released a scathing grand jury report that concludes “nothing has changed” in the Altoona-Johnstown diocese regarding child sex crimes and cover ups. The report was particularly critical of how Catholic officials deal now with abuse reports, saying there is “no privacy or confidentiality” for victims and that an abuse “review board” is not “unbiased or neutral” and was, in fact, set up to “convince the public that the days of a mysterious bishop deciding how to handle a scandalous report of child molestation and sodomy were over,” but “in reality, the bishop still makes the decision.”

The jurors also found that the work of a so-called “victims advocate” does not, in fact, “remotely resemble advocacy” but instead is “fact-finding” for church defense lawyers, and that victims’ information “is forwarded to lawyers whose interest is solely in protecting the diocese.”

SNAP wants Bishop Mark Bartchak to fire the nun who is the purported “victims advocate” and every member of the board, especially, Fr. Joseph Byrnes, a board member who “pled the Fifth” and refused to answer questions from the grand jury. (Staff and board members include Sister Donna Marie Leiden, Colleen Krug, D.J. Bragonier, Fr. Joseph W. Fleming, Dr. Russell Miller and Dr. Mary O’Leary Wiley.) http://www.ajdiocese.org/children-and-youth

2) The group wants Bartchak to voluntarily work with Attorney General’s office staff to choose replacements.

3) SNAP also wants Bartchack to reveal more about Mark Powdermaker who, as librarian at Bishop Guilfoyle High School, used school computers to “download graphic stories of rape and torture” of girls and “actively discuss” on “chat logs” his “desire to sexually assault and torture a child with other men on line.” Even though investigators found “hundreds of pages of his violent child rape stories and chats” in diocesan offices and jurors concluded that school and diocesan staff “helped him keep his secret” and Powdermaker “spent eight years (1994-2002) amongst the teenage girls he dreamed of raping.” (pages 140-141)

4) Even though the grand jury noted that Bartchak’s “power is nearly absolute,” it said that the “purge of predators is taking too long.” SNAP feels the same way about Bartchack’s pledge to post predators’ names on church websites. The group wants him to provide details and to make sure the information is posted on parish websites too, not just the diocesan website.

5) SNAP is also very critical of a three-page letter Bartchak had read in Altoona area parishes this weekend that repeatedly stressed “mercy” (ten times), “sin” (nine times) and “reconciliation (three times), but not once mentioned the words “crime” ““abuse,” “molestation” or “cover up.” It also announced not a single reform and contained no plea for victims, witnesses or whistleblowers to come forward.

“The letter repeatedly begged Catholics not to leave the church but said nothing that might make kids safer, expose more predators, unearth more cover ups or deter future recklessness, callousness and deceit,” said SNAP’s Judy Jones.

6) Finally, for all the “tragedy and evil” in the 115,042 pages of church abuse records, the grand jury said Bishop Mark Bartchak and his predecessor Bishop Joseph Adamec had one “brief conversation on the subject (of abuse),” “no detailed briefing,” and Bartchak was “unaware of the number of historical predators in the diocese when he appeared before the grand jury.

SNAP believes this was a deliberately self-serving move by Bartchak and is calling on him to explain why he cared so little to learn about this crucial crisis.

Contact:
Judy Jones 314 974 5003, SNAPjudy@gmail.com, Fran Unglo-Samber 717 514 9660, samber13431@comcast.net, David Clohessy 314 566 9790, davidgclohessy@gamail.com, Barbara Dorris 314 503 0003, bdorris@SNAPnetwork.org

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UNITED STATES
Hamilton and Griffin on Rights

Why is it important that predator priests’ files are exposed?

More than 30 US bishops – out of nearly 200 – have grudgingly posted partial lists of predator priests on their diocesan websites. But virtually none have voluntarily released their voluminous records about child sex crimes and cover ups.

Why should they?

Because, as the Bible tells us, “the truth shall set you free.”

Because, as Alcoholics Anonymous tells us, “we’re only as sick as our secrets.”

Because for decades, bishops have pledged to be “open and transparent” about this crisis.

Because since 2002, US bishops have claimed such “openness” is mandatory, as promised in the church’s first-ever belated, grudging nationwide abuse policy.

But here are the best reasons:

Because disclosing long-secret abuse and cover up records is the quickest, easiest, cheapest and most effective way to protect kids now. It’s a way to be sure that no proven, admitted or credibly accused abusive priest is still on the job today.

Because it’s the best way to deter future cover ups. For thousands of years, adults have known that most child sex crimes will never be exposed. So for thousands of years, many adults have not reported knowledge or suspicions of child sex crimes. Unless adults see that this is changing, and learn that even decades-old abuse cover ups are being exposed, many will continue to conceal child sex crimes.

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AUSTRALIA
Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse

8 March, 2016

The Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse has released a consultation paper on out-of-home care today.

Royal Commission Chief Executive Officer Philip Reed said the Commission’s terms of reference direct it to examine how to better prevent, report and respond to child sexual abuse in institutional contexts.

“We decided to examine out-of-home care because it was apparent from our private sessions, public hearings and research work that children in out-of-home care are at a heightened risk of sexual abuse,” Mr Reed said.

“To date we have held over 4,700 private sessions, in which out-of-home care was the largest category of institutions identified, constituting over 40 per cent of all reports of child sexual abuse,” he said.

“We have heard numerous accounts of the significant sexual, physical and emotional abuse of children that occurred in these institutions and its detrimental impact on many people’s lives.”

Mr Reed said the Commission had heard concerns that the current out-of-home care system did not adequately protect children from sexual abuse, or consistently respond as well as it should when abuse occurs.

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PENNSYLVANIA
The Morning Call

Dan Sheehan
Of The Morning Call

ALLENTOWN — In a little more than 15 years, Our Lady of Mercy Syriac Catholic parish in Allentown has grown from a small mission outpost to a thriving community of 500 families.

Now, the mysterious suspension of the parish’s longtime priest — and the appointment of a priest from a different rite to offer the sacraments — has many of the faithful in the Eastern rite church convinced they are being abandoned by their diocese.

Why?

“That’s the million-dollar question,” said George Makhoul of Neffs, a parishioner at Our Lady of Mercy and one of the leaders of a campaign to restore the suspended priest, the Rev. Bassim Shoni, to ministry. “They’re not giving us answers.”

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NEW MEXICO
New Mexican

Aaron Chavez, a Catholic elementary school teacher accused of molesting five students since 2007, entered a not-guilty plea at his arraignment Monday morning in state District Court.

Chavez, 47, an art teacher at Santo Niño Regional Catholic School south of Santa Fe, was arrested in January after a 6-year-old girl told her parents he had insisted on tucking in her shirt during an art class and touched her genital area in the process.

Four other alleged victims — including an 8-year-old and two teenagers who were in Chavez’s class as first graders — have since come forward saying he also inappropriately touched them.

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WASHINGTON
HeraldNet

Blye Pagon Faust, a 1993 graduate of Monroe High School, was a producer on this year’s Oscar-winning film “Spotlight,” the story of how the Boston Globe uncovered the massive scandal of child molestation and cover-up within the local Catholic Archdiocese. In addition to best picture, “Spotlight” took home the Oscar for best original screenplay. Faust, 40, took time this past week to talk with The Herald about the movie and her life. More about “Spotlight” is at spotlightthefilm.com.

