ABUSE TRACKER

RHODE ISLAND
Rhode Island Public Radio

[with audio]

By ELISABETH HARRISON

When an elite boarding school in Middletown, Rhode Island became the center of a growing sexual abuse scandal, Rhode Island Public Radio discovered an apparent loophole in the state’s child abuse reporting statute, which may have contributed to the school’s decision not to report the allegations, made by students and former students on multiple occasions over a period spanning decades.

RIPR’s report surprised and alarmed advocates for survivors of sexual assault, and angered the state’s attorney general, who maintains that schools do have a legal requirement to report abuse, even though no record could be found of a school or school official ever being prosecuted for failure to report sexual abuse in the state.

After RIPR’s story aired, advocates and lawmakers successfully fought for the passage of an amendment, which adds school employees to the list of alleged perpetrators who must be reported to child welfare officials. The amendment also gives child welfare officials the authority to investigate sexual abuse allegations in schools.

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IRELAND
RTE News

A second excavation is being conducted at the site of a former mother and baby home in Tuam, Co Galway.

The tests were requested by the Commission of Investigation into Mother and Baby Homes.

The commission was established following allegations about the deaths of 800 babies in Tuam over a number of decades and the manner in which they were buried.

Last October, a preliminary excavation took place at the site.

Specialist archaeologists returned to Tuam in recent days and are expected to continue their work there for another two weeks.

It is understood the latest excavation will entail a more detailed examination of the grounds and will involve deeper excavations than those initially carried out last autumn.

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WEST VIRGINIA
The News Center

[with video]

PARKERSBURG, W.Va. – Updated: 2/7/2017

On the day his trial was set to begin, a.Williamstown youth pastor pleads guilty to two charges of distribution of obscene materials to a minor.

Stefan Deliramich entered the plea Tuesday morning in Wood County Circuit Court.

Deliramich admitted to using a fake Instagram account to send obscene videos.

At the time of his arrest in April of 2016, Deliramich was a youth pastor at the First Baptist Church in Williamstown, and a girls soccer coach.

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WEST VIRGINIA
Marietta Times

PARKERSBURG – An April sentencing date has been set for a former youth pastor indicted on 14 counts related to obscene materials.

Stefan Andrew Deliramich, 30, appeared in Wood County Circuit Court Tuesday and entered pleas of guilty to two counts of distribution and display to a minor of obscene matter.

As part of the plea agreement, additional charges in the indictment will be dismissed. His trial was set to start this week.

Deliramich, a Wyoming native, was indicted by the September 2016 grand jury on 14 counts, seven for use of obscene matter with intent to seduce a minor and seven counts of distribution and display to a minor of obscene matter.

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GUAM
Guam Daily Post

Mindy Aguon | For the Post Feb 8, 2017

A canon law expert from Rome who also works at Boston College has directly contacted three victims of sexual abuse to seek their depositions. The attorney who represents the victims has called for answers, threatening to file an ethical complaint if communication with his clients continues without his consent.

In a letter to Rev. James J. Conn, attorney David Lujan questioned why the religious professor contacted three of his clients – Roland P.L. Sondia, Roy T. Quintanilla and Walter G. Denton – to discuss their cases for a matter “not related to the lawsuits on Guam.”

Conn is listed as the ordinary professor of canon law, Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome; and professor of the practice of canon law, School of Theology and Ministry at Boston College, according to the Canon Law Society of America.

Lujan said his clients were contacted directly, and despite his clients insisting that Conn would need to go through their lawyer, the professor said the matter is not related to the lawsuits in Guam so they did not need their attorney’s consent.

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AUSTRALIA
The Australian

February 8, 2017

JACK THE INSIDER
ColumnistCanberra
@JacktheInsider

The figure of 4444 people reporting abuse at the hands of Catholic clerics between 1980 and 2015 has seemed staggering to some. I was surprised that people were so shocked.

It is important to note the figure only represents those who have come forward and reported their abuse to some 90-odd Catholic authorities.

The rule of thumb for police investigators like those from VicPol’s Sano Task Force, is for every victim who comes forward, at least four will not.

There are those victims who cannot come forward, who are deceased, their lives often ended by suicide or in a storm of recklessness.

There are others who won’t ever come forward. They may a feel a victim’s shame at the abuse they have suffered. More often they appreciate coming forward will come at significant personal cost, the prospect of family dislocation, the ugly business of clerical sexual abuse meeting religious clannishness.

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NORTHERN IRELAND
Belfast Telegraph

By Cate McCurry
PUBLISHED
08/02/2017

The man who tried to expose historical sex abuse at the notorious Kincora boys’ home in Belfast in the 1970s has criticised a major inquiry after it redacted part of his evidence.

Former Army captain and intelligence officer Colin Wallace, whose attempts to blow the whistle on the abuse of the young boys were thwarted by superiors, said the censored information undermines the Historical Institutional Abuse inquiry (HIA).

He refused to testify before it last year, because he said it did not have adequate powers to get answers. Instead, Mr Wallace submitted a 45-page document about Kincora.

However, two sections were redacted – blacked out – before the material was placed on the HIA website. The redacted information, published by Lobster Magazine, includes details about senior figures from public life.

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AUSTRALIA
Courier-Mail

FAITH is a curious thing, and when it is betrayed, a person can be broken.

For the past four years The Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse has heard harrowing tales of how trusted people beat, raped, tortured, starved, humiliated and threatened children.

The commission process has been awful. There has been testimony of not just physical abuse but how entire world views had been ripped apart.

This week the Catholic Church has been in the spotlight again and for the first time there has been calculation of the profound secrecy, isolation and spiritual hurt inflicted over 60 years.

Brisbane Archbishop Mark Coleridge, ahead of his giving evidence, warned his flock of “grim moments and some truths”.

Yesterday he acknowledged that the church acted as a law unto itself.

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AUSTRALIA
Newcastle Herald

Joanne McCarthy
8 Feb 2017

ONE of the Catholic Church’s most vocal internal critics has urged the Australian child abuse royal commission to push the church to change because “what you say and what you come up with is going to have an effect around the world”.

“I believe what you are doing is unique in the world. It is historic. It is going to make a mammoth difference in the long run,” said American Dominic priest Dr Tom Doyle during evidence on Tuesday, after more than 33 years of fighting for change from within the church.

“You have taken something on that is mind-boggling and you are going into it in a deeper, more enlightened, more courageous manner than any other body that I have had contact with.”

Dr Doyle said the problem of sexual abuse within the Catholic Church was “not unique in Australia”, but the royal commission was the strongest response from any nation.

He hoped the royal commission was “going to have a profound effect in the Vatican, and it is another pile of information that is saying what they do not want to hear”.

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AUSTRALIA
Sydney Catholic

[with video]

My dear friends,

The Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse has begun its final three-week review of the performance of the Catholic Church in Australia. And what has been revealed has already been harrowing.

I have personally felt shaken and humiliated by this information, as I have by other important revelations in the Royal Commission to date. The Church is sorry and I am sorry for past failures that left so many so damaged. I know that many of our priests, religious and lay faithful feel the same: as Catholics we hang our heads in shame.

We have already heard many distressing and shameful cases of sexual abuse told to the Royal Commission by courageous survivors. Today we heard these individual stories aggregated in data presented to the Commission on the proportion of priests and religious with claims of abuse made against them since 1950.

To my shame and sadness it would seem that Australia-wide as many as 384 Catholic diocesan priests, 188 religious priests, 597 religious brothers and 96 religious sisters have had claims of child sexual abuse made against them since 1950. Claims have also been made against 543 lay church workers and another 72 whose religious status is unknown.

Unlike previous hearings based on particular cases or events, and involving interviews of those connected with those events in some way, this hearing will address ‘the big picture’ and feature expert witnesses along with Church leaders and lay people, some of whom will be drawn from our Archdiocese. The Royal Commission will now focus on two main issues: what factors caused or contributed to historical child sex abuse cases in the Church and failures to respond adequately; and what the Church has done or plans to do to address this by way of changes to structures, policies and culture, the discernment of priestly and religious vocations, formation and supervision of those engaged in ministry, and so on.

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VATICAN CITY
National Catholic Reporter

Josephine McKenna Religion News Service | Feb. 7, 2017

VATICAN CITY

Sydney Archbishop Anthony Fisher said he was ashamed and humiliated by revelations that 7 percent of Australia’s Roman Catholic clergy may have abused children between 1950 and 2010.

The alarming figure was presented by the church to an Australian inquiry looking into institutional sex abuse.

“The church is sorry and I am sorry for past failures that left so many so damaged,” Fisher said.

“I know that many of our priests, religious and lay faithful feel the same,” he said. “As Catholics, we hang our heads in shame.”

The Vatican press office distributed a link to Fisher’s statement on Monday, Feb. 6, and declined to make any further comment.

In these complex and difficult times, NCR pledges to publish unrelenting, independent journalism. But we can’t do it without your support. Subscribe or donate today!
More than 4,440 Australians claim to have been victims of church abuse between 1980 and 2015, the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse was told.

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AUSTRALIA
9 News

AAP

Brisbane Archbishop Mark Coleridge does not feel shackled by celibacy, nor does he view it as one of the causes of widespread child sexual abuse in the Catholic Church.

Archbishop Coleridge says he made a free decision to choose to live a celibate life when he was ordained in his 20s.

“I’ve never had the sense of being shackled, of having a burden imposed upon me by an oppressive church,” he told the child abuse royal commission on Wednesday.

The inquiry into the complex reasons behind child abuse in the Catholic Church has heard research shows less than 50 per cent of priests at any given time are actually practising celibacy.

Archbishop Coleridge said he wasn’t naive enough to think most clergy lived a strictly celibate life.

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AUSTRALIA
Riverine Herald

by ANDREW MOLE FEBRUARY 08, 2017

THE Royal Commission into Institutional Response to Child Sex Abuse has ground along its painful trail of tears since 2015.

We have all seen the highlights on the news, seen figures as lofty as Cardinal George Pell dragged into the witness box and seen the pain of the survivors, the people seeking some form of justice for childhoods so brutally stolen.

That its insidious reach would be into every corner of Australia was never in doubt.

But that it would land on our doorsteps with such a sickening thud must have come to most, not just Catholics, as a bolt out of the blue.

