ABUSE TRACKER

HARTFORD (CT)
Hartford Courant

November 16, 2017

By Ken Byron

A watchdog group has rated the Archdiocese of Hartford as one of the worst in the country for how much financial information it posts online in a just-released nationwide study of the Catholic Church.

The study, done by the international watchdog group Voice of the Faithful, said the archdiocese in Hartford did not do things that should be routine, like posting audited financial statements and information on the weekly collections that are a key source of church revenue. The study was done over the summer and covered 177 dioceses and archdioceses throughout the U.S. Voice of the Faithful, which focuses on the Catholic Church, announced the results of its survey on Thursday.

Hartford scored 17 points out of a possible 60 on a 10-question survey. That puts Hartford third from the bottom out of the 32 archdioceses in the survey, above Portland, Ore., and Mobile, Ala. The survey looked at dioceses as well. The Diocese of Bridgeport received a score of 55, and the Diocese of Norwich got a 19, according to an overview of the survey.

Archdiocese officials could not be reached for comment on Thursday. Voice of the Faithful spokesman Nick Ingala said there are easy fixes for a low score.

“It’s pretty simple,” Ingala said. “Most non-profits and corporations make financial statements readily available on their websites. That is what we would like to see archdioceses and dioceses do, and also publish guidelines for parish collections. Most of the church’s money comes from parishioners’ donations and they have a right to know where their money is going.”

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MENDHAM (NJ)
The Record

November 17, 2017

By Mike Kelly

His name was Jim and he was a victim of sexual abuse. I thought of him this week amid the continuing stream of revelations of all manner of sexual harassment and outright attacks by powerful men against younger women.

In most of the recent sexual abuse cases involving women, the revelations of what happened to them have been met with justifiable anger against the perpetrators and welcoming support for the victims. But hovering on the edge of this national discussion is a strangely persistent and creepy criticism: Why did it take the women so long to speak up?

This is why I thought of Jim.

Jim Kelly, who is not related to me, lived in Mendham and worked for a telecommunications firm. Before dawn, on a Sunday in October 2003, he left his home and drove to the railroad station in nearby Morristown. As a Hoboken-bound train rolled into the station around 5:15 a.m., Jim sat down on the tracks. He died instantly as the train rolled over him. He was 37.

Why Jim Kelly took his own life was hardly a mystery to those who knew him well. His family and friends said the answer was obvious. As a boy, Jim had been regularly abused by the Catholic pastor of his hometown parish, St. Joseph’s Church in Mendham. Jim never got over the enduring emotional pain that ultimately handcuffed his life.

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UNITED STATES
BishopAccountability.org

Summary of Case: Ronald Sam Gilardi was ordained for the Capuchin Franciscans in 1988. He taught at St. Thomas More Prep – Marian High School in Hays, Kansas until 1996, which shared an address with the Capuchins’ St. Bonaventure Friary. He resided there until 1995. In 1996 Gilardi was moved to Victoria, Kansas, where he was involved with the Capuchin Center for Spiritual Life and, from 1997-2000, he was the sole priest at St. Catharine’s in Catharine, Kansas.

In June 2000 Gilardi was arrested after a report was filed that he had sexually abused a 14-year-old male St. Thomas More Prep – Marian High student in 1993-1994. The boy was a boarder from Texas. Charges included criminal sodomy and indecent liberties with a child. His victim said Gilardi plied him with tobacco, alcohol and pornography. Gilardi pleaded guilty to the indecent liberties charge; he was ordered to spend 32 months in a treatment facility, followed by five years’ probation. His order sent him to the Vianney Renewal Center in Dittmer, Missouri.

As of November 2017 Gilardi appears to have been registered as a Missouri Sex Offender. His last known address is that of the RECON/Wounded Brothers Project in Robertsville, Missouri.

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SANTA FE (NM)
KSFR

November 15, 2017

By Dave Marash

The role of a priest, in the Catholic Church and other religions is that of a mediator, a connector, a communicator of that state of grace known as the Holy Spirit that puts man in touch with God. He is a kind of religious middle man, if you will, between the laity, the ordinary believers of a Churchly congregation and God.

Thus, when a priest abuses members of his congregation, he is committing, simultaneously, 2 betrayals…first, of his sacred relationship to God and his Church, — a breach of faith, and second, of his human relationship to the person he has abused – a breach of trust.

Both of these betrayals seem especially heinous when the victim of abuse is a child.

Compounding these offenses against God and humanity is when a priest’s abuses are covered up by his superiors in the hierarchy of the Church.

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CANBY (OR)
KATU 2

November 16th 2017

CANBY, Ore. – The former pastor at a Canby church is accused of sexually abusing an underage girl, court records show.

Lee Philip Wiegand was a pastor at First Baptist Church, however authorities say the abuse was not related to his time at the church.

A secret indictment filed earlier this month charges Wiegand of nine counts of second-degree sexual abuse. Wiegand was arrested and has since been released after posting bail.

The indictment claims that he abused a minor between October 2011 and October 2012.

Wiegand is expected to appear back in court next month for a case hearing.

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CANADA
CBC Radio- The Current

November 16, 2017

By Anna Maria Tremonti
Produced by Julian Uzielli

Warning: Some of the content may be disturbing

Story transcript

Rachel Jeffs was her father’s third child. He would go on to have 50 more.

Her father, Warren Jeffs, is the leader of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, also known as FLDS — a man believed by his followers to be a prophet.

“We were taught that the world was different than us,” Rachel Jeffs told The Current’s Anna Maria Tremonti.

The highly insular sect is a polygamist offshoot of the mainstream Mormon church. Outsiders aren’t welcome in FLDS communities, where women wear pioneer-style dresses and men commonly take at least three wives.

‘It was just going totally against what he had taught me.’
– Rachel Jeffs

Obedience to her parents was paramount, followed by prayer and modest dress, according to Jeffs.

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RESTON (VA)
CNS News

November 16, 2017

By Michael W. Chapman

(CNSNews.com) — Commenting on breaking news and Sen. Al Franken (D-Minn.) admitting that he groped a woman who was sleeping and took a picture of his actions, Cathoic League President Bill Donohue said “Franken is an admitted molester” and he “should resign immediately.”

“Senator Al Franken should resign immediately,” said Donohue, adding, “There is no place in public office for sexual abusers.”

“If Franken were an accused priest, he would be forced to step aside, pending an investigation,” said Donohue. “Given that he is an admitted molester, he should resign.”

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ALBUQUERQUE (NM)
KOB 4

November 17, 2017

By Chris Ramirez

Fighting for truth and transparency

By now, we know a lot about the priest abuse scandal that swept across the country. There are already countless news stories, big-budget motion pictures and thousands of legal settlements. So the question is, why keep fighting the Catholic Church for more information? Why does it still matter today?

In a three-part series we are calling Shattered Faith, we lay out why all this still matters. There are former priests walking the streets of New Mexico today who are responsible for victimizing dozens upon dozens of children. They have never been criminally charged and they have never faced prison time. In the time span of a few decades, clergymen preyed on more than a hundred children. Now as adults, their mental health has suffered. In fact, many mental health professionals believe the sheer number of adults dealing with childhood sexual trauma has put New Mexico into a mental health crisis.

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AUSTRALIA
The Newcastle Herald

November 17, 2017

After 57 public hearings across 444 sitting days, hearing from more than 1300 witnesses, the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse is a month away from drawing to a close.

The commission will sit for a final day on Thursday, December 14, a session its chief executive, Philip Reed, describes as a chance to thank the public for its continued support since the inquiry began in 2013. The commission will deliver its final report to the Governor-General the following day.

For the many thousands of Australians whose lives have been shattered by child abuse, the royal commission has been a welcome salve on wounds that have festered for years, and may never heal.

As the hearings continued, the chair of the commission, Peter McClellan, began to emerge as a figure of compassion and authority. Compassion when it came to victims gathering the courage to tell their stories. Authority when it came to those in the witness box having to explain their failings, or those of their organisations.

In a speech he gave in Melbourne on Tuesday, Justice McClellan described child abuse as “the greatest of personal violations”. The commission was contacted by 15,000 survivors or their families and received complaints about 4000 institutions. Clearly, the Australian experience was not one of “a few rotten apples”.

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SYDNEY (AUSTRALIA)
The Australian

November 15, 2017

By Brad Norington

All cemeteries across metropolitan Sydney could be up for sale, with a $1 billion privatisation proposal being considered by the NSW government that involves handing control to the Catholic Church.

Catholic Archbishop of Sydney Anthony Fisher has been an active supporter of the proposal advocated by an investment advisory firm, Fabrico, which claims “a commercial way of thinking” is needed to tackle a burial-space shortage on crown land in greater Sydney.

Under the sell-off plan, Sydney’s four cemetery trusts currently owned by the NSW government and operating on crown land would be consolidated into a new company and leased for 99 years to Fabrico.

Fabrico would then seek to sublease management of the combined cemeteries covering all religious faiths to the Catholic Metropolitan Cemeteries Trust, which currently manages Australia’s largest cemetery at Rookwood in Sydney’s west, and is controlled by Sydney’s Catholic Archdiocese.

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AUSTRALIA
The Guardian

November 15, 2017

By Aida Edemariam

Australian law may soon require priests to break the confidentiality of the confessional and report anything they hear about sexual abuse. Would it simply bring the practice into line with therapy or does it pose a mortal threat to a cherished sacrament?

There’s a story that is sometimes told, in refresher courses for priests who regularly take confession, that goes like this: when a well-known local criminal died, he was given a full Catholic funeral. The faithful were outraged – not only was he a sinner, he was a well-documented, public sinner. Don’t worry, said his son (who happened to be a Catholic priest), I heard his confession on his deathbed. At once, the son was hauled in by his bishop and ticked off – not for taking his father’s confession, but for talking about it. Everyone knew he meant well, said the bishop, but the seal of confession was sacrosanct: under no circumstances could it be revealed who had given confession to whom, and what it was about. If he had done the latter, he might even have been excommunicated.

In August, a commission investigating child abuse in the Catholic church of Australia recommended that any failure to report suspicions of child sex abuse to the authorities should result in criminal charges – even if the discovery was made within the seal of the confessional. “We are satisfied,” the commissioners wrote, “that confession is a forum where Catholic children have disclosed their sexual abuse and where clergy have disclosed their abusive behaviour in order to deal with their own guilt.” The archbishop of Melbourne’s reply was unequivocal: the seal could not be broken, and if that meant going to jail, well, so be it. In the US, in 2009, Rebecca Mayeux sued the Catholic Diocese of Baton Rouge and one of its priests for not doing anything about her confession, when she was a teenager, that she was being abused by a parishioner. The case is due to be heard in the first circuit court of appeal, but was dealt a blow in September when the Louisiana supreme court upheld the confidentiality of confession.

Confession occupies a curious place in the culture, especially from the point of view of non-Catholics: shadowy boxes and gabbled catechisms, Hail Marys and rosaries. It is often treated ironically – or, if not, as the life-or-death moral choice of Alfred Hitchcock’s 1953 film I Confess, in which a priest to whom a murderer has confessed ends up accused of the deed himself.

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IRELAND
Irish Central

November 17, 2017

By Nick Bramhill

An organization which represents over 1,000 Catholic priests across Ireland, has given each member a memo of instructions to follow in the event of an allegation of sexual abuse being brought against them.

The set of guidelines were unveiled by the Association of Catholic Priests at their recent annual meeting, following growing concern within the group that some members who have been falsely accused in the past have not received the backing from their religious superiors.

The organization, which drew up the seven-step information card following earlier meetings with the National Board for Safeguarding Children in the Catholic Church in Ireland (NBSCCC), also spoke of its concern over what it sees as the “guilty until proven innocent” culture that has left many innocent priests traumatized.

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KENNEBUNKPORT (ME)
NECN

November 16, 2017

By Danielle Waugh

A former Massachusetts priest who spent a decade in prison for raping an altar boy has pleaded not guilty to 31 sex abuse charges in Maine.