What do you remember about the moment at the Academy Awards when you heard Morgan Freeman read the name of your film as the best picture winner?

To be honest, it’s a bit of a blur, but I do remember just feeling an enormous surge of excitement, not only for our entire team, but for all our journalists and the survivors (of pedophilia), knowing that this would be further validation for all their work and efforts to be heard over the years.

Here’s what you said that night: “We would not be here today without the heroic efforts of our reporters. Not only do they affect global change but they show us the absolute necessity for investigative journalism.” How has this story changed your life?

When we were growing up, my parents subscribed to the Everett Herald, the Monroe Monitor and the Seattle Times, so I had always appreciated newspapers. After we made the movie, we knew absolutely how essential investigative units are, but I also realized just how crippled many newspapers had become. I joined the board of the Center for Investigative Reporting because I really believe in investigative journalism and I know it’s tough out there for newspaper reporters. The work the Boston Globe did had global ramifications. They won a Pulitzer prize. What if those reporters hadn’t had the six months it took to do all that research?

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UNITED STATES
Dallas Observer

BY JIM SCHUTZE
TUESDAY, MARCH 8, 2016

You have to wonder: Are daily newspaper people ever struck by the fact that a movie about what they do is so much more popular than they are?

Spotlight, Tom McCarthy’s movie about The Boston Globe’s 2002 Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative series on child molestation among Catholic clergy, was two things. It was a really great movie, and it was a delicious opportunity for self-back-patting by old ink-stained wretches. Like myself.

I watched. I patted. But since the Oscar ceremony, it has taken me a month or more to figure out why the discussion of the movie within my craft inevitably leaves me so sad and lonely. Oh, now I remember. It’s not the movie. It’s the craft.

For every bathetic reminiscence about the way it was when dailies ruled, about what they did and how great they were, I hear at least three expressions of complete bafflement about why dailies don’t do it anymore.

On the PBS Newshour recently, former New York Times ombudsman Margaret Sullivan said, “But I think that the will to do this kind of work is weakening somewhat, and it has to be beefed up. Spotlight is such an inspiring movie, that I’m hopeful that it will cause owners and editors and publishers to realize just how important this work is and to fund it and to get behind it.”

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FRANCE
20 Minutes

[Barbarin Case: New complaint against Lyon Cardinal and members of the diocese.The Archbishop of Lyon is targeted by a new complaint. Following his hearing as part of a preliminary investigation opened by the prosecutor of Lyons ten days ago, a second alleged victim of Father Preynat filed suit Monday against Cardinal Philippe Barbarin and also against several members of the diocese for “failure to report sexual assaults on children under 15 years” and “failure to assist a person in danger,” according to La Parole Liberee.]

L’archevêque de Lyon visé par une nouvelle plainte. A la suite de son audition dans le cadre d’une enquête préliminaire ouverte par le parquet de Lyon il y a dix jours, une seconde victime présumée du Père Preynat a porté plainte, lundi, contre Philippe Barbarin, mais également contre plusieurs membres du diocèse, pour « non-dénonciation d’agressions sexuelles sur mineurs de moins de 15 ans » et « non-assistance à personne en péril », a indiqué ce mardi à 20 Minutes l’association La Parole Libérée.

Le directeur de cabinet de l’archevêque, Pierre Durieux, Régine Maire, membre du Conseil épiscopal du diocèse, et Xavier Grillon, vicaire du diocèse de Roanne, sont également visés par cette plainte.

D’autres plaintes probables

Vendredi, François Devaux, membre fondateur de La Parole Libérée et victime présumée du Père Preynat, avait été entendu plusieurs heures par la justice dans le cadre de l’enquête préliminaire et avait déposé plainte à l’issue de son entretien contre les membres de l’église lyonnaise et deux hauts responsables du Vatican.

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PENNSYLVANIA
ABC 23

Fall-out continues after a Grand Jury report that uncovered widespread sex abuse and its cover-up across the Altoona-Johnstown Catholic Diocese. This as a Cambria County Judge resigns from the Bishop McCort Board of Trustees. Monday the Judge’ legal team released a statement. Missing from Bishop McCort’s Board of Trustees web page Patrick Kiniry. We confirmed the Board of Trustees has accepted a letter of resignation from Judge Kiniry effective immediately. We asked for a copy of the letter and when it was submitted and did not hear back. Kiniry was named in the Grand Jury report in connection with the investigation of the Monsignor Francis MCCAA. MCCAA is now dead but served for more than two decades at Ebensburg’s Holy Name Catholic Church until 1985. The report call MCAA “a monster” because of sexual abuse of as many as Juveniles. The documents say Kiniry who was at that time the Assistant District Attorney, met with Bishop Hogan.

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UNITED STATES
Aleteia

John Burger
March 8, 2016

The Oscar-winning movie Spotlight ends in January 2002, when the results of a months-long investigation by The Boston Globe ends in the publication of the first of many articles on the archdiocese of Boston’s mishandling of clerical sexual abuse.

In many ways, for the Church in the United States, it was just beginning.

Kathleen McChesney played a major role in that work, serving as the head of an office for child protection established by the U.S. Catholic Bishops’ Conference. A former executive assistant director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, McChesney developed and oversaw a national compliance mechanism to ensure that all dioceses complied with civil laws and internal policies concerning the prevention, reporting and response to the sexual abuse of minors. She also coordinated a major research study into the nature and scope of the problem of sexual abuse in the Church.

Now head of Kinsale Management Consulting and co-editor of Sexual Abuse in the Catholic Church: A Decade of Crisis, she spoke with Aleteia about what has been done since 2002 and where the Church needs to go from here.

What has the Catholic Church in the United States done to address the sex abuse problem since the Boston Globe’s expose? What reforms were put into effect, both for clergy and laity?

The two most important things that the U.S. bishops and religious superiors have done to address this problem in the U.S. were to utilize professional survivor advocates to assist persons who are reporting abuse and to ensure they are provided with pastoral care if they desire; and to implement programs to prevent future abuse, including the removal of offenders from ministry. These programs include abuse-awareness training that has been provided for millions of adults and young people and background checks of clergy, educators and volunteers.

How effective do those reforms seem to be?

The reforms in the United States, and the efforts of many dioceses and religious institutes initiated before 2002, have been effective in significantly reducing the incidence of abuse.

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PENNSYLVANIA
Tribune-Review

BY BRAD BUMSTED | Monday, March 7, 2016

HARRISBURG — When his wife was pregnant in 1996, Mark Rozzi said he “prayed to God we wouldn’t have a boy.”

Rozzi, 44, a Democratic state House member from Reading, had a reason for that prayer. Rozzi says he was raped by his priest at the Holy Guardian Angel Catholic Church when he was 13. The vast majority of sexual abuse by priests is perpetrated against boys, experts and national studies suggest.

Rozzi, elected in 2012, is at the forefront of an effort in the state Legislature to provide greater criminal and civil recourse to child sexual assault victims. One bill would eliminate the statute of limitations for child sexual abuse in criminal and civil cases. Rozzi is sponsoring legislation that would raise the age from 30 to 50 years for an adult victim of child sex abuse to file a civil complaint.