The Diocese of Sandhurst, which covers us and the many Catholic schools in the region, has been implicated in the findings of the Royal Commission as one of the worst areas in 60 years of church-institutionalised abuse of boys and girls.

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AUSTRALIA
Lismore Echo

Scott Sawyer | 8th Feb 2017

THE figures released by the Royal Commission into Institutionalised Responses to Child Sexual Abuse are shocking, there’s no other way to describe them.

Average ages of the victims were 10.5 for girls and 11.6 for boys.

Truly horrific.

In only 35 years, from 1980 to 2015, almost 4500 people alleged they were abused as children in more than 1000 Catholic institutions.

How were these despicable acts covered up for so long?

Who knows, but one thing is clear, conservatives fearing a rise of Islam already overlooked what can only be classed as religious terrorism that is thriving within our communities.

Victims took on average 33 years to come forward and reveal the horrors they suffered.

This means we’ll be dealing with this problem for decades to come. That’s without taking into account fresh abuse taking place.

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AUSTRALIA
Catholic Leader

February 8, 2017

AS well as fronting the Royal Commission this week, Brisbane Archbishop Mark Coleridge has spent time speaking extensively to journalists about child abuse and the Church.

Speaking to the ABC’s Radio National Breakfast, Archbishop Coleridge told presenter Fran Kelly, the Church was doing all it could to change the culture of the past to protect the children of today.

“The data is absolutely horrific,” Archbishop Coleridge said, following the release of Royal Commission figures revealing the extent of priest abuse.

“Sitting in the hearing room … listening to the litany of horror had an extraordinary impact. And it did on all of us.

“I for one never imagined the scale of the problem in years past. The data is there for all to see now.

“There is almost certainly more out there that has not come to light.

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AUSTRALIA
Sydney Morning Herald

Lisa Flynn

What we have learnt is that it was almost inescapable. The revelations at the royal commission of how widespread the child sex abuse was in the Catholic Church has shocked everyone. It really is the first time the community have truly understood how pervasive and extensive this abuse was over the decades in Australia.

But believe it or not there will be some good that will come from hearing this horror.

For far too long victims of child abuse have lived with the shame and the fear and the worry that no one would believe them. But this was happening on a bigger scale than anyone had thought.

We also know the courage and bravery it takes to come forward to authorities and report it. My team has helped hundreds of people seek justice in crimes against them, including helping them give evidence to the royal commission.

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AUSTRALIA
The New Daily

NRL great Matthew Johns has revealed he witnessed “incredible cruelty” during his time in the Catholic education system.

Johns — who played rugby league for Newcastle, Cronulla, New South Wales and Australia — attended All Saints College in Cessnock, NSW, for his education.

The school was formerly run by Marist Brothers, and Johns, deeply moved by the ongoing Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse, opened up on Wednesday morning.

He dubbed evidence that has emerged as “horrific” and added that his own experience attending a Catholic school was “tough” and “over the top”.

“I didn’t see anything, as far as child abuse, of a sexual nature,” Johns told listeners on his Triple M breakfast radio show, The Grill Team.

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AUSTRALIA
PerthNow

Megan Neil, Australian Associated Press
February 8, 2017

The child sex abuse scandal has destroyed the image of the Catholic Church in Ireland, an Australian royal commission has heard.

The former provincial of the Jesuit order in Ireland, Dr Gerry O’Hanlon, said the scandal changed the culture in Ireland so much that in the 1990s almost all priests were viewed as pedophiles.

“The image and the reality of the Catholic Church in Ireland has been severely dented and almost fatally destroyed by the abuse scandal,” Dr O’Hanlon told the child abuse royal commission on Wednesday.

The Jesuit priest and theology professor said the voice of the child would not have received a proper hearing in the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s.

He said the culture had now swung in the opposite direction and there was little evidence of the presumption of innocence for a priest accused of abuse, in the small number of cases where the allegations were found to be false.

Many priests now felt they would not receive a fair hearing within or outside the church, he said.

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AUSTRALIA
Herald Sun

Matthew Connors, The Courier-Mail

BRISBANE’S Catholic Archbishop says the Church is a law unto itself and must change its culture but does not believe celibacy played a role in its shocking history of sexual abuse.

Appearing at the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse in Sydney yesterday, Archbishop Mark Coleridge said the Catholic Church needed to address issues that are “systemic and cultural”.

He said he was not naive enough to think all priests remained celibate but did not believe celibacy caused people to abuse children sexually.

Despite his very senior role in the Catholic Church in Australia, Archbishop Coleridge said he did not believe he could question a priest about his sex life unless allegations had been made publicly against him.

He said it would be up to someone such as a spiritual director to ask those questions if a priest was not functioning effectively.

“I have no right to ask those questions or, if I do, to expect an answer,” he said.

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AUSTRALIA
Bendigo Advertiser

Emma D’Agostino
@amassedmedia

8 Feb 201

SANDHURST Bishop Leslie Tomlinson has apologised to victims and survivors of sexual abuse, following figures indicating the diocese was the second worst in Australia for rates of alleged child sexual abuse in a 60-year period.

The data released from the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse related to the period between 1950 and 2010, in which almost 15 per cent of priests who ministered in the Sandhurst Diocese were accused of child sexual offences.

“The evidence of the Royal Commission, along with all we have heard over the past four years, can only be interpreted for what it is – a massive failure on the part of the Catholic Church as an institution in Australia to protect our children from abusers and predators,” the bishop wrote in a statement.

He acknowledged that the Diocese of Sandhurst had its share of perpetrators of sexual abuse, “like every other Diocese in Australia”.

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NEW YORK
The New York Jewish Week

Manny Waks, a native of Australia who grew up in a large chasidic family, estimates that he was sexually abused “dozens and dozens of times” for two years as a tween by respected members of the Orthodox community.

In the three decades since, Waks has spoken about his traumatic experiences “well over a hundred times” in media interviews and international public forums, becoming one of the most prominent advocates for survivors of sexual abuse, particularly in the charedi community.

Last week, in a conference here he organized about sexual abuse, Waks talked again — briefly — about the abuse he suffered.

The Global Summit on Child Sexual Abuse in the Jewish Community was notable not only for the participation of a large number of rabbis and other leaders from the charedi community, a community that for decades had shied away from public discussion of a sensitive topic of such a sexual nature, but for an apparently evolved approach that balances the interests of charedi institutions and of individuals who had suffered abuse in those institutions.

In an opening night panel discussion, Rabbi Chaim Dovid Zwiebel, executive vice president of the charedi Agudath Israel of America, said the umbrella organization’s rabbinic leadership now supports an extension of the statute of limitations in New York State for sexual abuse victims to bring civil and criminal suits. Agudath had earlier opposed such an extension, citing the potentially financial liability that day schools, camps and other institutions could face.

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UNITED KINGDOM
Cambridge News

BY ANNA SAVVA
00:00, 8 FEB 2017

The Bishop of Ely Stephen Conway warned the Anglican church more than three years ago about alleged abuse in its ranks, it has been claimed.

The Right Rev Stephen Conway’s correspondence was revealed in a six month Channel 4 investigation into the activities of John Symth QC, a former leader at the Iwerne Trust Christian camps, which had close links with the Church of England.

Alleged victims have claimed they endured violent beatings at the hands of Smyth in the late 1970s or early 1980s.

In the report the church admitted that by 2013 police had been notified about the alleged abuse and the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Most Rev Justin Welby, was shown a letter written by the Bishop of Ely to the Bishop of Cape Town highlighting “concerns” expressed by “an alleged survivor”.

A spokesperson from Ely Diocese told the News: “We have the facts on file. When we were made aware in 2013 we did all we could to tell the appropriate authorities.

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WEST VIRGINIA
Washington Post

By Cleve R. Wootson Jr. February 7

The children shipped to Miracle Meadows boarding school usually arrived with a long list of behavioral problems.

Some had been diagnosed with ADHD, bipolar or oppositional defiant disorders that had frustrated schools and family members for years. Others had been given a choice by a judge: Miracle Meadows or jail.

So school administrators, in particular Susan Gayle Clark, who started the Salem, W.Va. school affiliated with the Seventh-day Adventist Church in 1988, ruled with “an iron fist.” But the strict discipline often crossed the line into abuse, investigators found.

Worse, court documents filed last week say, a “culture of silence and secrecy” covered up years of physical and sexual abuse.

Two former students of the shuttered school are suing, claiming staff members handcuffed them to beds, raped and beat them. School administrators knew about the abuse at the school, the lawsuit claims, but covered up the criminal acts to keep the school open, with tuition reportedly at $2,000 a month per student.

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JAMAICA
Global Voices

It all started in late 2016, when a 64-year-old pastor at the Nazareth Moravian Church in Jamaica was arrested after allegedly being found in a car sexually assaulting a 15-year-old girl. Since then, many more cases have come to light, usually perpetrated by men in positions of power. The situation has prompted a greater focus on the problem of child sexual abuse — a long-standing but hidden epidemic in Jamaican society that is often kept secret.

As a result, a new activist “army” has formed, with a strong mission. The Tambourine Army’s Facebook page defines the group as “a radical movement that was formed organically out of an urgent recognition to advocate differently for the rights of women and girls”.

Headed by the founder of WE-Change, the women’s affiliate of LGBT rights group J-FLAG, the name derives from a January 9 incident during a protest by survivors of sexual abuse at the Nazareth Moravian Church. The WE-Change founder became angry and hit the leader of the Moravian Church in Jamaica, Dr. Paul Gardner, on the head with a tambourine, alleging that he had abused her partner as a child. Dr. Gardner and his Vice President Jermaine Gibson resigned soon afterwards and have since also been charged with the sexual abuse of minors, leaving the Moravian Church in disarray.

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JAMAICA
Caribbean 360

KINGSTON, Jamaica, Tuesday February 7, 2017 – Government Senator Matthew Samuda is calling for legislative changes that will see the imposition of a mandatory minimum penalty of 25 years’ imprisonment for convicted child abusers who have a high duty of care.

Making his contribution to the State of the Nation Debate in the Senate, Samuda identified pastors, police and teachers as those individuals who should face stiff penalties if they abuse children in their care.

