ABUSE TRACKER

A digest of links to media coverage of clergy abuse. For recent coverage listed in this blog, read the full article in the newspaper or other media source by clicking “Read original article.” For earlier coverage, click the title to read the original article.

October 7, 2017

Utah quietly withdraws from FLDS UEP Trust fund

SALT LAKE CITY (UTAH)
Deseret News

October 6, 2017

By Pat Reavy

Utah has quietly withdrawn from the $110 million United Effort Plan trust of the Fundamentalist LDS Church.

Saying that the state’s “objectives have been achieved,” the Utah Attorney General’s Office on Friday confirmed that it had removed itself from the UEP Trust, which holds most of the property and homes in the twin border towns of Hildale, Utah, and Colorado City, Arizona.

The UEP Trust was created by the FLDS Church in 1942 on the concept of a “united order,” allowing followers to share in its assets. But the state of Utah seized control of it in 2005 amid allegations of mismanagement by FLDS Church leaders including Warren Jeffs, who was later convicted of child sex abuse and is serving a life prison sentence in Texas.

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

Capuchin brother accused again in clergy abuse lawsuit

GUAM
Pacific Daily News

October 6, 2017

By Haidee V Eugenio

A lawsuit filed Friday in federal court states that clergy sex abuse on Guam happened as recently as 2006 or 2007, when former Capuchin brother Vernon Kamiaz allegedly molested an Agana Heights Parish altar boy.

Most of the clergy abuse suits filed so far – nearly 130 – allege children were abused decades ago, from the mid-1950s to the early 1990s.

The plaintiff, identified in court documents only as J.C.M.P. to protect his privacy, said in his lawsuit that Kamiaz was actively involved with training altar boys at the Agana Heights Parish and was also his neighbor and family friend.

J.C.M.P. was 12 or 13 when the alleged sex abuse happened, his lawsuit states. He is now 23.

J.C.M.P. is represented by attorney David Lujan and demands $5 million in minimum damages.

Attorney Gloria L. Rudolph, of the law firm of Lujan and Wolff, confirmed that J.C.M.P. is the youngest to file a clergy abuse suit.

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

‘The Keepers’: Baltimore news station uncovers lost video that could answer questions about case

BALTIMORE (MD)
9 WCPO-TV

October 6, 2017

By Christian Schaffer, Scripps National Desk

(WMAR) – A video that could hold vital answers to questions posed in Netflix’s true crime documentary “The Keepers” has been found in the archives of a Baltimore newsroom.

Journalists at WMAR in Baltimore — one of our sister stations— have uncovered video of Catholic Church documents being dug up at a local cemetery in 1994. The video, which shows black plastic bags and papers at the bottom of the a deep hole in a Baltimore cemetery, confirms the existence of documents discussed on “The Keepers,” and gives new insight into what Father Joseph Maskell hid amid accusations of sexual abuse.

“The Keepers” investigates the murder of Sister Cathy Cesnik — a teacher at Archbishop Keough High School who was killed in 1970. It also looks into allegations of sexual abuse by Maskell, a former chaplain at the school.

According to “The Keepers,” Maskell ordered dozens of boxes of documents to be buried at a local cemetery in 1990 — documents that activists say contained proof of sexual abuse of minors.

In August of 1994, the boxes were dug up. The WMAR video shows that among the documents that were buried is a version of the “Millon Clinical Multiaxial Inventory,” or MCMI.

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

Australian bishops at Vatican discuss ‘restoring trust’

VATICAN CITY
Reuters

October 7, 2017

A delegation of top Australian bishops held meetings at the Vatican this week to discuss topics including the “restoration of trust” in the country where its senior Catholic Church figure is facing allegations of historical sexual offences.

The Vatican disclosed the meetings in a statement on Saturday, a day after Cardinal George Pell, the Vatican’s economy minister, attended a hearing in Melbourne over the allegations.

Pell, who has denied all accusations against him, has taken a leave of absence from his Vatican post to defend himself in his native Australia.

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

Compensation for uprooting indigenous children: Canada to pay $640m

OTTAWA (CANADA)
Agence France-Presse via The Daily Star

October 8, 2017

An estimated 20,000 indigenous children taken from their families starting in the 1960s and placed for adoption or fostering will share in a Can$800 million (US$640 million) payout, the government announced Friday.

The so-called “Sixties Scoop” saw them placed with primarily white middle-class families in Canada, the United States and overseas.

In recent years, as the children grew into adults and became aware of their past, several lawsuits and class actions were filed over their loss of aboriginal identity, claiming in court documents that it resulted in psychiatric disorders, substance abuse, unemployment, violence and suicides.

“People affected by the ’60s Scoop have told us that the loss of their culture and language are among the worst kinds of harm that they suffered,” Indigenous Relations Minister Carolyn Bennett told a press conference, flanked by Scoop survivors.

“That is why our government is responding directly to remedy the ill-advised (policies) of the past.”

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

With new information, new questions arise in Aurora priest sex abuse case

AURORA (IL)
Aurora Beacon-News / Chicago Tribune

October 7, 2017

By Hannah Leone

[See the entry for Pedraza-Arias in BishopAccountability.org’s database of accused priests.]

New disclosures are raising questions in the case of an Aurora priest charged with sex abuse whose trial has been repeatedly delayed while he faces deportation.

“I know the state wants to keep this trial on the calendar,” Kane County Circuit Judge Linda Abrahamson said Friday. “But this recent disclosure is like an atomic bomb.”

Alfredo Pedraza-Arias, 51, has pleaded not guilty to multiple counts of aggravated criminal sexual abuse, which allege that he sexually abused two girls at Aurora’s Sacred Heart Church between 2012 and 2014, when both girls were younger than six. He appeared in custody in the courtroom Friday, along with his attorney, David Camic; Assistant State’s Attorney Reagan Pittman; a representative from the Rockford Diocese; and a Spanish translator.

Abrahamson said the trial, slated for November, may be affected by whether lawyers have access to a man who investigated the case for the Kane County Child Advocacy Center.

New material disclosed last week includes notes about interviews the investigator conducted that weren’t turned in when they should have been, Camic said.

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

Pope Francis commits the church to protect children from abuse in the digital world

VATICAN CITY
America

By Gerard O’Connell
October 6, 2017

Pope Francis today committed the Catholic Church to work “effectively and with genuine passion,” in close association with lawmakers, police authorities, technological giants in the field of social communications and other actors in civil society, for “the effective protection of the dignity of minors in the digital world.”

He offered this commitment in the Vatican’s Clementine Hall when he addressed the 140 participants from the first world congress on “Child Dignity in the Digital World” that was held at the Jesuit-run Pontifical Gregorian University, Oct. 3 to 6.

He did so in response to its “Declaration of Rome,” a 13-point call to action, which was read to him at the audience by Muireann O’Carroll, a 16-year-old Irish girl, representing the “digital natives” generation.

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

Victims seek justice for former Maspeth priest’s sex abuse

MASPETH (QUEENS NY)
Queens Times Ledger

October 6, 2017

By Mark Hallum

Up to 15 victims have come forward accusing a former Maspeth parish priest of sexual abuse.

A former Maspeth priest is under investigation for the sexual assault of up to 15 girls between 1973 and 1994 with the help of Boston attorney Mitchell Garabedian, who was depicted in the film “Spotlight. Additional women are coming forward.

During the time Father Adam Prochaski was with Holy Cross parish school at 61-21 56th Rd. , Linda Porcaro, a teacher who was close to the matter and the whistleblower in the case, claims the priest had assaulted numerous girls between the ages of 5 and 16 and was known to use physical intimidation on the boys in the school.

“He was mean and intimidati­ng,” Porcaro said in an interview with TimesLedger. “He was very large, he towered over me … He was about 6-foot-4, he wasn’t slim, He wasn’t overweight, but he was built and to a child that’s already very intimidating. I know he was rough with the boys, I saw him with the boys.”

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

Hiding reality of sexual abuse a grave mistake, Pope acknowledges

VATICAN CITY
Agence France-Presse via ABS-CBN News

October 7, 2017

Pope Francis on Friday urged the world, including the Catholic Church, to face up to the devastating effects of online sexual violence on young people, including extreme pornography and sexting.

“We have to keep our eyes open and not hide from an unpleasant truth that we would rather not see,” Francis said at a gathering of technology executives and health professionals at the Vatican.

Alluding to the pedophile scandals that have rocked the church, he added: “For that matter, surely we have realized sufficiently in recent years that concealing the reality of sexual abuse is a grave error and the source of many other evils?”

In a speech about protecting the dignity of children in the internet era, Francis warned of the spread of extreme pornography, sexting and online bullying as well as sexual exploitation, trafficking and the live-streaming of rape and violence against children.

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

Four-week court hearing for Cardinal Pell

MELBOURNE
AAP (Australian Associated Press)

October 6, 2017

A four-week hearing in March will determine if Cardinal George Pell stands trial over historical sexual offence allegations involving multiple complainants.

As many as 50 witnesses will give evidence during a hearing that will determine if Cardinal George Pell stands trial on historical sexual offence charges.

The highest-ranking Catholic official to be charged with sexual abuse has appeared in court for the second time, again for a brief administrative hearing in the Melbourne Magistrates Court.

The case will return to the same court for a four-week committal hearing beginning on March 5.

A magistrate will then decide if Pell stands trial in the Victorian County Court over the charges involving multiple complainants.

The defence will argue some of the allegations, those involving Melbourne’s St Patrick’s Cathedral, could never have happened.

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

Suburban NY Diocese Plans Compensation in Sex Abuse Cases

ROCKVILLE CENTRE (NY)
Associated Press

October 7, 2017

A Roman Catholic diocese in suburban New York is creating an independent compensation program for people who were sexually abused by priests.

Newsday reports the Diocese of Rockville Centre on Long Island sent letters this week to people who previously have filed complaints.

The diocese is the eighth largest in the United States with an estimated 1.4 million Catholics.

The compensation program will be modeled after ones established in the Archdiocese of New York and the Diocese of Brooklyn during the past year.

Victims deemed eligible for financial compensation must agree not to pursue legal action against the church in the future in order to collect.

Rockville Centre’s program could involve dozens of cases of alleged abuse, some dating back decades.

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

Former Catholic priest facing trial accused of 19 historic sex abuse charges at Ealing school

ENGLAND
GetWestLondon

October 4, 2017

By Emily Pennink and Katherine Clementine

Father Laurence faces 19 historical sex charges, including beating with a cane

A former Catholic priest in Ealing has gone on trial for allegedly sexually abusing a string of pupils at a boy’s school.

Andrew Soper, known as Father Laurence, faces 19 historical sex charges relating to 10 former pupils at St Benedict’s School.

The 74-year-old former abbot has denied the offences of indecent assault, indecency with a child, and buggery allegedly committed in the 1970s and 80s.

The boys, who cannot be identified for legal reasons, were subjected to sexual touching and beaten with a cane, according to the charges.

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

This victim was sent to live with a priest as punishment. Then the priest molested him.

GUAM
Pacific News Center

October 5, 2017

By Janela Carrera

The lawsuit names former priest Father Andrew Mannetta.

Guam – Another sex abuse complaint was filed in Superior Court against the Archdiocese of Agana, naming former Guam priest Father Andrew Mannetta as the alleged perpetrator.

The lawsuit is brought by a a 46-year-old man with the initials G.E.J. who claims Father Mannetta sexually abused him when he was about 14 years old at the San Miguel Church in Talofofo.

According to the complaint, G.E.J.’s parents sent him to live with Father Mannetta because he was rebelling against his parents.

G.E.J. says that on several occasions Father Mannetta ordered him to lie on his stomach and then would rub his buttocks and legs while watching television. Every time this happened, G.E.J. says the priest inched closer and closer to his genitals.

G.E.J. says this happened about 10 to 15 times before he left the rectory and finally returned home.

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

Pope meets French cardinal accused of paedophilia cover-up

VATICAN CITY
Agence France-Presse via The Guardian

October 5, 2017

Pope Francis met Thursday with French Cardinal Philippe Barbarin, who is awaiting trial over allegations he covered up for a paedophile priest in his diocese.

It was the first time Francis has met with Barbarin, the Archbishop of Lyon, since the cardinal learned last month that he would have to appear in court in April in connection with priest Bernard Preynat’s abuse of boy scouts in the 1980s.

Public prosecutors ruled last year that Barbarin did not have a case to answer but he and six other co-defendants have been directly indicted by some of Preynat’s victims. A judge ruled last month that the case could proceed.

Barbarin, 66, faces a potential jail sentence if found guilty of failing to act immediately and appropriately when one of the victims reported Preynat to the Church in 2014, demanding he be sacked.

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

Holy See Press Office Communiqué: Meeting of the leadership of the Australian Catholic Bishops Conference in Rome, 07.10.2017

VATICAN CITY
Holy See Press Office

October 7, 2017

The leadership of the Australian Catholic Bishops Conference met this week in Rome with officials from the Secretariat of State and various offices of the Holy See for a wide-ranging discussion concerning the situation of the Catholic Church in Australia at this time.

Topics covered included the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse, the relationship between the Church and society at large, the restoration of trust, and greater participation of the laity in decision-making roles in the Church.

The Australian delegation was comprised of the President of the Conference, the Most Rev. Denis James Hart, Archbishop of Melbourne; and the Vice-President, the Most Rev. Mark Benedict Coleridge, Archbishop of Brisbane; accompanied by Justice Neville John Owen of the Truth, Justice and Healing Council.

The main encounter took place on Thursday, October 5, with the Cardinal Secretary of State, His Eminence Pietro Parolin; the Secretary for Relations with States, Archbishop Paul Richard Gallagher; the Prefect of the Congregation for Bishops, His Eminence Marc Ouellet, P.S.S.; and the Secretary for the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Archbishop Giacomo Morandi.

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

Australian Delegation Travels to Rome Amid Sex Abuse Scandal

VATICAN CITY
Associated Press via U.S. News & World Report

October 7, 2017

The Vatican says that leaders of the Australian Catholic Bishops Conference have traveled to Rome to discuss “the restoration of trust” amid a sex abuse scandal involving Australian cardinal George Pell, a top adviser to the pope.

The Vatican announced the delegation’s visit this week in a statement Saturday, saying key Australian church leaders met with top officials including the Vatican secretary of state and the secretary of the Congregation for the Doctrine of Faith, which is the Vatican office that processes all cases of priests accused of sexually abusing minors.

The extraordinary meetings in Rome come months after the Vatican released Pell to return to Australia to face charges in the decades-old case. Pell, who took a leave of absence as the Vatican’s financial czar, denies the charges.

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

Diocese launches compensation fund for clergy abuse victims

ROCKVILLE CENTRE (NY)
News12 Long Island

October 6, 2017

The Diocese of Rockville Centre is launching a fund to compensate victims of sex abuse by clergy.

The Diocese sent a letter to victims notifying them of the settlement program. It’s called the Independent Reconciliation and Compensation Program.

Victims who accept settlement money must waive their right to bring their cases to court.

The compensation fund is aimed at bringing closure to dozens of cases of alleged abuse by clergy that, in some cases, date back decades.

Settlements range from $100,000 to $500,000. Attorneys for clergy sex abuse victims say while accepting a settlement under the fund may help victims, it effectively hides the truth.

“In essence, they’re paying people off,” says attorney Mitchell Garabedian. “It’s saying to these people, ‘Here’s some money. We’re not going to list publicly the names of the predator priests. We just want you to go away.'”

It is unclear how many letters were sent out by the Diocese of Rockville Centre. A spokesman for the diocese says a formal announcement about the fund will be made in the near future.