Two men have accused Ronald Paquin of sexually abusing them at a trailer in Kennebunkport, Maine in the late 1980s. Both accusers were children at the time of the abuse.

Keith Townsend of Seabrook, New Hampshire, has identified himself as one of the accusers.

“I didn’t know if people would believe a story as old as this, but all I could think of is, ‘how many more victims are going through what I’m going through?’” he said.

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UNIONDALE (NY)
National Catholic Reporter

November 16, 2017

By Peter Feuerherd

UNIONDALE, N.Y. — Recounting the trail of sex abuse crimes that ended with Fr. Romano Ferraro in a Massachusetts prison serving a life sentence, representatives from the Minnesota-based Jeff Anderson & Associates law firm came to Long Island, New York, with a warning for victims delivered at a Nov. 15 press conference at the Marriott Hotel in Uniondale.

Those abused by Romano, they said, need to put in a claim for compensation by Dec. 21 to the Diocese of Brooklyn, New York, which ordained Romano in 1968.

Court documents show that Ferraro served not only in the Brooklyn Diocese but also in the Rockville Centre Diocese on Long Island. Records released at the press conference indicate that Ferraro also worked as a priest in New Jersey and Missouri, as well as in Florida and the Philippines, two places where he served as a naval chaplain.

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UNITED STATES
Times of Israel

November 15, 2017

By Michael J. Salamon

Dear Judge Moore,

I think you should avoid public life now. Some of your colleagues have suggested that you step aside. You would do well to heed them. I am not suggesting that you are guilty. I will leave that up to the members of your political party, your legal colleagues, and your religious community. However, there are certain things about your behaviors that I would like to highlight.
Do not bother suing the Washington Post. It will only cost a lot of wasted money. It is not in your best interest. If you go after the media, they will dig up even more dirt on you.

Pretending not to recall the names of malls and restaurants in your community where you hung out and sought out teenaged victims is also not advisable. You see, there are patterns that predators follow and you seem to fit some of them.

Abusers often have a script that they choose to perform from. They groom victims, select people they are familiar with either personally or by virtue of their lifestyle and personality and try to establish a good name for themselves in the community — it acts as a buffer against accusations. It’s almost like lying or massaging the truth as certain politicians are highly adapt at. But, you’re right, patterns are not so simple and many predators manage to get away with their heinous acts because of their overpowering images, rhetoric and bluster. In fact, when asked why they abused many sexual abusers simply say, “Because I could.”

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AUSTRALIA
Australian Associated Press

November 16th, 2017

By Jodie Stephens

A former employee at Parramatta Girls’ Training School has been committed to trial over alleged historical sexual assaults against schoolgirls.

Frank John Valentine was last year charged with more than 30 offences from the 1970s including rape, assaulting a female and committing an act of indecency, and assault occasioning actual bodily harm.

Court documents show the 77-year-old was further charged about six months ago with another five historical offences against a male.

At Parramatta Local Court on Thursday, Magistrate Jennifer Giles committed Valentine to trial after he waived his right to a committal hearing.

He is scheduled to be arraigned in the NSW District Court on December 7.

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UNITED STATES
The New York Times

November 15, 2017

By Bethany Mandel

In 2014, on Yom Kippur, the holiest day of the Jewish calendar, Rabbi Barry Freundel led the congregation of his Washington synagogue in pursuit of humble repentance before God. Ten days later, he was arrested and charged with dozens of counts of voyeurism. Ultimately, the rabbi was accused of having surreptitiously videotaped more than 150 women on hidden cameras in the bathroom of the mikvah, the ritual bath.

I was one of them.

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UNITED STATES
The New York Times

November 15, 2017

By Vanessa Grigoriadis

The outpouring of emotion over stories of sexual harassment in the workplace has been shocking and inspiring. After Harvey Weinstein’s sins were reported by The New York Times and The New Yorker, women (and men) in entertainment and a host of other industries have come forward with sickening tales of their own. The calls for greater accountability — meaning sustainable change beyond companies firing a handful of terrible, famous men — seem genuine.

This moment of clarifying anger is particularly impressive given the recent lack of respect paid to another type of victim, one who dominated the news directly before Mr. Weinstein’s fall from grace: the college sexual assault victim. Even as debate about sexual harassment at institutions as disparate as Fox News and Artforum rages on, we have entered a period of backlash regarding student-on-student sexual assault on campus.

About six years ago, colleges began offering better support and justice for victims, pushed in part by a grass-roots movement among students themselves. But in September, pundits across the political spectrum approved when the Education Department rolled back some Obama-era rules that had broadened protections for college sexual assault victims, ostensibly because they robbed accused students of their right to due process in campus courts. Obama’s rules were already pro forma at some colleges before his 2011 federal guidance, so I believe the backlash isn’t truly about government policy, but discomfort about the change in how students approach the problem of sexual assault today.

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Saint Cloud (MN)
SC Times

November 14, 2017

Bishop Donald Kettler of the Diocese of St. Cloud announced Tuesday that two names have been added to the list of clergy likely to have abused minors. Both men are deceased.

In a press release issued by the Diocese, Casimir Plakut and Augustine John Strub were named as religious order priests added by St. John’s Abbey in Collegeville to its list of men “likely to have offended minors.”

Plakut was ordained in 1938 and died in 1988. Strub was ordained in 1947 and died in 2015.

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HARRISBURG (PA)
Reading Eagle

November 16, 2017

By Beth Brelje

HARRISBURG – State Sen. Judy Schwank has offered legislation that she says will make it harder to keep sexual misconduct a secret in Pennsylvania.

The measure would make it illegal to silence victims with nondisclosure agreements to settle cases of sexual misconduct.

“For too long, sexual predators have hidden behind legal practices like nondisclosure agreements or settlements in which a victim agrees to not sue or discuss terms of a deal in exchange for a monetary settlement,” said Schwank, a Ruscombmanor Township Democrat. “If the agreement is violated, the other party can sue and seek damages from the victim.”

Her legislation would end this practice.

“Sexual predators should not be allowed to hide their secrets in the shadows of nondisclosure agreements, escaping justice because of their power, wealth or prestige,” Schwank said Wednesday during a news conference about the legislation at the state Capitol.

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DETROIT (MI)
The Associated Press

November 15, 2017

A former priest who says prosecutors waited too long to charge him with sexual abuse has lost his case at the Michigan appeals court.

James Rapp was sentenced to at least 20 years in prison for molesting students at Lumen Christi High School in Jackson in the 1980s. He was in prison in Oklahoma for similar crimes when he was charged in Michigan in 2015.

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GUAM
Pacific News Center

November 15, 2017

By Janela Carrera

At the time of the alleged abuse, Father Antonio Cruz was a priest at the Chalan Pago Parish.

Guam – Another sexual abuse lawsuit has been filed in federal court, naming the late Father Antonio Cruz as the alleged perpetrator.

The alleged victim, L.J.G., who is now 58 years old, says Cruz sexually abused him at his house on several occasions when he was 15 years old.

Cruz was a friend of the family, according to the complaint, giving him access to the minor at the time.

This is 147th lawsuit to be filed agains the Archdiocese of Agana.

L.J.G. is seeking $5 million in damages.

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CHARLESTON (SC)
ABC News 4

November 16th 2017

UPDATE | Armando Gonzalez pleaded guilty to 2 charges: lewd act w/ minor; criminal sexual conduct w/ minor 3rd degree.

— This story is being updated —

Attorneys say a former Lowcountry Sunday school teacher is expected in court today. We’re told Armando Gonzalez will plead guilty to sexually abusing children.

The hearing was scheduled to begin at 9:30 a.m.

Police say Gonzalez sexually abused children in 2010 and 2015. They say he and his wife were involved with a Salvation Army child care center in West Ashley.

Attorneys for the victims argue Salvation Army employees didn’t perform a proper background check on Gonzalez. They say employees should have discovered a history of abuse and never let him in the door.

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HUNTSVILLE (AL)
Los Angeles Times

November 15, 2017

By Jenny Jarvie

When Kenneth Frost, a Baptist deacon, first heard that a woman had accused Roy Moore of sexual abuse, he was skeptical. Not only did the allegation stem from nearly 40 years ago, but Moore — a figure he admires and believes to be a man of God — denied the woman’s claims.

The 79-year-old Republican vowed to support Moore, whether or not he was guilty.

“I believe in innocent until proven guilty, but even if he’s guilty, I’ll back him all the way,” said Frost, a member of Macedonia Baptist Church in Ranburne, a town of about 400 in eastern Alabama. “I still feel he’s a Christian man — and nobody’s perfect.”

The thorny issue of Moore, the Republican U.S. Senate candidate who faces accusations of sexual assault weeks before voters go to the polls, was not on the agenda as hundreds of church leaders gathered at the Whitesburg Baptist Church here this week for the annual meeting of the Alabama Baptist State Convention.

Yet up and down corridors and inside meeting rooms, pastors and deacons grappled with what to make of the allegations from women who say Moore, 70, a Baptist and former chief justice of the Alabama Supreme Court, sexually assaulted or attempted a relationship with them when they were teenagers.

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SPINDALE (NC)
The Associated Press

November 16, 2017

By Mitch Weiss and Holbrook Mohr

SPINDALE – Former members of a controversial Western North Carolina-based church want the state to take legal action to overturn a court-ordered compromise they say has crippled child abuse investigations involving the sect.

The former congregants of Word of Faith Fellowship also want Rutherford County child protection agency director John Carroll to resign, saying he pushed for the 2005 settlement and has failed to protect children from abusive practices inside the church.

The ex-members said they are sending letters urging action to North Carolina’s governor, attorney general and state and county child welfare officials.

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LONG ISLAND (NY)
News 12 Long Island

November 15, 2017

KINGS PARK – Lawyers are asking anybody who may have been sexually abused by a Long Island priest to come forward.

Former Catholic priest Romano Ferraro is now a convicted serial pedophile.

“It is hard to hear this and know what he has done,” says Marianne Helldorfer, a parishioner of St Joseph’s Church in Kings Park, where Ferraro once served.

Attorneys who represent Ferraro’s victims want to get the word out to others who may have been abused. That’s because a monetary compensation program offered by the Brooklyn Diocese, where Ferraro was ordained, has a Dec. 21 deadline.

“It is vital that survivors here on Long Island, if they were abused by Father Ferraro…comply with the Diocese of Brooklyn guidelines,” says attorney Michael Reck.

Ferraro served at St. Joseph’s between 1975 and 1977. Two alleged victims have come forward, but attorneys believe there may be more.

“We believe there are many children that were abused and are suffering in silence,” Reck says. “They are not alone and they do have rights.”

Those fighting for the victims say that monetary compensation falls short. They say they want the church to admit there was a decadeslong cover-up to protect pedophile priests and want the names of the accused priests to be publicly released.

“The bottom line is secrets are kept,” says Patrick Wall, a sex abuse victims advocate. “Secrets are kept in the archives of every diocese across the country.”

Church officials released a statement saying in part, “We recognize that no amount of monetary compensation could ever erase or undo the grave harm suffered by survivors of child abuse.”

Both the Diocese of Rockville Centre and Brooklyn are offering the compensation program.

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GUAM
USA Today Network

November 15, 2017

By Jerick Sablan

HAGÅTÑA, Guam — A settlement could be reached soon in four sexual abuse cases filed last year against Archbishop Anthony S. Apuron in Guam district court.

During a hearing Wednesday on a motion to dismiss the lawsuits, Apuron’s attorney, Jacqueline Terlaje, and attorneys representing the accusers asked Chief Judge Frances Tydingco-Gatewood to delay her decision until Dec. 31 to give them time to work on a possible settlement.

Former altar boys Walter Denton, Roy Quintanilla, Roland Sandia and the family of deceased former altar boy Joseph “Sonny” Quinata sued Apuron last fall, accusing him of molesting and/or raping the boys in the late 1970s, when he was a parish priest. All came forward in summer 2016 to make public accusations against Apuron, who has denied the allegations. (Sondia is an employee of the Pacific Daily News.)

Apuron was removed from the island in June 2016 to undergo a Vatican trial in connection with the accusations, but details of the trial or its outcome remain unknown.