He noted that while the existing law states there should be no discrimination based on profession, these changes are needed considering the recent cases of child abuse surfacing in the island.

Three members of the Moravian Church have been charged with having inappropriate relations with young girls. And as recently as last week, the head of the Centre for Investigation of Sexual Offences and Child Abuse (CISOCA) Superintendent Enid Ross-Stewart reported that the majority of alleged high-profile perpetrators of sexual offences against underage persons in Jamaica are pastors and policemen.

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AUSTRALIA
Gold Coast Bulletin

NRL great Matthew Johns has been moved to share his own dark past as a student in the Catholic Church education system.

The popular broadcaster was inspired to share stories from his upsetting past by the evidence reported by the royal commission into the Catholic Churches’ response to child sexual abuse.

The host of Triple M’s Grill Team said he saw regular cases of child abuse during his time at Maitland’s All Saints College – St Peter’s — a formerly Marist Brothers run school from 1898 to 1984.

He said students celebrated the day the college was no longer managed by Marist Brothers educators.

“I didn’t see anything, as far as child abuse, of a sexual nature,” Johns told Triple M.

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MAINE/MASSACHUSETTS
Boton Globe

By Travis Andersen GLOBE STAFF FEBRUARY 08, 2017

A former Catholic priest of the Boston archdiocese, who served more than 10 years in prison for raping an altar boy, was indicted Tuesday in Maine on 29 new counts of sexual misconduct involving two boys dating back to when he was a priest in Massachusetts, authorities said.

Ronald H. Paquin, 74, who served at parishes in Haverhill and Methuen before he was defrocked in 2004, was indicted by a grand jury in York County for allegedly abusing the victims in Kennebunkport between 1985 and 1989, District Attorney Kathryn Slattery said.

The first 13 counts of the indictment involve a child who was under the age of 14, Slattery said in a phone interview.

The age of the second alleged victim was not available on Tuesday.

Paquin, who was freed from jail in 2015, is not in custody. He will be summonsed to York County Superior Court at a later date, Slattery said.

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AUSTRALIA
Daily Mail (UK)

By Australian Associated Press and Nelson Groom for Daily Mail Australia

One of Australia’s most senior Catholic priests believes it is inappropriate to ask priests about their sex lives before they are accused of abuse.

Archbishop of Brisbane Mark Coleridge has told the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse that a bishop’s relationship with a priest is ‘delicate’.

When asked how the church allowed more than 4,000 Australian children to be allegedly abused, he said there are ‘certain things’ the head of the diocese are not entitled to know about the clergy.

‘How would I justifiably inquire of a priest what his sexual behaviour was when it hadn’t emerged into the public forum and become a problem in the community which he was supposed to lead?’ he said in Sydney on Wednesday.

‘I have no right to ask those questions or, if I do, to expect an answer.’

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GUAM
KUAM

Updated: Feb 08, 2017

By Krystal Paco

A 16th victim has filed suit in the District Court of Guam against the Archdiocese of Agana. According to the federal complaint, 58-year-old Felix Manglona alleges he was sexually molested by Father Louis Brouillard while Brouillard was a priest at San Isidro Catholic Church in Malojojo.

The complaint states both Manglona and his older brother were subject to the abuse as altar boys and Boy Scouts.

In a camping trip detailed in the complaint, Manglona states Brouillard was conducting a head count of the boys when he would come into the tent and perform oral copulation of Manglona and his tentmate.

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AUSTRALIA
Cairns Post

By Rebekah Ison, Australian Associated Press
February 8, 2017

One of Australia’s most senior Catholics says the church is a law unto itself and needs to change its culture.

Archbishop of Brisbane Mark Coleridge told the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse the church must put a “culture of concealment” behind it.

Commissioner Robert Fitzgerald asked whether it was too harsh to say the church in Australia still hadn’t embraced the notion of transparency as good practice.

“I think that’s probably true, that we haven’t yet embraced adequately a transparency that is appropriate and even necessary for an unusual community of communities like the Catholic Church,” Archbishop Coleridge replied in Sydney.

“We are, as it were, a law and a world unto ourselves.”

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AUSTRALIA
Triple Hack – ABC

After they are ordained, Catholic priests can’t have sex or get married. This week the Royal Commission asked the question: could the tradition of celibacy have partly led to the high rates of sex abuse in the Church?

Here are the church’s own figures:

* 40 per cent of the members of the brothers of St John of God had allegations of abuse made against them between 1950 and 2010
* That’s compared with 20 per cent of Marist brothers and 22 per cent of Christian brothers
* Between January 1980 and February 2015, 4,444 people alleged incidents of child sexual abuse
* 1,880 people holding positions in the Catholic Church, including priests, were identified as alleged perpetrators

The same day these figures were released, Dr Michael Whelan, a Marist priest, told the inquiry that the church’s law of celibacy was misguided and should not be in place. He said celibacy was “a huge issue for the Catholic Church and we have to deal with it”.

The argument usually runs like this – on one side are those who say that celibacy produces sexual frustration which then finds outlets in pedophilia or some other deviant sexuality. Alongside this is the related argument that paedophiles are harder to detect among celibate men, and for this reason the tradition of celibacy draws paedophiles to the priesthood.

The counter-argument is that not all celibate men or women abuse children. Most of this abuse happens within the family. Blaming celibacy distracts from the real causes of child abuse. This is basically the official view of the Church, though there are dissenting voices.

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AUSTRALIA
ABC News

By Michelle Brown and Paige Cockburn

One of Australia’s most senior Catholics, Archbishop of Brisbane Mark Coleridge, says he does not know how many priests break their vows of celibacy, and does not think it is appropriate to question them.

Appearing at the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse, Archbishop Coleridge said he had never had a sense of “being shackled” by his vow of celibacy but could not speak about the experiences of others.

Commissioner Peter McLellan intervened when Archbishop Coleridge said he could not say whether at any one time 50 per cent of clergy might be breaking their vows.

“It might be said Archbishop that given that you’re the leader of one of the most significant diocese in Australia that these are questions you should know about?” Commissioner McLellan said.

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AUSTRALIA
9 News

Belinda Grant-Geary

One of Australia’s most senior Catholic priests said his role was to deal with sexual abuse cases only after they had been made public.

Archbishop Mark Coleridge said it would not be appropriate to quiz the clergy on their sex lives when asked how the church’s structure allowed more than 4,000 Australian children to be allegedly abused.

Speaking at the Royal Commission into Child Sex Abuse on Wednesday, Father Coleridge described the relationship between a priest and bishop as “delicate”.

He argued that as his role was in the Church’s “external forum”, he had no right to question priests about their sex lives.

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AUSTRALIA
Echo

The Royal Commission Into Child Sexual Abuse has again stirred emotion over horrendous acts perpetrated in God’s name.

The Commission’s latest public hearing, Case Study 50: Catholic Church authorities in Australia, found seven per cent of priests who were members of 75 surveyed authorities were alleged ‘offenders’ between 1950 and 2010.

Remarkably, the Lismore Diocese has been named as having the fourth largest number of pedophile priests in the country.

AAP reported that after the commission conducted 15 public hearings into the Catholic Church, counsel assisting Gail Furness SC said much of it included ‘depressingly similar’ evidence.

‘Documents about alleged abuse were destroyed or not kept’, she said. ‘Children were ignored, or worse, punished. Secrecy prevailed as did cover-ups.’

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AUSTRALIA
The Guardian

Christopher Knaus
Tuesday 7 February 2017

The archbishop of Brisbane, Mark Coleridge, has said he does not believe that celibacy is a causative factor in child sexual abuse within the Catholic church.

Coleridge has also said he has little idea how many priests are breaking their vows to celibacy and believes that he, as a bishop, has no right to ask them about their sexual lives.

“The relationship between a bishop and a priest, or a bishop and any other human being, is a very delicate one,” he said.

“There are certain things that I am not entitled to know. I’m just trying to even imagine how that would work out practically, how I would discover the details of a priest’s sexual life?”

The issue of celibacy again came before the royal commission into institutional responses to child sexual abuse on Wednesday, as commissioners attempt to understand the root cultural causes that allowed child abuse to occur and be covered up at such a staggering scale.

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AUSTRALIA
news.com.au

FEBRUARY 8, 2017

Belinda Merhab
Australian Associated Press

The Senate has called on Cardinal George Pell to return to Australia to face allegations of misconduct.

The Greens motion, agreed to by the upper house on Wednesday afternoon, calls on Cardinal Pell to assist police and prosecutors investigating allegations of criminal misconduct against him.

It comes after the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse released data revealing 40 per cent of St John of God Brothers from 1950 to 2010 were accused pedophiles.

The data also revealed 4444 people made complaints to Australian Catholic authorities between 1980 and February 2015.

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AUSTRALIA
Crux

Catholic News Service February 7, 2017
CONTRIBUTOR

SYDNEY, Australia – Catholic experts told an Australian government commission that the church needed to re-examine its culture of clericalism if it wanted to help put an end to clergy sexual abuse.

Several experts also told the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse that the church needed the commission’s help to get on the right track.

“The mismanagement of the church is the business of the Royal Commission, in my view, because it has led to the situation that this church is in. If this was a business, we’d be shut down a long time ago,” said Dr. Michelle Mulvihill, psychologist and former Sister of Mercy who has worked with religious orders.

Mulvihill and three others testified on February 7 before the Royal Commission as it wraps up more than three years of investigations into the Australian Catholic Church’s response to child sexual abuse.

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AUSTRALIA
Riverine Herald

THE Catholic Church’s Sandhurst Diocese, which includes Echuca, Rochester and Kyabram, had one of the worst child sex offence records in Australia.

Second only to the Diocese of Sale, in Gippsland. Figures in both were more than double the national average identified by the Royal Commission.

An Echuca parish priest, appalled at the shocking new data from the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sex Abuse, is also relieved it is now all out in the open.

The Sandhurst Diocese, which includes Echuca, had the second highest rate of priests accused of child sexual abuse out of Australia’s 17 Catholic dioceses over a period of 60 years.

Figures showed almost 15 per cent of priests who ministered in our diocese between 1950 and 2010 were accused of child sexual offences.