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

Diocese of Rockville Centre’s letter to those who have alleged clergy sexual abuse

ROCKVILLE CENTRE (NY)
Newsday

[This is a letter to a survivor from the Rockville Centre diocese’s Director of the Office for the Protection of Children and Young People. It was published on October 6 in Newsday’s Letter: LI Catholic diocese creates sex abuse compensation program.]

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

Letter: LI Catholic diocese creates sex abuse compensation program

ROCKVILLE CENTRE (NY)
Newsday

October 6, 2017

By Bart Jones, bart.jones@newsday.com

The Diocese of Rockville Centre is creating an independent compensation program for people who were sexually abused by priests — the latest effort in New York to bring closure to a horrific chapter in modern Catholic church history.

The diocese this week sent letters to those who previously have filed such complaints with diocesan officials, according to attorneys representing some of them. Newsday obtained a copy of the letter Friday.

The program will be modeled after similar ones established in the Archdiocese of New York and the Diocese of Brooklyn during the past year.

Under those programs, victims deemed eligible for financial compensation must agree not to pursue legal action against the church in the future in order to collect. Rockville Centre’s program could encompass dozens of cases of alleged abuse, in some cases dating back decades.

In a statement to Newsday, Sean Dolan, a spokesman for the Diocese of Rockville Centre, wrote, “In the interest of providing survivors with advance notice of our impending Independent Reconciliation and Compensation Program, the Director of the Office for the Protection of Children and Young People sent a letter advising them of what would be occurring. A formal diocesan announcement will be made in the near future.”

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

Clergy abuse happened as recently as 10 years ago, lawsuit claims

HAGÅTÑA (GUAM)
Pacific Daily News (USA TODAY Network)

October 6, 2017

By Haidee V. Eugenio

Some of the sexual abuse that more than 100 children on Guam are alleged to have suffered at the hands of Catholic clergy happened about 10 years ago, not in the more distant past as most lawsuits have claimed, according to a new suit filed Friday in federal court here.

Most of the nearly 130 lawsuits filed so far have said children were abused from the mid-1950s to the early 1990s.

But a 23-year-old man, identified in court documents as J.C.M.P., alleges that Vernon Kamiaz, a Capuchin brother involved in training altar boys at Our Lady of the Blessed Sacrament Church in Agaña Heights, molested him in 2006 or 2007. Attorney Gloria L. Rudolph, of the law firm of Lujan and Wolff, confirmed that J.C.M.P. is the youngest to file a clergy abuse suit; USA TODAY does not use the names of potential victims of sexual abuse unless they consent to being identified.

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

October 6, 2017

Statement: Victims group blasts Vatican abuse summit

ROME (ITALY)
SNAP, the Survivors Network (SNAPnetwork.org)

October 5, 2017

Recent cases show epidemic of child pornography and cover-up in the church

Church should be target of global response, not leading it, group says

Today, the world’s largest support group for men and women sexually abused in the Catholic Church is criticizing a Vatican summit aimed at exposing child sexual abuse on the Internet.

“If the Vatican is so dedicated to punishing people who use the internet to exploit children, the first thing they need to do is fix the problem within the church. Then they must punish their own bishops who covered up for men who made, uploaded, viewed or distributed child pornography,” said Barb Dorris, the managing director of SNAP, the Survivors Network (SNAPNetwork.org).

“And there is the obvious: they must turn over Msgr. Carlo Capella to civil authorities in the United States and Canada. Anything less than that is smoke and mirrors,” she said.

Msgr. Carlo Capella is a Vatican diplomat who was recalled to the Vatican last month when U.S. authorities accused him of possession of child pornography. Last week, Canadian officials issued a warrant for his arrest on child pornography charges there.

The three-day Child Dignity in the Digital World Conference concludes October 6, 2017 at the Gregorian University in Rome. The event has brought together world leaders in digital media, according to media reports. However, the epidemic and cover-up of child pornography, SNAP says, is a big problem in the Catholic Church:

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

Ex-Maspeth priest molested girls: lawyer

MASPETH (BOROUGH OF QUEENS, NY NY)
Queens Chronicle

October 5, 2017

By Christopher Barca

More than a dozen women have come forward in recent weeks to accuse a former Maspeth priest of molesting them as children decades ago.

Prominent attorney Mitchell Garabedian told the Chronicle in a Tuesday interview that 15 women claim that former Holy Cross Church pastor the Rev. Adam Prochaski sexually abused them at some point between 1973 and 1994.

“Father Prochaski was sexually abusing innocent children for more than two decades,” Garabedian said. “My clients are very courageous for coming forward.”

According to the Daily News, which broke the story, Prochaski was first assigned to Holy Cross in 1969. Garabedian said the abuse began four years later and occurred not just at the church, but at the parish’s now-defunct school and other locations.

“Sex abuse happened at school, in Holy Cross Church, in the rectory next door and in some of the children’s homes, as well as the father’s,” the attorney said. “In many cases, his abuse was open, notorious and in plain view.”

The ages of his alleged victims, many of them Polish immigrants, ranged from just 5 years old to 16, he added.

The allegations finally graduated from whispered rumors in 1990, when former Holy Cross teacher Linda Porcaro said seven of the priest’s alleged victims told her what had happened to them.

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

Pope Francis Says Tech Companies Should Protect Children From Sexual Exploitation, Cyber Bullying

VATICAN CITY
Reuters

October 6, 2017

The Pontiff argues filters and algorithms are not enough.

Pope Francis told executives of leading internet companies on Friday to use “their great profits” to defend children from sexual exploitation and other dangers lurking online.

The pontiff, speaking at a conference in Rome, said the Catholic Church needed to accept responsibility “before God, victims, and public opinion” for its own sex abuse scandals, but wanted to share the lessons it had learned.

Speaking to participants including representatives from Facebook (FB, +1.67%) and Microsoft (MSFT, +1.37%) , he said social media businesses had to do more than set up filters and algorithms to block harmful content.

The 80-year-old pope spoke out against the spread of extreme pornography, the dangers of so-called “sexting” between young people and between adults and children, and cyber bullying, calling it “a true form of moral and physical attack.”

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

PNG Catholic priest accused of sexual misconduct

PACIFIC PAPUA NEW GUINEA
RNZ (Radio New Zealand)

October 6, 2017

Police in Papua New Guinea are investigating the conduct of a Catholic Priest, who is accused of sexual misconduct.

The Milne Bay police chief, George Bayagau, says an investigation has been launched after 16 girls complained about the priest’s inappropriate behaviour.

Mr Bayagau told the Post Courier that officers from the sexual violence unit are investigating, although he refused to go into further detail.

The priest works as a chaplain at a local secondary school.

A Catholic Church investigation found no evidence of wrongdoing.

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Pope pledges church commitment to fight child abuse on- and offline

VATICAN CITY
Catholic News Service

October 6, 2017

By Cindy Wooden

Acknowledging how often the Catholic Church failed to protect children from sexual abuse, Pope Francis pledged “to work strenuously and with foresight for the protection of minors and their dignity,” including online.

“As all of us know, in recent years the church has come to acknowledge her own failures in providing for the protection of children: Extremely grave facts have come to light, for which we have to accept our responsibility before God, before the victims and before public opinion,” the pope said Oct. 6.

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Pope Francis: ‘painful’ failures help Church lead in protecting minors

VATICAN CITY
Catholic News Agency

October 6, 2017

By Elise Harris

On Friday, Pope Francis told a group of religious and secular experts from around the world that protecting minors against increasing online threats is a serious new concern, and one in which the Church can be a leading voice given the experience gleaned from past mistakes.

“As all of us know, in recent years the Church has come to acknowledge her own failures in providing for the protection of children,” the Pope said Oct. 6. “Extremely grave facts have come to light, for which we have to accept our responsibility before God, before the victims and before public opinion.”

Because of this, “as a result of these painful experiences and the skills gained in the process of conversion and purification, the Church today feels especially bound to work strenuously and with foresight for the protection of minors and their dignity, not only within her own ranks, but in society as a whole and throughout the world.”

The Church can’t even attempt to “do this alone – for that is clearly not enough,” he said, but she stands ready by “offering her own effective and ready cooperation to all those individuals and groups in society that are committed to the same end.”

In this sense, he said, the Church adheres fully to the goal of putting an end to “the abuse, exploitation, trafficking and all forms of violence against and torture of children” that was set by the United Nations in the 2030 Sustainable Development agenda.

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Pope Francis: speech to World Congress on Child Dignity in Digital World

VATICAN CITY
Vatican Radio

October 6, 2017

Pope Francis addressed the participants in the World Congress on Child Dignity in the Digital World. Hosted by the Pontifical Gregorian University and its Centre for Child Protection, the four-day event brought together different government and police representatives, software companies, religious leaders and medical experts specialized in the impact of on-line abuse. Below, please find the full text of Pope Francis’ prepared remarks, in their official English translation.

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… I thank the Rector of the Gregorian University, Father Nuno da Silva Gonçalves, and the young lady representative of the youth for their kind and informative words of introduction to our meeting. I am grateful to all of you for being here this morning and informing me of the results of your work. Above all, I thank you for sharing your concerns and your commitment to confront together, for the sake of young people worldwide, a grave new problem felt in our time. A problem that had not yet been studied and discussed by a broad spectrum of experts from various fields and areas of responsibility as you have done in these days: the problem of the effective protection of the dignity of minors in the digital world. …

… We know that minors are presently more than a quarter of the over 3 billion users of the internet; this means that over 800 million minors are navigating the internet. We know that within two years, in India alone, over 500 million persons will have access to the internet, and that half of these will be minors. What do they find on the net? And how are they regarded by those who exercise various kinds of influence over the net?

We have to keep our eyes open and not hide from an unpleasant truth that we would rather not see. For that matter, surely we have realized sufficiently in recent years that concealing the reality of sexual abuse is a grave error and the source of many other evils? So let us face reality, as you have done in these days. We encounter extremely troubling things on the net, including the spread of ever more extreme pornography, since habitual use raises the threshold of stimulation; the increasing phenomenon of sexting between young men and women who use the social media; and the growth of online bullying, a true form of moral and physical attack on the dignity of other young people. To this can be added sextortion; the solicitation of minors for sexual purposes, now widely reported in the news; to say nothing of the grave and appalling crimes of online trafficking in persons, prostitution, and even the commissioning and live viewing of acts of rape and violence against minors in other parts of the world. The net has its dark side (the “dark net”), where evil finds ever new, effective and pervasive ways to act and to expand. The spread of printed pornography in the past was a relatively small phenomenon compared to the proliferation of pornography on the net. You have addressed this clearly, based on solid research and documentation, and for this we are grateful. …

… Very appropriately, you have expressed the hope that religious leaders and communities of believers can also share in this common effort, drawing on their experience, their authority and their resources for education and for moral and spiritual formation. In effect, only the light and the strength that come from God can enable us to face these new challenges. As for the Catholic Church, I would assure you of her commitment and her readiness to help. As all of us know, in recent years the Church has come to acknowledge her own failures in providing for the protection of children: extremely grave facts have come to light, for which we have to accept our responsibility before God, before the victims and before public opinion. For this very reason, as a result of these painful experiences and the skills gained in the process of conversion and purification, the Church today feels especially bound to work strenuously and with foresight for the protection of minors and their dignity, not only within her own ranks, but in society as a whole and throughout the world. She does not attempt to do this alone – for that is clearly not enough – but by offering her own effective and ready cooperation to all those individuals and groups in society that are committed to the same end. In this sense, the Church adheres to the goal of putting an end to “the abuse, exploitation, trafficking and all forms of violence against and torture of children” set by the United Nations in the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development (Target 16.2)

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Former abuse commission member Collins expresses concern over group’s restructuring

UNITED STATES
National Catholic Reporter

October 5, 2017

By Joshua J. McElwee

The clergy abuse survivor who resigned in frustration from the Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors last March has expressed concern about a proposal to restructure the group so it no longer includes direct involvement of survivors.

In an interview with NCR, Marie Collins said she worries the possible change to put survivors on a new advisory panel separate from the commission might mean they are not consulted on every issue the group considers.

“I feel it is a backward step,” Collins said in an email conversation Oct. 3.

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Cardinal charged with sex offenses jeered at Australia court

AUSTRALIA
Associated Press

October 6, 2017

By Trevor Marshallsea

SYDNEY (AP) — Cardinal George Pell, the most senior Catholic official to face sex offense charges, was jeered by protesters as he made a court appearance in his native Australia on Friday in a case that has rocked the Vatican and placed scrutiny on the pope’s stance against abusive clergy.

Australia’s highest-ranking Catholic and Pope Francis’ top financial adviser, Pell entered the Melbourne Magistrates Court flanked by police and media as a small group of placard-waving protesters yelled from the sidewalk. He did not react to the hecklers.

The 20-minute hearing focused on planning for the committal hearing starting March 5 that will determine whether he goes to trial. As many as 50 witnesses could be called for that proceeding, expected to last a month.

Pell, who remained silent throughout, has been charged with multiple offenses involving multiple complainants. The exact detail and nature of the charges have not been disclosed to the public, though police have described them as “historical” sexual assault offenses, meaning they are alleged to have occurred years ago.

Pell through his lawyer has vowed to fight the charges. The 76-year-old cardinal has taken leave from his position as Vatican treasurer to return to Australia and defend himself. He has not been required to enter a plea in court, though his attorney said at his first court appearance in July that Pell intended to plead not guilty.

Pell’s attorney, Robert Richter, told Friday’s hearing at least one of the allegations could not have happened.

“We propose to demonstrate to Your Honor that what was alleged was impossible,” Richter told magistrate Belinda Wallington.

Today’s brief hearing centered on which witnesses would be cross-examined at the committal hearing, and touched on a factor likely to feature prominently in the case — the memories of witnesses speaking about incidents alleged to have occurred up to several decades ago.

Richter pointed out one witness had given police a “vague” statement. Wallington noted the man was age 11 at the time.

“We’re dealing with historical events. Memory’s not static,” Wallington said.

The magistrate refused Pell’s lawyers permission to cross-examine five witnesses they had hoped to question, but granted permission for them to cross-examine dozens of others at the committal hearing, saying it was appropriate to allow those witnesses’ memories to be “further explored.”

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Pope denounces porn and corruption of kids’ minds, bodies

VATICAN CITY
Associated Press via Miami Herald

October 6, 2017

By Nicole Winfield

Pope Francis on Friday denounced the proliferation of adult and child pornography on the internet and demanded better protections for children online — even as the Vatican confronts its own cross-border child porn investigation involving a top papal envoy.

Francis met with participants of a Catholic Church-backed international conference on fighting child pornography and protecting children in the digital age. He fully backed their proposals to toughen sanctions against those who abuse and exploit children online and improve technological filters to prevent young people from accessing porn online.

Francis said the Catholic Church knew well the “grave error” of trying to conceal the problem of sexual abuse — a reference to the church’s long history of cover-up of priests who have raped and molested children around the world.

He said an international, cross-disciplinary approach was needed to protect children from the dark net and the “corruption of their minds and violence against their bodies.”

Using terms that are certainly new to papal lexicon, Francis denounced “extreme pornography” on the web that adults consume and the increasing use of “sexting” and “sextortion” among the estimated 800 million minors who navigate the internet.

“We would be seriously deluding ourselves were we to think that a society where an abnormal consumption of internet sex is rampant among adults could be capable of effectively protecting minors,” he said.