He’s driven to push ahead, not only because of his own reported molestation by the late Rev. Edward Graff, but for his friends who were abused and struggled with alcoholism or drug addiction, and those who committed suicide.

“I have had three childhood friends kill themselves,” he said. All were abused. Last year, before Easter, the third friend killed himself.

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INDIA
Times of India

TNN | Mar 7, 2016

Kochi: The Vadakkekara police have filed the chargesheet against Catholic priest Edwin Figarez (41) who was booked for raping a minor girl at Puthenvelikkara last year. The chargesheet was submitted before Ernakulam additional sessions court set up to hear cases related to atrocities and sexual violence against women and children.

The chargesheet said that the priest raped the 14-year-old girl several times between January and March 28 last year. The accused was the parish priest of Lourdes Matha Church, Puthenvelikkara in Ernakulam when he committed the crime. Vadakkekara CI Vishal Johnson said that the chargesheet was submitted at the court before the accused completed 90 days in judicial custody; Figarez is yet to be granted bail in the case. After the girl’s mother filed a complaint, Figarez went into hiding and evaded arrest for nearly eight months.

A lookout notice was issued against the priest. However, Figarez surrendered before the police on December 18, 2015, after the high court rejected his anticipatory bail plea.

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PENNSYLVANIA
Philly.com

MARCH 8, 2016

They knew and they let it happen! To kids!

That’s a quote from the movie Spotlight attributed to real-life reporter Mike Rezendes when he was investigating Boston priests accused of sexually molesting altar boys and other children 15 years ago.

The comment could just as well be applied to Pennsylvania authorities who for decades did precious little to stop similar abuse by priests and cover-ups by religious leaders in the Roman Catholic Diocese of Altoona-Johnstown.

A grand jury report released last week by Attorney General Kathleen Kane said an investigation had revealed evidence of “several instances in which law enforcement officers and prosecutors failed to pursue allegations of child sexual abuse occurring within the Diocese.”

Cambria County Judge Patrick T. Kiniry, a former district attorney, reportedly told state investigators that the close relationship between local authorities and diocesan officials when the alleged abuse cases occurred was a reflection of the Catholic Church’s influence.

Evidence presented to the grand jury included material gathered in a raid of diocesan offices last August by state agents. They found a “secret archive” of documents, including handwritten notes sent to Bishop Joseph Adamec by the late Bishop James Hogan, which detailed alleged abuse cases, including victims’ statements.

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OHIO
WKBN

By Molly Reed
Published: March 7, 2016

YOUNGSTOWN, Ohio (WKBN) – The Youngstown Diocese is responding to a request from a nonprofit advocate for victims of sexual abuse that an investigation be launched into the diocese.

Road to Recovery made the request after a grand jury report on alleged sexual abuse in the Altoona-Johnstown Diocese in Pennsylvania was released. That investigation claims that the Altoona-Johnstown Diocese helped cover up the sexual abuse of hundreds of children, including abuse by Brother Stephen Baker, who was on staff at Warren JFK in the late 1980s.

In 2013, the Youngstown Diocese announced abuse settlements with 11 former students of Baker’s. Road to Recovery says 28 more students are still waiting for Bishop George Murry to settle their claims.

Monsignor John Zuraw, chancellor of the Diocese of Youngstown, said the diocese does not have a secret archive, nor does it have secret files. He said the situation is completely different from one that was reported at the Altoona-Johnstown Diocese.

“This is the second wave of individuals who have come forward,” he said.

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UNITED STATES
The Salt Lake Tribune

By DeAnn Tilton and Ken Ivory

For every legal action, lawmakers decide how long a victim has to take the offender to court. Historically, the state of Utah has given survivors of childhood sexual abuse just a few years to get to civil court to seek redress for the harm done to them by those who have abused them.

While short time limits, also called statutes of limitation, can be appropriate for some legal actions, such as property disputes, where it’s in both parties’ best interest to get to court quickly and sort out who owns what, decades of research into the experiences of survivors of childhood sexual abuse tell us that traditional statutes of limitation are inappropriate in these cases.

We now understand, better than ever before, that there are many significant barriers survivors face in going public with the abuse inflicted upon them, not the least of which includes disclosing it to their loved ones. Other barriers include intimidation, shame, fear of losing important family relationships and the distortion that child sexual abuse causes to the mental and emotional ability of a survivor to comprehend the nature and damage caused by the exploitation and abuse. Research now shows that survivors are into their 40s, on average, before they are able to publicly disclose the abuse.

Despite these barriers, some survivors eventually heal enough to find the courage to knock on the courthouse doors seeking justice for the harm done to them. Tragically, they have found those doors were locked years ago by unrealistically short statutes of limitation. This injustice not only prevents survivors from seeking civil damages to recover some of the financial costs for the physical and mental harm done, it also prevents them from publicly informing the rest of society about those who are still free to abuse others.

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AUSTRALIA
The Guardian

Jeff Sparrow

By one of those peculiar historical coincidences, Cardinal Pell appeared before the royal commission into institutional responses to child sexual abuse just as the conservative attack on Safe Schools reached its peak. In doing so, he provided a striking example of why the program matters so much.

Several years ago, when working on my book Money Shot, I asked Save the Children’s Karen Flanagan, one of the country’s most experienced advocates for children’s rights, about the forms that child abuse took in Australia.

“Intra-familial abuse, that’s the most common,” she said. “Most children are abused by someone very closely related to them or very well known to them – in other words, a trusted, respected person. About a third of all sex offending is committed by adolescents, about 6% of reported sex offences are by women and the rest is by men. Probably about 95% would be intra-familial.”

In other words, most abused children know the perpetrator.

“If it’s not within the home,” Flanagan said, “it’s the babysitter, or the school or the sporting club. It’s people who know the child, who have a relationship with him or her, who are trusted.”

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PENNSYLVANIA
WJAC

BY LAUREN HENSLEY MONDAY, MARCH 7TH 2016

EBENSBURG, Pa.– A Cambria County judge has resigned from the Bishop McCort Board of Trustees.

Judge Patrick Kiniry was named in the state attorney general’s grand jury report that uncovered widespread sexual abuse allegations and a cover-up involving the Altoona-Johnstown Catholic Diocese.

Kiniry was named in particular during the investigation into Monsignor Francis McCaa in 1985.

The chairman of the board of trustees confirmed Kiniry’s resignation with 6News on Monday. 6News asked for a copy of the letter of resignation and date it was submitted but our requests went unanswered Monday.

The grand jury report says Kiniry, who was at the time the assistant district attorney of Cambria County met with Bishop James Hogan. The document says it was agreed to have McCaa pulled from the church and given counseling.

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WASHINGTON
KGMI

Priests and a psychiatrist warned the Seattle Archbishop about a priest who abused children, but the Archbishop just moved the priest to different parishes.

Three people now say the priest, Michael Cody, abused them as kids when he was the pastor of the Assumption Parish and School in Bellingham from 1972 to 1975.

The Seattle Times reports seven other women accuse Cody of preying on them as children while he served in Skagit County before coming to Bellingham.