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ROME
Telegraph (UK)

Nick Squires, Rome
7 FEBRUARY 2017

Secret notes hidden in a confession box in a Renaissance church in Rome fed information about Vatican intrigue to a woman who was convicted of leaking confidential information about the Holy See, a new book has revealed.

The book, published on Tuesday, has been written by Francesca Chaouqui, a public relations consultant who was hired by the Vatican to sit on a papal commission into economic reform.

In the first big scandal to hit the papacy of Pope Francis, Ms Chaouqui was put on trial for leaking documents to two Italian journalists who subsequently wrote best-selling books about corruption, infighting and skullduggery inside the tiny city state.

She was convicted by a Vatican court last year and sentenced to 10 months in jail in what was dubbed the Vatileaks II trial, but was given a suspended sentence because she was pregnant.

In her book, In The Name of Peter, the 35-year-old public relations executive reveals for the first time that she had a mole in the Vatican’s powerful Secretariat of State.

He kept her abreast of what was going on there by leaving secret notes in a confessional in the 16th century San Luigi dei Francesi church, which is famous for Caravaggio paintings that hang on its walls.

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GUAM
Pacific Daily News

Haidee V Eugenio , heugenio@guampdn.com Feb. 7, 2017

The Archdiocese of Agana, the Vatican and some Catholic priests now face 15 sex abuse lawsuits in U.S. District Court, asking for $75 million. Another former altar boy is expected to sue the church later this week.

The lawsuits had been in the Superior Court of Guam, but after eight judges recused themselves from hearing those cases, citing conflicts of interest, attorney David Lujan started to file the cases in federal court.

Lujan’s law firm said Tuesday they filed a motion to dismiss the 15 clergy sex abuse lawsuits in the Superior Court. A new abuse complaint could be filed as early as Wednesday, the law firm stated.

The Archdiocese of Agana continues to expand its legal defense team, with a fourth California-based lawyer tapped by local attorney John C. Terlaje to serve as co-counsel for the church.

Attorney Daniel C. Zamora, a shareholder at the San Francisco law firm of Weintraub Tobin Chediak Coleman Grodin, filed in federal court on Monday a petition to appear as co-counsel for the archdiocese.

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GUAM
Guam Daily Post

Mindy Aguon | For the Post

A canon law expert from Rome who also works at Boston College has directly contacted three victims of sexual abuse to seek their depositions. The attorney who represents the victims has called for answers, threatening to file an ethical complaint if communication with his clients continues without his consent.

In a letter to Rev. James J. Conn, attorney David Lujan questioned why the religious professor contacted three of his clients – Roland P.L. Sondia, Roy T. Quintanilla and Walter G. Denton – to discuss their cases for a matter “not related to the lawsuits on Guam.”

Conn is listed as the ordinary professor of canon law, Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome; and professor of the practice of canon law, School of Theology and Ministry at Boston College, according to the Canon Law Society of America.

Lujan said his clients were contacted directly, and despite his clients insisting that Conn would need to go through their lawyer, the professor said the matter is not related to the lawsuits in Guam so they did not need their attorney’s consent.

Lujan put Conn on notice that there shouldn’t be any further communication with the clients without first contacting Lujan. Should Conn persist, Lujan said he will file an ethics complaint with Boston College.

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AUSTRALIA
Townsville Bulletin

CHRIS McMAHON, Townsville Bulletin

MORE than 5 per cent of Catholic priests in the Townsville Diocese between 1950 and 2010 have been accused of sexual abuse against children.

A report, released as part of the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse, reveals the alleged abuse suffered by children at the hands of church members across the region.

The report classed 5.7 per cent of priests who served in the Townsville Diocese during the 60-year period as alleged perpetrators of sexual abuse at some point in their career.

No specific number of alleged perpetrators was provided in the report, which analysed data compiled from a survey of 75 Catholic Church authorities.

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ILLINOIS
Chicago Tribune

Katherine Rosenberg-Douglas

The Catholic Archdiocese of Chicago has settled another lawsuit accusing defrocked priest Daniel McCormack of sexual abuse, this one for $2.3 million.

The settlement was reached with a man who claimed in a lawsuit that he was 12 when he was twice sexually abused by McCormack when the priest was assigned to St. Agatha’s Parish in Lawndale on the West Side.

The man, identified in the lawsuit as John Doe, was not a member of the parish but lived in the area and often went to a nearby basketball court to play pick-up games.

Doe said he was abused the first time before McCormack was arrested on Aug. 30, 2005 on suspicion of sexually abusing a different child, according to the lawsuit.

McCormack was allowed to return to St. Agatha’s and continue interacting with children, including on the basketball courts, according to the man’s attorney, Lyndsay Markley. That’s when the man was abused the second time, she said.

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NEW YORK
News 12

An episcopal priest from Long Beach was shuttled to and from court in Mineola Tuesday to answer to child pornography and drug charges.

Christopher King was a parish priest at St. James Episcopal Church in Long Beach until his arrest Friday.

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AUSTRALIA
The Advertiser

[live steam]

Joanne McCarthy
8 Feb 2017

10.04am: The royal commission has resumed. This morning we have a panel of four people giving evidence about church structure, governance and culture. They are governance and management consultant Dr Maureen Cleary, University of Sydney professor of law Patrick Parkinson, Catholics for Renewal president Peter Johnstone and Brisbane Archbishop Mark Coleridge.

Dr Cleary is introducing herself and her work that has involved investigating governance within Australian dioceses and Catholic organisational structures. Dr Cleary has worked with a broad range of churches beyond the Catholic Church, including the Anglican church, Baptist and Uniting churches, and the Salvation Army.

Dr Cleary has just said the people she works with are people or institutions that recognise they need to change.

She said legal incorporation has had a positive impact on Catholic organisations she has worked with, and she is now expanding on that. She is talking about welfare and provider groups within the Catholic Church which act with the consent of the institutional church and the local bishop, but with autonomy.

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PENNSYLVANIA
WPXI

After more than three decades of silence, a man who says he was sexually abused by a priest and a nun in Beaver is speaking out and working with state investigators.

Johnny Hewko was an elementary student in the 1970s at Saints Peter and Paul Catholic Church, in Beaver, which is where he said the abuse happened. Hewko said he was abused once a week for nearly three years.

Hewko said it had a devastating impact on his life. He did poorly in school, turned to alcohol and drugs and had difficulty holding down a job. He credited the support around him for keeping him together.

“I’ve been blessed to have a good group around me that when my faith gets small they help me bring it back,” said Hewko.

In 2009, Hewko approached the Pittsburgh Catholic Diocese and told it his story. In a letter to him, the diocese wrote, “After extensive interviews …we are unable to confirm independently the allegation of sexual abuse by either the principal or the pastor who is deceased.”

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NEW YORK
WABC

[with video]

By Stacey Sager

LONG BEACH, Long Island (WABC) — A priest on Long Island who was arrested on child pornography and drug charges has lost his job.

Christopher King, 51, served as pastor at St. James Episcopal on Penn Street in Long Beach.

He was taken into custody Friday after investigators searched the rectory and found disturbing materials.

According to court documents, police allegedly found child pornography videos of at least five boys. Four of them were between ages 2 and 6.

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IRELAND
Galway Bay FM

Galway Bay fm newsroom – Test excavation work has been extended at the site of the former Mother and Baby home in Tuam.

The work is led by the Mother and Baby Homes Commission of Investigation.

Initial test excavation work was carried out last October and November.

A second phase has now begun and will continue for the next two to three weeks.

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ILLINOIS
Fox 32

CHICAGO (Sun-Times Media Wire) – The Archdiocese of Chicago has reached a $2.3 million settlement with a man who claims he was sexually abused by convicted child molester and defrocked priest Daniel McCormack.

John C. Doe sued the Archdiocese in April 2014, claiming he was abused at a West Side parish on two occasions in 2005, when he was 12 years old, according to a statement from the victim’s attorney, Lyndsay Markley, announcing the settlement.

The victim met McCormack while playing pickup basketball at St. Agatha’s Parish in North Lawndale, and claimed in the suit that the second act of abuse might have taken place after McCormack was arrested on Aug. 30, 2005, for allegations of sexually abusing another child.

The case was set to go to trial on May 15, but the parties came to the settlement and the case was dismissed on Jan. 19, according to Markley.

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GUAM
Patrick J. Wall

It’s time for the people of Guam to lower their expectations of the canonical church trial of Archbishop Anthony Apuron.

Make no mistake: there will be extreme secrecy cloaked under the “pontifical secret” and sovereign immunity. And while the procedure is called a canonical “trial,” it is nothing like any criminal trial you have experienced or seen on television.

1. There will be no jury impaneled to publicly decide innocence or guilt.

2. There will be no judge in a black robe responsible to the People conducting a fair and impartial trial.

3. Secrecy is king. There will be no public hearing. The process began in secret, will be conducted in secret, decided in secret and the findings will be kept in secret Vatican archives.

4. The outcome will only be known when the Holy See serves its decision on Anthony Apuron through the Papal Nuncio of the country and bishop where Apuron is domiciled.

5. The procedure is based on the Code of Canon law and SST (Sacramentum Santitatis Tutela) promulgated in 2001.

6. No matter the outcome, this is a test for Pope Francis and his commitment to discipline Bishops in the protection of minors.

7. Apuron will not be present in Rome for any of it.

What to expect

Pope Francis is the only church official who can bring an action against Apuron.

Whenever the Pope becomes aware of a Bishop who has sexually abused children, he appoints investigators—known as auditors—to gather the facts and circumstances around the matter. A likely candidate is Revered James Conn S.J., J.D., J.C.D.

The Pope then reviews the matter and decides whether to commence a Judicial or Administrative action.

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NEW YORK
New York Times

By SHARON OTTERMAN
FEB. 7, 2017

SLOATSBURG, N.Y. — The luxurious home, given to the Archdiocese of New York in December 2015, is an eight-bedroom, 10,000-square-foot manor house on seven lakefront acres here, with a private tennis court, outdoor pool and 70-foot indoor lap pool that resembles a Venetian canal.

The New York couple who donated the home, in Sloatsburg, N.Y., intended for it to be used as a retreat house, a place where hardworking priests could relax and decompress.