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Vatican Finance Chief George Pell Faces March Hearing Over Sex-Abuse Charges

MELBOURNE (AUSTRALIA)
The Wall Street Journal

October 5, 2017

By Robb M. Stewart

Australian court allows lawyers for the cardinal to cross-examine witnesses named by prosecution

Lawyers for Cardinal George Pell, one of the most senior officials in the Vatican, will cross-examine dozens of witnesses called by prosecutors accusing him of historical sexual offenses in Australia.

Cardinal Pell, who is Pope Francis’ finance chief, appeared in the Melbourne Magistrates’ Court on Friday for a 20-minute procedural hearing. Magistrate Belinda Wellington agreed to a four-week committal hearing from March 5, during which the court will decide if there is enough evidence to progress the matter.

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Pell to make case for abuse charges as ‘impossible’ at March hearing

MELBOURNE (AUSTRALIA)
Crux

October 6, 2017

In a court hearing on Friday, an attorney for Australian Cardinal George Pell described abuse charges against the 76-year-old prelate as “impossible.” A four-week hearing has been scheduled beginning next March 5 to determine if the claims of “historical sexual offenses” against Pell are sufficient to proceed to a full trial.

Cardinal George Pell made his second appearance before an Australian court on Friday, with his defense team saying it wants to call some 50 witnesses in an effort to demonstrate that claims the 76-year-old prelate committed “historical sexual offenses” are impossible.

A four-week hearing has been scheduled beginning on March 5 of the next year to hear the evidence and determine whether the case should proceed to trial.

Legal observers in Australia say they assume Pell will have to stand trial, since roughly 95 percent of cases at the Magistrate’s Court level proceed to trial. Moreover, in a politically sensitive and high-profile case such as this, cases are rarely terminated at the preliminary stage.

Also at the March hearing, magistrates will decide which, if any, of the charges will proceed to trial, whether they will be tried together or separately.

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Cardinal George Pell to face four-week court hearing over alleged historic sex assault offences

MELBOURNE (AUSTRALIA)
The Telegraph

October 6, 2017

By Jonathan Pearlman

Cardinal George Pell, one of the most powerful figures in the Vatican and Australia’s most senior Catholic, will face a four-week court hearing next March over alleged historic sex assault offences that his lawyer described as “impossible”.

The 76-year-old, who has strongly denied any wrongdoing, attended a brief procedural hearing in Melbourne but made no comment.

The court has ordered a four-week committal hearing to begin on March 5.

The court heard that at least 50 witnesses will be called, including some who were choirboys at the time of their relevant evidence. Five witnesses were disallowed.

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Top Vatican adviser Pell’s hearing date set, dozens of witnesses planned

MELBOURNE (AUSTRALIA)
CNN

October 5, 2017

By Lucie Morris-Marr and Ben Westcott, CNN

Dozens of witnesses are expected to give evidence when Vatican treasurer Cardinal George Pell faces an Australian court again in March on charges of historic sexual assault.

One of the most senior figures in the Vatican, Pell appeared at Melbourne Magistrates’ Court Friday after he was charged by detectives from Victoria Police in June.

He is fighting multiple allegations of historic sexual abuse, although the details of the charges have not been made public.

His barrister Robert Richter QC already told the court in the first hearing in July his client would plead not guilty.

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Cardinal George Pell in Melbourne court over historical sexual offences

MELBOURNE (AUSTRALIA)
9News.com

October 6, 2017

Guarded by a ring of police, Cardinal George Pell has been heckled outside the Melbourne Magistrates’ Court where he appeared for a brief mention of his case.

A frail-looking Pell, 76, left the court building on Friday morning with his barrister Robert Richter QC and a band of police, who accompanied the pair to the lawyer’s office amid a media frenzy.

As he made the slow walk to and from court, Pell was heckled by protesters but didn’t react.

Police had cordoned off the court entrance early in the day and blocked part of the road outside.

A line of about 30 people – mainly media – waited for hours to secure a seat in the courtroom where the third most senior Vatican official’s committal mention was heard.

There was no sign of Pell supporters, but some victim advocacy representatives turned up, a few holding signs.

“It doesn’t matter how high up the tree you are, it doesn’t matter how much access to money you have, no one is above the law,” Brian Cherrie said.

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Cardinal George Pell appears at Melbourne Magistrates’ Court to fight historical sexual offence allegations

MELBOURNE (AUSTRALIA)
ABC (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)

October 6, 2017

By Emma Younger

Cardinal George Pell will face a four-week committal hearing next March as he fights historical sexual offence allegations, some of which are impossible, according to his legal team.

Australia’s most senior Catholic cleric has faced his second hearing at the Melbourne Magistrates’ Court, after he was charged by Victoria Police detectives in June with offences involving multiple complainants.

The exact detail and nature of the charges have not been made public.

Cardinal Pell strenuously denies the allegations.

Cardinal Pell’s defence barrister, Robert Richter QC, said his team will aim to prove some of the allegations made against his client could never have happened.

“We want to demonstrate that what was alleged was impossible,” he told the court.

Magistrate Belinda Wallington refused Mr Richter’s application to cross-examine five witnesses, but approved all others.

The court heard the prosecution’s brief of evidence was “voluminous”.

The hearing lasted about 20 minutes and mainly dealt with administrative matters.

The court heard about 50 witnesses will give evidence at Cardinal Pell’s committal hearing, which will determine whether there is enough evidence to commit him to stand trial.

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October 5, 2017

Erzdiözese Wien verstärkt Prävention bei Kindergruppen

VIENNA (AUSTRIA)
Archdiocese of Vienna

October 4, 2017

[Summary: The Archdiocese of Vienna has released a brochure (31 megabyte download), “My Safe Place,” providing guidance on preventing violence and abuse in church youth groups.]

Umfangreiche Broschüre mit Reflexionsfragen und Checklisten für Gruppenstunden und mehrtägige Veranstaltungen – Kardinal Schönborn: “Kirche soll ein sicherer Ort sein”

Praktische Hinweise für eine bessere Prävention von Gewalt und Missbrauch in kirchlichen Kinder- und Jugendgruppen liefert eine neue Broschüre der Erzdiözese Wien. “Mein sicherer Ort” heißt die 68-seitige Handreichung, die sich speziell an ehrenamtliche Gruppenleiter richtet und in den nächsten Tagen in 3.000-facher Ausführung in die Pfarren versendet wird. “Kirche soll ein sicherer Ort sein”, betont Kardinal Christoph Schönborn im Vorwort. Die Broschüre solle alle in der Kirche Tätigen unterstützen bei ihrer Bereitschaft zu “Präventionsarbeit und auch Reflexion dessen, wie Kinder- und Jugendarbeit in den Gemeinden und Gruppen gestaltet wird”, so der Erzbischof.

Wo in der Kirche Missbrauch durch Geistliche, Priester oder Ordensleute geschehe, könne dies zur “Gottesvergiftung” werden, mahnte der Kardinal mit Blick auf die Missbrauchskrise nach dem Jahr 2010. “Missbrauch verstellt oft für ein ganzes Leben den Zugang zu Gott, der mit uns ist und der uns befreit”. Die Kirche sei verpflichtet zur “Umkehr”, zur Aufarbeitung ihrer Vergangenheit und auch dazu, “uns aktiv und engagiert für die Prävention von Missbrauch und Gewalt sowie für den Schutz der jungen Menschen einzusetzen, die uns anvertraut sind”.

Die Broschüre setzt an der bereits seit vielen Jahren laufenden Präventionsarbeit der Katholischen Jungschar an, ergänzt um die Expertise von diözesanen Präventionszuständigen und Fachleuten. Ziel sei es, “den Blickwinkel des Gewaltschutzes in die Arbeit mit Kindern und Jugendlichen einzubringen”, erklärte die Leiterin der Stabsstelle für Missbrauchs- und Gewaltprävention, Kinder- und Jugendschutz der Erzdiözese Wien, Martina Greiner-Lebenbauer, im Interview mit “Kathpress”. Auch die Themen sexuelle Übergriffe und Gewalt, Nähe und Distanz, Macht und Machtmissbrauch, Sexualität und das Verhalten in Verdachtsfällen werden im Druckwerk angeschnitten.

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Victims can lose all memory of child abuse, says judge

SYDNEY (AUSTRALIA)
The Australian

October 2, 2017

By Richard Guilliatt

The head of the royal commission into institutional child abuse has declined to respond to criticisms that it is endorsing controversial “repressed memory” counselling techniques but says he has seen direct evidence that victims may have complete amnesia of their trauma.

Judge Peter McClellan told a conference of psychotherapists in Sydney on Saturday that he had been “somewhat startled” while leading the inquiry to meet abuse victims who have no memory of their childhood trauma.

“I have sat with people in private sessions … when we know that that person has been abused by someone and the perpetrator has confessed and been convicted, and the victim has no memory of that abuse having occurred at all,” Justice McClellan said.

The Weekend Australian revealed on Saturday that experts in the field of trauma and memory were critical of the commission for endorsing “ethically dubious” counselling ideas that they say are identical to the repressed-memory therapy of the 1980s and 90s, when a rash of false and bizarre allegations of abuse were made.

Justice McClellan said he would not comment on the criticisms, which centre in part on the commission’s endorsement of the counselling guidelines of Cathy Kezelman, a high-profile activist who says she was sexually abused during her childhood by her father and a pedophile cult led by her grandmother.

The Weekend Australian revealed on Saturday that Dr Kezelman’s mother and brother repudiate her claims, and her psychologist was investigated by the Psychology Council of NSW. Dr Kezelman, who is president of the Blue Knot Foundation and sits on the expert panel devising the $4 billion redress scheme for victims of institutional abuse, denied at the weekend that the counselling guidelines she co-wrote advocated the retrieval of repressed memories.

Fairfax Media quoted her as saying it was “totally false” to suggest her repressed memories were triggered by her psychotherapy, because the memories began emerging when she was at home, not while with her therapist.

Dr Kezelman was scheduled to introduce Justice McClellan at Saturday’s conference but did not appear because of illness. The judge has previously called her an “old friend” of the commission and said her knowledge exceeded that of many judges and bureaucrats dealing with child abuse.

In his speech, Justice McClellan alluded to an address he gave 11 years ago that contained cautionary words about the repressed memory phenomenon, whereby adult psychotherapy patients recover memories of entirely forgotten child abuse. In that earlier speech, he noted that these memories could be false, citing scientific research.

On Saturday, Justice McClellan said the royal commission had commissioned a wide range of experts, and its research indicated memory was constantly refined and reconsolidated. Some adults could not recall their trauma in detail or at all, which could present problems when dealing with police or seeking compensation.

More than 7500 people have told the royal commission they were abused in institutional settings, and all will be eligible to apply for compensation payments and subsidised counselling under the federal government’s proposed redress scheme for victims. The maximum individual compensation has been set at $150,000.

Justice McClellan said counsellors employed by the redress scheme should have expertise in dealing with complex trauma.

The judge’s speech was preceded by a presentation from Joan Haliburn, a psychiatrist at the Complex Trauma Unit at Westmead Hospital, who said at least half of her patients had no memory of their trauma before entering psychotherapy with her.

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Mum rejects Cathy Kezelman’s abuse claims

SYDNEY (AUSTRALIA)
The Australian

October 4, 2017

By Richard Guilliatt

The elderly mother of child abuse activist Cathy Kezelman has broken her silence to reject her daughter’s claims of sexual abuse at the hands of her father and a paedophile cult.

In a letter to The Australian today, Lusia Puterman says the abuse her daughter alleges could not have occurred, describing her late husband as a loving man who “cherished his daughter”.

Dr Kezelman, whose expertise has been endorsed by the royal commission into institutional abuse and who sits on the advisory panel of the government compensation scheme for abuse victims, underwent psychotherapy for nine years and recovered repressed memories of extreme sexual abuse by multiple members of her family.

The Weekend Australian revealed on Saturday that leading experts in trauma and memory were critical of the royal commission for endorsing Dr Kezelman’s counselling ideas, which they said were potentially harmful and contravened the best-practice guidelines of major health bodies.

Mrs Puterman, who is 94 and lost her parents in the Holocaust after fleeing the Warsaw ghetto at 19, writes that she and her daughter were best friends until 1998, when Dr Kezelman entered psychotherapy following a breakdown and began experiencing repressed memories of abuse.

She says her daughter became distant and, without explanation, eventually stopped seeing her and that regular contact with her grandchildren ceased. She says she was further hurt in 2010 when her daughter published a memoir, Innocence Revisited, which detailed her allegations of abuse.

In her book, Dr Kezelman wrote that she had no recollection of being sexually abused until she began psychotherapy at 44, and that she developed a multiple-personality condition and remembered a decade of childhood abuse, including rapes by her ¬father and torture by a paedophile cult led by her grandmother.

Mrs Puterman says the allegations “stem only from Cathy’s mind” and it would have been impossible for such abuse to occur without anyone noticing. She says, however, she loves her daughter and has had email contact with her in recent years.

The commission has twice called Dr Kezelman as an expert witness and its chairman, judge Peter McClellan, has commended her expertise and appeared with her at public events.
Her counselling guidelines have been widely distributed and are quoted in the commission’s report on the proposed compensation scheme for victims.

Dr Kezelman was quoted at the weekend saying “traumatic memory is implicit, and mainly unconscious; it manifests in the body and via behavioural re–enactments rather than words”.

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Child safety leader sees not just Church’s dark past, but game-changing future

DENVER (CO)
Crux

October 5, 2017

By John L. Allen Jr. and Ines San Martin

Baroness Joanna Shields, an American-born expert on internet safety and child protection who’s now a member of the British House of Lords and a former UK Government Minister, says that when she looks at the Catholic Church and child welfare she doesn’t just see a mixed past but a potentially game-changing future: “When the pope speaks, people listen,” she said.

Rome – For Catholics who’ve lived through the carnage of the Church’s clerical sexual abuse scandals, put the words “Vatican” and “child safety” into a sentence, and inevitably, understandably, the mental associations are with where Catholicism has failed.

Someone like Baroness Joanna Shields, however, brings a fresh set of eyes. One of the world’s leading experts on child protection, she’s hardly unaware of the Church’s mixed record. However, when she looks at Catholicism today, what she sees isn’t so much the problem but a potentially key ingredient of the solution.

“When the pope speaks, people listen, especially young people,” Shields said. “I think a lot of young people are really into how he connects with them. His Ted Talk, for instance, I thought was extraordinary. He talked about technology, and how it would be great if technology empowered everyone equally.”

“Well, just adding to what he said and his wisdom, I think it’s equally important that technology protects everyone equally,” Shields said on Wednesday.

Shields, born in Pennsylvania but today a member of the British House of Lords and a former UK Minister for Internet Safety and Security, is the founder of the WePROTECT global alliance, led by the UK government and supported by over 70 countries, 30 technology companies, and NGOs to combat the global crime of online child sexual abuse and exploitation.

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Statement on Child Dignity in the Digital World

WALTHAM (MA)
BishopAccountability.org

October 5, 2017

The Vatican conference on Child Dignity in the Digital World has just concluded its speeches and workshops. There will be a reception this evening, and then a papal audience tomorrow, during which the conference’s Final Declaration will be presented to Pope Francis.

During the conference, Msgr. Carlo Capella has been the elephant in the room. The Vatican diplomat is the subject of an international child pornography investigation, yet he is being harbored by the Vatican while the conference about child abuse images/child pornography and related problems proceeds.

To my knowledge, none of the participants has confronted the ironies of this situation, certainly not Cardinal Pietro Parolin. He dealt briefly with the “very painful” matter of Msgr. Capella before the conference, and then in his keynote address invoked the “tragic reality” and “extremely grave facts” of the Catholic abuse crisis, mentioning them as qualifications for the Vatican’s hosting the conference: “We want to share the experience we have acquired.”