Archbishop Thomas Connolly was told Cody was a sick and dangerous pedophile, but Connolly kept putting Cody in situations where he could abuse kids.

The information is from Cody’s “secret file” obtained by the Times.

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AUSTRALIA
Sydney Morning Herald

March 8, 2016

Josephine Tovey
Reporter

One of the most influential newspapers in the United States, The Washington Post, has devoted an editorial to Australian Cardinal George Pell’s appearance at the royal commission last week, noting his “stumbles” and condemning some of his testimony for seeking to “airbrush the church’s staggering lapses.”

The newspaper’s editorial board told its readers that on the same day the film Spotlight, which depicts an investigation into abusive priests in Boston’s Catholic church, was awarded the Oscar for Best Picture, a “related drama” was taking place in the Vatican, as Australia’s most senior Catholic gave testimony to a commission back in Australia.

The Post stated that while Cardinal George Pell stayed mostly “on message” during his appearances before the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse, he “stumbled” at several moments, and in doing so, revealed “the shortcomings in the church’s response to revelations of misconduct.”

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UNITED STATES
Washington Post

By Editorial Board March 6

ON THE same day Hollywood conferred its most prestigious prize on “Spotlight,” the newsroom drama about the Boston Globe’s reporting on the Catholic Church’s complicity in the sexual abuse of children by priests, a related drama was unfolding near the Vatican itself. For hours, Cardinal George Pell, the Holy See’s treasurer and one of its top-ranking clerics, answered questions posed by an Australian commission that quizzed the cardinal on the extent of his knowledge about pedophile priests he knew decades ago.

Cardinal Pell, the most senior Australian Catholic, stayed mainly on message, the message from the Vatican for years having been one of carefully couched contrition in the face of incontrovertible evidence that the church enabled and covered up for sex abuse by clergy. “I’m not here to defend the indefensible,” said the cardinal.

But under polite and sustained grilling, the 74-year-old cardinal, who testified in Rome by video link to Australia, stumbled on several occasions, revealing the shortcomings in the church’s response to revelations of misconduct.

He referred to having heard rumors, during his years as a young clergyman, of “eccentricities” among priests teaching at Australian Catholic schools, a case of whitewash by euphemism. He pleaded a “senior moment” to explain away his failure to recall various allegations and the church’s response. While discussing a notorious priest who was widely known as a serial abuser by the early 1990s, when Cardinal Pell was a high-ranking church official in Melbourne, he said: “I didn’t know whether it was common knowledge or whether it wasn’t. It’s a sad story and [the extent to which it was known publicly] wasn’t of much interest to me.”

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GUAM
Guam Daily Post

Jasmine Stole | Post News Staff

Former Sen. Bob Klitzkie is calling on the Department of Land Management to look into what he suspects are deliberately doctored government documents that the Archdiocese of Agana printed in the Nov. 29, 2015 issue of the U’Matuna Si Yu’os.

The U’Matuna Si Yu’os printed a copy of a certificate of title on the front page of the paper. In the article, approved by the Monsignor David Quitugua, vicar general, Quitugua said the certificates established that the archdiocese, by Archbishop Anthony Apuron, “maintains legal ownership of the seminary property and it is only the archdiocese through the mechanisms of Canon Law that will determine the transferor conveyance of this property.”

The property in question is that on which sits the Redemptoris Mater Seminary of Guam in Yona. At issue is the legal ownership of the property. Critics, like Klitzkie, refute the archdiocese’s claims that the property is under the control of Apuron and the archdiocese.

The church printed the certificate of title retrieved from DLM records on Oct. 30, 2015, and the accompanying article, under the headline “Ownership of Seminary property confirmed.”

About a month after the article was published, in a December letter to DLM Director Michael Borja, Klitzkie wrote that four certificates of title are “clearly erroneous on their face.”

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PENNSYLVANIA
Americans United for Separation of Church and State

Mar 7, 2016 by Rob Boston

Last week, Pennsylvania Attorney General Kathleen Kane released a damning grand jury report about the rampant sexual abuse of minors by priests in the Altoona-Johnstown Diocese – and the failure of anyone in authority to stop it.

News of the report hit me hard. I was born and raised in Altoona. For 16 years I attended a Catholic church in that diocese. I spent eight years in a Catholic school appended to one of its churches.

The nuns occasionally punished us in ways that were inappropriate, but I never suffered the kind of abuse detailed in the report. Still, I felt like I’d been socked in the gut. As I read the report, I kept coming across the names of familiar towns, churches and people.

The report is not easy reading. It goes into explicit detail about the horrors inflicted on these children. Be aware of that if you decide to take a look.

I was especially disgusted by how the powers that be in both the church and the state failed the victims. If you’ve seen the Academy Award-winning film “Spotlight,” you know how church officials reacted: They created, then hid, secret files on problem priests. They did not report them to authorities. They attacked the victims. They shipped molesters off to other parishes where, inevitably, the priests sought more victims.

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UNITED STATES
Boston Globe

By Mark Shanahan GLOBE STAFF MARCH 07, 2016

An Academy Award is good — but not great — for business apparently. “Spotlight” earned $1.8 million at the box office during the first weekend since winning the Oscar for best picture. To date, director Tom McCarthy’s movie about the Globe series exposing the priest abuse scandal in the Catholic church, has grossed $41 million. “Spotlight” was in more than 1,200 theaters this past weekend, which is the most since the movie opened last fall. While it got a bump at the box office because of the Oscar, it wasn’t huge.

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MAINE
CentralMaine.com

BY AMY CALDER STAFF WRITER
acalder@centralmaine.com | @AmyCalder17 | 207-861-9247

The Academy Award-winning movie “Spotlight” might not have been made if not for Waterville native David Mizner.

Mizner, an associate producer of the film, pitched the idea of turning the story about the Boston Globe’s Pulitzer Prize-winning expose of the Catholic Church priest abuse scandal into a movie.

Waterville native David Mizner was the inspiration for bringing the Academy Award-winning film “Spotlight” to the screen. Mizner, an associate producer for the film, is a novelist and contributing writer to The Nation and other publications and wrote the description of a course on the Boston Globe’s investigation of the Catholic Church abuse scandal for Columbia University journalism class.

“I had no real creative role in the film,” said Mizner Monday. Producers, though, cited him Feb. 28 when they accepted the Oscar for Best Picture at the 88th annual Academy Awards ceremony at the Dolby Theatre in Hollywood.

A novelist and freelance writer, Mizner several years ago wrote a case study for the Knight Case Studies Initiative at the graduate school of journalism for Columbia University.

In doing so, he contacted producers Nicole Rocklin and Blye Faust, who were interested in creating a film about one of his novels, and told them he had a great idea for a different movie — about the priest abuse coverup.

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UNITED STATES
Crux

By John L. Allen Jr.
Associate editor March 7, 2016

Recently two different constituencies in the Catholic Church have complained of feeling misunderstood or let down by Pope Francis, and it’s instructive to compare the pontiff’s responses in each case.

One group is made up of Eastern Catholics, especially the 5 million-strong Greek Catholic Church in Ukraine, while the other is composed of survivors of clerical sexual abuse. In a nutshell, the pope’s reaction to the former seems a textbook example of effective outreach, while the latter so far appears largely a tale of missed opportunities.