But the forest-framed residence, where Cardinal Timothy M. Dolan, the archbishop of New York, has vacationed at least twice in the past year, is now presenting a conundrum for the New York archdiocese, which is already fighting a perception among parishioners that it is “bloated” and “rich,” even as it continues to close parishes and schools, including six school closings announced Monday.

Though it had originally been intended as a retreat house, an archdiocesan spokesman said that was no longer an appropriate use: The house has too many stairs for many priests and would have only seven rooms for guests. The idea is also opposed by the homeowners association of the Pierson Lakes gated community, to which the house belongs.

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AUSTRALIA
Riverine Herald

AN ECHUCA parish priest, appalled at the shocking new data from the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sex Abuse, is also relieved it is now all out in the open.

The Sandhurst Diocese, which includes Echuca, had the second highest rate of priests accused of child sexual abuse out of Australia’s 17 Catholic dioceses over a period of 60 years.

Figures showed almost 15 per cent of priests who ministered in our diocese between 1950 and 2010 were accused of child sexual offences.

St Mary’s Catholic Church’s Father Des Welladsen said it was a shocking revelation.

‘‘It’s a surprise to me,’’ he said.

During his 47 years ministering in the Sandhurst Diocese, Fr Welladsen said he was only aware of one paedophile priest.

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ITALIA
Rete L’Abuso

[Pedophile priests: Take the aggravating circumstance of abuse of power.]

L’AUTORE: Annamaria Zarrelli

I preti pedofili non hanno diritto ad alcuno sconto di pena, nemmeno quando agiscono «al di fuori del sacerdozio».

Se gli abusi su un minore sono commessi da un sacerdote, la pena sarà aggravata e ciò vale anche quando la violenza sia perpetrata al di fuori della funzioni del ministero e del cultosacerdotale o in ambiti che esulino da quelli propri della realtà parrocchiale. A confermarlo è stata la Corte di Cassazione che, con una recentissima sentenza, [1] ha fatto ulteriore chiarezza sul punto.

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ITALIA
TGCOM24

[The church knew about a violent priest who abused 11 children. He was defrocked but the church kept the action secret.]

Lʼuomo era stato ridotto allo stato laicale nel 2012 per “delicta cum minoribus”, ma la Congregazione decise di mantenere segreti i motivi dellʼallontanamento

Torna in un’aula di tribunale Giovanni Trotta, ex prete ridotto allo stato laicale, già condannato nell’ottobre 2015 a 8 anni di reclusione per violenza sessuale su un bambino di 11 anni e finito nuovamente in carcere a giugno 2016 con accuse analoghe per reati commessi su una decina di bambini. Polemiche sulla decisione della Chiesa di allontanarlo, già nel 2012, senza però divulgarne i motivi, permettendo di fatto che l’uomo trovasse nuove vittime.

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ITALIA
Today

[Priest accused of sexual abuse: “He can not control himself, guilty of drugs”]

„L’ex parroco di Mandas e Villamar (Sud Sardegna) è sotto accusa per i presunti abusi sessuali su alcuni ragazzini. Don Pascal Manca soffrirebbe di un “disturbo del controllo degli impulsi” con una “ipersessualità indotta da farmaci”“

“Don Pascal Manca è seminfermo di mente”: lo sostiene una perizia psichiatrica.

L’ex parroco di Mandas e Villamar (Sud Sardegna) è sotto accusa per i presunti abusi sessuali su alcuni ragazzini. Stando alla ricostruzione del pubblico ministero Liliana Ledda, l’uomo di Chiesa avrebbe approfittato sessualmente di cinque ragazzini minorenni che frequentavano le parrocchie dei due paesi del medio campidano. Un adolescente, in particolare, ha raccontato agli inquirenti di essere stato drogato dal prete, il quale gli avrebbe offerto succhi di frutta mischiati a psicofarmaci per poter poi abusare di lui.

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ITALIA
Rete L’Abuso

In una nota la replica alla denuncia di un 40enne contro il cardinale Sepe per non aver avuto giustizia “Non emersero elementi sufficienti per avviare un processo penale nei confronti di quel sacerdote” L’INDAGINE STELLA CERVASIO UN uomo contro la Curia di Napoli.

Diego Esposito nome di fantasia – è oggi un quarantenne che denuncia di essere stato violentato da un prete per 4 anni a partire da quando ne aveva 13. Si è rivolto a papa Francesco, che con il “motu proprio” ha deciso che la responsabilità delle indagini sui casi di pedofilia che infestano la Chiesa è dei vescovi.

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DEUTSCHLAND
der Freitag

[In the Spotlight film Richard Sipe is quoted as saying at least 6% of all Catholic priests are pedophiles and live this out. Why should it be different in Germany?]

Katholische Kirche Noch immer die größte Gefahr für Kinder und Jugendliche.

Ein Blog-Beitrag von Freitag-Community-Mitglied Andreas Moser

In dem Film Spotlight wurde die Studie von Richard Sipe zitiert, nach der mindestens 6% aller katholischen Priester pädophil sind und dies ausleben. Die Recherchen des Boston Globe bestätigten das, und in meiner Filmbesprechung stellte ich die Frage, wieso dies in Deutschland anders sein sollte.

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AUSTRALIA
The Australian

February 8, 2017

TESSA AKERMAN
ReporterMelbourne
@TessaAkerman

Bill Shorten has called for George Pell to again appear before the child sex abuse royal commission during a blistering attack in which he paid tribute to the abuse survivors but condemned institutions that failed the children.

Mr Shorten blasted Cardinal Pell and the Catholic Church over the child sex abuse scandal, calling for the cardinal to again appear before the royal commission, but this time on home soil.

The Labor leader said the scale of the abuse and systemic cover-up was sickening and a betrayal of the faith the perpetrators claimed to serve. “It is well past time for Cardinal Pell to return to Australia and account to this commission in person,” he said.

“I salute the survivors who have testified, remarkable Australians summoning the courage to tell their stories. Some of them for the first time, others carrying the memory of being deliberately ­ignored, or flat-out accused of making up their stories.”

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OHIO
BishopAccountability.org

Summary of Case: Richard Unwin was a priest of the Archdiocese of Cincinnati, ordained in 1979. He assisted at parishes in Forest Park, Hamilton, Oxford, Springfield and McCartyville, then pastored in Piqua and Tipp City. Unwin was also an educator, teaching at Badin High School in Hamilton, serving as principal of Catholic Central High in Springfield and, briefly, at Lehman High School in Sidney where he was also religion department chair.

In 2003 the archdiocese received a complaint that Unwin had sexually abused a male minor more than 15 years previously. Unwin acknowledge the abuse and was placed on leave. The Ohio Board of Education revoked his teaching license in 2005 and, in 2007, Unwin was laicized.

Ordained: 1979
Laicized: 2007

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ROME
The Commentator

Tim Hedges

On 7 February 2017

It seemed in the Italian press as if one country had invaded another. It was in fact one very small country which had engineered a coup d’état against an even smaller sovereign entity which wasn’t, properly speaking, a country.

The Pope had fired the Grand Master of the Sovereign Order of Malta. The reason? Obeying Church teaching.

It is hard to know how Pope Francis gets himself into these scrapes. What should have been a quiet private matter, if it happened at all, was in every paper in the civilised world. For sheer, bull headed, foot-in-mouth belligerence Papa Bergoglio trumps Trump.

The Prince and Grand Master of the Order of Malta was Fra’ Robert Matthew Festing, Guards Officer and son of a Chief of the Imperial General Staff. You have to be a bit socially upmarket to get on in this company, the other bigwigs being a selection of the European Catholic aristocracy.

Anyway, Festing had sacked Albrecht, Freiherr von Boeselager, the Grand Chancellor, on the grounds that he, the Freiherr, had been involved in charitable works which distributed condoms. Now, the Catholic faith is against the use of condoms, so you might imagine that the Pope would have patted the blessed Festing on the back for ridding the order of a dangerous progressive.

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NORTHERN IRELAND
News Letter

A former resident of a notorious Belfast boys’ home is set to mount a legal challenge against the findings of an inquiry that rejected claims that senior establishment figures used it to abuse children.

Richard Kerr, who alleges he was abused by “very powerful people” with links to the Kincora home, does not accept the conclusions of the four-year Historical Institutional Abuse (HIA) inquiry.

The inquiry dismissed long-standing claims that senior politicians, civil servants and businessmen were complicit in a paedophile ring that operated at the home in the 1970s and for which three staff members were jailed.

The report also rejected associated allegations that the UK security services knew what was going on and, instead of intervening, used the information to blackmail the establishment figures involved.

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NORTHERN IRELAND
Belfast Telegraph

So, is that it, then? There will be no more inquiries, or investigations, into the Kincora scandal following Sir Anthony Hart’s final report for the Historical Institutional Abuse (HIA) inquiry. Yes, the under-pressure Royal Ulster Constabulary was “inept”, according to Sir Anthony, in relation to the force investigating claims of child sexual abuse at the east Belfast care home in the 1970s. In addition, the RUC and the authorities were guilty of a “catalogue of failures” in dealing with the allegations swirling around about Kincora, the report found.

Crucially, however, the report did not find any evidence that the intelligence services, both MI5 and the Army, were aware of a paedophile ring operating at the home; or that the “spooks” were blackmailing the abusers to spy on fellow hardline Ulster loyalists in the first decade of the Troubles.

Sir Anthony said the idea that Kincora was a homosexual “brothel”, used by the security services as a “honeypot” to extract information about leading loyalists was without foundation.

In his report, the judge said: “There is no credible evidence to support any of these allegations.” He also insisted that the abuse did not extend beyond the three guilty staff members.

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PENNSYLVANIA
PennLive

By Steve Marroni | smarroni@pennlive.com

When she was a teenager, Stephanie Fessler was sexually abused by a member of her York County church.

It was a place where she was supposed to feel safe, but it was the authorities within that church who not only failed to protect her, but they covered up the abuse, she claims.

And according to a lawsuit Fessler filed against the Jehovah’s Witness church in Spring Grove, had church elders contacted the authorities as they were legally obligated to do, she would have been spared more sexual assaults from the same woman.

While her abuser, Terry J. Monheim, pleaded guilty back in 2012 in York County Court, a lawsuit Fessler filed against Monheim and the church is going to trial Tuesday in Philadelphia.