Cardinal Parolin went on to cite the Holy See’s “adherence” to the Convention for the Rights of the Child. Yet in its Concluding Observations (2014), the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child stated:

“The Committee is gravely concerned that the Holy See has not acknowledged the extent of the crimes committed, nor taken the necessary measures to address cases of child sexual abuse and to protect children, and has adopted policies and practices which have enabled the continuation of sexual abuse by clerics and impunity for the perpetrators.” (para. 43)

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New Hampshire front at Rome’s child safety summit: ‘We can do something!’

DENVER (CO)
Crux

October 5, 2017

By John L. Allen Jr.

At an Oct. 3-6 summit at Rome’s Gregorian University, with the support of the Vatican, on efforts to keep children safe in the digital world, there’s been a lot of talk about the massiveness of the challenges. In that context, speakers from New Hampshire have provided a badly-needed dose of hope, insisting that data show smartly-crafted and long-term programs to help children actually do make a difference.

Rome – New Hampshire is the lone state among the original 13 American colonies in which no Revolutionary War battle was fought, but militias from the “Live Free or Die” state did play key roles in several turning points in the struggle for independence, including helping the Continental Army win the Battle of Saratoga.

Perhaps that background helps explain why the New Hampshire contingent at an Oct. 3-6 summit at Rome’s Gregorian University devoted to “Child Dignity in the Digital Age” has been the most emphatic voice of optimism, insisting that the struggle against child abuse and exploitation online is not only a battle that can be fought, but it can be won.

From the beginning of the conference, one strong thrust has been to sound alarms about the massive dimensions of child abuse online.

Tim Morris, Executive Director of Police Services for Interpol, told participants that the “incidents” the global law enforcement agency flagged in 2016 – meaning a lewd comment on-line, an upload of offensive material, an attempt to lure a young person into sexual situations, and so on – amounted to 2.3 million on 15 notorious websites they monitor.

In the first eight months of 2017, he said, Interpol has already logged 3 million incidents.

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Vatican conference focuses on dangers ‘dark web’ poses to children

NEW YORK (NY)
America Magazine

October 2, 2017

By Gerard O’Connell

“Technology is transforming childhood beyond our recognition. It’s a challenge that transcends boundaries, and the only way we can respond is together,” Baroness Joanna Shields told a press briefing in advance of the first ever world congress on “Child Dignity in the Digital World,” which opens tomorrow, Oct.3, at the Jesuit-run Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome.

“Technology has no boundaries. Evil has the same access as good has,” the baroness, who is the founder of WePROTECT, added. Up to now, she said, we have tended to praise the great contribution the internet has made to humanity, and the horizons it has opened; but, she said, we may have been too uncritical, given the risks and dangers that we now see it presents to children. She believes this pioneering congress can help to strike a better balance. “It’s not about scaremongering,” she said; “it’s about alerting the public, so that parents understand the world their children are growing up in. It’s about protecting children from abuse on the internet.”

“It’s not about scaremongering. It’s about protecting children from abuse on the internet.”

Dr. Ernie Allen, another speaker at the congress, pushed this point home by emphasizing the fact that “the internet has changed the very nature of this problem—the abuse of children.” He told America that this is particularly true of “the dark web” which “was set up by the U.S. government for good purposes” and which he agreed with. One of the aims “was to protect the privacy of political dissidents during the Arab Spring, to protect them from retaliation by repressive regimes, or Turkey or other big ones,” he said. But, he commented, “the problem is the unintended consequences of this. When you develop something like that, you cannot limit who can use it, and so today it is being used by traffickers [of drugs and humans], arms dealers, terrorists, pedophiles and others.” In other words, the dark web has become what some authors (though not Allen) have called “the badlands of the internet.”

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Church more aware of crime, harm of child abuse, Vatican official says

ROME
Catholic News Service via National Catholic Reporter

October 4, 2017

By Carol Glatz

Child abuse is not only a crime, it is sacrilege, Cardinal Pietro Parolin, Vatican secretary of state, said at a world congress promoting the protection of children online.

“The church has become increasingly aware of the harm experienced by victims, of their suffering and of the need to listen to them,” he told an international assembly of more than 100 top experts and leaders in government, law enforcement, nonprofit organizations and technology, who are working in child protection.

Action must be taken to “heal wounds, restore justice, prevent crimes” and establish a culture of “real safeguarding” so children can grow up healthy and safe, Parolin said Oct. 3 in a keynote address opening the four-day gathering.

“Fortunately, with regard to the church, this is already happening, in various institutions and regions, even when society in general has not yet developed the necessary awareness,” he said. “These efforts, however, must continue, must be expanded and deepened with clarity and firmness.”

“To disparage infancy and to abuse children,” he said, “is for the Christian, therefore, not only a crime, but also — as Pope Francis has stated — sacrilege, a profanation of that which is sacred, of the presence of God in every human being.”

The congress, “Child Dignity in the Digital World,” was being held as the Vatican was investigating accusations that one of its foreign diplomats had violated laws relating to child pornography images.

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Lawsuit: Priest abused boy daily

GUAM
Guam Daily Post

October 5, 2017

By Mindy Aguon

A former Guam resident alleges he was subjected to daily sexual abuse while required to live with a priest at the San Miguel Church in Talofofo in 1985.

A lawsuit, filed by G.E.J. who used his initials to protect his identity, named Andrew Mannetta.

The Bremerton, Washington, resident alleges that when he was 14, he rebelled against his parents and ran away from home for a brief period.His parents made arrangements for G.E.J. to live with former Guam priest Andrew Mannetta at the church for two weeks.

Mannetta was the parish priest at the Talofofo church. The civil complaint, filed in the Superior Court today, alleges the priest subjected the boy to daily sexual abuse by forcing him to lie on his stomach as the priest rubbed the boy’s thighs and private parts.

When the boy tried to move away from contact, Mannetta allegedly grabbed him and threw him back on his stomach, court documents state.

Archdiocese of Agana blamed

The lawsuit alleges Mannetta was grooming G.E.J. for an increased level of sexual abuse including penetration.

G.E.J.’s attorney, Anthony C. Perez, alleges the Archdiocese of Agana knew or should have known of Mannetta’s “heinous and despicable conduct” and failed to take any steps to warn its parishioners of the risk of harm to children.

Perez said the archdiocese had a practice and pattern of harboring child abusers and protecting their identities.

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

Lawsuit: Boy sexually abused daily while living with priest

GUAM
Pacific Daily News

October 5, 2017

By Haidee V Eugenio

After former altar boys tearfully went public with allegations, a law was passed to open doors for lawsuits against the church, clergy and others.

A 14-year-old boy whose parents thought it would be best for him to live with a Catholic priest after he ran away from home was sexually abused daily by the priest for about two weeks, according to a lawsuit filed in local court on Thursday.

Former island priest Andrew Mannetta allegedly sexually abused the plaintiff, identified in court documents only as G.E.J. to protect his privacy, at the rectory adjacent to San Miguel Church in Talofofo in 1985.

G.E.J. is now living in Bremerton, Washington. He is represented by attorney Anthony C. Perez.

In the lawsuit, G.E.J. said he was born and raised in a family that was devout Catholic. The lawsuit says in 1985, when G.E.J. was about 14 years old, he rebelled from his parents and ran away from home for a brief period of time. That’s when his parents thought the boy would benefit from staying with a priest.

“While living with Father Andy, plaintiff was subjected to daily sexual abuse,” the lawsuit says. “Father Andy would order plaintiff to lie on his stomach on Father Andy’s bed next to Father Andy while watching television.”

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Vatican Shines Light on Child Abuse as Claims Against Priests Persist

NEW YORK (NY)
New York Times

October 5, 2017

By Jason Horowitz

Vatican City — For a church hierarchy excoriated for decades over the sexual abuse of children in its trust, hosting a conference this week about the spreading scourge of online child pornography was an opportunity to strike a positive note about the Vatican’s role in protecting minors.

“Yes, yes, yes,” said Cardinal Pietro Parolin, the Vatican’s secretary of state, when asked Tuesday night at the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome if the Catholic Church could lead a global response to the problem.

But in an awkward confluence of events, the four-day congress, Child Dignity in the Digital World, is taking place mere weeks after the Holy See recalled Msgr. Carlo Capella, a church diplomat in the Vatican’s Washington Embassy, amid accusations that he had possessed child pornography.

It was just the latest of the abuse accusations against priests that have dogged the church around the globe for decades even as it has promised to punish predators and protect the preyed upon. Advocates for the victims have questioned the church’s commitment.

Last week, as organizers prepared for the congress — with its keynote address by Cardinal Parolin, the second-highest-ranking official after Pope Francis; blanket coverage by the church’s news media; and a papal audience with Francis on Friday — the Canadian police issued an arrest warrant for Monsignor Capella. He was accused of distributing child pornography during a Christmas visit in 2016 to Ontario.

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Vatican needs boots on the ground to promote child safety, expert says

DENVER (CO)
Crux

October 5, 2017

John L. Allen Jr. and Ines San Martin

American Monsignor Stephen Rossetti is one of the key participants in the Oct. 3-6 summit at Rome’s Gregorian University on “Child Dignity in the Digital World.” He’s been involved in anti-abuse efforts in the Church for years, and he has some concrete advise to offer.

Rome – Very few people in the Catholic Church, at any level or in any place, have a deeper experience of the clerical sexual abuse scandals and the broader effort to promote child safety than American Monsignor Stephen Rossetti, a former president of the St. Luke’s Institute in Silver Spring, Maryland, and a key adviser to virtually every anti-abuse initiative in the Catholic Church.

Thus when Rossetti speaks, people tend to listen. He’s part of the scientific committee organizing an Oct. 3-6 summit at Rome’s Gregorian University on “Child Dignity in the Digital World,” and he’s got a clear message about what would constitute a serious commitment from the Vatican coming out of this high-profile event: Boots on the ground.

“You need people doing this 24/7. People who are actually collaborating with UNICEF, with the United Nations, with Interpol,” Rossetti said.

He said one logical place for such a dedicated team within the Vatican to be located would be the Secretariat of State, typically the Vatican’s main policy-setting organism, because, among other things, “it’s international,” meaning that it deals with global diplomacy.

Rossetti spoke to Crux on Oct. 4, during the Gregorian conference.

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Child safety summit reflects Pope’s ‘extraordinary’ power to convene

DENVER (CO)
Crux

October 4, 2017

By John L. Allen Jr.

Look around at the lineup at an Oct. 3-6 summit at Rome’s Gregorian University on “Child Dignity in the Digital World,” and it’s a host of experts from the biggest outfits in their various fields — Harvard, Interpol, Facebook, UNICEF, Microsoft, and so on. It’s the cream of the crop, and it’s another illustration of the Vatican’s unique power to convene, since basically nobody can say no to an invite from the pope.

Rome – Ever since the collapse of the Papal States in 1870, the Vatican has had to make its way in the world as a “soft power,” relying on moral authority and the pope’s massive bully pulpit to move the ball on matters it perceives as priorities.

That soft power takes many forms, but one is on especially clear display this week at Rome’s Jesuit-sponsored Gregorian University: The power to convene.

One of the near-universal truths about the Vatican’s role in the world today is that virtually nobody can say no to an invitation from the pope. You can put together almost any sort of event you want, from a study of artificial intelligence to a symposium on punk rock in the 1980s, and if it comes with the promise of face time with the pope at some point, the world’s leading authorities on the subject inevitably will show up.

That’s not the only reason they come, of course – they come because they’re passionate about the subject, because Rome is not the worst place to spend a few days, and because they’ll see valued friends and colleagues who plow the same furrows. Still, however, it’s fair to say that the magnetic attraction of the pope doesn’t hurt.

Oct. 3-6, the Gregorian is hosting a major international summit titled “Child Dignity in the Digital World,” devoted to the effort to combat child abuse and exploitation online, especially the so-called “Dark Web.” It’s a vast region of the internet, perhaps the overwhelming majority, which is anonymous and designed to be impossible to detect, where 80 percent of the traffic is believed to be driven by child pornography.

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Church more aware of crime, harm of child abuse, top Vatican official says

NEW YORK (NY)
America Magazine

October 4, 2017

By Gerard O’Connell

“We must work to take control of the development of the digital world, so that it might be at the service of the dignity of minors,” Cardinal Pietro Parolin, the Vatican Secretary of State, said in his keynote address at the opening of “Child Dignity in the Digital World,” the first world congress focused on addressing the dangers children and adolescents face on the internet.

Addressing the 140 participants from all continents at the Oct. 3 – 6 congress, at the Gregorian University in Rome, Cardinal Parolin said everyone present knows that “the sexual abuse of minors constitutes a very vast and widespread phenomenon.” Over the past few decades, he acknowledged, “this tragic reality has come powerfully to the fore in the Catholic Church and very grave facts have emerged.”

The church has become “progressively aware of the harm suffered by the victims” and of the need to listen to them so as to find ways “to heal the wounds, re-establish justice, prevent crimes” and to develop and consolidate “a new culture of child protection,” he said.

The congress was being held as the Vatican was investigating accusations that one of its foreign diplomats had violated laws relating to child pornography images.

Italian Monsignor Carlo Capella was recalled to the Vatican from his post at the Vatican nunciature in Washington, D.C., after the U.S. State Department notified the Holy See of his possible crimes. Police in Canada also issued a nationwide warrant for the monsignor’s arrest on charges of accessing, possessing and distributing child pornography while he was visiting Canada.

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The Holy See and Its Commitment to Combatting Sex Abuse Online

VATICAN CITY
Vatican Radio

October 4, 2017

By Cardinal Pietro Parolin

[Note: The available URL for this speech is defective. We link to the Google cache of the Vatican Radio webpage.]

(Vatican Radio) Vatican Secretary of State, Cardinal Pietro Parolin on Tuesday addressed the Child Dignity in the Digital World world congress being held at Rome’s Pontifical Gregorian University this week. In his speech to the conference the Cardinal spoke about “The Holy See and Its Commitment to Combatting Sex Abuse Online”.

Please find the English translation of Cardinal Parolin’s speech:

Dear President of the Senate, Your Eminences, Excellencies, Dear Father General, Ambassadors, Father Rector, Academic Authorities and Professors, Dear Friends, I thank you for inviting me to speak at the opening of this important Congress, thus allowing me to convey the greetings and appreciation of His Holiness Pope Francis and of the Holy See for this initiative. It is an event that is hosted and organized, along with other laudable events, by a prestigious Pontifical University.

I greet the distinguished persons and institutions who are participating in this initiative, and I express my gratitude to all those who have contributed concretely to the organization and planning of this Congress. Above all, I wish to express my appreciation for having chosen the topic that will be discussed: the dignity of the child in the digital world. The majority of you, who have worked for a long time in this field, are well aware that the sexual abuse of minors constitutes a vast and widespread phenomenon. Over the past few decades, this tragic reality has come powerfully to the fore in the Catholic Church and extremely grave facts have emerged. The Church has become increasingly aware of the harm experienced by the victims, of their suffering and of the need to listen to them, in order to work on various fronts; these include: a wide range of interventions which must be carried out in order to heal wounds, restore justice, prevent crimes and form educators and persons who deal with minors, with a view to spreading and consolidating a new culture of child protection – a real safeguarding – that effectively guarantees they can grow up in a healthy and safe environment. This is a task requiring deep human care, competence and tenacity; experience tells us that where this commitment is consistent and continuous, the fruits that will come of it are positive and encouraging. The Church’s effort in this sense, even when society in general has not yet developed the necessary awareness, must continue, must be expanded and deepened, with clarity and firmness, so that the dignity and rights of minors may be protected and defended with much greater attentiveness and effectiveness than was done in the past. In this venue, we want to share the experience we have acquired, so that it may prove useful for an ever greater good, thanks to collaboration with all of you. The world into which human persons are today born and raised is characterized, ever more deeply and pervasively, by the development and ubiquity of new communications technologies and new instruments for their use. Handheld phones and tablets and other devices have come to be part of the daily life of an ever greater number of people; these users are ever younger, so much so that we can speak of the young generations as “digital natives.” This has spread to every part of the world, reaching even areas where economic and social development are as yet inadequate and uneven.