To begin with Greek Catholics, many felt that Francis’ historic Feb. 12 meeting with Patriarch Kirill of the Russian Orthodox Church in Havana, Cuba, was a propaganda coup for Moscow, and that the joint declaration the two men issued was even worse — mostly a series of Catholic concessions to the Russians, including language that could be read to invalidate criticism of Russia’s invasion of Eastern Ukraine. …

Meanwhile, survivors of sexual abuse, as well as their families and advocates, have had their own reasons of late for feeling ambivalent about Francis.

They’ve complained that he appointed a bishop in Chile known as an apologist for that country’s most notorious abuser priest. They’ve watched as a survivor on the pope’s anti-abuse panel was assigned an involuntary leave of absence by fellow members after voicing criticism over the Chile appointment and other matters, and they also wonder why Francis hasn’t had any reaction to criticism of Cardinal George Pell, his hand-chosen financial reformer, for Pell’s record on abuse cases in Australia.

Survivors also noted that Francis did not meet abuse victims during his trip to Mexico last month, even though that country was hard-hit by a scandal surrounding the Legion of Christ and its late founder, Marcial Maciel Degollado.

So far, Francis has not addressed those concerns in his own voice, apparently content to let others do it for him.

Last week, a group of 15 Australian survivors, along with relatives and supporters, were in Rome to watch Pell testify before a Royal Commission in their country via video link. They told everyone who would listen that they’d like to meet the pope, and at one stage Pell released a statement vowing to try to help make it happen.

It was a bit mystifying, then, to hear a Vatican spokesman assert on Friday that no meeting would take place because there had been no “official request.” Everyone knew the victims wanted it, and Francis rarely has shown himself to be a slave to protocol when he’s determined to do something.

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UNITED KING
BBC News

The alleged abuse victim of a former Sussex bishop has said an open letter from a former Archbishop of Canterbury praising him is deeply distressing.

The Church has settled a civil claim made by the woman, who claims she was abused by Bishop of Chichester George Bell in the late 1940s and early 1950s.

In a letter to the bishop’s niece, Lord Carey said he was “appalled” by the way authorities had treated his memory.

But Rt Rev George Bell’s unnamed victim said: “Great men can do evil things.”

She says he molested her as a child in Chichester Cathedral as she sat on his lap listening to stories.

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AUSTRALIA
Sydney Morning Herald

March 8, 2016

Kate Aubusson

What is the minimum age of moral culpability?

Somewhere north of 28-years-old, according to Alan Jones.

On Monday night’s Q&A, the radio presenter appeared to absolve all those aged 28-years-and-under of moral and ethical responsibility as he defended Cardinal George Pell’s response to the sexual abuse of children within the Catholic Church.

The shock jock was responding to an audience question which suggested Pell – now one of the highest ranking Vatican officials – should be removed from his post over his lack of action on reports of abuse.

Jones called the discoveries of the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse “almost too grotesque to even define” and agreed Pell’s choice of words during his evidence to the Royal Commission were “appalling”.

But he defended Pell’s unresponsiveness to cases of abuse during the cardinal’s early career within the church.

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AUSTRALIA
The Guardian

Elle Hunt
@mlle_elle
Monday 7 March 2016

Senior Liberal minister Michaelia Cash has condemned George Pell’s apparent lack of compassion and empathy for victims of abuse in the Catholic Church as being against the teachings of Jesus.

The minister for women was one of five panelists on ABC’s Q&A program on Monday night and was asked whether she thought Pell should be removed from his position in the church.

Pell gave evidence at the royal commission into institutional responses to child abuse in Sydney via video link from Rome over four days last week.

Cash began her answer by acknowledging that she is Catholic.

“What we’ve all seen over the last few weeks – over the last few years – it was that complete lack of empathy.

“Jesus was someone who had compassion and who had empathy. I would expect nothing less from the leaders of our church, especially of those victims in verbalising what they went through, to at least show them compassion and empathy.

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CONNECTICUT
Hartford Courant

MICHELLE R. SMITH, SUSAN HAIGH
Associated Press

HARTFORD — It’s called “passing the trash”: A school suspects a teacher of sexual misconduct and forces the teacher out to protect the students. But that teacher can still get a new job in a new school, sometimes with a glowing recommendation.

Only Pennsylvania, Missouri and Oregon ban the maneuver, but a federal mandate passed in December now requires states to address its potential risks. Connecticut is considering such legislation.

One woman abused by such a teacher says it’s about time the problem is getting attention.

She was 16 when her English teacher at the exclusive Marlborough School in Los Angeles began grooming her. He showered her with praise, gave her gifts and pitted her against her friends. Then there was a sexual advance, and sex. Eventually, she became pregnant and miscarried.

She reported him only years later, after she learned he had targeted another girl more recently. A lawsuit she filed says he was accused of misconduct at two schools before Marlborough hired him. When he was finally pushed out of Marlborough, the school gave him a recommendation, the suit asserts.

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UNITED STATES
The Scripps Voice

March 4, 2016

By Evelyn Gonzalez ’18
Feminism Columnist

The personal stories and accounts of survivors get lost under the weight of a heavy silence when we, as a society, allow those in power to have so much influence over the relevancy and importance of our words. As a result of our reliance on a capitalist system that often thrives on the exploitation of society’s most vulnerable, very few mechanisms exist at the present to protect survivors of abuse if it means that the image of corporations might be damaged in the process. In allowing this to continue, we have created a culture that forces survivors of abuse to speak up; but those that speak up are faced by a society who refuses to listen, reinforcing a damaging culture of violence and injustice.

On December 25, 2015, The New York Times released a piece on the connection between Whole Foods Market co-founder John Mackey and sex offender and creator of the nonprofit Center for Integral Wisdom, Marc Gafni. Approximately one month later Sara Kabakov submitted an exclusive to Forward’s online website. In it she detailed her personal account of the sexual and spiritual violation and molestation she faced under the hands of Marc Gafni during the 80’s. Along with Kabakov, several other women, including one of Gafni’s ex-wives chose to come forward with their own descriptions of the violence enacted on them. The similarities in the stories written by these women were striking in that they highlighted the varying ways they were forced into silence by Gafni himself and from their own communities. In this current society, speaking out about one’s past experience, especially against people in positions of power, can often result in a high degree of danger and vulnerability. Gafni’s ex wife, who chose to stay anonymous when she published her story in The Times of Israel about Gafni’s abuses said, “there is also a risk to staying silent, staying safe. 20 years and untold numbers of victims later, I have learned that staying safe can also be risky business.” In exposing the connection between Whole Foods Market and Gafni, the voices of those who are most at risk can be brought to the forefront of the conversation.

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NEW MEXICO
Gallup Independent

Published in the Gallup Independent, Gallup, N.M., March 2, 2016

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

ALBUQUERQUE – The Diocese of Gallup’s bankruptcy case continues to be marked by a series of delays.

U.S. Bankruptcy Judge David T. Thuma’s goal of seeing the Gallup Diocese file its plan of reorganization Monday failed to materialize after a status conference Friday was canceled and rescheduled for Tuesday.