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UNITED KINGDOM
Christian Today

Lorraine Caballero 07 February, 2017

The son of a Christian campaigner who moved to Zimbabwe in 1984 is urging his father to return to the United Kingdom to face the consequences of teen abuse allegations against him that have surfaced recently.

Hampshire Police have just launched an investigation into allegations that John Smyth, a Christian campaigner who used to manage Christian youth camps, stripped and violently beat 22 young men from public schools in Britain. Channel 4 News talked to the alleged victims, who said they endured the lashings as punishment for pride and other minor sins.

According to the victims, they had to wear adult nappies after the beatings to stem the bleeding. The alleged abuses started in the late 1970s but the young men’s schools were only informed about them after there was an attempted suicide in 1982. However, the allegations were unknown to the police until recently.

“These are horrific allegations’ and if proven true it is right that my father face justice,” the campaigner’s pastor son PJ Smyth said, according to Times Live.

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AUSTRALIA
9 News

AAP

A retired Anglican priest convicted of molesting five boys over three decades in WA has been admonished by a judge for admitting at least two of the offences after subjecting the victims to a trial.

Raymond Sydney Cheek was aged 84 in November when he was found guilty by a jury of committing an act of gross indecency and two counts each of indecent assault and indecent dealings with a child between 1955 and 1985.

He was granted bail before sentencing on Tuesday.

But Cheek wrote an eight-page letter of complaint to District Court of WA judge Ronald Birmingham complaining about his lawyer Michael Perrella’s conduct at the trial – and found himself without counsel.

After Judge Birmingham forwarded the correspondence to the lawyer, he refused to continue acting for Cheek, saying the trust between him and his client was gone.

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ITALY
International Business Times

BY PRANSHU RATHI @PRANSHURATHI ON 02/07/17

Accused of breaking his vows of celibacy, the 48-year-old priest known as Don Andrea Contin has been accused of having as many as 30 lovers whom he would frequently take to a naturist swingers’ resort in France, besides allegedly being in possession of pornographic home videos which were concealed in covers that had names of various popes.

He has also been accused of persistently carrying a “briefcase full of vibrators, sex toys, masks and bondage equipment,” according to one of his accusers who said so in her police statement. She also said that Contin encouraged her to have sex with a horse and also beat her on two occasions. Contin is also accused of prostituting his lovers through swinger websites, according to The Times.

Padua’s bishop, Claudio Cipolla, said he intended to strip Contin of his priesthood, regardless of the outcome of the investigation that is being carried out by the local police.

“I am incredulous and pained by the accusations… even if, at the end of this affair, there are no legal consequences, we have a duty by canon law to take disciplinary action,” Cipolla told a press conference, the Local reported.

Investigations against Contin began in December after three women came forward with allegations. Although he denied the allegations at first, he later confessed to the police after they found video evidence upon searching his home.

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NEW YORK
News 12

[with video]

February 7, 2017

LONG BEACH – A Long Beach Episcopal priest will be in court today on porn and drug charges.

Police say Christopher King was a parish priest at St. James Episcopal Church until his arrest Friday.

According to police, King had videos involving mostly boys, some as young as 2 to 3 years old, engaged in sexual activities.

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AUSTRALIA
Crux

Inés San MartínFebruary 6, 2017
VATICAN CORRESPONDENT

The Australian Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse revealed on Monday that between 1980 and 2015, 4,400 people had reported having been abused at more than 1,000 Catholic institutions across Australia, with seven percent of Australian priests facing charges.

After data from Australia’s highest board of inquiry revealed that seven percent of the country’s Catholic priests have been accused of sexually abusing minors, the Australian Church is responding, with one archbishop saying that he feels “shaken and humiliated.”

The Australian Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse on Monday released statistics showing that between 1980 and 2015, 4,400 people reported having been abused at more than 1,000 Catholic institutions across Australia.

Gail Furness, the lead lawyer assisting the commission, said the average age of the victims was 10.5 for girls and 11.5 for boys.

In her opening remarks, Furness also revealed that seven percent of priests in Australia had been accused of sexually abusing children between 1950 and 2010.

She also asserted that the Vatican had refused to hand over documents involving Australian priests accused of abuse in July 2014, with a Vatican communication saying that it was “neither possible nor appropriate to provide the information requested.”

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AUSTRALIA
Can-India

Sydney, Feb 7 (IANS) Late Pope John Paul II was aware of priests sexually abusing children, and of efforts by the Catholic Church to cover up the allegations, an American canon lawyer claimed on Tuesday.

Thomas Doyle, an expert on cases of sexual abuse by the clergy, said this while testifying at a hearing here in Australia, Efe news reported.

Doyle is deposing before the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse in public and religious institutions.

He also said that in 1985 at least four US dioceses sent reports to the Vatican on child sexual abuse by priests.

One of these reports were prepared by Doyle himself, who requested a bishop be sent down to Luisiana to deal with cases of paedophilia.

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ROME
Reuters

By Philip Pullella | ROME

The woman convicted of helping leak Vatican documents says in a new book that an official in a key office of the Holy See left her secret messages in the confession box of a Rome church during the trial.

The episode is one new element in the book “In Peter’s Name”, by Francesca Chaouqui, who got a 10-month suspended sentence at the end of a sensational eight-month trial dubbed “Vatileaks 2” last July. [nL8N19T29C]

She describes a Vatican where infighting and resistance to Pope Francis’s reforms is rife.

Asked for a comment on the book, Vatican spokesman Greg Burke said: “We’re not losing sleep over it”.

Much of the financial information in her book has already reported in two books published in 2015 that contained information leaked by a Vatican official. Chaouqui was convicted of being an accessory.

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UNITED KINGDOM
Telegraph

Patrick Foster Peter Robertson
6 FEBRUARY 2017

Victims of a barrister facing child abuse claims say the Archbishop of Canterbury failed to expose the scandal, as a Bishop said that he had also been assaulted.

An open letter to the Most Rev Justin Welby, endorsed by eight alleged victims of John Smyth QC, calls on the Archbishop, a former colleague of the barrister, to come clean about the extent of his knowledge of the abuse claims.

The development came as the Bishop of Guildford revealed that he was one of 22 young men abused by Mr Smyth, who is accused of savagely beating beatings boys he met at Christian holiday camps in the late Seventies.

The Right Rev Andrew Watson said: “The beating I endured in the infamous garden shed was violent, excruciating and shocking; but it was thankfully a one-off experience never to be repeated.”

Hampshire Police last week announced an investigation into the abuse claims, which were reported to senior figures in the Church in 1982, and police sources said eight men have come forward to say that they were attacked by the barrister.

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UNITED KINGDOM
Telegraph

This is an open letter to the Archbishop of Canterbury from an anonymous abuse victim who told his story in the Daily Telegraph. It is endorsed by seven other victims.

Dear Archbishop,

I am sure that we will meet one day. You have expressed your deep regret about how the Church has treated myself and my fellow victims since John Smyth’s abuse was uncovered. And besides, we have a lot in common. We are pretty much the same age. You went to Eton, I went to Winchester College. We have shared a university education.

We were both at the Iwerne Trust Christian camps at the same time, although I was there as a boy, you were there as an Iwerne Officer. Crucially, however, we both personally knew John Smyth, the subject of Channel 4’s news reports last Thursday & Friday. He was my abuser. The man who beat me in the horrific detail that was exposed in the television reports (and that I have written about in my account for Monday’s Daily Telegraph, the newspaper that, in my opinion, bravely ran this story before all others).

You have described John Smyth as ‘charming’ and ‘delightful’. Some people have found these words a strange description for someone who is alleged to have performed such monstrous acts, but I completely agree with you. I first met John Smyth when I was 14 years old. He was charming and delightful. That was why I latched on to him.

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GUAM
KUAM

Updated: Feb 07, 2017

By Krystal Paco

He said he was going to do it, and he did …

Attorney David Lujan has motioned to dismiss each of the cases against the Archdiocese of Agana in the Superior Court of Guam. The motions were made Tuesday afternoon in lieu of the same 15 cases being filed at the District Court of Guam. As we reported, each of the judges in the local court disqualified themselves from hearing the case due to conflicts, including relations to the accused, the victims, or being exposed to the cases as a parishioner of the Church. The federal filings also name the Vatican as a defendant. Each plaintiff is suing for $5 million in damages. A 16th victim is also anticipated to file a complaint later this week.

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UNITED STATES
Catholic News Service

By Dennis Sadowski Catholic News Service

WASHINGTON (CNS) — The resignation of the president of the Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests opens the door for a new generation of leaders, said a top volunteer within the organization.

“SNAP is full of vibrant leaders,” Joelle Casteix, the organization’s Western regional director, told Catholic News Service Feb. 6. She said the resignation Feb. 3 of Barbara Blaine, who founded SNAP and served as its president for 29 years, was not totally unexpected.

“The time was not what anyone had planned, but any vibrant organization can always find people to stand up and lead an organization into its next phase,” Casteix said.

“For us, it’s always heartbreaking when a leader departs,” she added. “The true heart and mission of SNAP will always be with its volunteer leadership.”

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ROME
Crux

John L. Allen Jr. February 6, 2017
EDITOR

In her new book “Nel Nome di Pietro” (“In the Name of Peter”), Vatileaks 2.0 defendant Francesca Chaouqui provides few new revelations of Vatican financial scandals, instead trying to reframe her own image from femme fatale to idealistic reformer who ran afoul of powerful vested interests.

After one defendant in last year’s Vatileaks 2.0 trial published a book in January, Rome has been waiting for the other shoe to drop, this time a volume by the woman at the heart of it all: Francesca Immacolata Chaouqui, an Italian PR consultant whose own new book is titled Nel Nome di Pietro (“In the name of Peter”).

The book went on sale today, and if the interest one brings is whether it offers new revelations about financial corruption in the Vatican, then it’s more of a whimper than a bang.

To recap, Chaouqui, a Spanish cleric named Monsignor Lucio Vallejo Balda and an Italian layman named Nicola Maio served on a commission created by Pope Francis in 2013 to study reform of Vatican finances. Later, all three would be charged along with two Italian journalists with leaking and publishing confidential documents from that commission.