The phenomenon is now global and so we speak of a “digital world.” We now realize that, supported by ever greater evidence, the scourge of offenses against the dignity of minors, as with so many other dramatic problems in today’s world, spreads through and aligns itself within the new parameters of the digital world. This plague meanders and infiltrates along a labyrinth of paths and through deep, hidden layers of reality. The digital world is not, in fact, a separate part of the world: it is an integral part of the unique reality of the world. Minors who grow up in it are exposed to new risks, or rather, to old risks manifested in new ways; and the culture of the protection of minors that we want to spread must be sufficiently able to address today’s problems. Looking at our contemporary world, Pope Francis continually reminds us that the forms of abuse and violence against minors proliferate in an interwoven manner: the traffic of minors and of human persons generally, the phenomenon of child soldiers, the absence of even the most elementary education, the fact that small children are the first victims of hunger and extreme poverty. On the day dedicated by the Church to the memory of the Holy Innocents, Pope Francis wrote: “We need the courage to respond to this reality, to arise and take it firmly in hand (cf. Mt 2:20)… [We need] the courage to guard this joyfrom the new Herods of our time, who devour the innocence of our children. An innocence stolen from them by the oppression of illegal slave labour, prostitution and exploitation. An innocence shattered by wars and forced migration, with the great loss that this entails. Thousands of our children have fallen into the hands of gangs, criminal organizations and merchants of death, who only devour and exploit their neediness” (Letter to Bishops, 28 December 2016). In all these situations, the horrendous reality of sexual abuse is nearly always present, as a common aspect and consequence of multifaceted and widespread violence that ignores all respect, not only for the body, but more so for the soul, for the profound vulnerability and dignity of every child, of every young boy and girl of whatever nation. And so we recognize the challenges, but realize too that even though we have learned a great deal with respect to this phenomenon, it remains important to understand it ever better, and, more than anything, to continue to make our understanding of the phenomenon accessible to all those who promote the protection of the rights of minors. Only in this way can we effectively fight the battle to protect minors in our digitalized world. The phenomena we observe reach levels of shocking gravity; their dimensions and the speed with which they spread surpass our imagination. Here then is the second reason for my appreciation of the method employed by this Congress: calling together representatives from the various fields of scientific research as well as those who are actively committed to the protection of minors; representatives of leading companies in technological development and communications characteristic of the digital world; those responsible for the common good of human society; legislators, politicians, and law enforcement agencies called upon to combat crimes and abuses; religious leaders and leaders of civil society organizations committed to working for minors. Like some of the other speakers, I too want to insist on a distinguishing characteristic of this assembly, one that makes it new and even unique, namely: establishing a dialogue between the many competent and meritorious people who have made their own the cause of defending the dignity of minors in the digital world. They are doing this by channelling their energies towards a shared commitment in order to overcome the sense of disorientation and powerlessness when faced with such a markedly difficult challenge, and to help us to intervene creatively. Once this basic strategic territory has been identified, we must work to regain control of the development of the digital world, so that it may be at the service of the dignity of minors, and thus of the whole human race of tomorrow. For the minors of today are the entirety of tomorrow’s human race.

Following the research and understanding of these problems there must come a commitment and a far-seeing, courageous endeavour on the part of all of us here present; there must also be an appeal for the cooperation of every person in a position of responsibility, in the various countries and sectors of society. Perhaps I may be permitted to offer some further reflections, which I propose for your consideration. The demographic development of humanity is particularly rapid in many countries where economic and social progress is still lacking or uneven. Hundreds of millions of children and young people are growing up in a digital world within a context that is still largely undeveloped. Their parents and teachers may not, perhaps, be culturally equipped to accompany them and help them to grow up in this world, whereas their political leaders will often not know where to begin in order to protect them. We have a responsibility to these children too, as do the companies that promote and drive the development of the digital world. With its international, global and interdisciplinary perspective, this Congress must take responsibility for those minors at the world’s “peripheries”, of which Pope Francis continually speaks: peripheries that are in geographic areas of greater economic poverty, but that are also found within wealthy societies where there is considerable human and spiritual poverty, loneliness and a loss of the meaning of life. It is not by chance that it is minors in all these peripheries who are the preferred target of networks of exploitation and of organized online violence on a global scale.

Both in society and in the Church, there has always been insistence on the primary responsibility of the family and of the school in guaranteeing minors a sound education so essential to the protection and promotion of their dignity. This still very much applies today and every effort must be made so that parents and educators may be increasingly able to undertake their duties, even in the face of risks and challenges from the digital world. There is, however, no doubt that in the modern context their ability to influence the formation of young generations is proportionately far less than in the past, and is often frustrated and overtaken by the continual wave of messages and images that come to even the smallest children through countless open avenues provided by the new media. For this reason too, responsibility towards young generations must be shared fully by all the sectors of society that you represent. Finally, we find ourselves hosted here by an institution which depends on the Catholic Church and which is thus particularly attentive to the moral and religious dimensions of the life and development of the human person. I hope that your work may be able also to integrate these perspectives into the shared work of reflection and commitment, and that from them you may draw vigour, inspiration and motivation. For the rest, all of us surely agree on what is affirmed in the second principle of the Universal Declaration of the Rights of the Child, namely, that every child should have the means “to develop physically, mentally, morally, spiritually and socially in a healthy and normal manner and in conditions of freedom and dignity”. Moreover, as John Paul II affirmed in 1990, on the occasion of the World Summit for Children, we stress “the need to do much more to safeguard the well-being of the world’s children, to enunciate the rights of the child and to protect those rights through cultural and legislative actions imbued with respect for human life as a value in itself, independently of sex, ethnic origin, social or cultural status, or political or religious conviction” (Letter to J. Pérez de Cuellar, 22 September 1990. The Holy See adhered to the Convention on the Rights of the Child in 1990). The minors of whom we speak and whose dignity we wish to defend and promote are human persons, and the value of each of them is unique and unrepeatable. Each of them must be taken seriously and protected in this ever more digitalized world, so that they may be able to fulfil the purpose of their life, their destiny, their coming into the world. The destiny and the life of each of them is supremely important, precious in the sight of human beings and in the sight of God. According to Scripture, every human being is created “in the image and likeness” of God. According to the New Testament, the Son of God came among us as a vulnerable child, and in needy circumstances, assuming both the fragility and the hope for a future that are intrinsic to an infant.

To disparage infancy and to abuse children is for the Christian, therefore, not only a crime, but also – as Pope Francis has stated – sacrilege, a profanation of that which is sacred, of the presence of God in every human being. The forces that drive the technical and economic development of the world seem unstoppable and, as we know, are perhaps often determined and driven by economic and even very powerful political interests, which we must not allow ourselves to be dominated by. The power of sexual desire that dwells in the depth of the human mind and heart is great and wonderful when it advances the path of humanity; but it can also be corrupted and perverted, to become a source of suffering and unspeakable abuse: and so it must be elevated and directed. The sense of moral responsibility in the sight of humanity and in the sight of God, the reflection on the correct use of freedom in the building and orientation of a new world and in learning how to live in it, are thus absolutely necessary and fundamental for our common future. You have come together here to address one of today’s most important and urgent issues for the journey of humanity. I hope that the living sense of the beauty and the mystery of human persons, of the greatness of their vocation to life, and thus of the duty to protect them in their dignity and their growth, may inspire your work and bear concrete and effective fruit.

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October 4, 2017

Vatican to Host Youth Summit to Hear Doubts, Criticism

VATICAN CITY
Associated Press via New York Times

October 4, 2017

Pope Francis wants to hear firsthand from young people about their “doubts and criticisms” in the run-up to a big meeting of bishops on how the Catholic Church can better minister to young people today.

The Vatican said Wednesday it would host a summit of young people from around the world March 19-24 as a preparatory meeting to the synod of bishops later in the year. As well as young Catholics, other Christians and young atheists have been invited to the event.

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Vatican Urges Online Protections for Kids Amid Porn Scandal

ROME (ITALY)
Associated Press via U.S. News and World Report

October 3, 2017

By Nicole Winfield

The Vatican secretary of state urged law enforcement agencies, governments and social media sites on Tuesday to take responsibility to protect children from online sexual abuse and exploitation — a statement that came even as one of his diplomats is caught up in an international child porn investigation.

Secretary of State Cardinal Pietro Parolin said the case of Monsignor Carlo Capella was “very painful” for all involved.

Parolin said the Vatican was treating the Capella case with “utmost concern, utmost commitment” but also confidentiality to protect the integrity of the investigation. He spoke to reporters on the sidelines of a Catholic Church-sponsored conference on protecting children from online threats.

Canadian police have issued an arrest warrant for Capella, accusing him of accessing, possessing and distributing child pornography during a visit to an Ontario church over Christmas. He is now in the Vatican after being recalled from the Vatican’s embassy in the U.S.

Vatican prosecutors have also opened an investigation into Capella’s actions.

Parolin — Capella’s boss — headlined the opening of the four-day conference on protecting children online that has drawn leading researchers in public health, Interpol, the U.N., government representatives as well as executives from Facebook and Microsoft.

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Cardinal Parolin: When protecting kids in the digital world, don’t forget the peripheries

VATICAN CITY
Catholic News Agency/EWTN

October 3, 2017

By Elise Harris

In the keynote speech at a conference on protecting children in the digital world, Vatican Secretary of State Cardinal Pietro Parolin said child safety is one of the most urgent issues of modern times, and stressed that children on the global “peripheries” shouldn’t be forgotten.

In his Oct. 3 speech, Parolin noted that technological and cultural change “is particularly fast in many countries in which social and economic progress are still very limited and unbalanced.”

Thousands of children are now growing up in the digital world in vastly underdeveloped nations, he said, which means their parents and educators “will no longer be culturally equipped to accompany them and help them grow in this world, while their governments often don’t know where to begin in protecting them.”

“We are also responsible for these children, and the businesses that promote and push the development of the digital world are also responsible for them,” he said.

Given the international and interdisciplinary approach of the conference, Parolin stressed that the participants themselves “must take responsibility for those peripheries of the world of which Pope Francis continually speaks.”

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Top Vatican official says ‘tragic experience’ on sex abuse helps Church lead

DENVER (CO)
Crux

October 4, 2017

By Inés San Martín

At the opening session of a major conference at Rome’s Jesuit-run Gregorian University on the protection of children in a digital world, the Vatican’s number two official, Italian Cardinal Pietro Parolin, said the Catholic Church’s “tragic experience” with clerical sexual abuse allows it to be a leader in the fight against child abuse in other arenas.

Rome – Addressing a group of experts gathered in Rome, including representatives of Facebook, Google, and Microsoft, Pope Francis’s right-hand man said on Tuesday that the Church’s tragic experience with the sexual abuse of children, “this reality [that] has come powerfully to the fore in the Catholic Church,” allows it to help lead the fight in other arenas.

“In this venue, [the Catholic Church] want[s] to share the experience we have acquired, so that it may prove useful for an ever greater good, thanks to collaboration with all of you,” Italian Cardinal Pietro Parolin said.

Parolin, the Vatican’s Secretary of State, was one of two keynote speakers at a conference titled “Child Dignity in the Digital World,” being held at Rome’s Pontifical Gregorian University Oct. 3-6. It’s organized by the university’s Centre for Child Protection (CCP), a UK-based global alliance called WePROTECT, and “Telefono Azzurro,” the first Italian helpline for children at risk.

“We recognize the challenges, but also realize that even though we have learned a great deal with respect to this phenomenon, it remains important to understand it ever better, and, more than anything, to continue to make our understanding of the phenomenon accessible to all those who promote the protection of the rights of minors,” he said.

“Only in this way can we effectively fight the battle to protect minors in our digitalized world,” Parolin told the gathering. “The phenomena we observe reach levels of shocking gravity; their dimensions and the speed with which they spread surpass our imagination.”

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Parishioner suing former Manitoba Anglican priest for alleged sexual exploitation

WINNIPEG (MANITOBA, CANADA)
CBC News

Parishioner suing former Manitoba Anglican priest for alleged sexual exploitation
Brandon bishop ‘horrified’ by allegations, says he demanded priest’s resignation

October 4, 2017

By Vera-Lynn Kubinec and Katie Nicholson

A woman who was a parishioner of an Anglican church in western Manitoba is alleging she was exploited and sexually assaulted by her priest for years, after he manipulated her into a sexual relationship.

The woman is suing former priest Nigel Packwood and the Anglican synod of the Diocese of Brandon.

Packwood “initiated and maintained” an illicit and long-standing sexual relationship with the parishioner, says the statement of claim filed Sept. 19 in Winnipeg.

“Rev. Packwood exploited and misused the power, authority and discretion conferred upon him by the Diocese to gain access to confidential information about [the plaintiff] and her circumstances and to initiate and maintain illicit intimate sexual contact with, and to manipulate, control and sexually exploit [the plaintiff] for his own personal sexual gratification,” the claim says.

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Danish priest made sex videos with teenager

DENMARK
The Local

October 4, 2017

A 47-year-old priest used promises of trips abroad to persuade a 16-year-old boy to have sex with him, Holbæk City Court heard during the former clergyman’s trial on Tuesday.

The priest met the 16-year-old on gay dating site boyfriend.dk, writes news agency Ritzau.

Pretending to work for the army, the priest began speaking to the teenager, who is from Jutland, the court heard according to Ritzau’s report.

The former priest at the Tømmerup Church is currently on trial at Holbæk City Court, accused of sexual misconduct with 12 children between the ages of 12 and 17 years.

He was initially arrested in June 2016.

He recorded sex with the 16-year-old boy several times, the court heard during proceedings Tuesday.

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Guam’s day of reckoning after decades of sex abuse

KANSAS CITY (KS)
National Catholic Reporter

October 4, 2017

By Anita Hofschneider

Chalan Pago-Ordot, Guam — B.J. pushes aside the ferns as he approaches the edge of the muddy river in central Guam. Hunched over and carrying a cane, he is looking for the spot where he was tied to a tree decades ago. Mosquitoes descend ferociously with every step he takes. Apart from the gushing water, the jungle is quiet.

“Look, if you yell, nobody can hear you,” he says. “Or if anything happens to you, nobody will know.”

The river looks completely different from that day 46 years ago when B.J. says he was raped repeatedly by Fr. Louis Brouillard, a priest and then-Boy Scout leader. B.J. was only 11 years old, and remembers the water was calm. The trees weren’t pressed so hard against the water’s edge.

“He had me strapped to one of these trees like this,” he says, pointing to the trees next to him. “He went down there, right, and then he started to slowly swim back here, right, and he got up here to me, right? That’s when everything changed.”

B.J. is one of more than 100 men and women who have filed lawsuits against the Archdiocese of Agana on Guam alleging abuses that occurred between the 1950s and 1980s.

Sex abuse scandals have roiled archdioceses throughout North America for the last two decades. But only in recent years has the church in this small, intensely Catholic U.S. territory begun confronting its own legacy of abuse.