A few weeks ago, the diocese’s own goal of filing its reorganization plan in early February became a casualty of a dispute between two other parties in the case — attorneys for Catholic Mutual, the diocese’s current insurer, and Michael P. Murphy, the former future claims representative who resigned his position.

During a brief court hearing Tuesday, Thomas Walker, a diocesan attorney, explained the latest delay was caused by the illness of the diocese’s lead bankruptcy attorney.

“We had a significant holdup last week because Susan Boswell got very sick and was out of commission for the week, and it did slow things quite a bit,” Walker told Thuma.

Boswell attended Tuesday’s hearing by telephone. Although both she and Walker expressed optimism that the diocese could get a reorganization plan on file next week, Thuma suggested a later date for the next hearing.

“I don’t want to have another conference where we don’t have a plan. … Once we get a plan on file, we’ll probably have enough to talk about,” Thuma said. “I’d like to have this soon afterwards so we can talk about scheduling of the disclosure statement hearing and plan confirmation hearing.”

Boswell then suggested the hearing be held March 21.

“That way no excuses — absolutely the plan and the relevant motions and the disclosure statement will be on file,” she said.

Thuma agreed and scheduled the continued status hearing for 11 a.m. March 21.

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SPAIN
Expatica

7th March 2016

A third teacher at a school run by a Roman Catholic order in Barcelona has confessed to having sexually abused students in a video released Monday, deepening one of Spain’s biggest paedophile scandals.

The man, who is in his 70s and was identified only by his initials A.F., can be heard in the video recorded with a hidden camera apologising to one of the victims he abused in the 1980s.

“I don’t know why I did it…it was like a child’s game,” he says in the video posted on the website of Barcelona-based daily newspaper El Periodico de Catalunya which masked his face.

The victim said he was sexually abused by the former teacher dozens of times when he was 8-14 years old. His allegations were not refuted by the former teacher.

The abuse took place at a Marist school in Les Corts, a Barcelona neighbourhood, at the centre of a paedophile scandal which erupted in February after the paper published the confession of a former gym teacher who said he had sexually abused his students.

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ITALIA
Il Giorno

[Sex abuse in the Lombard diocese.]

Milano, 7 marzo 2016 – Era il 2003. Il parroco di Villa di Serio, seimila anime nella Bergamasca, è don Vittorio Damiani, 62 anni. Il 6 maggio i carabinieri bussano alla porta della canonica: il sacerdote è accusato di abusi sessuali su minori. Lui protesta la sua innocenza, ma non regge alla pressione. Si toglie la vita in cella, nel carcere di Bergamo, appena due mesi dopo l’arresto. È il primo clamoroso episodio di pedofilia in canonica a scuotere la diocesi di Bergamo e la Lombardia intera. Un episodio destinato a non restare isolato.

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PENNSYLVANIA
CBS Pittsburg

[with video]

March 2, 2016 By Ralph Iannotti

VANDERGRIFT (KDKA) — Robert Mizic, 45, lives in the small Westmoreland County borough of Vandergrift.

Back in the late-1970s, when Mizic was growing up in suburban Philadelphia, he attended a small Catholic school in Pottstown where he served as an altar boy at St. Peter’s Roman Catholic Church.

That’s when he says the abuse began.

He says his mother, Bev, went to rectory and complained when he told her “the priest had asked me some lewd questions in the confessional.” He was never specific at the time.

After that, he says the priest first sexually and then physically abused him for a period of several months.

Mizic is going public now for the first time because of the Pennsylvania Attorney General’s report on the alleged widespread sex abuse of children in the Altoona-Johnstown Diocese.

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IOWA
Brown County Democrat

By Associated Press – 3/7/16

SIDNEY, Iowa — A southwest Iowa pastor has been convicted of sexually abusing a 5-year-old girl.

A Fremont County jury Friday found 68-year-old Roger Kissel guilty of sex abuse and lascivious acts. Radio station KNCY in Nebraska City, Nebraska, reports (http://bit.ly/21S6L9r ) that the jury deliberated for about 2½ hours. Kissel’s sentencing is set for May 4.

When he was arrested, Kissel was a pastor at the nondenominational Sidney Cowboy Church. Police have said the allegations weren’t connected to the church. Prosecutors say the crimes occurred in 2013.

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UNITED KINGDOM
The Tablet

07 March 2016 | by Megan Cornwell

The Holy See’s statement was a response to heightened scrutiny from the media

Critics of the Catholic Church’s response to the child sex abuse scandal are “sensationalist” and have “a short memory”, the Vatican has asserted in a scathing response to Cardinal Pell’s evidence in front of an Australian Commission.

Fr Frederico Lombardi SJ, Head of the Vatican press office, said in the statement that “those who are least informed or have a short memory” think the Church has done nothing to combat and respond to “these terrible problems”, but that “objective consideration shows that this is not the case”.

The Holy See’s statement was a response to heightened scrutiny from the media while Cardinal Pell was giving evidence to Australia’s inquiry into historic child abuse in the Church and as Spotlight won best film at the Oscars.

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AUSTRALIA
The Age

[with video]

March 8, 2016

Peter Craven

Last week we saw Cardinal George Pell cross-examined for about 20 hours at the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sex Abuse, with the 74-year-old prelate speaking via video link from Rome. Afterwards there was a meeting with victims who were pleased to hear he would try to set up a centre for survivors of abuse.

In an hour-long interview on Sky with Andrew Bolt, Pell said he wasn’t so stiff on the inside and, at one point, he appeared to weep. Yet none of this cut the mustard: from much of the response to Pell’s testimony, both during and after it, you would imagine he is personally responsible for the sins of the Church.

Why? Because we were witnessing a show trial. A week before the hearing began, the Herald Sun published a leak from Victoria Police that investigations were under way into possible crimes of the cardinal. No new lines of inquiry were offered, no reliable source was indicated and the one specific matter referred to allegations which had been laid to rest in 2002 when they were examined by Justice Southwell.

Still, the day after Pell made his notorious slip about not being “interested” in the sexual abuse, the front page of the Herald Sun said “Hear No Evil, See No Evil, Stop No Evil”.

It’s nonsense. When Pell initiated the Melbourne Response in 1996 he went further than any bishop had gone to fixing the problem. Yet a lot of people want to blame him for the horrors that were perpetrated for no better reason than they see his formidable, take-no-prisoners manner as the embodiment of the attitude of an arrogant and heartless church.

So, when he says that as a young priest in Ballarat he heard of a brother not only using excessive discipline but behaving dodgily with boys and he spoke with the chaplain who said the Christian Brothers were attending to the problem, this is met with derision.

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AUSTRALIA
The Age

Chris Davis

Autres temps, autres moeurs. French for “other times, other customs”. A phrase that is relevant as the media and the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse examine 20th century decisions using 21st century morality.

For those who weren’t there, I’ll share my 20th century experience. My boys’ only school was a place of great good, thanks to some exceptional teachers. The most enduring and inspiring was an English spinster who had lost her fiancé in World War I. Her surrogate children were her “boys”. She taught us English in the finest tradition, as well as a love of literature and a code of excellent conduct. Having been in the choir of St Paul’s Cathedral in London, she sang beautifully. She was strict, but with a delightful warmth and sense of humour. The headmaster was a World War II veteran, highly decorated for his skill and courage. He imparted wisdom and balance, acquired from having witnessed the best and worst of the human condition.