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ROME
New York Times

By JASON HOROWITZ
FEB. 7, 2017

ROME — When Steve Bannon was still heading Breitbart News, he went to the Vatican to cover the canonization of John Paul II and make some friends. High on his list of people to meet was an archconservative American cardinal, Raymond Burke, who had openly clashed with Pope Francis.

In one of the cardinal’s antechambers, amid religious statues and book-lined walls, Cardinal Burke and Mr. Bannon — who is now President Trump’s anti-establishment eminence — bonded over their shared worldview. They saw Islam as threatening to overrun a prostrate West weakened by the erosion of traditional Christian values, and viewed themselves as unjustly ostracized by out-of-touch political elites.

“When you recognize someone who has sacrificed in order to remain true to his principles and who is fighting the same kind of battles in the cultural arena, in a different section of the battlefield, I’m not surprised there is a meeting of hearts,” said Benjamin Harnwell, a confidant of Cardinal Burke who arranged the 2014 meeting.

While Mr. Trump, a twice-divorced president who has boasted of groping women, may seem an unlikely ally of traditionalists in the Vatican, many of them regard his election and the ascendance of Mr. Bannon as potentially game-changing breakthroughs.

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AUSTRALIA
Daily Telegraph

James Taylor, Canterbury-Bankstown Express
February 6, 2017

REVESBY Catholic school De La Salle College is facing multiple lawsuits for alleged child sexual abuse.

Three cases have been filed against the school over the alleged abuse of Grade 6 and 7 students in the 1970s and 80s.

However the teacher allegedly responsible, Brother Anselm Hallam, died in the early 1990s aged 92, before his charges could be heard in court.

De La Salle also faces lawsuits for alleged child sexual abuse at its Marrickville college.

Sydney Catholic Schools executive director Dr Dan White said he wasn’t in a position to comment “as it is an historical matter” and responsibility for the school was entrusted to the De La Salle Brothers at that time.

However he condemned the actions of anyone who abused children.

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AUSTRALIA
ABC News

By Laura Gartry

A Perth judge has expressed frustration after a former WA Anglican priest due to be sentenced for sexually abusing five boys had his case adjourned until Friday, because he claimed he did not realise his lawyer had dropped him.

Serial paedophile Raymond Sydney Cheek sexually abused children over a 30-year period in WA’s south, targeting young boys across numerous parishes.

He was found guilty of committing an act of gross indecency and two counts each of indecent assault and indecent dealings with a child between 1955 and 1985 in November last year.

Cheek criticised his defence during the trial by lawyer Michael Perrella in a letter to District Court judge Ronald Birmingham, claiming he misunderstood his right to give evidence.

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GUAM
Guam Daily Post

By Mindy Aguon | For the Post Feb 7, 2017

Attorney David Lujan moved three more sexual abuse civil complaints to the District Court. The cases, filed on behalf of Edward Roberto Chan, Ramon Afaisen De Plata, and Paul Joseph Borja against the Roman Catholic Archbishop of Agana, brings the total number of lawsuits seeking to hold the Vatican responsible for the allegations against the archdiocese to 15.

Like the other dozen cases moved over the last two weeks, the three cases filed today each demand relief in the form of a minimum $5 million in damages.

According to Post news files, De Plata said that in March 1964, he was a 10-year-old altar boy at Our Lady Peace Parish in Chalan Pago. While staying overnight with about eight other altar boys in the parish rectory, De Plata said he saw Apuron – a seminarian at the time – and another clergy member, Rev. Antonio Cruz, engaging in sexual activity with another 10-year-old altar boy.

“The restroom was located inside (Cruz’s) bedroom. I woke up late in the night to use the restroom. When I entered Pale Cruz’s bedroom, I saw Pale Cruz lying on the bed naked. One of the altar boys was on the bed naked,” De Plata stated in a written testimony.

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AUSTRALIA
Border Mail

Ellen Ebsary
@EEbsary

7 Feb 2017

As the incidence of child abuse in Catholic institutions is further unveiled, a Border advocate for the Care Leavers Australia Network thinks of the victims who will never be identified.

The Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse yesterday identified 14.7 per cent of priests in the Sandhurst Diocese as alleged perpetrators between 1950 and 2010.

This statistic for the church region, which covers the North East, was the second highest rate in the country.

Rhonda Janetzki said these figures were only “scratching the surface”.

“They’re talking about the priests, brothers and nuns, but there was also a lot of abuse from employees and volunteers in those institutions too that hasn’t been mentioned,” she said.

“I think there are thousands of people living in country areas like Albury-Wodonga who have never ever spoken about the abuse inflicted on them.”

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AUSTRALIA
ABC News

By Nicole Asher

The Australian Catholic Church has confirmed more than $200,000 has been paid to victims of sex abuse perpetrated by priests ministering in the Diocese of Sale, in eastern Victoria.

The church has released data as part of the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse, showing the proportion of priests in the Sale Diocese accused of child sex crimes between 1950 and 2010 was double the national average.

In the 60 years to 2010, 15.1 per cent of priests in the Sale Diocese were accused of child sex abuse, compared to 7 per cent of priests nationally.

The Sale Diocese had the highest percentage of priests subject to abuse allegations in Australia, followed by the Diocese of Sandhurst, which includes Bendigo, with 14.7 per cent.

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AUSTRALIA
ABC News

By Riley Stuart

An expert witness received loud applause as he savaged the Catholic Church for sacrificing the welfare of children at an emotional royal commission hearing today.

Dr Thomas Doyle, a United States canon lawyer and expert in areas of sexual abuse by clergy, has been giving evidence at the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse in Sydney.

He claimed Pope John Paul II knew children were being sexually abused by priests and the Catholic Church attempted to cover up allegations.

Dr Doyle said victims and their families were coerced into keeping quiet about the abuse, even threatened with ex-communication.

“In the theology that I believe in there’s no office in the Catholic Church or anywhere else is so important that it justifies sacrificing the welfare of one innocent child. Period,” he said.

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AUSTRALIA
9 News

By Belinda Grant-Geary

The Catholic church assumed those entering the clergy wanted to do “good things” for the congregation, giving paedophiles unprecedented access to children, a royal commission has heard.

Professor Francis Moloney, a senior fellow at Victoria’s Catholic Theological College, said before dozens of witnesses including Cardinal George Pell that he did not believe paedophiles used the church to get close to vulnerable children and instead thought people with “latent” tendencies realised their attraction to minors once they spent more time with them alone.

“I don’t think they were self-acknowledged paedophiles who became religious in order to be with young people. I think they come to us and these tendencies emerge,” he told the Royal Commission into child sex abuse on Tuesday.

“It is a psychosexual deviation there that is latent but then appears once they find themselves involved one-on-one with young people.”

Professor Maloney said of the 20 percent of Salesians of Don Bosco identified as perpetrators of sexual abuse were situational offenders while others “would-be paedophiles whether they were Salesians or not”.

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AUSTRALIA
Sky News

Shocking world first data on child sex abuse in the church in Australia revealed seven per cent of priests were alleged paedophiles, a royal commission has been told.

The chief executive of the church’s Truth, Justice and Healing Council held back tears on Monday as he talked about the ‘massive failure on the part of the Catholic Church in Australia to protect children from abusers’.

Royal commission research showed 4444 people had made allegations of abuse to 93 Catholic authorities between 1980 and 2015.

‘These numbers are shocking. They are tragic and they are indefensible,’ Francis Sullivan told the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse sitting in Sydney.

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AUSTRALIA
Shepparton News

by BARCLAY WHITE FEBRUARY 07, 2017

The local diocese of the Catholic Church had the second highest percentage of alleged offenders in the country, new documents reveal.

The Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse released details on the numbers of priests that were accused of child sexual abuse during a 60-year period.

From 1950 to 2010, the Diocese of Sandhurst, which includes Shepparton, Bendigo and Echuca, Wangaratta and Wodonga, 14.7 per cent of priests were alleged perpetrators.

The high percentage was second only to the Diocese of Sale, where 15.1 per cent of priests were alleged perpetrators of abuse during the same period.

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AUSTRALIA
Northern Star

Mia Armitage | 7th Feb 2017

WEDNESDAY 4.30pm: NEARLY 14% of Lismore’s most experienced Catholic priests were accused of sexually abusing children by 2010 but the diocese’s spokesman, the Most Reverend Geoffrey Jarrett, has reserved comment.

Between 52 and 64 priests have served in the Diocese of Lismore in each decade since 1950, with 129 priests having served in the area by 2010, detailed data presented to the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse has shown.

Some 18 of those priests, or 13.9%, have been accused of sexually abusing children throughout their careers, marking Lismore as one of the nation’s top five worst dioceses for child sex accusations against the Church.

Too soon to comment: Diocese of Lismore

But Apostolic Administrator of the Diocese Bishop Jarrett, standing in while Bishop-elect Father Gregory Homeming prepares for his ordination, said it was too early to comment publicly on findings.

“My response is that we are in the early days of the Royal Commission’s present three week hearing, and until it completes its investigation, it would be premature to comment on the first release of statistics,” Bishop Jarrett said via email to The Northern Star.

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AUSTRALIA
SBS

AAP

Australian Catholics should stand up to Rome over its response to child sexual abuse and demand a fair go for victims, a royal commission has heard.

A psychiatrist who worked for the St John of God Brothers before leaving over concerns about systemic abuse and corruption, delivered a scathing assessment of the church’s response to child sex offences during evidence on Tuesday.

Michelle Mulvihill told the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse priests were currently almost “unsackable” and that all pastoral care workers should be registered.

“It’s time for us, as Australians, to stand up to Rome and say ‘We are not little Rome, we are not little Italy’,” Dr Mulvihill said in Sydney.

“We are Australians and in Australia we believe in a fair go.”

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AUSTRALIA
ABC News

ANALYSIS
By political editor Chris Uhlmann

About 20 boys crammed into the small hotel room in Wellington and the mood was sombre.

Marist College Canberra’s First XV had gathered to hold court. The 1978 rugby tour of New Zealand was going well, but they weren’t there to talk about football.

The night before an incident had profoundly shaken the group.

One of the players had been called to a Marist brother’s room on the pretence of treating an injury from that day’s game.

The coach tried to sexually assault the boy. He fled, told his closest friend, and word had spread quickly through the touring party.