The magnitude of the claims is staggering. According to a recent USA Today analysis, Guam, with a population of only about 160,000, has a per-capita rate of abuse claims more than five times higher than in Boston. So far, 16 priests have been accused of sexual abuse. About a third of them are deceased and some have left the priesthood. One was defrocked.

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October 3, 2017

Expert says Vatican botched response to child porn suspicions about envoy

ROME
Crux

September 28, 2017

By John Allen and Claire Giangrave

German Jesuit Father Hans Zollner, who leads a child protection center at a Roman university and serves on a papal commission advising Francis on reform, says the Vatican should have been more transparent about recent reports that an envoy at the papal embassy in Washington, D.C., is part of an investigation for possible involvement in child pornography, seeing it as part of an going struggle to be more “up-front.”

ROME – Arguably the Catholic Church’s leading expert in the fight against child sexual abuse believes the Vatican dropped the ball on a recent case in which a diplomat at the papal embassy in Washington, D.C., was flagged as a possible suspect in a child pornography investigation, saying, “This should have been handled differently.”

“I really don’t understand this type of reaction [from the Vatican], and I’m pretty sure the American bishops were quite upset about how it was handled,” said German Jesuit Father Hans Zollner.

Zollner heads the Centre for Child Protection at Rome’s Gregorian University and is also a member of the Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors, a body created by Pope Francis to advise him on the reform effort and led by Cardinal Sean O’Malley of Boston.

Zollner called the way the recent case has been handled “tragic” and “unprofessional.”

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Pédophilie : l’Eglise tremble avant le procès du cardinal Barbarin

LYON (France)
Marianne

September 28, 2017

By Philippe Clanché

Jugé en avril prochain pour “non-dénonciation d’agressions sexuelles sur mineurs” commises par un de ses prêtres, l’archevêque de Lyon, trop sûr de lui, incarne l’impuissance de l’institution religieuse à faire face publiquement à un mal qui la ronge.

Philippe Barbarin prêchait (la bonne parole bien sûr) aux futurs prêtres en soutane de la très classique communauté Saint-Martin, dans la Mayenne, lorsqu’il a appris en ce 19 septembre une contrariante nouvelle. Le cardinal-archevêque de Lyon doit comparaître devant la 6e chambre correctionnelle du tribunal de Lyon, du 4 au 6 avril 2018, pour « non-dénonciation d’agressions sexuelles sur mineurs », des faits commis par un prêtre de son diocèse, Bernard Preynat. Comment une affaire aussi ancienne peut-elle aujourd’hui faire vaciller la star de l’épiscopat français ? Et faire trembler, par ricochet, tous les évêques, qui paniquent à la perspective de découvrir une brebis galeuse parmi leur troupeau…

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News Release: Jehovah’s Witness Sexual Abuse Class Action

TORONTO (Ontario, Canada)
Law Firm of McPhadden Samac Tuovi Haté

October 2, 2017

For Immediate Release

Jehovah’s Witness Sexual Abuse Class Action Toronto law firm McPhadden Samac Tuovi Hate announced today that it had commenced a class action in Ontario against 3 Jehovah’s Witness organizations, one in Canada and two in the United States.

The amount claimed on behalf of the former students is the sum of $66,000,000.

The case has been brought on behalf of current and former Jehovah’s Witnesses who claim they were sexually assaulted by Elders of the organization. There is also a class of claimants composed of those who allege that when they were children they were sexually assaulted by adult Jehovah’s Witnesses.

The action has been commenced on behalf of all those affected, regardless of where in Canada they reside.

While the name of the proposed representative plaintiff has been disclosed in the Statement of Claim, a discreet and confidential claims process whereby the identities of other claimants are not disclosed will be sought.

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$66M class action sex abuse suit filed against Jehovah’s Witnesses

TORONTO (Ontario, Canada)
680 News

October 2, 2017

A group of alleged sexual abuse survivors from across the country have filed a $66-million class action lawsuit against the Jehovah’s Witness, CityNews has learned.

The suit accuses the religious organization of having rules and policies that protect child sex abusers and put children at risk.

“The organization’s policy and protocol for dealing with allegations of sexual abuse is seriously flawed, and results in further harm to victims of sexual abuse and results in legitimate allegations of sexual abuse going unreported,” it alleges.

“This is an issue that the wider community should be concerned with, and not just Jehovah’s Witnesses,” says Tricia Franginha. She says her first 14 years of life as a Jehovah’s Witness were filed with sexual abuse.

“As a result of their procedures, when abuse allegations come forward, these sexual offenders are left at large,” Franginha says. “As most people know about Jehovah’s Witnesses, they are the ones who come to your door on Saturday mornings, when your kids are home, and for all you know, that person has offended more than once.”

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Oregon Court of Appeals upholds pastor’s child sex abuse conviction

OREGON
The Oregonian/OregonLive

October 2, 2017

The Oregon Court of Appeals has upheld the conviction of a pastor sentenced to prison for sexually abusing a girl who grew up in his Happy Valley church.

The court affirmed the conviction of Mike Sperou without opinion on Wednesday, records show. A Multnomah County jury convicted Sperou in 2015 on three counts of first-degree sexual penetration of a person under the age of 12, and he was sentenced to 20 years in prison.

He’s being held in the Oregon State Penitentiary in Salem, and records list his earliest release date as December 27, 2032.

In 1997, seven girls complained that Sperou, co-founder of the North Clackamas Bible Community, had molested them. No charges were brought because the girls’ stories were inconsistent or vague. The allegations came on the heels of a split in the church, leading to the exit of several families.

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Church hosts conference on Child Dignity in Digital World

ROME
Vatican Radio

October 2, 2017

Child Dignity in the Digital World is the title of a world congress being held at Rome’s Pontifical Gregorian University this week. Among the key note speakers is the Vatican Secretary of State, Cardinal Pietro Parolin, and the meeting ends with a papal audience on Friday.

Ahead of the opening session, organisers held a press conference to highlight the urgency of this global challenge of protecting children from on-line abuse.

Listen to Philippa Hitchen’s report:

[AUDIO LINK]

The secret, scary world of children being groomed, abused and radicalized on-line was the subject of a short video shown at the press conference on Monday. It featured seven boys and girls, from toddlers to teens, talking about how easy it is to fall prey to internet paedophiles, traffickers, bullies or recruiters for extremist organisations.

It was a sobering start to this World Congress, which brings together top researchers, government representatives, law enforcement officials, software specialists, NGOs andreligious leaders.

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Salina Catholic Bishop moving to Arizona

SALINA KS
KAKE News (Salina KS)

October 3, 2017

SALINA, Kan. – Some Kansans might dream in winter of moving to Arizona. Now a Kansas Catholic leader is doing it – but not to retire.

The Vatican announced Tuesday that Salina diocese Bishop Edward Weisenburger is being transferred, to become Bishop of Tucson. He will be installed November 29, to replace Bishop Gerald Kicanas. Kicanas was required to resign upon turning 75.

Weisenburger, 56, has served in Salina since May 2012. A statement from the Salina diocese praised him for working in the acquisition of Manhattan’s hospital by Via Christi-Ascension, as well as “efforts to shine a spotlight on the cruel abuse of the poor at the hands of the predatory (‘payday’) loan industry.”

Tucson’s diocese is much larger than Salina’s. The Tucson area has about 450,000 Catholics as opposed to 44,000 in northern Kansas.

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Pope transfers Salina Bishop to Arizona

SALINA KS
Salina Post

OCTOBER 3, 2017

Pope Francis has transferred Bishop Edward Joseph Weisenburger from the Diocese of Salina to the Diocese of Tucson, Arizona, according to a media release.

The Holy See made the announcement Tuesday in Rome. Weisenburger was notified last week by the Apostolic Nuncio, Archbishop Pierre Christophe, that Pope Francis was entrusting to him the pastoral care of the good people of the Diocese of Tucson.

Bishop Gerald F. Kicanas, sixth Bishop of Tucson, submitted his resignation in accord with Church law upon reaching his 75th birthday. He will serve as the administrator of the Diocese until Weisenburger’s installation. Weisenburger’s appointment comes more than a year after Kicanas’ offered his retirement. In light of Kicanas good health and exceptional service, it is not surprising that the Holy See extended his tenure for an extra year. Weisenburger stated “I am humbled to follow in the footsteps of a shepherd who has served graciously and generously for many years. Bishop Kicanas has served in many national capacities for the Catholic Church and is highly esteemed. Knowing that he will continue to reside in our Diocese is a great comfort for me and a blessing for our people.”

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Australian Abuse Report Deeply Flawed

NEW YORK NY
Catholic League

October 3, 2017

By Bill Donohue and Rick Hinshaw

[The report to which this blog post refers is Child Sexual Abuse in the Catholic Church: An Interpretive Review of the Literature and Public Inquiry Reports, by Desmond Cahill and Peter Wilkinson, RMIT University, Australia.]

The following analysis is the work of Catholic League president Bill Donohue and Catholic League director of communications Rick Hinshaw; Donohue has a Ph.D. in sociology and Hinshaw has an M.A. in political science:

On October 6, Cardinal George Pell will appear in a Melbourne court on trumped up sexual abuse charges. The media will no doubt turn its attention to a report issued in August by the Centre for Global Research at RMIT University, Melbourne, “Child Sexual Abuse in the Catholic Church.” It offers what it calls an “interpretive review of the literature and public inquiry reports” on the subject. Its reach is wide: it offers biblical and historical analysis, and covers many nations.

By any measure, the report is deeply flawed and highly politicized. It is also poorly edited—the exact wording on various subjects is repeated several times. Quite frankly, it is one of the most sophomoric attempts to deal with the issue of clergy sexual abuse ever published.

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Church report: Decision reached in Guam archbishop’s Vatican trial

HAGÅTÑA (GUAM)
USA TODAY Network

October 2, 2017

By Haidee V Eugenio, heugenio@guampdn.com

[See the summary of the case against Apuron in our Bishops Accused of Sexual Abuse and Misconduct: A Global Accounting.]

HAGÅTÑA, Guam — A decision has been reached in Archbishop Anthony S. Apuron’s Vatican trial, Archbishop Michael Jude Byrnes said Monday, but it is still awaiting the judges’ signatures.

Tony Diaz, director of communications for the Archdiocese of Agana, said the decision — known as a sentence — has three elements. The first is the specific charge, the second is the specific verdict — guilty, not guilty or not proven, and the third is the penalty.

Diaz said Byrnes has only been notified that there is a decision, but he does not know the specific charges, the verdict or the penalty, if any.

Diaz said the Archdiocese will share whatever information they get from the Vatican as soon as they get it.

Former altar boys have accused Apuron of sexually abusing them in the 1970s. They have filed lawsuits against Apuron and the Archdiocese.

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Amid child porn scandal, Vatican backs push for child safety online

ROME (Italy)
Crux

October 3, 2017

By John L. Allen Jr.

As the Vatican deals with criticism of its handling of the case of a papal diplomat recalled to Rome from Washington facing allegations of child pornography use both in the U.S. and Canada, it’s backing a major summit at Rome’s Jesuit-run Gregorian University this week designed to tackle the growing problem of child vulnerability in an internet age.

ROME – On the heels of its own child pornography scandal involving the computer of a papal diplomat, the Vatican is lining up behind a major summit this week at Rome’s Jesuit-run Gregorian University devoted to the broader theme of keeping children safe in an internet-saturated age.

Titled “Child Dignity in the Digital World,” the Oct. 3-6 conference brings together leading experts on child protection, law enforcement officials, executives of Internet and social media companies, NGOs, and others, to discuss how to promote child welfare online.

The idea is for those various players to hammer out a plan of action, which will be presented to Pope Francis on Friday when conference participants meet him in an audience.

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Judge orders Montana Catholic diocese to update court on settlement plan

GREAT FALLS MT
Great Falls Tribune

October 2, 2017

By Seaborn Larson, slarson@greatfallstribune.com

A U.S. bankruptcy judge last week ordered a hearing intended to map out the remaining settlement proceedings between the Great Falls-Billings Diocese and the 86 victims claiming they were abused by eastern Montana priests through the 1900s.

Last month, settlement negotiations ended after a two-day session without resolution. The impasse reportedly came as the parties disagreed about whether or not certain church assets are available to the settlement fund.

In the order setting the Nov. 2 hearing, Federal Bankruptcy Judge Jim Pappas asked the diocese to provide a summary of the church’s income and expenses since it filed for bankruptcy in March. Primarily, the judge hopes to discuss “the factors leading to the filing of this Chapter 11 case; (the diocese’s) objectives in the case, and the means by which (the diocese) hopes to achieve those objectives.” The hearing also gives the diocese a chance to discuss any other topic of significance that affects the bankruptcy case.

The diocese has argued that certain assets are being held in trust for the parishes, and are therefore exempt from a settlement fund the diocese promised to create for victims when it filed for chapter 11 bankruptcy on March 31.

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Pope names Cardinal Burke a judge on Vatican supreme court

ROME
Catholic News Service via thecatholicspirit.com

October 2, 2017

By Cindy Wooden

Pope Francis has named U.S. Cardinal Raymond Burke a member of the Apostolic Signature, the Church’s supreme court, which the cardinal headed as prefect from 2008 to 2014.

Members of the Apostolic Signature serve as judges in the cases, which mainly involve appeals of lower-court decisions or of administrative decisions by other offices of the Holy See.

The appeals involve everything from challenges to the decisions of marriage tribunals to recourse against the dismissal of a religious, the transfer of a parish priest, the restriction of a priest’s ministry, removal of ministerial faculties, renovation of a parish church and dismissal from a teaching position.

Cardinal Burke’s nomination was met with surprise in some quarters because he continues to speak publicly about issuing a formal “fraternal correction” of Pope Francis over the pope’s teaching in “Amoris Laetitia,” his exhortation on the family. But the public criticism of the pope did not prevent Pope Francis in late 2016 from naming Cardinal Burke the presiding judge in a church trial investigating allegations of sexual abuse leveled against Archbishop Anthony S. Apuron of Agana, Guam. The results of the investigation and trial have not been announced.

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The Most Offensive Street Name in Dallas

DALLAS TX
D Magazine

October 2017

By Tim Rogers

How this happened is still unclear. What should happen next is not.

[See also BishopAccountability.org’s resource page about Grahmann’s handling of the Kos case. Grahmann was bishop of Dallas from 1989 to 2007.]

A newcomer to town wouldn’t give it a second thought. Off West Jefferson Boulevard, in southwest Dallas, between Dallas National Golf Club and Cockrell Hill, there’s a small working-class subdivision called Santa Clara. The entry road is called Via Bishop Grahmann. What could possibly be remarkable about that?

Charles Grahmann served as the sixth bishop of the Catholic Diocese of Dallas, from 1990 to 2007. It was on his watch that a jury in 1997 found the Diocese guilty of gross negligence, conspiracy, malice, and fraud in trying to hide the heinous acts of a child-molesting priest named Rudy Kos. One of Kos’ victims committed suicide. The jury returned the largest clergy-abuse verdict in history, nearly $120 million (later reduced). On the witness stand, Grahmann claimed to have no knowledge of the abuse. Here’s how the jury forewoman described Grahmann’s attitude to the Dallas Morning News: “It looked like he was bored to death and thought he was above it all. I don’t know how you can be in that much denial and have that much evidence.” As the full extent of Grahmann’s culpability was laid bare, the News and D Magazine, both owned by Catholics, called for his resignation.

That is the man whose name the street bears. How that happened remains a bit of a mystery. The land that Santa Clara now occupies once belonged to the Cockrells, one of the founding families of Dallas. It changed hands over the years and eventually came into the possession of the Sisters of Our Lady of Charity and Refuge, who still have a convent a little ways to the north. From them it passed to a number of owners, until a developer called Lennar Corporation, through a subsidiary named NuHome Designs, bought it. The land was platted in 2000, just three years after the Kos trial.