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AYRSHIRE (SCOTLAND)
Ayrshire Post via Daily Record

November 16, 2017

Francis Moore, 82, of Largs, is charged with crimes against three boys between 1977 and 1981 in locations in South and North Ayrshire.

The trial of a retired priest accused of historical sex abuse will now take place next year.

Francis Moore, 82, of Largs, is charged with crimes against three boys between 1977 and 1981.

He also allegedly indecently assaulted a student priest between 1995 and 1996.

Moore had been due to stand trial next month.

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LEXINGTON (KY)
Lexington Herald Leader

November 15, 2017

By Jane Chiles

I have read, watched and listened to the commentary concerning the allegations that have been swirling around Roy Moore, candidate for the U.S. Senate seat that was vacated when Sen. Jeff Sessions joined the Trump Cabinet as attorney general. I can no longer remain silent. I had been hopeful that we had evolved beyond the “destroy the victim” culture, but it is clear that we have not.

In 2002, a lengthy series of investigative articles were published in the Boston Globe, exposing the U.S. Catholic Church’s long history of sexual abuse of minors by priests. Ultimately, after months of stories validating this evil, the church was forced to confront its demons.

As a lifelong Roman Catholic who had spent the most recent 12 years of my life as the executive director of the Catholic Conference, handling public policy for the Catholic bishops in Kentucky, and raising three sons in the church, I am unable to fully describe how crushingly painful, shocking, disappointing and anger-generating this was for me.

But I was one of the lucky ones. I was able to arrive at a horrific train wreck and roll up my sleeves and do something about this. I was appointed to the first National Review Board in July of 2002, a board created by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops.

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ALBANY (NY)
The Associated Press

November 16, 2017

ALBANY, N.Y. (AP) Advocates for a bill in New York that would loosen the statute of limitations for molestation are hoping the national attention on sexual misconduct gives their cause fresh momentum.

The bill would have given victims more time to file civil lawsuits or seek criminal charges against their abusers. It also would create a one-year window for past victims to file civil suits.

Victims now have until they turn 23 to sue, but supporters say it often takes far longer for victims to report their abuse.

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NEW BRUNSWICK (CANADA)
CBC News

November 16, 2017

By Gabrielle Fahmy

56 lawsuits against Catholic priests currently in front of New Brunswick courts could cost millions

Dozens of new sexual abuse lawsuits involving priests from the Moncton archdiocese are threatening the financial viability of the church.

CBC News found at least 56 lawsuits against the Roman Catholic Church in New Brunswick that are still in front of the courts, and this despite an extensive conciliation process that was conducted a few years ago.

Between 2012 and 2014, the church hired retired judge Michel Bastarache to talk to victims confidentially.

The Moncton archdiocese ended up paying $10.6 million to 109 victims, and the diocese of Bathurst $5.5 million to 90 victims.

It’s estimated victims received between $15,000 and $300,000, depending on the severity of the abuse, how old they were when it started, and how many years it lasted.

What followed were major cutbacks by the church.

In Moncton, diocesan staff was slashed by half, from 19 before 2013 to fewer than 10 now. Only two staff members were kept on full time.

The diocesan centre in Dieppe, which used to be the home of the archbishop, was sold.

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NEW BRUNSWICK (CANADA)
The Globe and Mail

November 15, 2017

By Kevin Bissett

A lawyer representing dozens of alleged Catholic sex abuse victims in New Brunswick says he expects hundreds more complainants may emerge.

Robert Talach said he believes more people will seek compensation through the courts after a 2012 reconciliation process that saw 80 victims compensated, and that the actual number of victims in the province is in the hundreds.

“It’s going to be shocking for people,” he said Wednesday from his office in London, Ont.

“You are talking dozens of victims for each priest. These guys were left in the field operating and abusing for decades.”

Talach said he believes that a CBC News estimate of 56 current lawsuits against the Catholic Church in the province is low, noting that he’s handling about 32 involving the late Camille Leger alone.

Leger was a priest in Cap-Pele, N.B., between 1957 and 1980. He died in 1990 and his accusers only came forward after his death.

“I’m not surprised by that,” said Talach. “People wait for a juncture in their life where they can deal with it. Sometimes people wait until their elderly, very Catholic parents pass away. There are triggers that are very individual to every person.”

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GUAM
Kuam News

November 15, 2017

By Krystal Paco

Is it too little too late? Chief Judge Frances Tydingco-Gatewood will have to decide if a 2016 law that lifted the statute of limitations on child sexual abuse cases covers all expired claims. The issue comes as defense for Archbishop Anthony Apuron motions for dismissal. At stake: the nearly 150 clergy sexual abuse lawsuits filed to date, both in the local and federal courts.

If the legislature intended to lift the civil statute of limitations for all child sexual abuse cases, they didn’t do it right.

This according to Attorney Jacque Terlaje’s reading of Public Law 33-187, the legislation that enabled the close to 150 clergy sexual abuse lawsuits filed in both the local and federal courts to date.

Terlaje represents Archbishop Anthony Apuron.

Though only four of the lawsuits name Apuron as an abuser, how Chief Judge Frances Tydingco-Gatewood rules in these cases impacts all the others.

Wednesday’s hearing addressed defense’s objection to Magistrate Judge Joaquin Manibusan’s report and recommendation to deny defense’s motion to dismiss.

Terlaje urged the Chief Judge to look at the law’s language noting the legislature should’ve been more specific in their 2016 law if their intent was a 100-percent lift of the statute of limitations.

Terlaje stated “the law in front of the court only corrected the 2011 law.”

That law, if you recall, opened a window for victims to file their claims, but provisions in that law kept anyone from filing.

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ROME
CRUX

November 15, 2017

By Claire Giangravè

On Nov. 3, a 17-year-old girl went to the Maggiore Hospital in Bologna, in northern Italy, saying that she had been raped and robbed. The local parish priest, Father Lorenzo Guidotti, was quick to write a post on his private Facebook account saying that he has no pity for the young woman, who, in his view, was responsible for what happened to her.

ROME – While sexual assault allegations against people in positions of power gain momentum in the United States, recent events in Italy have highlighted an ongoing culture of victim-blaming, even at times by Church and government officials.

Italian actress and director Asia Argento, one of the first victims to speak up against award-winning Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein, has now described dozens of instances of alleged sexual assault, and reportedly fled to Germany to escape the “climate of tension” and “victim-blaming” in her native country.

This is not the only time when some Italian citizens and media have shown a lack of empathy with victims of sexual assault who condemn their attackers, including a recent case with a parish priest who took to Twitter to criticize a rape victim.

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JACKSON (MI)
Associated Press

November 15, 2017

JACKSON, Mich. (AP) A former priest who says prosecutors waited too long to charge him with sexual abuse has lost his case at the Michigan appeals court.

James Rapp was sentenced to at least 20 years in prison for molesting students at Lumen Christi High School in Jackson in the 1980s. He was in prison in Oklahoma for similar crimes when he was charged in Michigan in 2015.

The appeals court says any statute of limitations was suspended when Rapp was locked up in Oklahoma. The 3-0 opinion was released Wednesday.

The 77-year-old Rapp pleaded no contest to criminal sexual conduct. Authorities say he coerced students into having sexual contact while working as a teacher and wrestling coach.

Rapp worked in six states before he was defrocked as a priest.

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GUAM
The Guam Daily Post

November 15, 2017

By Mindy Aguon and John O’Connor

A former priest of the Archdiocese of Agana, defrocked and implicated in several sex abuse lawsuits, died on Tuesday.

Raymond F. Cepeda had been ill for many years, according to family members. He was 66 years old.

His death was mentioned in court by attorney Jacqueline Taitano-Terlaje during a hearing for sex abuse cases involving her client, suspended Archbishop Anthony Apuron, yesterday at the District Court of Guam.

Cepeda previously served as a priest at the San Vicente-San Roke Church in Barrigada and the Santa Barbara Church in Dededo.

He was laicized in 2009 for “serious allegations of abuse.”

Cepeda has been named in more than 10 cases of child sexual abuse from the 1980s and ’90s.

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LOUISVILLE (KY)
WHAS 11

November 15, 2017

LOUISVILLE (WHAS11) — A priest serving a 15-year-prison sentence for sexually abusing a teenage boy is getting out early.

James Schook has been granted early parole.

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LONDON (ENGLAND)
Anglican Communion News Service (ACNS)

November 15, 2017

An international commission established to make the Churches of the Anglican Communion safe places for children, young people and vulnerable adults has begun its work. The Anglican Communion’s Safe Church Commission was established by the Anglican Consultative Council (ACC) at its meeting last year in Lusaka; in one of four resolutions on safeguarding.

The establishment of the commission was recommended by the Anglican Communion Safe Church Network – a global group of clergy and laity which “emerged out of a concern that a number of Anglican Provinces have seen highly publicised lapses in behaviour by some clergy and church workers with tragic consequences for those who have been abused.” The network, which was recognised by the ACC at its 2012 meeting in Auckland, “is a growing international group of people committed to the physical, emotional and spiritual welfare and safety of all people involved in churches throughout the Anglican Communion.”

While the network has an on-going brief to educate people about abuse and misconduct in churches, and to equip and support people working to make their churches safe, the commission has been given a specific time-sensitive task.

It will identify safeguarding policies and procedures currently in place within the Churches of the Communion; and develop new international guidelines in time for consideration by the Anglican Consultative Council at its next meeting in 2019. In its 2016 resolution establishing the commission, the ACC envisages that the guidelines will be implemented “as far as practicable” by each of the Communion’s provinces.

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UNITED STATES
CTV News

November 15, 2017

By Jeff Lagerquist

Warning: This story may contain details that some readers may find disturbing

Rachel Jeffs finds it hard to watch family videos of the life she left behind inside the
Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (FLDS) compound in Utah.

The reclusive breakaway polygamist sect of the Mormon Church from which she escaped in 2015 is totally isolated from the outside world, hidden behind six-foot concrete walls. Women are often married to men twice their age while still in their teens. Most husbands take several wives.
Jeffs’ trauma started much earlier. Her abuser was her father Warren, the church’s self-proclaimed prophet and leader, now serving a life sentence plus 20 years for child sexual abuse. He’s run the cult from his cell since 2011.

Jeffs is one of 53 children born to her father’s 78 wives.

In her vivid new memoir, Breaking Free, Jeffs details her years of sexual abuse at the hands of her cult-leader father and explains how she found the strength to escape with her five children to start a new, happier life.

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GUAM
Pacific Daily News

November 15, 2017

By Jerick Sablan

Former Guam priest Raymond Cepeda, who is accused in 11 different lawsuits of sexually abusing children on island, died Tuesday, according to information provided at a hearing Wednesday morning in federal court.

Attorney Jacqueline Terlaje, who represents Archbishop Anthony Apuron in separate clergy abuse lawsuits, informed the court about Cepeda’s death during a hearing on the Apuron cases. She did not provide details about how or where Cepeda died.

Cepeda was 66, according to voter records.

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GUAM
Pacific News Center

November 15, 2017

By Janela Carrera

Guam – One of the defendants in the child sex abuse scandal has died. He is defrocked priest Raymond Cepeda.

Cepeda was previously a priest at Santa Barbara Catholic Church in Dededo. In 2009 he was laicized or defrocked amid allegations of sexual abuse.

Cepeda has also been named in a number of sex abuse lawsuits filed against the Archdiocese of Agana. As one of the few defendants living on Guam and still alive at the time the lawsuits were filed against him, Cepeda was served with court documents and was ordered to file an answer to the charges. Before he could do that, the cases were stayed pending mediation.

In the District Court of Guam, Cepeda was named a defendant in 10 sexual abuse lawsuits.

The archdiocese has released a statement saying Cepeda died Tuesday and that he had been ill for many years, adding “the archdiocese extends prayers and condolences to Cepeda’s family and friends.”

Cepeda was 66 years old.