Sadly, there was a dark and unspoken side to it all. Older unattached male teachers who lived in at the boarding school. They invited schoolboy “pets” in for special tutoring and special occasions, and exclusive weekend camps. Given the status of teachers, amongst boys being a “pet” was seen as an achievement. Not that anyone talked about what actually went on behind closed doors, except when it emerged as unacceptable sexual behaviour amongst boarding school pupils. Some of it was seen as entertaining, such as when a “misbehaving pet” was backside up on the teacher’s lap for the duration of a lesson, whilst being intimately “spanked”.

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ITALY
PanARMENIAN

March 7, 2016

PanARMENIAN.Net – Building on the momentum of its best-picture Oscar win, Spotlight grossed $1 million on 297 screens this past weekend in Italy, an increase of 43 percent from last weekend, The Hollywood Reporter reveals.

This is more than one-fifth of the $4.8 million international gross that Spotlight brought in overall this past weekend in its post-Oscar victory lap, a 124 percent increase across international territories. To date, it has grossed $2.6 million in Italy.

To compare, the $1 million weekend revenue is approximately 13 percent higher than Birdman’s post-Oscar weekend in Italy, when it grossed $885,000 on its way to a total of $5.4 million throughout its run in the country.

Spotlight has been a huge media draw in the Catholic country. Michael Keaton, and the man he plays in the film, Boston Globe editor Walter Robinson, toured Rome in January where they praised the investigative journalism behind the film that brought to light the abuses of the Catholic church from Boston all the way up to the Vatican.

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PENNSYLVANIA
We Are Central PA

[with video]

By Marielena Balouris | mbalouris@wtajtv.com
Published 03/06 2016

Altoona, Blair County, Pa.

It’s been nearly one week since the Attorney General announced the results of a multi-year investigation into the Altoona-Johnstown Catholic Diocese. The findings revealed cases of sexual assault dating back to the 1940’s.

Even though there is overwhelming evidence of the abuse in the Grand Jury report, they cannot prosecute because the statute of limitations has run out. Local Catholics are upset by the findings of the investigation, but some say this hasn’t affected their faith.

Mike Glashauser has been a parishioner at Our Lady of Lourdes for 35 years. He says it’s a tight-knit community and the results of the Grand Jury investigation has shocked them all. But now, it’s time to move forward. He said, “I think now we just have to come together and have church and pray for the victims and their families. We have to keep the faith forward and God will lead us in the right direction.”

Glashauser knew one of the priests named in the report from when he was in grade school. He was not affected, but says he’s glad the truth is out. His father agrees.

Frank Glashauser said, “We’re losing so many people in the Catholic religion anyhow and then to have this happen to us, its you know, its uncalled for and for the priests to hide it, its really uncalled for and it should never be hidden, they should have dealt with it from the very beginning.”

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OHIO
Vindicator

Mon, March 7, 2016
Staff report

YOUNGSTOWN

The leader of a national support group for victims of sexual abuse by priests and other clergy is calling on county prosecutors in Mahoning and Trumbull counties to urge Ohio Attorney General Mike DeWine to launch an aggressive investigation into sexual abuse within the Catholic Diocese of Youngstown.

At a press conference Sunday outside the headquarters of the diocese, Robert Hoatson, president of the New Jersey-based Road to Recovery support group, said, “We want the same type of investigation as was done in Altoona [Pa.].”

Pennsylvania Attorney General Kathleen Kane last week released findings of her office’s investigation of the Altoona-Johnstown Diocese. It revealed that former bishops either covered up or didn’t do enough to respond to hundreds of allegations of abuse committed by more than 50 priests from 1966 to 2011.

“We want state officials to raid that building,” Hoatson said, referring to the West Wood Street headquarters of the diocese.

“In that building, I guarantee you are the same types of files found in Altoona,” Hoatson said. He added he would like the state to review records of all priests who have served in the diocese over the past 60 years or so.

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PENNSYLVANIA
Herald-Standard

By Mike Tony mtony@heraldstandard.com

Local priests in the Greensburg and Pittsburgh Catholic Dioceses were shocked by Tuesday’s grand jury presentment outlining child sexual abuse in the neighboring Altoona-Johnstown Diocese spanning some 60 years.

“As Bishop (David) Zubik (of the Pittsburgh Catholic Diocese) said, this is a devastating time for the church, and we’re definitely sorry for the hurt that’s been caused,” said the Rev. Pierre Falkenhan, pastor of Our Lady of the Valley Catholic Parish in Donora.

The Rev. Bill Berkey, pastor of St. Francis of Assisi Parish, Western Fayette County, said his parishioners in Masontown and New Salem will be reassured that the parish has done all necessary child protective clearances of church clergy, staff and volunteers. Clergy and volunteers in the Diocese of Greensburg, which includes parishes throughout Fayette, Westmoreland, Armstrong and Indiana counties, are required to have criminal background checks and child abuse clearances.

“I think we’re all shocked by it. It’s disheartening,” said the Rev. Vince Gigliotti, pastor of St. Anne Parish in Belle Vernon.

Neither Berkey nor the Rev. Wiliam Terza, pastor of St. Damien of Molokai in Monongahela, said they believed that their parishioners would have a crisis of faith or confidence in the church because of the grand jury presentment.

“I have not had anyone come up to me and make a comment about it,” Terza said. “I’m sure everyone is going to think, ponder, question.”

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NEW MEXICO
Albuquerque Journal

By Olivier Uyttebrouck / Journal Staff Writer
Monday, March 7th, 2016

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — An attorney who filed 13 lawsuits against the Diocese of Gallup on behalf of alleged victims of clerical sexual abuse said the disclosure of church records will be an essential part of any settlement in the diocese’s Chapter 11 bankruptcy case.

Robert Pastor, a Phoenix attorney, said claimants and their attorneys in the case are adamant that the diocese must release church records, including the personnel files of accused priests.

Attorneys working toward a settlement told U.S. Bankruptcy Judge David Thuma of Albuquerque last week that they intend to file a reorganization plan with the court later this month.

“Exposure of these facts is critical to why we bring these cases,” said Pastor, who filed suits against the diocese from 2010-13.

“We are not going to settle unless those files are exposed,” he said. “There may be a delay in exposure, but those files are coming out. They must.”

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UNITED STATES
Daily News Egypt

Rana Khaled

For centuries, investigative journalism is widely believed to have played an instrumental role in guarding the interests of society and giving a chance for the otherwise silenced victims of wars, natural crises, and sexual assaults.

The same can be said of the role of cinema in raising people’s awareness on divisive or underrepresented issues, and piquing the public’s attention to the major human stories that require public consideration. So what of a film that tells the story of one of the leading investigative reports that revealed scandalous facts about some of the biggest religious institutions in the world?

Spotlight’ “Spotlight”, based on the true story of the Boston Globe’s investigative team, achieved huge success, both critically and in box offices, despite its plot not necessarily adhering to a commercial formula. The film, starring Michael Keaton, Rachel MaAdams, and Mark Ruffalo, won the Best Picture and Best Original Screenplay at the Academy Awards, receiving a total of six nominations.