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Diplomat’s recall not unusual, but justice must be served, says expert

ROME
Catholic News Service

October 2, 2017

By Carol Glatz

ROME (CNS) — The recall of a Vatican diplomat suspected by U.S. authorities of having a connection with child pornography reflects normal international protocol, but the suspect must be put on trial and receive punishment if found guilty, said a key organizer of a world congress on child protection.

“Due process has to be followed. If there is a case and if the person is found guilty, then he or she needs to be punished, whoever that is,” said Jesuit Father Hans Zollner, head of the Pontifical Gregorian University’s Center for Child Protection, which is hosting a world congress on protecting minors from online abuse, violence and exploitation.

The Oct. 3-6 congress in Rome came on the heels of the recall of Italian Msgr. Carlo Capella from the Vatican nunciature in Washington, D.C., after the U.S. State Department notified the Holy See of his possible violation of laws relating to child pornography images.

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Judge finds probable cause to charge priest with sex assault

NEW JERSEY
NJ Advance Media for NJ.com

October 2, 2017

By Justin Zaremba, jzaremba@njadvancemedia.com

GUTTENBERG — A hearing has found probable cause for the filing of charges against a Catholic priest accused of sexually assaulting a young parishioner two decades ago.

Probable cause was found for charges of first-degree aggravated sexual assault and second-degree sexual assault against the Rev. Michael “Mitch” Walters on Wednesday, according to an official with the Guttenberg court. The case was then transferred from the municipal court up to the Hudson County Superior Court.

A criminal probe into Walters was first announced in 2016 by Road to Recovery, a Livingston-based group that advocates for victims of clergy abuse. Walters, the group alleged, molested a boy at the St. John Nepomucene Parish in Guttenberg in the 1990s.

Months earlier, Walters was removed from ministry at the Our Lady of Sorrows church in South Orange following allegations he molested children at St. Cassian’s Parish in Montclair in the early 1980s.

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Longtime Native Health Staffer Out After Sex Abuse Allegations Surface

PHOENIX AZ
Phoenix New Times

October 2, 2017

By Antonia Noori Farzan

Dennis Huff, the longtime head of behavioral health services at Native Health of Phoenix — which primarily serves the urban Native American community — has left the organization amid allegations of sexual abuse of students at St. Catherine’s Indian School in Santa Fe during the late 1970s and early 1980s.

Last month, the Archdiocese of Santa Fe included a person named Dennis Huff on a list of 74 clergy members who had been “credibly accused of sexual misconduct over the last several decades,” according to the Santa Fe New Mexican.

On Tuesday, September 26, when Phoenix New Times first contacted Native Health to ask about the accusations, Huff was identified on the nonprofit community health center’s website as a member of the leadership team, with the title of behavioral health services administrator.

Two days later, Huff was no longer listed on the website. Communications coordinator Susan Levy wrote in an email, “Regarding your inquiry, Dennis Huff is no longer employed at Native Health. Our policy is not to release any information regarding current and former employees, except dates of employment.”

On Friday afternoon, Walter Murillo, Native Health’s CEO, shared the following statement:

“Dennis Huff was hired by NATIVE HEALTH in 1992, and served as an exemplary member of our administrative staff. Recently, NATIVE HEALTH received an anonymous letter with allegations against Mr. Huff involving events said to have allegedly occurred prior to his employment with our organization. NATIVE HEALTH requires all employees to pass a rigorous background check and we are not aware of any complaints during Mr. Huff’s employment, nor are there any disciplinary actions reported by the State of Arizona Board of Behavioral Health Examiners. Mr. Huff was required to maintain a criminal background check card, which was monitored and maintained by the Arizona Department of Public Safety, for the length of his employment with us. Upon learning of the allegations against him, NATIVE HEALTH initiated an internal process to determine the best course of action, culminating in Mr. Huff’s decision to resign. During that time, Mr. Huff continued to serve in an administrative role only, with no direct client contact. NATIVE HEALTH regularly reviews our policies, procedures, and practices to ensure that we remain true to our mission providing holistic, patient-centered, culturally sensitive health and wellness services to all people.”

In 2014, a lawsuit filed in New Mexico district court alleged that Huff, then a Franciscan monk at the now-defunct St. Catherine Indian School in Santa Fe, had sexually abused a 15-year-old boy living in the school’s dorms back in 1976. After a settlement conference, the case was dismissed in February at the plaintiff’s request.

In January 2016, a little over a year after the lawsuit was filed, Louie Toya identified himself as the “John Doe” in the case. Toya, a member of Jemez Pueblo, told the Albuquerque Journal that he had run away from the school after the alleged rape occurred and gone on to struggle with alcoholism for most of his life.

According to the complaint, Toya also suffers from “delayed PTSD symptoms, embarrassment, humiliation, destruction and loss of faith, loss of sexual capacity and intimacy, loss of self-esteem, depression, anger issues, nightmares, and other damages” as a result of the abuse.

Toya’s attorney, Levi Monagle, whose firm has filed more than 70 lawsuits against priests from the Archdiocese of Santa Fe, couldn’t confirm that the Dennis Huff named in the lawsuit was the same individual formerly employed by Native Health.

“The Dennis Huff in our case did spend time in Arizona in various capacities,” he acknowledged. “If it is the same person, I find it very troubling.”

Eric Morrow, who represented Huff in the lawsuit, declined to comment on whether his client had relocated to the Phoenix area. Directory phone numbers listed for Huff were either out of date or not in service.

However, a 1997 article in the Albuquerque Journal, archived on a website documenting sexual abuse in the Catholic church, noted that Huff had left the order and was believed to be living in Mesa. At the time, Huff had just been accused of sexually abusing another former student, who had been at the school between 1980 and 1983. (The former student submitted a complaint to local police, but Phoenix New Times was unable to locate any records suggesting that charges were ever filed in court.)

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October 2, 2017

Opinion: Attacks on the credibility of abuse survivors are not justified by research

AUSTRALIA
The Guardian

October 1, 2017

By Michael Salter

New science of trauma and memory has shown that the assertions of ‘false memory’ advocates are exaggerated

For a quarter of a century, the concept of “false memories” has provided a scientific fig leaf for sceptics of child sexual abuse allegations.

The “false memory” argument is deceptively simple: children and adults are prone to invent false memories of child sexual abuse that never occurred, particularly if encouraged by a therapist or some other authority figure.

So-called “recovered memories”, in which adults recall sexual abuse in childhood after a period of amnesia, have been a particular focus of disbelief.

In fact, scientific studies find that children are far less suggestible than we have been led to believe. Brain imaging studies have identified the neurological mechanisms involved in the process of forgetting and then recalling sexual abuse as an adult.

Delayed disclosure and amnesia are now understood as normal coping mechanisms in response to abuse.

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Pastors told to report cases of child abuse

UGANDA
New Vision

October 2, 2017

By Luke Kagiri

Bagonza said there are some pastors who tend to hold on to cases of child abuse as spiritual cases in churches.

Born-Again pastors in Uganda have been advised not to spritualise child abuse cases, but to always report them to Police and concerned authorities.

This was revealed by Bishop Charles Bagonza, the overseer of the Pentecostal Churches of Uganda. Bagonza said there are some pastors who sometimes tend to hold on to cases of child abuse as spiritual cases in churches.

“Any issue or case of child abuse or any form of violation should not be handled in church, but should be reported to the relevant authorities,” he said.

Bagonza was on Saturday addressing the faithful at Mityana Pentecostal Church in Busimbi, Mityana municipality, at an event to mark the closure of the four-month prayer campaign dubbed ‘The DOVE 120’ (Days of Victory Ever).

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Jeff Anderson’s firm to fund law school’s Zero Abuse Project

ST. PAUL MN
National Catholic Reporter

October 2, 2017

By Brian Roewe

[See the 9/14/2017 news release by Jeff Anderson & Associates about the launch of the Zero Abuse Project.]

A $2 million gift from a leading firm in sexual abuse litigation seeks to turn a Minnesota law school into a national training and resource center for child abuse prevention and response.

The donation, from the firm Jeff Anderson and Associates, will create at the Mitchell Hamline School of Law in St. Paul, Minnesota, what is called the Zero Abuse Project. The effort will educate and train lawyers and other professionals in the skills necessary to recognize signs of child abuse, how to better work with people who have experienced such trauma, and ultimately how to advocate for an end to child abuse through courtroom litigation and legal reform.

“Our law firm is making this commitment in the hopes that people don’t need to contact us in the future,” Jeff Anderson, whose office is also based in St. Paul, said in a Sept. 14 press release announcing the project.

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Rushville church at center of child sexual abuse allegations

INDIANA
WISH-TV.com

September 29, 2017

By Vi Nguyen

RUSHVILLE, Ind. — Neighbors are responding after learning about allegations of child sexual abuse at a church in Rushville.

Police executed a search warrant last week at Rushville Baptist Temple Church at 1335 North Spencer Street as part of their investigation.

Police said they are looking into allegations of child molestation and began looking into the church several weeks ago after a woman told them her young daughter was a victim.

During the course of their investigation, police said another woman came forward and said the same thing happened to her as a young girl nearly 30 years ago.

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Vatican No. 2 opens online abuse seminar amid porn scandal

ROME
The Associated Press via WRAL.com

October 2, 2017

By Nicole Winfield

The Vatican’s secretary of state is headlining an international conference on protecting children from online sexual abuse and exploitation, weeks after he recalled one of his diplomats who was caught up in a U.S.-Canadian investigation into child porn.

Organizers said the arrest warrant issued for Monsignor Carlo Capella showed the need for the conference, which opens Tuesday and ends Friday when participants bring a set of proposals to Pope Francis.

Cardinal Pietro Parolin will deliver the keynote address on “The Holy See and its commitment to combatting sex abuse online.” Panelists include leading researchers in public health, law enforcement, government as well as executives form Facebook and Microsoft — evidence of the across-the-board realization that the digital age is bringing exponential new threats to children.

“The risks are everywhere. It is not a western problem,” said the Rev. Hans Zollner, conference organizer and head of the Center for Child Protection at the Pontifical Gregorian University, the Catholic Church’s leading research and education center on sexual abuse prevention and child protection.

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Archbishop of Canterbury accused of hypocrisy by sexual abuse survivors

ENGLAND
The Guardian

September 30, 2017

By Harriet Sherwood

Comments follow Justin Welby’s criticism of the BBC over its handling of the Jimmy Savile abuse cases

Survivors of sexual abuse by Church of England figures have accused Justin Welby of “breathtaking hypocrisy” after the Archbishop of Canterbury criticised the BBC for the way it handled abuse by Jimmy Savile.

Welby said the BBC had not shown the same integrity over accusations of child abuse that the Catholic and Anglican churches had.

In a statement, six survivors of abuse by powerful church figures rejected Welby’s comments and said the record of the church and Welby himself was one of “silence, denial and evasion”.

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Justin Welby accuses BBC over Jimmy Savile abuse victims

ENGLAND
The Guardian

September 30, 2017

By Jamie Doward and Harriet Sherwood

Archbishop of Canterbury faces backlash after claiming broadcaster showed less integrity than church in tackling scandal

The Church of England and the BBC engaged in an extraordinary war of words on Saturday over their responses to sex abuse scandals within their ranks.

The dispute was prompted by criticism of the BBC levelled by Justin Welby for its response to the Jimmy Savile crisis. The archbishop of Canterbury said the BBC had not shown the same integrity over accusations of child abuse that the Catholic and Anglican churches had.

The BBC’s religious affairs correspondent, Martin Bashir, responded by listing cases of alleged sex abuse within the Anglican church, adding that Welby’s comments reminded him of the passage in the gospel of St John in which Christ says “Let him who is without sin cast the first stone”.

Survivors of sexual abuse by CoE clerics accused Welby of “breathtaking hypocrisy” after his criticism of the way the BBC dealt with the many cases of abuse carried out by Savile.

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Anglican church failed to pay child sex abuse survivor agreed $1.5m settlement

AUSTRALIA
The Guardian

September 29, 2017

By Christopher Knaus

‘It’s extremely hard,’ says abuse survivor, who was forced to take church back to court to obtain payment

The Anglican church failed to pay a child sexual abuse survivor an agreed $1.5m settlement, prompting allegations it has treated him with disdain.

The church, however, says the failure to meet Thursday’s payment deadline was inadvertent, and urgently moved to transfer the money after being alerted to the error on Friday.

The survivor, who asked for anonymity, sued the Anglican church’s Brisbane diocese in late 2015 for horrific abuse he suffered at St Paul’s school in the 1980s, at the hands of convicted paedophile Gregory Robert Knight.

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Opinion: Pope Francis is no heretic

CANADA
The Globe and Mail

October 1, 2017

By Michael W. Higgins

Michael W. Higgins is a distinguished professor of Catholic Thought at Sacred Heart University in Fairfield, Conn. He is the co-author of Suffer the Children Unto Me: An Open Inquiry into the Clerical Sex Abuse Scandal.

Evidently, the last time anything like this happened was during the reign of Pope John XXII in the year 1333.

It doesn’t happen that often, so when it does, it is a matter of note.

The fuss in Catholic conservative circles, and the unwelcome stress it has created in the Vatican of Pope Francis, is the letter Correctio filialis de Haeresibus Propagatis or Filial Correction of Pope Francis for the Propagation of Heresies. Traditionalist groups have a sacred bond with the Latin language – the onetime lingua franca of the Roman Catholic Church – so everything, admonition, indictment, or apocalyptic screed appears in the mother tongue.

The Correctio is more than an historical oddity, a fervent initiative launched by scandalized Catholics keen on getting the Barque of Peter steered in the right direction again. It is a shot across the bow and should be read as such and not dismissed as the rantings of a disaffected crowd of ultra-conservative Catholics horrified by the “untoward” actions and musings of a Latin American pontiff who does not play by the rules of orthodoxy.

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New mediator in settlement talks

GUAM
The Guam Daily Post

October 2, 2017

By Mindy Aguon

A new mediator has been agreed upon by the parties in more than 100 church sex abuse cases.

Attorney David Lujan, who represents the bulk of the plaintiffs who have alleged sexual abuse by members of the Archdiocese of Agana and the Boy Scouts of America, confirms retired federal Judge Michael Hogan will not be the arbitrator for the church settlement discussions.

“One of the groups didn’t want Hogan and refused to deal with him because of a bad experience in the past,” Lujan said.

Antonio Piazza, of Mediated Negotiations based in San Francisco, California, has been recognized as one of the leading mediators in the world.

According to his company website, he pioneered the development of mediated negotiations as the preferred alternative to protracted conflict in complex civil disputes, having successfully mediated the resolution of more than 4,000 cases since 1980 with some individual settlements exceeding $1 billion.

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BBC and Archbishop of Canterbury should stop pointing the finger at one another over child abuse, victims’ lawyer says

ENGLAND
The Telegraph

October 2, 2017

By Sarah Knapton

The BBC and the Archbishop of Canterbury should both stop pointing the finger at one another over child abuse, a representative of victims has said after a row over how the corporation and the Church of England handled complaints.

The Most Rev Justin Welby had claimed the church handled sex scandals with more integrity than the broadcaster.

Richard Scorer, a specialist abuse lawyer at Slater and Gordon, who has represented victims of Savile and former Bishop Peter Ball said the BBC and the Church of England should both be “looking very hard at themselves and be focused entirely on how they can both look to improve safeguarding in the future.”