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IRELAND
The Irish Times

November 11, 2017

By Colm Keena

Paradise Papers reveal an Irish priest’s key role in the finances of a rich Catholic order whose founder was a sex abuser

An Irish priest played a key role in offshore structures holding substantial assets belonging to the wealthy but secretive Catholic order the Legionaries of Christ, the Paradise Papers have revealed.

The Paradise Papers are 13.4 million leaked legal and other files showing tax avoidance and other financial activity across numerous businesses from 1950 to 2016. They have been published over the past week as part of a global investigation by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists.

Fr Anthony Bannon (70), a former Irish superior of the organisation, appears in the leaked files from the Appleby law firm alongside the Mexican founder of the order, the late Fr Marcial Maciel Degollado, as well as on the corporate registry in Panama.

Maciel, a long-time friend of Pope John Paul II, has been condemned as a serial sex abuser of seminarians in his cult-like order. He used his order’s money to buy influence in the Vatican, and usually travelled with tens of thousands of dollars in cash on his person.

He also fathered children by two women, and used false identities. One former member of the order, Dublin priest Fr Peter Byrne, tells The Irish Times that in his view Maciel was a “sociopath” and a “gangster”.

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CORAL SPRINGS (FL)
Miami New Times

November 14, 2017

By Tim Elfrink

The call came from California. A woman told Coral Springs Police she had recently learned something terrible: A South Florida man had molested her daughter for years. It began when the girl was just 4 years old.

An officer noted the information and called the victim, who was then a teenager. She confirmed the story in stomach-churning detail.

The man had forced her to perform oral sex, she said. He would regularly “finger and fondle her” genitals, make her touch his penis, and “dirty talk” to her. The abuse lasted until she was a teenager, she told the cop. She’d never even told her family about the crimes.

By the end of that harrowing call on August 20, 2015, police knew the accused predator was no ordinary suspect. His name was Bob Coy, and until the previous year, he’d been the most famous Evangelical pastor in Florida.

Over two decades, Coy had built a small storefront church into Calvary Chapel Fort Lauderdale, a 25,000-member powerhouse that packed Dolphin Stadium for Easter services while Coy hosted everyone from George W. Bush to Benjamin Netanyahu. With a sitcom dad’s wholesome looks, a standup comedian’s snappy timing, and an unlikely redemption tale of ditching a career managing Vegas strip clubs to find Jesus, Coy had become a Christian TV and radio superstar.

But then, in April 2014, he resigned in disgrace after admitting to multiple affairs and a pornography addiction. Coy shocked his flock and made national headlines by walking away from his ministry, selling his house, and divorcing his wife.

The sexual assault claims, which have never before been divulged, raise new questions about the pastor, his church, and the police who handled the case. Documents show that Coral Springs cops sat on the accusations for months before dropping the inquiry without even interviewing Coy. His attorneys, meanwhile, persuaded a judge with deep Republican ties to seal the ex-pastor’s divorce file to protect Calvary Chapel Fort Lauderdale from scrutiny.

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GUAM
Pacific Daily News

November 15, 2017

By Steve Limtiaco

A 58-year-old man has accused former Guam priest Antonio Cruz, who died more than 30 years ago, of sexually abusing him in 1974, according to a lawsuit filed Tuesday in the U.S. District Court of Guam.

The lawsuit, filed by a man identified only by the initials “L.J.G.” states Cruz was close friends with the man’s parents and visited the family weekly.

It is the 143rd lawsuit filed in federal or local court, accusing a clergy member or other person associated with the Catholic Church on Guam of sexual abuse.

It is the 10th lawsuit accusing Cruz of sexual abuse. If the allegations are true, Cruz abused boys on Guam for about 20 years, from 1957 to 1977. Cruz died in 1986.

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CAROL STREAM (IL)
Christianity Today

November 15, 2017

By Krispin Mayfield

Practical ways to care for the wounded.

Alex left home 10 years ago when he was 18 and hasn’t been to church since. When a friend at work mentioned going to church, Alex felt nagging guilt. Alex hoped that by attending church with his friend he might feel better about himself.

As a young boy, Alex was sexually abused by his uncle. When Alex told his parents about the abuse, they instructed him to “be a good Christian” and forgive his uncle. It’s been years since Alex has seen his uncle, but the shame left by the abuse remains and has made him feel disconnected.

Alex remembers his former pastor’s attempts at transparency during sermons. The pastor spoke about arguments with his wife on the way to church and failure to rest on Sabbath days. “If those are the darkest aspects of your life,” Alex thought, “you could never understand my experiences.”

While sitting in the church service with his coworker, Alex felt worse about himself. Everyone else seemed put together and healthy. “I’m broken and out of place,” Alex thought.

Alex’s experience is one of many stories about the aftermath of abuse and how attending church can be difficult for those who, like Alex, have endured trauma. No single statistic captures the ubiquity of abuse. The National Center for PTSD estimates that 7 to 8 percent of the general population will have Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) at some point. However, there are many people who do not neatly fit a PTSD diagnosis but have experienced what psychologists call “attachment trauma” and other forms of abuse or neglect. The National Center for Victims of Crime shares that 1 in 5 girls and 1 in 20 boys are victims of sexual abuse. The National Domestic Violence Hotline reports “Nearly 3 in 10 women (29%) and 1 in 10 men (10%) in the US have experienced rape, physical violence and/or stalking by a partner and report a related impact on their functioning.” The statistics do not consider rates of spiritual abuse, sexual harassment, verbal abuse, or other forms of maltreatment.

Given those statistics, how in the everyday aspects of church life can we care for survivors of trauma? How can church leaders convey welcome and belonging to survivors of abuse who show up to a Sunday service? There are a number of ways those things can be accomplished within the church.

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LONG ISLAND (NY)
Newsday

November 14, 2017

By Bart Jones

Three men who say priests victimized them as children voice gratitude or skepticism — but want the Catholic Church to make records public.

The three men grew up on Long Island in devout Catholic families. They attended Catholic schools and were befriended by parish priests they say were revered by their parents and often were dinner guests in their homes.

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TOWSON (MD)
WBAL TV 11

November 14, 2017

A man who sexually abused a 4-year-old girl at a church will spend the next 18 years in prison.

Terrence Smalls, 27, had pleaded guilty to sexual abuse of a minor and was sentenced Tuesday to 25 years with all but 18 years suspended. He will be on five years of probation upon his release.

On Nov. 27, 2016, after service at the Church of Nativity in Timonium, a 4-year-old girl told her mother that Smalls, a volunteer in the daycare room of the church, had abused her in a bathroom during the church service.

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NEW BRUNSWICK (CANADA)
CBC News

November 15, 2017

By Gabrielle Fahmy

Every month, new legal action is taken against the church in Moncton, Bathurst and Edmundston

Almost every month for a year, lawsuits have been filed against the Catholic Church in New Brunswick by alleged victims seeking compensation for sexual abuse by priests.

Many of the priests are dead, but that hasn’t stopped the lawsuits in Moncton, Bathurst and Edmundston from piling up.

CBC News has found at least 56 lawsuits are still before the courts, despite an extensive conciliation process a few years ago.

At least 11 priests are targeted in the accusations, and one name appears far more often than others.

“It’s very difficult to see all these new allegations coming in,” said Moncton Archbishop Valéry Vienneau.

“We are going through a very difficult time. It certainly has not helped our credibility, as priests and as a church.”

Thirty-two of the accusations are against one individual — Camille Leger.

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UNITED STATES
BishopAccountability.org

Summary of Case: John L. Abrams was ordained for the Diocese of Brooklyn in 1951. He was an assistant priest at several consecutive parishes before being placed in charge in 1971 of St. Gregory’s in Crown Heights for eight years, followed by three years as pastor of Sacred Heart in Bayside, Queens. In 1982 he was transferred to St. Patrick’s in the Fort Hamilton neighborhood, where he assisted until 1988. During 1988-1989 Abrams was ‘in residence’ at St. Francis de Chantal. According to the Official Catholic Directory, he was ‘Absent on Sick Leave’ 1989-1997, after which he was ‘Retired.’

At some point after the US Bishops’ Conference in 2002, several men came forward to the diocese with allegations that Abrams had sexually abused them when they were boys during the late 1970s-early 1980s, while Abrams was pastor of Sacred Heart. The diocesan review board determined in 2007 that the allegations were credible. Abrams was barred from public ministry, and the matter was to be referred to the Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.

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ETHETE (WY)
National Public Radio (NPR)

November 14, 2017

By Melodie Edwards

One morning earlier this year, Northern Arapaho member Rose was sitting at the table with her 14-year-old daughter, Latoya.

“I told her to move her hair because she had her hair like this,” said Rose, showing how Latoya pulled her hair over to hide her neck and cheek. “Because I noticed something … she had marks, hickeys, just completely covering her, even almost on her face.”

That’s when Latoya told her mother that she had been forcibly kissed by a woman from another reservation who was six years older. (NPR is using only their middle names because they fear retaliation.)

“At that moment, I saw me in her,” Rose said. She took a deep breath and this time there were tears in her voice. “And there was just nothing I could do for her except let her know, it’s not your fault; it’s OK; I’ll protect you.”

Rose wanted more than anything to protect her daughter because when she herself was 6, she too was molested by an older girl. Studies show that 1 in 3 Native American women is sexually assaulted in her life. But Rose wanted to stop that cycle of abuse.

According to a new poll by NPR, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, 36 percent of Native Americans living in majority-Native areas say they avoid calling the police because of a fear of discrimination. And nearly half say they or a family member feels he or she has been treated unfairly by the courts. But thanks to a recent law, a small number of tribes are creating their own court systems in hopes they will process cases faster and restore trust.

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IRELAND
The Irish Times

November 13, 2017

By Patsy McGarry

Former Glenstal abbot says pandemic of child abuse and incest is a ‘religious problem’

Moralising will not help us understand the wave of sexual harassment and child abuse cases that have emerged nationally and internationally, says Mark Patrick Hederman, former abbot of the Benedictine monastery at Glenstal, Co Limerick.

Instead, he believes we must look at the human passions that connect people such as Harvey Weinstein and Tom Humphries.

“We’ve had three philosophers of the 20th century that decided there are only three basic energies that move us all. One is power, the other is sex, and the other is money.”

While this does not capture the full picture, “it’s a good beginning… The world goes round because of sex, said Freud; or money for Marx, and power for Nietzsche,” he says.

“The church had found that out in the Middle Ages and they said: ‘We’ll put three stops on those three things – poverty, chastity, and obedience.’ So they put vows over them. It was like putting a manhole over the sewer. It doesn’t work like that.”

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ST. LOUIS (MO)
The Missourian

November 13, 2017

The Most Rev. Robert J. Carlson, Archbishop of St. Louis, reported he has received an allegation of sexual abuse of a minor against retired priest Rev. Dennis B. Zacheis.

The acts are alleged to have occurred while he was an associate pastor at St. Margaret Mary Alacoque Parish in Mehlville from 1975 to 1979. Father Zacheis denies the allegation.

Father Zacheis, known here locally as Father Dennis, served as pastor at St. Gertrude Parish in Krakow from 1994 to 2003.

Archbishop Carlson, in consultation with the Review Board of the Archdiocese of St. Louis, has decided for the sake of openness and transparency to make this known.

No details of the accusation were given and it’s unclear whether the accuser had involved the police.

Father Zacheis has been retired from ministry without priestly faculties since 2010, due to alleged irregularities in finances for which he was responsible as pastor of St. Anthony’s in Sullivan. He currently resides in a private residence.

In keeping with the Charter for the Protection of Children and Young People, an announcement about this allegation has been made in the archdiocesan newspaper, The St. Louis Review, and in the parishes where Father Zacheis served.

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IRELAND
The Journal

November 14, 2017

The Association of Catholic Priests is launching therapy sessions for the mental wellbeing of priests.

AN IRISH PRIESTS group is launching therapy sessions for its members whose morale has been affected by sexual abuse scandals within the Catholic Church.

The Association of Catholic Priests will run its first Circle of Healing session in Cork on 28 November, as part of its move to help churchmen affected by the Church’s scandals, including those who have been wrongly accused of sexual abuse.