The film tackles the controversial issue of child sex abuse by a number of Catholic priests in Boston, inspired by the actual series of stories published by the team portrayed in the film.

On 6 January 2002, the Spotlight team, including reporters Matt Carroll, Sacha Pfeiffer, Michael Rezendes, and Editor Walter V. Robinson, published their first story, entitled “Church Allowed Abuse by Priest for Years”. The article shook not only for the Boston community, but thousands of readers around the world.

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AUSTRALIA
Anadolu Agency (Turkey)

By Recep Sakar

MELBOURNE, Australia

Days after Australia’s most senior Catholic gave evidence from the Vatican on sexual abuse by priests, one of those abused has told Anadolu Agency of the extent of the suffering.

“I was abused in my own house and my older brothers were abused and other siblings. I had three sisters — they were all abused,” says Tim Lane, who is now 44, but was just four-years-old when he became a priest’s victim in the Victoria state diocese of Ballarat.

“It is a terrible thing… a terrible thing to live with.”

Lane is just one of the many Australians who were abused by priests in their homes, at churches and at religious seminaries in the cities of Ballarat and Melbourne during the 1970s and 1980s.

Last Monday, senior Catholic Cardinal George Pell insisted to a royal inquiry into child sex abuse that while he was a priest in Ballarat, he was unaware such offenders were being moved between parishes to escape prosecution, and to protect the reputation of the church.

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

PENNSYLVANIA
StateCollege.com

by Patty Kleban on March 07, 2016

In the Bible, (Matthew 15: 8-9) Jesus refers to hypocrisy when he says “these people honor me with their lips but their hearts are far from me.”

When the news came out last week that the Altoona-Johnstown Diocese of the Roman Catholic Church has joined the ranks of Boston and Philadelphia, to name just a few, in facilitating sexual abuse by priests, I could not help thinking about hypocrisy. According Pennsylvania Attorney General Kathy Kane who released the summary of grand jury proceedings and years of investigation, more than 50 priests and other diocesan personnel were involved the sexual abuse of minors. Leaders in the diocese then allegedly compounded those crimes by hiding the atrocities from the proper authorities and reassigning priests to other parishes where they inevitably continued their sickness. Few if any criminal charges will be brought forward in this case because of the statute of limitations.

Is it not the definition of hypocrisy for those who we looked to for spiritual guidance and who heard our confessions and baptized and confirmed our children to not only perpetuate but cover up the torture of the weakest members of their flock? Using their status within the church, and in some cases God’s name, the men sought sexual gratification and power over others. It is not only hypocritical but both legally and morally reprehensible.

And all the while they were preaching from the pulpit about sin, confession, penance and redemption.

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OHIO
WFMJ

By Janet Rogers, Reporter

YOUNGSTOWN, Ohio –
Youngstown Catholic Bishop George Murry is being called on to settle 28 cases of child sexual abuse allegedly perpetrated Brother Stephen Baker, who was a coach at Warren John F. Kennedy High School in the 1980’s and 1990’s.

“We want the county prosecutors in Mahoning and Trumbull Counties to request Ohio Attorney General Mike DeWine to do the same kind of investigation that Pennsylvania’s Attorney General did,” said Dr. Robert Hoatson, who was among the protesters outside the offices of the Youngstown Diocese on Sunday.

The recently completed Pennsylvania investigation revealed decades of alleged systematic protection of sexual predators within the community of priests and religious leaders in the Roman Catholic Diocese of Altoona Johnstown, including Brother Stephen Baker.

In 2013 Baker committed suicide shortly after the church settled lawsuits filed by 11 victims who had been students at Warren JFK.

“We want a group of law enforcement officers to raid the Youngstown Diocese and take out the secret files on every priest, just like they did in PA. It is the only way we got to the truth in Altoona and Johnstown. It is the only way we will get to the truth in Youngstown, Ohio,” said Dr. Hoatson, who is a counselor with Road to Recovery based in New Jersey and works with victims of sexual abuse.

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ROME
Bendigo Advertiser

By Melissa Cunningham in Rome
March 6, 2016

Cardinal George Pell says he grieves for Ballarat and prays daily for victims whose lives have been shattered by the Catholic Church’s scourge of sexual abuse.

In a his bid to try and set the record straight in his hometown, Australia’s most senior cleric spoke directly with The Courier in Rome on Saturday.

He accepted some victims may never be healed and others would never be willing to accept any help from an institution that failed to protect them.

During the rare interview, the Cardinal refused to answer questions relating directly to church’s handling of child sexual abuse allegations inflicted on children by clergy he work alongside for years.

“I spent nineteen and half hours refusing to defend the indefensible, I am not about to try and do that again,” he said.

“The Catholic Church has made enormous mistakes and I accept that.”

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PENNSYLVANIA
WJAC

BY JILLIAN HARTMANN SUNDAY, MARCH 6TH 2016

JOHNSTOWN, Pa. – It was not your typical Sunday mass at St. John Gualbert Cathedral in Johnstown Sunday morning.

Bishop Mark Bartchak asked priests and religious leaders in the Altoona-Johnstown Roman Catholic Diocese to share a message to fellow Catholics during Sunday’s mass.

The message is in regards to the grand jury report uncovering alleged widespread sex abuse within the diocese.

“A number of people asked, ‘Do I want to be part of the church anymore?” Father James Crookston said while reading Bishop Bartchak’s message. “Where is God in all of this?”

Bishop Bartchak heard a number of questions asked from victims of abuse, their families and other Catholics responding to the grand jury report. He said this week was filled with darkness of sin.

“We will pass through this darkness,” said Crookston.

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OHIO
WKBN

By Molly Reed
Published: March 6, 2016

YOUNGSTOWN, Ohio (WKBN) – Road to Recovery, a group that represented and advocated for alleged victims of sexual abuse by a former Warren JFK baseball coach, was back in Youngstown on Sunday calling for an investigation.

The group wants Mahoning and Trumbull County prosecutors to request the state attorney general’s office launch an investigation of the Youngstown Diocese.

“We want a group of law enforcement officials to raid off that building, and to take out the files just the way they did in Pennsylvania,” said President Robert Hoatson.

The grand jury report in the Altoona-Johnstown Diocese in Pennsylvania said the Diocese helped cover up the sexual abuse of hundreds of children.

In 2013, the Youngstown Diocese announced abuse settlements with 11 former students of Brother Stephen Baker while he was on staff at Warren JFK in the late ’80s. Students came forward years later, claiming they were also abused by Baker.

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AUSTRALIA
ABC News

Child sexual abuse survivors from Ballarat who flew to Rome to watch Cardinal George Pell give evidence at the child abuse royal commission want the Prime Minister to commit to a redress scheme.

The Victorian group arrived home on Sunday after a crowdfunded trip to Rome.

“A lot of people might think this is the end of our journey. It’s not,” abuse survivor Andrew Collins told reporters at Melbourne Airport.

He said clerical abuse in Ballarat – including that by Australia’s worst paedophile priest, Gerard Ridsdale – and its long-term effects on victims highlighted the importance of supporting survivors.

“We call on the Turnbull Government to put into place the redress scheme that the royal commission has put forward,” Mr Collins said.

“The longer he holds off, the more people will die.”

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