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Vatican tribunal has made a decision in Apuron’s trial

GUAM
Pacific News Center

October 2, 2017

By Janela Carrera

The decision, however, has yet to be made public.

[See the summary of the case against Apuron in our Bishops Accused of Sexual Abuse and Misconduct: A Global Accounting.]

The highly anticipated decision into Archbishop Apuron’s canonical trial has been made but what the decision is has not yet been revealed.

It’s been about a year since a canonical trial was launched on dethroned Archbishop Anthony Apuron in Rome and we are now at the precipice of what will definitely be a historical moment for the Catholic faith on Guam.

Coadjutor Archbishop Michael Byrnes gave an update on Archbishop Apuron’s trial today during a press conference at the Chancery Office.

“I was in contact with Father Justin Wachs just last week, he says that the sentence has been determined but they have to send it out to the other judges for their signatures,” said Byrnes.

Archbishop Apuron stands accused of sexually assaulting at least four altar servers in the 1970s at the Mt. Carmel Catholic Church in Agat. All four alleged victims have pending lawsuits in District Court—one of whom, the late Joseph Sonny Quinata, was done through his estate.

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October 1, 2017

Children of priests step out of the shadows, and the Catholic church responds

BOSTON (MA)
Boston Globe

September 30, 2017

By Michael Rezendes

[See a PDF of the Boston Globe front page with this story.]

Mary “Mimi” Bull was happily married and the mother of three children when she found out that her biological father was a Catholic priest she had known growing up in Norwood in the 1940s. She had always believed that she was adopted and that the priest who often visited was just a family friend.

But it wasn’t until last month, at age 80, that Bull finally spoke to someone with a life story like her own. He is an Irish activist who learned as an adult that his godfather, a local priest, was really his biological dad. Bull talked on the phone for an hour with Vincent Doyle, the first time she had ever spoken with another priest’s child.

“It was huge,” Bull told the Globe.

Many children of priests grow up thinking they are alone in their situation, in their confusion, anger, or sorrow. But they are now discovering how much company they have, and some are coming forward in the aftermath of a Globe Spotlight series in August on a painful, little-discussed issue in the Catholic church: the fate of children born to priests who break their promise to live without marriage or sex.

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Cardinal Burke back at Vatican high court — but as adviser

VATICAN CITY
Associates Press via Washington Post

September 30, 2017

One of Pope Francis’ leading conservative critics, American Cardinal Raymond Burke, is getting a second life at the Vatican high court he headed until Francis removed him in 2014.

Francis appointed Burke as a member of the Apostolic Signatura on Saturday. Members serve as advisers to the court, which currently is headed by a longtime Vatican diplomat, Cardinal Dominique Mamberti.

Francis removed Burke as the court’s prefect in 2014 and named him envoy to the Knights of Malta lay religious order. The pope then effectively sidelined Burke from that job this year after he intervened in a condom scandal that led to a governance crisis in the order.

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First-of-its-kind congress leads global conversation on digital sexual child abuse

ROME (ITALY)
Catholic News Agency/EWTN

September 30, 2017

By Hannah Brockhaus

A global congress to be held in Rome next week will focus on how to protect children in the digital age, bringing together various experts from around the world to develop concrete ways to combat the issue of online child sex abuse.

Fr. Hans Zollner, SJ told journalists Sept. 29 that this is an issue that is dangerous for “many, many young people in the world today.”

Head of the Center for Child Protection and a member of the Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors, Zollner said he has spoken to many parents who do not know what to do about their children’s access to the internet: “Everyone is talking and they do not know what to do.”

With this congress, “we can propose something we believe could be useful.”

But this is just the beginning, he told CNA. “We will start now, but this is again, one step in a very long journey that needs persistence and perseverance and we try to give our contribution to that.”

The world congress, on the topic of “Child Dignity in the Digital World,” is being held in Rome Oct. 3-6. It has been organized by the Pontifical Gregorian University’s Center for Child Protection (CCP).

The week-long congress will include scientists, academic experts, leaders of civil society, high-level politicians, and religious representatives from around the world. It will conclude with a papal audience, where participants will present a final document – a declaration on future action – to Pope Francis.

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Internet Pornography ‘Pernicious’, Says Priest

LONDON (ENGLAND)
The Tablet

September 28, 2017

Catholic columnist and parish priest Alexander Lucie-Smith has raised concerns over the widespread availability of pornography on the internet and said many in the Church will not accept pornography use is “near universal” among boys and young men, writes Bernadette Kehoe.

Addressing the annual Ordinariate festival, in a talk entitled “Preaching the Gospel in the Internet Age”, Fr Lucie-Smith argued that the “pernicious” effect of pornography meant a generation was growing up unable to embark on a proper human relationship. He called for “an urgent, proper proclamation of the sixth commandment and a radical new approach to sex education, marriage preparation and education for chastity”. Organisers of the festival, which took place at a school near Westminster Cathedral, said that the question-and-answer session after the talk showed that he had struck a chord with many of the priests present – and their experience in the confessional.

Fr Lucie-Smith defended the importance of traditional preaching in the computer age, but highlighted the proliferation of opinion in a way that was unknown a generation ago when the “commentariat” comprised a few hundred people. Now, he said, everyone has an opinion and can share it instantly. In his view, a trawl of the Catholic internet reveals “voices overwhelmingly for tradition; it’s the out-of-touch elite that wants change”.

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Alleged Perv Priest Holed Up in Vatican Now Wanted in Two Countries

NEW YORK (NY)
Daily Beast

A Vatican diplomat-priest, wanted in the U.S. and Canada on child pornography charges, is now safe in the Holy See. Can he be brought to justice? Will he?

By Barbie Latza Nadeau

Rome – Monsignor Carlo Capella, a 50-year-old priest and diplomat in the Vatican’s foreign service, allegedly uploaded child pornography from a church in Windsor, Canada, last Christmas, according to a new arrest warrant issued by Canadian authorities. The cleric currently is wanted for accessing child pornography, possessing child pornography and distributing child pornography––but he won’t face the secular charges any time soon because he is safely inside the fortified walls of Vatican City in Rome.

Capella is reported to be the same priest who was secretly swooped back to Rome last August when American authorities wanted his immunity lifted on similar charges. The Vatican will not confirm or deny his identity and would not comment on the Canadian arrest warrant, which does name the suspect. But in September, the Holy See did say it was disciplining the errant unnamed priest in house.

“The Holy See, following the practice of sovereign states, recalled the priest in question, who is currently in Vatican City,” a statement released September 15 says.

According to the Canadian arrest warrant, “Investigators believe that the offenses occurred while the suspect was visiting a place of worship in Windsor. Investigators have determined that the suspect has returned to his residence in Italy.”

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New poll finds Pope Francis still enjoys widespread popularity in U.S.

DENVER (CO)
Crux

September 29, 2017

By Christopher White

New poll finds Pope Francis still enjoys widespread popularity in U.S.

Two years after his visit to the United States in September 2015, Pope Francis is still enjoying widespread approval in the country. New polling results from Saint Leo University Polling Institute found the pope’s overall approval ratings held high, despite waning support for his handling of clergy sexual abuse and immigration.

Two years after Pope Francis visited the United States in September 2015 and four months after his first meeting with President Donald Trump, the pope’s overall approval among Americans Catholics is at 87.9 percent-up from 82.6 this past March.

While the new data evidences a five-point bump among the U.S. Catholic population, his popularity dipped slightly among the general U.S. population, now at 67.9 percent approval, down slightly from 70.5 percent last March.

The polling, which was carried out by Saint Leo University Polling Institute, took place from September 10-16 among 1,000 individuals.

Respondents were asked to weigh in on six areas of the pope’s job performance: Advancing the cause of the poor, human rights work, environmental issues, migration and immigration, handling cases of sexual abuse involving Catholic clergy, and marriage and family issues.
The pope received his lowest approval for his handling of sexual abuse issues, with 46.4 percent of national respondents saying they “strongly or somewhat approve” of his work in this area, while 30.8 percent say they “somewhat and strongly disapprove” of the pope’s course of action.

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Pope Francis Remains Popular, Lowest Marks Earned for Clergy Sex Abuse

ST. LEO (FL)
St. Leo University Polling Institute

September 29, 2017

Pope Francis Remains Popular in National Saint Leo University Poll, Lowest Marks Earned for Clergy Sex Abuse, Immigration, Marriage Issues
Work on human rights issues and in helping the poor received the highest approval ratings

While Pope Francis continues to garner favorable opinion in the most recent Saint Leo University Polling Institute (http://polls.saintleo.edu) survey, his lowest marks come on the issues of handling sexual abuse by clergy, immigration/migration, and marriage and family issues.

The nonpartisan poll was conducted online among 1,000 American adults from September 10 through September 16. As a Catholic university, Saint Leo’s polling institute examines American’s opinions about the pope in each quarterly survey.

Saint Leo’s poll shows the pope’s current favorable opinion rating at 67.9 percent—down from 70.5 percent in the March 2017 poll, and up from the 62.6 percent in the November 2016 poll. Among Catholics nationally, Pope Francis’ popularity increased, with 87.9 percent having a favorable opinion of him, up from 82.6 percent in the March poll.

While the Saint Leo poll routinely asks respondents to rate the job Pope Francis is doing on four issues, the September poll added two issues—one regarding sexual abuse by clerics and one about marriage and family. The poll asked, “How would you rate the job Pope Francis is doing on:”

– Advancing the cause of the poor;
– Human rights;
– Environmental issues;
– Migration/immigration;
– Handling cases of sexual abuse involving Catholic clergy;
– Marriage and family issues.

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Vatican diplomat also wanted in Canada on child porn charges

VATICAN CITY
Catholic News Service

September 29, 2017

By Cindy Wooden

An arrest warrant has been issued in Canada for Msgr. Carlo Capella, the Vatican diplomat recalled from service in Washington in late August, who already was the subject of a Vatican criminal investigation involving child pornography.

Police in Windsor, Ontario, issued a statement Sept. 28 saying, “A Canada-wide arrest warrant has been issued for Carlo Capella, a 50-year-old male, for the charges of: access(ing) child pornography, possess(ing) child pornography and distribut(ing) child pornography.”

“Investigators believe that the offenses occurred while the suspect was visiting a place of worship in Windsor,” the statement said. “Investigators have determined that the suspect has returned to his residence in Italy.”

Msgr. Capella had worked since the summer of 2016 at the Vatican nunciature in Washington. Prior to that, he worked on the Italy desk at the Vatican Secretariat of State. He was ordained to the priesthood in 1993 for the Archdiocese of Milan.

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Why the U.S. Catholic Church Has Lost More Members than Any Other Major Denomination

UNITED STATES
The Open Tabernacle

October 1, 2017

By Betty Clermont

The downward trend in the number of Catholics is pretty familiar by now. In 2016, we were 18% of the population according to a recent PRRI report. In 2014, we were 21% and in 2007, 24% according to a Pew Religious Landscape Study.

The decline in non-Hispanic white Catholics is a bit steeper: 11% in 2016, 12% in 2014 and 16% in 2007.

Thirty six percent of Catholics are Hispanic; 9% are black, Asian and other. Hispanics are 52% of Catholics under the age of 30. The proportion of Hispanics is likely to increase because they have younger children and larger families, according to PRRI.

In 1990, native-born Catholics were 23% of the U.S. population and 87% were white, non-Hispanic.

“The largest decline among major religious groups” has occurred in the Catholic Church according to an earlier PRRI survey. “Nearly one-third (31.2%) of Americans report being raised in a Catholic household, but only about one in five (20.9%) Americans identify as Catholic currently.”

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Barbara Blaine 1956-2017: The Catholic activist who fought for victims of clergy sex abuse

NEW YORK (NY)
The Week

October 6, 2017

For decades, Barbara Blaine stayed silent about the sexual abuse she had suffered as a teenager at the hands of a Catholic priest. Then in 1985, the Chicago social worker read a newspaper story about a pedophile priest in Louisiana and decided to confront church officials in her hometown of Toledo. They dismissed her claims and left her feeling, she said, “raked over the coals.” Uncertain how to heal, Blaine sought out other victims and in 1988 formed the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAP). The group today has more than 21,000 members and is the nation’s most powerful voice for abuse victims. “I don’t think any of us thought when we started;’ Blaine said in 2014, “that we would still be doing it now:’

Blaine was 13 when she was first abused by a priest who convinced her that she was an “evil temptress;’ said The Boston Globe. After attending college in St. Louis, she moved to Chicago, where she headed a Catholic charity that helped to house the homeless. She initially founded SNAP in Chicago as a support group, but its mission soon expanded to advocacy. Members posted fliers outside churches warning that an abusive priest was inside; victims held vigils holding photos of themselves as children when they were first abused.

That activism, together with revelations of massive church cover-ups in Boston and elsewhere, eventually led U.S. bishops to pledge to remove all alleged abusers, said The New York Times. But SNAP accused the church of failing to keep those promises, so Blaine kept campaigning. Following her death, her husband, Howard Rubin, said he was inundated with messages from survivors. “I’m hearing from people,” he said, “who are saying, ‘She saved my life.'”

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Child institutional abuse probe’s approach under fire

SYDNEY (AUSTRALIA)
The Australian

September 30, 2017

By Richard Guilliatt

[See also our caches of Child institutional abuse probe’s approach under fire and ‘Those events never happened’.]

The $500 million royal commission into institutional child abuse is promoting “ethically dubious” and potentially harmful ideas about the counselling of sexual abuse victims and the reliability of their testimony, senior experts in the field have warned.

Several leading national and international researchers say the long-running inquiry has adopted a misguided victim-advocacy role and published misleading, inaccurate research that could potentially undermine the $4 billion redress scheme for abuse victims.

Richard Bryant, director of the Westmead Trauma Stress Clinic, said the royal commission ­appeared to be advocating counselling practices that were potentially dangerous and contradicted guidelines endorsed by the ­National Health and Medical Research Council.

His concerns were echoed by several experts in psychology, including emeritus professor Don Thomson, chairman of the ethical guidelines committee of the Australian Psychological Society, and Elizabeth Loftus of the University of California Irvine, an internationally renowned memory researcher who described some of the ideas endorsed by the commission as “brain babble”.

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Child abuse activist Cathy Kezelman hits back over ‘false memory’ claims

SYDNEY (AUSTRALIA)
The Sydney Morning Herald

September 30, 2017

By Michaela Whitbourn

[See the article that Kezelman is responding to: ‘Those events never happened’.]

A leading child abuse activist linked to the $500 million child abuse royal commission has hit back at claims by her family that her psychological treatment triggered “false memories” of abuse at the hands of her father as she comes under fire over her role advising on a compensation scheme for victims.

Cathy Kezelman, a former GP who heads the influential Blue Knot Foundation representing adult victims of childhood trauma, helped co-write national counselling guidelines for sexual abuse victims and was appointed last year to a panel advising the Turnbull government on the rollout of a $4 billion redress scheme for victims of institutional child sexual abuse.

But in an article published in the Weekend Australian Magazine on Saturday, Dr Kezelman’s brother and emergency doctor Claude Imhoff said he “utterly refute[d]” his sister’s claims that she suffered horrific abuse at the hands of her father and a group of paedophiles led by her paternal grandmother.

“I can categorically state that those events never happened,” Dr Imhoff said.

He said his sister had “simply ignored the professional guidelines and not mentioned anything about the dangers of false memories” being created in counselling sessions and he was speaking out to prevent a wave of false accusations against alleged perpetrators.

Dr Kezelman told Fairfax Media it was “completely false” to suggest her own memories of childhood trauma were triggered by her psychological treatment.

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