Father Tim Hazelwood, a spokesperson for the group of 1,000 priests, said the aim of the sessions is to help priests “process” and “explore their feelings around the sexual abuse scandals” and to provide support of those who have had to deal with years of negativity within the Church.

“The last 20 years were hugely traumatic for the lives of priests,” Father Hazelwood told TheJournal.ie.

He said that the lives of priests have changed drastically over the past number of years and the public’s attitude toward priests has shifted, leaving priests fearful “that people will say things to them or get aggressive towards them” if they wear their clerical clothes in public.

“On top of that, there have been so many sexual abuse scandals. There is all that negativity and no forum where priests can talk about it,” Father Hazelwood said.

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ROME
The Associated Press

November 14, 2017

An Italian diocese is defending its decision to ordain a seminarian accused in a book and an investigative TV report of having engaged in gay sex with a fellow teenager while both studied at the Vatican’s youth seminary.

A statement Tuesday from the diocese of Como said church superiors had investigated claims against the seminarian and determined that he was worthy of being ordained a priest. It said church authorities in Rome had given him a “positive” evaluation, which factored into the decision to ordain him.

Italian journalist Gianluigi Nuzzi revealed the case of the unnamed seminarian in his new book “Original Sin.” This weekend, investigative TV report “Le Iene” (The Hyenas) interviewed the subject of the seminarian’s reported advances. He said the seminarian, who was a year older and had a position of authority over younger students, would come into his dorm at night demanding sex starting when he was 13 and continuing until he was 18.

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INDIA
Times of India

November 14, 2017

By Pradeep Gupta

Ulhasnagar: Vithalwadi police on Tuesday arrested a 40-year-old Sharon Fellowship Church priest and a 25-year-old female devotee for allegedly raping a Class X student for two years. Another devotee alerted the victim’s mother that there was something amiss with the priest who had tried to touch her inappropriately and was suspected to have sexually assaulted her daughter.

On receiving a text message, the 15-year-old victim’s mother took her daughter into confidence and checked the information. “My daughter broke down and revealed the ordeal that she had been facing for two years. She said the priest had threatened her and used to get physical with her after his accomplice, a devotee too, used to blackmail her and take her to his house, where both sexually assaulted my daughter,” the victim’s mother stated in her complaint.

A team led by senior inspector S J Shirsat and inspector Nandlal Khadkikar carried out a probe and arrested Geet Kumar Somnath Pillai alias Manikuttan alias Shreejit and Rosy (name changed), who served as a priest at the church in Vithalwadi. Police will record the statement of the woman who alerted the victim’s mother too.

The minor has been visiting the church for three years along with her family to offer prayers. “She had met Rosy, who introduced her to Pillai, in February 2015. They got close and finally she took her to the accused’s house, where the priest and devotee raped and committed unnatural sex with her,” said a police officer.

Khadkikar said the team was also probing if the accused had committed similar offences with others. Shirsat said they are were recording statements and collecting evidence in the case.

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LAFAYETTE (LA)
Daily Advertiser

November 14, 2017

By Ken Stickney

The Rev. F. David Broussard’s trial date on child pornography charges remains set for Nov. 27, according to court officials and the office of the accused man’s defense attorney.

Broussard is scheduled to appear before Judge Vincent J. Borne of St. Mary Parish in 16th Judicial District Court in St. Martinville.

The Diocese of Lafayette priest, suspended from his duties after his July 2016 arrest, is accused of possessing more than 500 images of child sex abuse on his personal computer. A diocesan priest for more than two decades, he most recently was assigned to St. Bernard Roman Catholic Church in Breaux Bridge, where he also served as chancellor of the church school.

He remained free on $25,000 bond.

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BALTIMORE (MD)
The Crime Report

November 14, 2017

By Tom Nugent

The grisly story of a young Catholic nun’s murder—still unsolved—took a shocking new twist Monday night when a Baltimore television station quoted both witnesses and a police spokesperson in a news telecast which suggested that five additional murders (four of them involving teenagers) were linked to rampant sex abuse by both Catholic priests and local police during an 11-year period that began in 1970.

The story on WJZ-TV—the CBS outlet in Baltimore—marked the first time ever that a mainstream news organization has reported on a current police investigation of apparent connections between six different unsolved murders and Catholic Church/police sexual assaults in Baltimore.

While confirming the fact that Baltimore County cold case detectives are currently looking for connections between the unsolved killings and the sexual abuse, county police spokesperson Corporal Shawn Vinson told WJZ: “We’ll continue to try to look for any leads, any additional evidence that we can find.”

The groundbreaking news program on the six unsolved murders stemmed from recent disclosures unearthed during a local, 22-year-long reporting effort. Those findings were published in Inside Baltimore, an independent online newspaper last August.

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UNITED STATES
Chicago Tribune

November 14, 2017

By Kathryn Brightbill

We need to talk about the segment of American culture that probably doesn’t think the allegations against Republican Senate candidate Roy Moore are particularly damning, the segment that will blanch at only two accusations in the Washington Post expose: He pursued a 14-year-old-girl without first getting her parents’ permission, and he initiated sexual contact outside of marriage. That segment is evangelicalism. In that world, which Moore travels in and I grew up in, 14-year-old girls courting adult men isn’t uncommon.

I use the phrase “14-year-old girls courting adult men,” rather than “adult men courting 14-year-old girls,” for a reason: Evangelicals routinely frame these relationships in those terms. That’s how I was introduced to these relationships as a home-schooled teenager in the 1990s, and it’s the language that my friends and I would use to discuss girls we knew who were in parent-sanctioned relationships with older men.

One popular courtship story that was told and retold in home-school circles during the 1990s was that of Matthew and Maranatha Chapman, who turned their history into a successful career promoting young marriage. Most audiences, however, didn’t realize just how young the Chapmans had in mind until the site HomeschoolersAnonymous.org and the blogger Libby Anne revealed that Matthew was 27 and Maranatha was 15 when they married. Libby Anne also drew mainstream attention to Matthew Chapman’s writings, in which he argued that parents should consider marriage for their daughters in their “middle-teens.” At that point the Chapmans stopped receiving quite so many speaking invitations.

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NEWCASTLE (AUSTRALIA)
Newcastle Herald

November 15, 2017

By Joanne McCarthy

GRAEME Lawrence was the charismatic 13th Anglican Dean of Newcastle who supported the Hunter through the 1989 earthquake, the 2005 Bali bombing and the 2007 floods, and was honoured for his work by a grateful community.

He declined to comment on Tuesday after police charged him with sexually assaulting a teenage boy, 15, in the early 1990s, following a referral in 2016 from the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse.

It marked another point in a fall from grace for the former Anglican priest that has included the public airing of sexual abuse allegations at a Newcastle Anglican disciplinary hearing in 2010, a failed Supreme Court appeal against its findings in 2011, his defrocking in 2012 and denial of child sex allegations during questioning at a royal commission public hearing in Newcastle in 2016.

Mr Lawrence, 75, was arrested at a Kotara home by Newcastle City Local Area Command Strike Force Arinya police at 8.30am on Tuesday and charged with four counts of aggravated sexual assault and aggravated indecent assault.

In a statement NSW Police said the charges related to “alleged sexual assaults upon a 15-year-old boy in the Hunter region during 1991”.

He was granted conditional bail to appear at Newcastle Local Court on December 7.

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MONTREAL (CANADA)
Montreal Gazette

November 14, 2017

By Paul Cherry

Olivain Leblanc, 75, pleaded guilty to one count of gross indecency and apologized to the victim and his mother.

A priest who taught at Collège Notre-Dame decades ago and admitted on Tuesday to having sexually abused a teenage boy at the school has been sentenced to 15 months of house arrest.

Using a walker and unable to meet the usual Montreal courthouse requirement to stand, Olivain Leblanc, 75, sat while he pleaded guilty to one count of gross indecency.

Prosecutor Amélie Rivard explained that, between 1979 and 1981, the abuse involved oral sex and touching the student in a sexual manner when the victim was a young teenager. She also said the joint recommendation made on the sentence, along with defence lawyer Isabel Schurman, was agreed upon during a long facilitation process where negotiations where held before a different Quebec Court judge outside of a courtroom.

“Nothing can repair (the victim),” Rivard said while summarizing the difficulty the man went through after he was abused. In a story published in the Montreal Gazette in 2010, the victim said he lived a solitary life, wrestling with the psychological after-effects of what he experienced. He said he bounced from dead-end job to dead-end job while his former classmates went on to become engineers, lawyers and doctors.

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GUAM
The Guam Daily Post

November 14, 2017

By Mindy Aguon

A 58-year-old man alleges a priest, who was a family friend, would often visit his home when he was a teen and sexually abuse him.

L.J.G., who used initials to protect his identity, filed a civil complaint in the District Court of Guam yesterday against the Archdiocese of Agana. The case alleges the victim was sexually abused in 1974 by Antonio C. Cruz, who was a priest at Our Lady of Peace and Safe Journey church in Chalan Pago.

The lawsuit alleges Cruz was close friends with L.J.G.’s parents and visited the boy’s home on a weekly basis.

During those visits, documents state, Cruz sexually molested and abused L.J.G. who was 15 years old at the time.

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AUSTRALIA
ABC Newcastle

November 14, 2017

By Liz Farquhar and Kerrin Thomas

The former Anglican Dean of Newcastle Graeme Lawrence has been arrested and charged with alleged sexual assaults on a 15-year-old boy.

The alleged offences occurred in the NSW Hunter region in 1991.

In 2016, police in Newcastle received a referral from the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse, and Strike Force Arinya was formed to investigate.

Mr Lawrence was one of a number of current and former Anglican Church officials to give evidence at the royal commission hearing into the Anglican Church in Newcastle last year.

This morning, officers from the strike force arrested the 75-year-old former dean at his home in the Newcastle suburb of Kotara.

Mr Lawrence was taken to Waratah Police Station and charged with four counts of aggravated sexual assault and aggravated indecent assault.

He has been granted conditional bail to face Newcastle Local Court next month.

He was defrocked in 2012.

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AUSTRALIA
Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC)

November 13, 2017

By Danny Tran

Police forces failed in their duty to protect Australian children because they often refused to believe their complaints about sexual abuse, the royal commission’s chairman says.

Child protection agencies also failed to listen to children, leaving them in situations of danger, Justice Peter McClellan said in some of his final remarks before the commission’s final sitting.

The chairman of the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse gave a speech in Melbourne this afternoon, critical of Australia’s major social institutions for seriously failing to protect children from paedophiles.

“It is not a case of a few ‘rotten apples’,” he said.

“The problems have been so widespread, and the nature of the abuse so heinous, that it is difficult to comprehend.

“Across many decades many institutions failed our children. Our child protection, criminal and civil justice systems let them down.

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ALBANY (NY)
PR PR Health via The Daily Telescope

November 14, 2017

By Brad Bennett

Astronomical numbers of vulnerable victims fall prey to sexual abuse and rape in Governor Andrew Cuomo’s system and almost all reported criminal cases disappear

Governor Cuomo knows about these atrocities, he has protected most of the criminals involved and he has taken no significant actions to stop or prevent any of these sex crimes or criminal cover-ups.”
— Michael Carey

ALBANY, NEW YORK, UNITED STATES, November 14, 2017 — Governor Andrew Cuomo took decisive actions following the award winning New York Times “Abused & Used” investigative reporting series to keep these horrific heinous crimes from the 911 call systems, local police and county elected prosecutors. The sole purpose of bypassing local authorities and courts is to cover-up crimes. Similar to the Catholic Church sex scandal where sexual predators were shuffled from parish to parish, this is exactly what New York State’s mental health care system is doing with predator caregivers https://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/04/04/sex-abuse-catholic-church_n_5085414.html. Instead of Catholic priests, it is sexual predators posing as caregivers working in a widely known unsafe system which is rampant with sexual abuse.