The boys, aged between 16 and 18, called a meeting. At its end they passed a resolution: the coach was to be banned from the change room, when the team returned to Canberra, the brother was to leave the school and the Marists were called on to guarantee that he would never teach again.

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AUSTRALIA
Illawarra Mercury

Kate McIlwain
@kmcilwain

7 Feb 2017

A number of senior church figures linked to Wollongong have been called to give evidence at the royal commission, as the commissioners focus on the extent of child sexual abuse in the church over the past seven decades.

The list of more than 60 witnesses in the three week hearing, which began on Monday, includes respected canon lawyer and former chancellor of the Diocese of Wollongong Moya Hanlon.

Sister Hanlon appeared at the hearing into former Wollongong priest John Gerard Nestor. Nestor’s conviction and jail sentence for the indecent assault of a 15-year-old altar boy was overturned in in 1997; he was thrown out of the church in 2008 after more allegations of abuse emerged.

Sister Hanlon is listed among a panel of three other canon lawyers.

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AUSTRALIA
Courier-Mail

CARLEEN FROST, The Daily Telegraph
February 6, 2017

AN American priest who lifted the lid on systemic child sex abuse throughout Catholic churches in the US has slammed the Vatican for the lack of support it has offered to its victims.

Father Thomas P. Doyle was the first witness to appear at today’s royal commission hearing in Sydney and has told the public gallery those forgotten survivors had suffered “profound spiritual damage”.

Dr Doyle was one of the first people to bring attention to the rise of sex abuse in church ranks across American in the early 1980s, and has spent decades ministering to victims and their families.

“I will say that one of the massive holes in the Roman Catholic Church’s approach to this issue still today is the failure to completely comprehend the depth of the spiritual damage that is done to their victims, to their families, especially their parents, to their friends and to the community itself,” Dr Doyle told the commission today.

“There seems to be no ability to even ask the proper questions.

“I have never seen anything coming out of the Holy See dealing with the spiritual damage.

“All I’ve seen is ‘Get them to go back to church’, which is nuts. That’s crazy.

“I’ve seen a lot of people, both priests and religious, who have tried to figure out how to deal with this and bringing aid and comfort and support to the victims.

“But as an institution, I have seen nothing.”

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AUSTRALIA
Herald Sun

Shannon Deery, Herald Sun

THE former head of one of the Catholic Church’s most abusive religious orders has warned of the potential for an escalation in child sexual abuse.

Fr Francis Moloney told the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse today that the church was moving backwards in a potentially dangerous move.

He said a wave of conservatism moving through seminaries around the country threatened the good work being done by some in the church.

“We’ve got to face these truths,” he said.

“We have a major problem in the Australian Church.

“To say that the seminarians are all fine, the seminarians have been renewed, they’ve been exposed to this wider society, that is simply not true.

“The seminaries are closing their doors, they’re putting garments on the boys, they’re having long Latin liturgies, they like to walk around the streets in their (robes).

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AUSTRALIA
Sydney Morning Herald

Rachel Browne

The Vatican has failed to support survivors of sexual abuse in the church for decades, with prominent Catholics demanding action at a royal commission.

A whistleblower priest who was one of the first to report allegations of sexual abuse to the Vatican in the 1980s told the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse he was punished for speaking out.

Father Thomas Doyle, an American canon lawyer, told the second day of the inquiry into Catholic Church authorities, secrecy, cover-ups and betrayal of victims were hallmarks of the institution’s response to abuse.

“One of the massive holes in the Roman Catholic Church’s approach to this issue today is a failure to completely comprehend the spiritual damage that is done to victims, to their families . . . and the community itself,” he said.

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AUSTRALIA
Morning Bulletin

Melanie Plane and Chloe Lyons | 7th Feb 2017

WHEN Margaret Campbell heard 11.4% of priests from the Diocese of Rockhampton in the 1960s had claims of sexual abuse against them during the span of their career, she couldn’t believe it.

It’s not that the high figure came as a surprise to her, it’s that she believes the figure is not high enough.

Ms Campbell, who was sexually abused throughout the seven years she spent at the Neerkol Orphanage on the outskirts of Rockhampton in the 1960s, is this week sitting in on the Royal Commission into child sexual abuse taking place in Sydney.

Yesterday, a new report was released by the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse showing the extent of child sexual abuse within the Diocese of Rockhampton.

According to the report, which documents claims of abuse between 1950 and 2009, 11.4% of priests from the Diocese of Rockhampton in the 1960s had claims of sexual abuse against them during the span of their career.

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AUSTRALIA
CQ News

Chloe Lyons | 7th Feb 2017

THE Catholic Bishop of Rockhampton has apologised to victims of child sex abuse after a new report provides details of the horrific levels of historic offending in the Diocese.

The Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse has released a report which contains details of the abuse of children within the Catholic Diocese of Rockhampton.

It is claimed in the report 8% of priests who worked in the Diocese between 1950 and 2009 had had a claim of child sex abuse made against them at some stage in their career.

This percentage was 1.3% between 2000 and 2009.

In statement released on Friday, Francis Sullivan of the Truth, Justice and Healing Council said the data contained in reports about the church would “reveal a horrific picture of the extent of the claims of abuse by priests and brothers whose responsibility was to protect and care for children”.

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AUSTRALIA
Newcastle Herald

Joanne McCarthy
7 Feb 2017

THE Catholic Church’s troubling views on human sexuality were a major factor in the child sexual abuse crisis, and led the church to commit “soul murder” of abuse victims, a Catholic priest has told the royal commission.

“Sometimes those murdered souls stay dead,” said American Dominican priest and church critic Dr Tom Doyle, who was applauded after slamming the church’s “very stultified comprehension of human sexuality”, and presentation of priests as “higher beings”.

Dr Doyle described clericalism as a “virus that has infected the church” where “it is believed that the church men, the priests, the bishops, are in some form or way sacred and above ordinary people, and because of this sacredness, because of their importance, they must be held as more important and protected”.

It enabled priests accused of child sexual abuse to feel they would be protected by the church when allegations were raised, Dr Doyle said.

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AUSTRALIA
The Guardian

Christopher Knaus
Monday 6 February 2017

One of the first American priests to have broken ranks on child abuse said the Catholic church still fails to comprehend the depth of spiritual damage done to victims.

Father Thomas Doyle, then a canonical lawyer at the Vatican’s Washington embassy, was tasked with investigating child abuse cases in the US in the mid-1980s, preparing a 40-page report for the nuncio, or papal ambassador, which he said was handed to the pope.

Doyle’s warnings about the abuse went unheeded and he said he was pushed out of his position with the embassy in 1986.

He has spent the time since helping survivors, speaking to thousands of individuals abused by Catholic clergy.

Doyle, giving evidence to the child abuse royal commission in Sydney on Tuesday, spoke of a life-changing moment in his early years of examining abuse claims, when he met a 10-year-old survivor face to face.

“When I looked into his face, I still see it, it was empty,” Doyle said. “And that moment changed my life. The parents were simple, good, decent people who could not comprehend why they were being treated the way they were by the church.

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AUSTRALIA
Border Mail

Melissa Cunningham
@MeljCunningham

7 Feb 2017

The Catholic Church still fails to comprehend the depth of damage caused to victims and their families as result of the widespread sexual violation of children and adults by clergy, an inquiry heard.

Doctor Thomas Doyle, a United States canon lawyer and expert in areas of sexual abuse by clergy gave evidence at the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse in Sydney on Tuesday.

The Dominican priest accused the Catholic Church of committing the “soul murder” of abuse victims, with some survivors never recovering from the trauma.

“Sometimes those murdered souls stay dead,” Dr Doyle told the inquiry.

“One of the massive holes in the Roman Catholic Church’s approach to this issue still today, is a failure to completely comprehend the depth of the spiritual damage that is done to the victims, to their families, especially their parents, to their friends and to the community itself.”

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AUSTRALIA
The Guardian

Father Thomas Doyle tells the child abuse royal commission about how the Catholic Church handled a US priest who was accused of abusing all five daughters in one family in 1985. He says the priest was told to go to Holland because it has no extradition treaty with the US. ‘You can’t make this stuff up. It sounds bizarre,’ he says.

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AUSTRALIA
Newcastle Herald

7 Feb 2017.

FOUR years have passed since the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse came into being, and in that time, an extraordinary rendition of shameful, deplorable, criminal behaviour – much of it by men of the cloth, supposing to tell others how to live their lives – has been laid bare by the commission and its investigators.

While some Catholics have complained about what they see as an inordinate focus on their church over other institutions, the mathematics of the matter make it impossible for the commission to ignore: Monday’s proceedings heard that in the 35 years from 1980 to 2015, almost 4500 allegations of child abuse were made to church authorities, involving some 1880 alleged offenders.

In her opening address, counsel assisting Gail Furness detailed disturbingly high rates of paedophilia in many religious communities, topped – if that is the appropriate word – by St John of God, with 40 per cent of its brothers alleged to be perpetrators of child sexual abuse.

As Ms Furness observed: “ The accounts were depressingly similar. Children were ignored or worse,punished. Allegations were not investigated. Priests and religious were moved. The parishes or communities to which they were moved knew nothing of their past. Documents were not kept or they were destroyed. Secrecy prevailed as did cover ups. Priests and religious were not properly dealt with and outcomes were often not representative of their crimes. Many children suffered and continue as adults to suffer from their experiences in some Catholic institutions.”

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AUSTRALIA
Newcastle Herald

Joanne McCarthy
7 Feb 2017

THE percentage of Maitland-Newcastle Catholic priests who allegedly sexually assaulted children grew to its highest levels between 1990 and 2010, and to some of the highest levels in Australia, shocking new figures released by the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse have shown.

More than one in 10 of the diocese’s priests between that period were the subject of child sex abuse allegations. During the same period about one in five Marist Brothers – the order that ran Maitland and Hamilton high schools – were accused of child sexual abuse.

Between 1990 and 2010 more than 30 per cent of the John of God Brothers order, which ran a home at Morisset until 2001 for intellectually disabled boys and boys with behavioural problems, were accused of sexually abusing children.

Between 1950 and 2015 a staggering 40 per cent of the St John of God Brothers were accused of abusing children, the highest percentage of alleged abusers in any Australian Catholic order or diocese.

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