It’s all about power, control and the money and hardly anything about providing safe care and services for our most vulnerable. Almost every imaginable safety and abuse prevention measure still is not in place to protect people with disabilities in residential care facilities and group homes. Hiding and concealing information and documents from authorities and the general public is the key to this disgusting scheme and this also is what Governor Cuomo has chosen http://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/sdut-cuomos-office-tightly-controls-public-records-2014oct23-story.html.

The Criminal Conspiracy occurring surrounds the governor’s fraudulent Justice Center also hiding and concealing documents and evidence of sex crimes and many other types of crimes, including homicides, from local police so that criminal investigations in most cases will never happen. No 911 call, no tape of the reported crime, no police report, no independent medical report , no criminal investigation, then it didn’t happen is how New York State is operating under Governor Andrew Cuomo.

New York State documents also obtained through FOIL dating back to 2005 reveal that the New York State OMRDD/OPWDD system has a culture of sexual abuse, rape and cover-ups. Thousands of reported sex crimes committed against the disabled are never reported to local police or District Attorney’s and are disappearing within the system that former Attorney General Cuomo and now Governor Cuomo has protected with a vengeance http://www.einpresswire.com/article/414428414/cuomo-has-been-protecting-sexual-predators-for-over-a-decade?n=2 . State data, as well as this well known study found on the State of Massachusetts website titled, Prevalence of Violence, http://www.mass.gov/dppc/abuse-recognize/prevalence-of-violence.html point to possibly one third of developmentally disabled residents within Governor Cuomo’s OPWDD system are being sexually assaulted annually. In a system of 126,000 developmentally disabled children and adults, many of whom cannot speak to tell anyone anything, there are upwards of 43,000 victims every year. Try to wrap your mind around the scope of what I am bringing to your attention.

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TEMPE (AZ)
Daily Mail

November 13, 2017

By Snejana Farberov

– Jaime Lara resigned from ASU on Thursday, after Roman Catholic Diocese of Brooklyn outed him as a disgraced former cleric

– Lara was ordained in 1973 and was in active ministry until 1992 when he was removed from the priesthood by the Vatican

– It was between 1979 and 1981 that Lara is accused of molesting three children ranging in age from 9 to 11 years old at St. Francis Xavier Church in Brooklyn

– Alleged vicitm Ricardo Gonzalez, now aged 48, told the New York Times Father Lara began molesting him when he was 11 years old

A well-respected research professor at Arizona State University has resigned after the Roman Catholic Diocese of Brooklyn revealed last week that he had been defrocked more than 25 years ago for sexually abusing children.

University officials requested that Jaime Lara step down from his post after they learned of his history as a priest. His resignation was tendered Thursday, The Arizona Republic first reported.

Lara was ordained in 1973 and was in active ministry until 1992 when he was removed from the priesthood by the Vatican. The information was posted Wednesday on the diocese website along with the names of seven other former clerics who had been removed from priesthood.

It was between 1979 and 1981 that Lara is accused of sexually abusing three children ranging in age from 9 to 11 years old at St. Francis Xavier Church in Brooklyn, according to the victims’ attorney, Mitchell Garabedian.

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UNITED STATES
Longview News Journal

November 14, 2017

By Ross Douthat

Lately we have been given an extended education in the different varieties of liberal pigs. There’s the industrial-scale predator who buys indulgences from Planned Parenthood. And the male feminist who respects women so very much — especially when they’re too drunk to resist him. And the Great Man of Letters creeping on his co-workers. And the let-it-all-hang-out artist who thinks it can’t be assault if the only person you’re touching is yourself.

But this past week our era of exposure has reminded us that cultural conservatism has its own distinctive swine.

So while we wait to see what becomes of Alabama Senate candidate and professional Christian Roy Moore, who is credibly alleged to have spent his 30s pursuing high school girls with the “I get older, they stay the same age” gusto of Matthew McConaughey’s character in “Dazed and Confused,” it’s worth doing a quick typology of the predators that flourish among the godly and moralistic.

One type is what you might call the rotten patriarch. This is the man who depends on the trappings of spiritual or familial authority to exploit the young and weak, shame them into silence and preemptively discredit them.

The rotten patriarch might be anyone from a handsy pastor or a lecherous pillar of the community to the leader of a sect or religious order. And in the defenses of Moore from various Alabama Republicans you can see the way conservative impulses protect this kind of figure — both in the suggestion that a man of his religious reputation should be trusted over his accusers, and in the risible invocation of biblical examples to defend an older man’s lust for a 14-year-old girl.

But there are other styles of predation that flourish within conservative communities. For instance, there is the burrower, the networker, the institutionalist — the predator who embeds himself within a hierarchical system that protects him because it wants to protect itself.

Many Catholic priests-abusers fit this pattern. Their clerical authority didn’t always keep them from getting chased out of parishes. But they were networked with other predators who helped them skate through to the next assignment, and the larger ecclesiastical entity saw its own self-protection as more important than their punishment.

Then finally there is the serial repenter — the creep who relies on the promise of forgiveness to keep his place and his powers and his opportunities to prey again.

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NEW ZEALAND
Stuff

November 14, 2017

By Joel Ineson

A senior member of the Catholic Church has thrown his support behind a strengthening bid for a royal commission into child abuse, but will not pledge the same from the institution as a whole.

Bill Kilgallon wants his own church – and all other faith-based institutions – to be included in the Government’s inquiry into the abuse of children in state care before 1992.

The call comes as concern continues to mount that the Government’s inquiry will miss the scale of historical child abuse in New Zealand if it limits its scope to state-affiliated or owned institutions.

An Australian Royal Commission into child abuse, considered by many to be a global benchmark, reported that 60 per cent of abuse happened in faith-based institutions.

“If they keep going down the track of just a state institution inquiry . . . it’ll leave the majority of abuse out,” Liz Tonks, a supporter of male sex abuse victims, said.

Sporting clubs have also been flagged by advocates as institutions that need to be included in an inquiry.

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AUSTRALIA
Australian Associated Press (AAP)

November 13, 2017

By Jamie McKinnell

A former Anglican priest has been charged with sexually assaulting a 15-year-old boy in the NSW Hunter region in the early 1990s.

Newcastle detectives began investigating the now 75-year-old in 2016 after a referral from the child sexual abuse royal commission.

Police say the man is a former “senior” priest who allegedly abused the boy in 1991.

He was arrested on Tuesday morning at a home in Kotara.

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BALTIMORE (MD)
CBS Baltimore

November 13, 2017

By Denise Koch

BALTIMORE (WJZ) — Could a nearly 50-year-old secret be behind the murders of several Baltimore teenagers?

WJZ continues its investigation into the murder of young nun Sister Cathy, who was silenced right before she was about to blow the whistle on a powerful sex ring run by priests and police.

WJZ has learned that police are now looking into whether other unsolved murders could be connected.

Sister Cathy Cesnik’s decomposing body was found frozen in a ditch in Lansdowne in January 1970.

The murder of this popular nun has never been solved, and neither have the murders of five young people killed over the next decade.

Now, Baltimore County police are actively trying to determine whether the cases are linked.

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Nantucket (MA)
Mass Live

November 12, 2017

By Scott J. Croteau

The Cape and Islands district attorney will meet with the son of Heather Unruh after he accused actor Kevin Spacey of sexually assaulting him on Nantucket in 2016.

The Boston Globe reports the meeting will take place soon and District Attorney Michael O’Keefe wants all the information relevant to the alleged sexual assault.

In an announcement last week, former WCVB-TV news anchor Heather Unruh accused Spacey of sexually assaulting her then 18-year-old son at the Club Car bar in Nantucket in July 2016. Unruh’s son worked as a busboy there.

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NASHVILLE (TN)
Baptist Press

November 13, 2017

By Diana Chandler

NASHVILLE (BP) — While a growing international storm of sexual abuse allegations and revelations has swirled for more than a month, the Southern Baptist Convention has long encouraged churches to be proactive in preventing abuse, SBC resources show.

Spiritual leaders, churches and seminaries should model, exhort and teach the highest standards of moral and ministerial integrity, and churches should use legal resources and avenues to exclude sexual predators from leadership and influential positions including pastors and counselors, the SBC said as early as 2002.

“We call on our churches to discipline those guilty of any sexual abuse in obedience to Matthew 18:6-17 as well as to cooperate with civil authorities in the prosecution of those cases,” the SBC said in its resolution that year On the Sexual Integrity of Ministers . “We pray for those who have been harmed as a result of sexual abuse and urge our churches to offer support, compassion, and biblical counseling to them and their families.”

A Hollywood sexual abuse scandal that began in early October with accusations against movie mogul Harvey Weinstein revived a “Me Too” campaign birthed 10 years ago by activist Tarana Burke, according to Ebony.com, “to unify those who’ve been victimized by sexual violence.” The revived campaign, widely attributed to Alyssa Milano and identified in social media as #MeToo, drew support from scores, some of whom alleged sexual abuse in church settings.

Living Proof Ministries Founder Beth Moore and Saddleback Church Cofounder Kay Warren are among Southern Baptists sharing personal stories at #MeToo.

Apart from the #MeToo campaign, a civil lawsuit alleging sexual abuse-related offenses against First Baptist Church of Columbia, S.C., was filed Oct. 10 in Richland County, S.C., Fifth Judicial Circuit Court, according to online court documents.

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PORTLAND (ME)
Portland Press Herald

November 13, 2017

By Edward D. Murphy

The abuse of boys allegedly took place in Kennebunk in the late-1980s

A York County grand jury has re-indicted a former priest from Massachusetts who is accused of repeatedly sexually abusing two boys he brought to Maine in the 1980s.

Ronald Paquin now faces 31 counts of sexual abuse in York County. He was originally indicted in February on 29 counts of sexual abuse for acts he allegedly committed in the mid- to late-1980s when he brought the boys to Maine for “short-term stays,” Kennebunk Police Chief Craig Sanford said at the time Paquin was charged. Sanford would not say where the alleged abuse occurred, other than to describe it as “a seasonal location,” or provide any other information on the charges.

Paquin, 74, has been held at the York County Jail since he was arrested and formally charged in February.

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GUAM
Pacific News Center

November 13, 2017

By Janela Carrera

There are over 130 sex abuse lawsuit filed against the church so far.

Guam – The latest sex abuse lawsuit filed against the Archdiocese of Agana describes some of the routine practices of the alleged pedophiles against the victims.

The latest lawsuit comes from B.F. who names two individuals, Father Louis Brouillard and Boy Scout Leader Edward Pereira. B.F. says that he was not a member of the Boy Scouts or officially an altar server but often participated in their events and outings.

The sexual abuse began in the mid 1960s when B.F. was 10 years old. At the church rectory, B.F. alleges that Brouillard would instruct B.F. and his friends to take turns sitting on his lap with both priest and minors fully naked. According to the complaint, Brouillard would fondle the victims and force them to perform the same to him.

The victims says Pereira also sexually abused him by groping his private parts outside of his clothing.

B.F. is seeking $10 million in damages.

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GUAM
USA Today

November 12, 2017

By Haidee V Eugenio

HAGÅTÑA, Guam — A year since stepping into a fractured community of faith, Archbishop Michael Jude Byrnes continues to work on bringing people back to church pews with stronger faith than they had before.

There’s still brokenness but everything can be overcome, he said.

“I think we’ve begun,” Byrnes said about fixing that brokenness of the soul, given the betrayal of trust by spiritual leaders, based on more than 140 clergy sex abuse lawsuits filed against priests and others associated with the Catholic Church.

With his groups of advisers and people he has met along the way, Byrnes is leading efforts to rebuild trust in the church. He says hope and healing ultimately comes from one’s faith in God.

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SPINDALE (NC)
Associated Press

Nov. 13, 2017,

By Mitch Weiss and Holbrook Mohr

An Associated Press investigation has found that a secretive evangelical church has used positions of authority, deception and intimidation to bring children into the sect or keep them from leaving.

SPINDALE, North Carolina (AP) — As a court-appointed advocate for two foster boys, it was Nancy Burnette’s job to ensure they were in good hands. So as part of her casework, she visited Word of Faith Fellowship, the evangelical church they attended with the couple seeking to adopt them.

What happened next haunts her: In the middle of the service, the chanting and singing suddenly stopped, Burnette said, and the fiery pastor pointed at Burnette, accusing her of being “wicked.” ”You are here to cause strife!” she recalled Jane Whaley shouting, as she sensed congregants begin to converge upon her. “You don’t think these kids are supposed to be here!”

Terrified, Burnette left, but not before promising the boys, ages 4 and almost 2, that she would return — a promise she ultimately could not keep.

“What I didn’t know was how hard Word of Faith would fight — and the tactics they would use — to keep the kids,” Burnette told The Associated Press.

That was not the only time Word of Faith Fellowship’s leaders and members have used positions of authority, intimidation or deception to bring children into the church’s folds or keep them from leaving — often at Whaley’s behest, according to dozens of interviews and hundreds of pages of court records, police reports and social services documents obtained by the AP.

As a result, children have been introduced to sometimes violent church practices that run counter to the North Carolina laws designed to protect them, the AP found.

The state promotes “family preservation,” designed to prevent the “unnecessary placement of children away from their families.” But the AP found that some young congregants have been separated from their parents for up to a decade — bounced from family to family — as leaders strive to keep them in the church.

In addition, three single mothers told the AP that a longtime Word of Faith Fellowship member who was a county court clerk bypassed the foster system and eventually won permanent custody of their children, even though a judge called the clerk’s conduct inappropriate. Two of the mothers said the clerk approached them and offered to temporarily keep the children while they served their jail time.

The AP interviewed a dozen former congregants who said they had personally witnessed the three children living with the clerk being subjected to intense screaming sessions called “blasting” aimed at casting out demons, or being held down, shaken or beaten.

Even as she battled desperately for her young son, one of the three women had told a judge that, if she could not have him, the boy would be better off in foster care due to the church’s abusive nature.

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SPINDALE (NC)
Raw Story

November 13, 2017

By Sarah K. Burris

The Word of Faith Fellowship, a North Carolina church facing a slew of investigations, is now being accused of kidnapping the children of at least one mother.

According to the Associated Press, the church in Spindale, North Carolina, used its relationship with a social worker to take more than a dozen children from their families.

As a child advocate, Nancy Burnette was tasked with visiting the church to ensure two foster children were safe while a family was working to adopt them. Out of the blue, the pastor pointed to Burnette and accused her of being “wicked.”

″You are here to cause strife!” she recalled pastor Jane Whaley shouting during a fiery sermon. At that point she said she felt the church members converge upon her. “You don’t think these kids are supposed to be here!”

North Carolina’s social services laws cite “family preservation,” so as to prevent “unnecessary placement of children away from their families.” Yet, many children have been taken from their families and put into the custody of church members. Thus far, three single mothers have come forward to allege a county court clerk bypassed the foster system so that church members were able to obtain custody of their children, despite a judge calling the conduct inappropriate.

“What I didn’t know was how hard Word of Faith would fight — and the tactics they would use — to keep the kids,” Burnette said.

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SPINDALE (NC)
Associated Press

November 13, 2017

By Mitch Weiss and Holbrook

SPINDALE, North Carolina – When Rutherford County’s child protection agency seeks to investigate allegations of abuse at Word of Faith Fellowship, it runs smack into two major obstacles: a habitual lack of cooperation from church members and a court-ordered compromise that limits what can trigger an inquiry and how social workers can question minors.

Word of Faith has been investigated numerous times over the course of decades without serious consequences, in large part because church leader Jane Whaley orders congregants to lie to and mislead authorities, according to dozens of former followers interviewed by The Associated Press.

In 1995, for example, the State Bureau of Investigation interviewed Whaley, sect leaders and dozens of former members about abuse allegations. Investigators determined congregants — including children — had been mistreated, but the district attorney ultimately declined to prosecute, saying any case would be undermined by most victims’ recalcitrance.

Whaley and a dozen church families sued the Rutherford County Department of Social Services in 2003, contending they were being targeted because of their religious beliefs. The agency settled the lawsuit two years later, agreeing to a list of stipulations dictating how it can investigate reports of child abuse.

Word of Faith received guarantees that abuse inquiries could no longer be solely based on objections to such core practices as “blasting,” when congregants surround a church member and shriek for hours in an attempt to expel demons.

The agreement also placed limits on where social workers can interview children and barred them from asking questions about religious beliefs or practices.

And the church won the right to refuse to admit any child to its K-12 school whose parents do not consent to the use of corporal punishment.

Several experts who reviewed the stipulations at the Associated Press’s request called the agreement highly unusual and spoke of a potential chilling effect on investigations.

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UNITED STATES
Inside Higher Ed

November 13, 2017

By Colleen Flaherty

What’s to be done about the numerous reports of faculty misconduct dating back years and even decades?

As more and more sexual harassment cases involving faculty members come to light, a significant share of them date back 10, 20 and even 30 years. The last few months have seen a series of high-profile cases in which the accused professors are now senior in age as well as status, retired or even deceased. While these so-called cold cases certainly pose practical challenges in terms of dwindling institutional memory and evidence, experts say institutions are often (if not always) eager to help right past wrongs — and that they must.

“The deep question here is, ‘What is the purpose of making these allegations after so many years?’” said Michele Dauber, the Frederick I. Richman Professor of Law at Stanford University. “To a certain extent, it’s not unlike debates about Confederate memorials showing up in states that have never really been forced to come to terms with what they’ve done. It is wrong to say that people who were wronged by institutions in the past should simply let it go, with no acknowledgment of their suffering.”

Issues of moral responsibility are arguably more relevant and important in an educational setting, and indeed academic institutions have grappled with these parallel issues of legacy, Dauber said. “We really need to think about who we’re honoring … Seo-Young Chu is clearly owed an apology, at minimum.”

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AUSTRALIA
Herald Sun

November 12, 2017

By Rebekah Cavanagh

A FORMER Anglican priest has been charged with multiple counts of indecent assault and gross indecency against two young girls.

Timothy Cohen, 63 has been charged with multiple counts of indecent assault and gross indecency in regional Victorian towns in the 1980s.

He is also accused of sexual penetration with one of the victims.

The Melbourne Magistrates Court heard on Friday that Cohen planned to contest the charges at a three-day hearing in April.

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ST. LOUIS (MO)
St. Louis Post-Dispatch

November 13, 2017

By Blythe Bernhard

A retired priest from St. Anthony’s Catholic Church in Sullivan has been accused of sexually abusing a child in the late 1970s, the Archdiocese of St. Louis reported Monday.

Rev. Dennis B. Zacheis denies the allegations, according to the report.

Zacheis was assigned to St. Anthony’s in 2005 and served at St. Alban Roe in Wildwood for the previous 17 months before resigning. The report does not note where Zacheis worked in the 1970s.

Zacheis retired in 2010 over alleged financial indiscretions while serving as pastor at St. Anthony’s. The Archidocese refunded $60,000 to the church for a budget shortfall. Zacheis spent church money on expenses related to his vacation home at the Lake of the Ozarks, according to an audit. Zacheis’ lawyer at the time said the priest denied any wrongdoing.

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ISRAEL
HAARETZ

November 13, 2017

By Dina Kraft

The three women seek the extradition of the headmistress whose lawyer says she’s unfit to face trial. The sisters tell Haaretz about their experiences in a close-knit community back home

Growing up in an especially cloistered ultra-Orthodox home and community in Melbourne, Australia, the three sisters were required to have their books vetted by their school or parents. Any depictions of male-female interaction of any kind were whited out and taped over – even fairy tales.

Television and movies were prohibited. Even mail-order clothing catalogs weren’t allowed into their home. They learned nothing about their own bodies or sex.

But they say the kind attention they received from their charismatic headmistress at their all-girls ultra-Orthodox school evolved into sexual abuse, assault and rape – as they told the Australian police. They say they didn’t even have the words to describe it; each kept her experiences to herself. They were unaware, they say, until years after the alleged abuse began, that all three had become the headmistress’ victims.

“We didn’t know what our bodies even were, we didn’t have biology lessons,” said Elly Sapper, 28, the youngest of the three sisters who have accused the headmistress, Malka Leifer. “Everything was taboo. You didn’t even know about getting your period. You didn’t know when someone touches your body it was wrong. She said that was love, so we believed her.”

Last week, Sapper and her sisters Nicole Meyer, 32, and Dassi Erlich, 30, spoke with Haaretz in Tel Aviv about the abuse they say took place between about 2001 and 2008.

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AUSTRALIA
The Advertiser

November 11, 2017

By Andrew Dowdell

A CATHOLIC priest has died weeks before he was scheduled to give evidence in Adelaide Archbishop Philip Wilson’s trial for concealing child sex abuse.

Father Glen Walsh was a Hunter Valley priest and campaigner against child sex abuse within the Catholic Church.

He was due to appear as a prosecution witness later this month in Archbishop Wilson’s trial in New South Wales.

Archbishop Wilson is accused of concealing abuse committed by Hunter Valley paedophile priest Jim Fletcher in the 1970s.

He has denied the charges and is scheduled to face trial from November 27.

Father Walsh is being remembered as being one of the first to put the interests of abuse victims above those of his church as the magnitude of abuse emerged in recent years.

The NSW Coroner will hold an inquiry into his death but there are no suspicious circumstances and Father Walsh is believed to have taken his own life last Monday.

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NEW HAVEN (CT)
Yale Daily News

November 13, 2017

By Britton O’Daly & Adelaide Feibel

Former Yale adjunct professor Jaime Lara, who taught at the Divinity School and the Institute for Sacred Music for over a decade, sexually abused minors when he served as a priest in the Catholic Church from 1973 until his removal in 1992, the Roman Catholic Diocese of Brooklyn confirmed on Thursday.

In the 25 years since his removal from the church, which the diocese hid from the public until last week, Lara has become a renowned scholar of sacred art history, writing five books and winning prestigious awards and fellowships. He served as a professor of Christian art and architecture and chair of the program in religion and the arts at Yale from 1995 to 2009 and also taught at the University of Notre Dame and Columbia University. Since 2013, he has served as a research professor at Arizona State University in the Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies. After learning of Lara’s history of sexual abuse, Arizona State officials requested he resign, effective immediately, The Arizona Republic reported.

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PORTLAND (ME)
Fiddlehead Focus

November 12, 2017

PORTLAND, Maine — An independent, on-site audit of safe environment procedures has found the Roman Catholic Diocese of Portland in full compliance with the Charter for the Protection of Children and Young People.

The on-site audit, which reviewed the period of July 1, 2016, to June 30, 2017, was conducted by StoneBridge Business Partners of Rochester, N.Y., said diocesan officials in a Nov. 8 press statement.

The Charter, which originated in 2002, calls for an effective response from the diocese to any report of sexual abuse by church personnel, background checks on all diocesan employees and volunteers who work regularly with minors, and other mandates for the protection of children.

Auditors found 100 percent of all diocesan employees and active clergy had had background checks. Auditors also reviewed the implementation of the Think First/Stay Safe Prevention Program for children in Catholic schools and religious education, and the implementation of the Protecting God’s Children Program for all those working and volunteering in the Diocese of Portland.

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IRELAND
The Irish Times

November 13, 2017

By Patsy McGarry

Bishops accused of ignoring church guidelines and denying priests’ rights

The Association of Catholic Priests (ACP) has issued a portable information card to assist priest’s faced with abuse allegations.

It was claimed at its annual meeting in Athlone last week that guidelines prepared for the handling of such cases by the church’s own child protection watchdog, its National Board for Safeguarding Children (NBSC), were not being followed by bishops and religious superiors.

The seven pointers on the information card, designed in a credit card size to fit handily in a wallet, “are in keeping with recommendations” by the NBSC, the ACP says.

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AUSTRALIA
The Age

November 13, 2017

By Amber Wilson

A former teacher and Catholic brother accused of 99 historical sex offences will be absent from a pre-trial committal hearing in Melbourne due to his age.

Lawrence Fitzpatrick, 90, appeared in the Melbourne Magistrates Court on Monday charged with abusing 18 victims, including children under 14, at Sale, Briagolong, Stratford and Rosedale between 1971 and 1977.

The court was told the Marist brother is unsteady on his feet, has recently fallen multiple times, suffers back pain, fatigue, confusion, and is hearing impaired.

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CHILE
Biobiochile.cl

November 12, 2017

Publicado por Manuel Stuardo

La Información es de Carlos Martínez

[The bishop of the diocese of San José de Temuco, Héctor Vargas, has suspended a priest, Carlos Aedo Méndez, after receiving an allegation that Méndez sexually abused a minor 27 years ago.]

.Suspendido del ejercicio público como sacerdote, tras ser denunciado por el delito de abuso sexual, permanece el párroco de Purén.

La medida, asumida por el obispo de la Diócesis San José de Temuco, Héctor Vargas, deriva de una denuncia formal por abuso sexual que el 7 de octubre de este año fue recibida en la Vicaría Judicial del Obispado de Temuco.

Esta fue realizada por la persona afectada en contra del presbítero, Carlos Aedo Méndez, párroco de la Parroquia San Enrique de Purén, respecto de hechos ocurridos en Galvarino hace 27 años, cuando la presunta víctima era menor de edad.

Ahora, ante la denuncia acerca de esos mismos hechos, el obispo Vargas aplicó lo dispuesto por la Conferencia Episcopal de Chile, para este tipo de situaciones.

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UNITED STATES
BishopAccountability.org

Summary of Case: Chester John “Chet Warren” was ordained for the Oblates of St. Francis de Sales in 1957. He was on staff at a boys’ high school in Philadelphia until 1960, when he was assigned to his order’s monastery in Toledo, Ohio. From 1963 to 1974 Warren was an assistant priest at Toledo’s St. Pius X parish and school. In 1974 he was transferred to a Taylor, Michigan parish in the Archdiocese of Detroit, then was returned in 1978 to the Oblates’ headquarters in Toledo. Warren resided during at least 1986-1992 at the St. Francis de Sales High School faculty house, while working as a chaplain at St. Vincent Medical Center.

In 1985 a young woman, Barbara Blaine, reported to the Oblates and later to the diocese that Warren had sexually abused her from the time she was a 13-year-old 7th-grader in 1969 at St. Pius X school, until she was a senior in high school. She said that the order told her that no one else had complained about Warren. In 1989 Blaine founded the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAP). After she named Warren publicly in 1992, two women contacted her to say that they, too, had been sexually abused by the priest as girls; both said they reported the abuse to Warren’s superiors in the early 1970s. By 2002 at least eight women had come forward with similar allegations. In 2003 a woman said she was abused by Warren as a preschooler in the context of ritual abuse involving a group of priests. In a 2005 press conference a nun stated that she was raped by Warren at age 6.

Warren was allowed to stay in ministry until 1992, just before he was named as a perpetrator by Barbara Blaine on national television. (Blaine had informed the Oblates that she was going to name him.) He was suspended, and later dismissed by his order. He was not laicized.

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NEW YORK (NY)
NY1 News

November 9, 2017

Attorneys are calling on Cardinal Dolan to remove a priest accused of sexually abusing two children in the Bronx.

Lawyers Helping Survivors of Child Sex Abuse held a press conference in Midtown Thursday asking Father Lawrence J. Quinn be removed from service at Our Lady Queen of Martyrs Church in Upper Manhattan.

He’s accused of abusing children while assigned to Our Lady of Mercy in Fordham Heights between 1990 to 2001.

Attorneys for survivors of clergy sex abuse say the archdiocese needs to do more to protect children.

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AUSTRALIA
Sunday Mail

November 11, 2017

By Andrew Dowdell

Catholic priest Glen Walsh who was to give evidence in Archbishop Philip Wilson’s trial has died

A Catholic priest has died weeks before he was scheduled to give evidence in Adelaide Archbishop Philip Wilson’s trial for concealing child sex abuse.

Father Glen Walsh was a Hunter Valley priest and campaigner against child sex abuse within the Catholic Church.

He was due to appear as a prosecution witness later this month in Archbishop Wilson’s trial in New South Wales.

Archbishop Wilson is accused of concealing abuse committed by Hunter Valley paedophile priest Jim Fletcher in the 1970s.

He has denied the charges and is scheduled to face trial from November 27.

Father Walsh is being remembered as being one of the first to put the interests of abuse victims above those of his church as the magnitude of abuse emerged in recent years.

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IRELAND
Irish Times

November 12, 2017

By Patsy McGarry

‘No reconciliation’ with Dublin priests following his response to 2009 Murphy report

Archbishop Diarmuid Martin has been criticised for what a Dublin parish priest has called his negativity towards the Catholic Church in Ireland.

“It’s quite plain really,” said Fr Gregory O’Brien.

“He publishes statistics about 2 per cent (Sunday) Mass attendance when there are 1,000 people at Mass here and 1.2 million in the whole country. I don’t think it helps the morale of priests or people particularly”.

Fr O’Brien is parish priest at St Jude the Apostle in Willington, south Co Dublin. Archbishop Martin, he said, was “very negative, overly negative.”

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UTAH
Salt Lake Tribune

November 11, 2017

By Nate Carlisle

Child bride-related charges dropped against polygamist; details of Mexico ranch killings emerge

Pennie Petersen says Orson William Black will be free within days unless sex-abuse charges are reinstated.

In this photo provided with a redaction by the law enforcement in the Mexican state of Chihuahua, Orson William Black, 56, stands while being detained Nov. 5, 2017. Black is a former member of the polygamous Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints who has been on the run from child sex abuse charges in Arizona since 2003. Courtesy Photo.

Arizona prosecutors eight months ago dropped charges against a polygamist who had allegedly married underage girls on the Utah line, said a woman who has been working for 14 years to bring the polygamist back from Mexico.

Following the slaying of three of his family members in Mexico, Orson William Black, 56, finally returned to the United States on Thursday and is being held at a detention center in El Paso, Texas. But the woman who has been pursuing him, Pennie Petersen, on Saturday said he’ll be free this time next week if the Arizona attorney general doesn’t reinstate the child sex-abuse charges.

“When he gets out of that jail cell in El Paso, if he thinks the heat is on him, he’s gone,” Petersen said in a phone interview.

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UNITED STATES
Business Insider

November 11, 2017

By Michelle Mark

Rachel Jeffs, the daughter of polygamist cult leader Warren Jeffs, spoke out on “Megyn Kelly Today” about the sexual abuse she endured at her father’s hands when she was a child.

Rachel Jeffs, who escaped the church in 2015, said her father began sexually abusing her when she was eight years old.

The daughter of the polygamist cult leader Warren Jeffs spoke out on “Megyn Kelly Today” about her upbringing as a member of the FLDS Church and the sexual abuse she suffered at the hands of her father when she was a child.

Rachel Jeffs, who also details the abuse in an upcoming book titled “Breaking Free,” told Kelly in an interview that aired Friday that her father abused her “way more times than I can count,” starting with an incident that occurred when she was eight years old.

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IRELAND
Irish Central

November 12, 2017

By Cormac MacConnell

“We laity in the past placed ye on a pedestal that was far too high and uncomfortable for any mortal men.”

By the time ye are reading this I will possibly be roasting eternally already in the hottest corner of hell for having dreadfully broken the centuries-old sacred tradition of the Seal of Confession of the Catholic Church.

Mighty priests and saints were burned at the stake in the past for refusing to break that seal, so this is a heavy moment indeed for all of us. Maybe ye should stop reading here at this point to not become even laterally complicit in MacConnell’s. Those of you who are devoutly Catholic should take this suggestion seriously.

Anyway, for those of you still here, the context is that I also was devoutly Catholic and a regular Mass-goer until about 25 years ago when the frightening tide of scandals attached to my church began to surface in turgid waves.

It was a shock here in holy Ireland, for example, when it was revealed that both Bishop Eamon Casey and Father Michael Cleary, the hierarchy’s brightest stars of the time, were biological fathers as well as priests sworn to celibacy. They were both good and charming men and that was a minor enough matter on the scale of things.

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PHOENIX (AZ)
Associated Press via KVOA-TV

November 11, 2017

A research professor at Arizona State University has resigned after the Roman Catholic Diocese of Brooklyn made public this week details about his removal from the priesthood years ago over cases of clergy sex abuse involving minors.

University officials requested that Jaime Lara resign after they learned of his history as a priest. His resignation was tendered Thursday, The Arizona Republic reported .

Lara could not be reached for comment Friday.

He was ordained in 1973 and was in active ministry until 1992 when he was removed from the priesthood by the Vatican. The information was posted Wednesday on the diocese website along with the names of other former clerics who had been defrocked.

It was between 1979 and 1981 that Lara is accused of sexually abusing three children ranging in age from 9 to 11 years old at St. Francis Xavier Church in Brooklyn, New York, according to the victims’ attorney, Mitchell Garabedian.

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SAN JOSE (CA)
San Jose Mercury News

By Ethan Baron

November 11, 2017

Move comes the same week former Presentation High graduate publishes essay alleging she was sexually molested by now-deceased instructor

Two teachers were put on forced leave Friday at a Catholic girls high school that was already reeling from a high-profile claim that school officials kept a teacher on staff after he molested two students in 1990.

The Presentation High School teachers were placed on paid administrative leave after two students and a former student came forward earlier in the week with information regarding two separate, more recent situations — at least one of which was serious enough to warrant a call to police.

The statements to the school from the students and former student came three weeks after the Washington Post published an essay by Presentation High graduate Kathryn Leehane describing her frustration after she reported to school officials and police that a teacher had sexually molested her and another female student in 1990. The teacher, who was not named, remained at the school but has since died.

“Eventually, I lost hope for justice,” Leehane wrote.

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GUAM
Pacific Daily News

November 12, 2017

By Haidee V Eugenio

A more in-depth look into the life of Archbishop Michael Byrnes from his interview with Pacific Daily News reporter Haidee Eugenio on Oct. 27, 2017.

A year since stepping into a fractured community of faith, Archbishop Michael Jude Byrnes continues to work on bringing people back to church pews with stronger faith than they had before.

There’s still brokenness but everything can be overcome, he said.

“I think we’ve begun,” Byrnes said about fixing that brokenness of the soul, given the betrayal of trust by spiritual leaders, based on more than 140 clergy sex abuse lawsuits filed against priests and others associated with the Catholic Church.

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UNITED STATES
The Los Angeles Times

November 10, 2017

By Kathryn Brightbill

We need to talk about the segment of American culture that probably doesn’t think the allegations against Republican Senate candidate Roy Moore are particularly damning, the segment that will blanch at only two accusations in the Washington Post expose: He pursued a 14-year-old-girl without first getting her parents’ permission, and he initiated sexual contact outside of marriage. That segment is evangelicalism. In that world, which Moore travels in and I grew up in, 14-year-old girls courting adult men isn’t uncommon.

I use the phrase “14-year-old girls courting adult men,” rather than “adult men courting 14-year-old girls,” for a reason: Evangelicals routinely frame these relationships in those terms. That’s how I was introduced to these relationships as a home-schooled teenager in the 1990s, and it’s the language that my friends and I would use to discuss girls we knew who were in parent-sanctioned relationships with older men.

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UNITED STATES
The New York Times

November 11, 2017

By Ross Douthat

Lately we have been given an extended education in the different varieties of liberal pigs.

There’s the industrial-scale predator who buys indulgences from Planned Parenthood. And the male feminist who respects women so very much — especially when they’re too drunk to resist him. And the Great Man of Letters creeping on his co-workers. And the let-it-all-hang-out artist who thinks it can’t be assault if the only person you’re touching is yourself.

But this week our era of exposure has reminded us that cultural conservatism has its own distinctive swine.

So while we wait to see what becomes of Alabama Senate candidate and professional Christian Roy Moore, who is credibly alleged to have spent his thirties pursuing high school girls with the “I get older, they stay the same age” gusto of Matthew McConaughey’s character in “Dazed and Confused,” it’s worth doing a quick typology of the predators that flourish among the godly and moralistic and traditional.

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