ABUSE TRACKER

AUSTRALIA
Catholic Outlook

The Catholic Church in Australia observes Child Protection Sunday on 10 September 2017.

The Australian Catholic Church’s Child Protection Sunday runs in conjunction with National Child Protection Week. This year we are focusing on a Royal Commission’s key element that when children participate in decisions affecting them and are taken seriously an institution is better prepared to be child safe. Our theme is: “See Me, Hear Me”.

In the first reading for Child Protection Sunday the Prophet Ezekiel speaks of “being a sentry to the House of Israel’. That image captures well one element of the role each of us has in regard to Children.

As Pope Francis outlined before leading the crowds in the Angelus prayer in March last year it is important to “Listen: this is the key word. Do not forget, listen to the sick and marginalised, or among families.” As a sentry, each of us plays a part in listening to what the children have to say, making sure that every child is safe and protected from abuse and harm.

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ILLINOIS
Herald-Tribune

By Pete Spitler
Editor@heraldtrib.com
updated: 8/22/2017

Perhaps lost in the noise of the school funding fight was news that Gov. Bruce Rauner signed legislation on Aug. 11 that removes the statutes of limitation for sexual abuse crimes.

The bill, Senate Bill 189, now allows for the prosecution of those crimes at any time. Previously, victims had to report crimes within 20 years after they turned 18.

SB 189 took effect as soon as it was signed and applies to future felony child sex crime cases, as well as current criminal cases in which the previous statute of limitations has not expired.

According to sponsor State Sen. Michael Hastings (D-Tinley Park), the legislation puts in place “best practices for dealing with sexual assault cases statewide and puts in place a system that will encourage survivors to come forward and receive justice when they are ready.”

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UNITED STATES
USA Today

In May 2003, Thomas O’Brien, then bishop of the Diocese of Phoenix, admitted to sheltering at least 50 priests accused of sexual abuse, often shuffling them around to parishes across the state.

O’Brien’s admission, released under an agreement with the county attorney, acknowledged he “allowed Roman Catholic priests under my supervision to work with minors after becoming aware of allegations of sexual misconduct.” He also waived his own immunity should sexual misconduct allegations against him surface.

Thirteen years later, in a lawsuit filed last September, O’Brien — now bishop emeritus — was accused of sexually abusing a grade-school boy.

In recent months, USA TODAY Network reporters at the Pacific Daily News have uncovered scores of allegations involving 14 Catholic priests on Guam, where a former altar boy’s accusation last summer that Archbishop Anthony Apuron sexually abused him in the 1970s has prompted other revelations.

Abuse cases also have roiled Catholic parishes elsewhere the nation, sometimes decades after evidence of the crimes first emerged.

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GUAM
The Guam Daily Post

Mindy Aguon | The Guam Daily Post Aug 22, 2017

Suspended Archbishop Anthony Apuron believes every citizen should be afforded due process and the right to defend against a cause of action that has long expired, according to court documents filed in four civil suits filed against the leader of Guam’s Catholic Church.

In a motion filed by his attorney, Jacqueline Taitano Terlaje, Apuron contends the District Court of Guam must dismiss the lawsuits filed against him and the Archdiocese of Agana because the victims’ claims are time-barred and Public Law 33-187 is “inorganic and unconstitutional.”

Apuron and his attorney maintain that the law that amended Guam’s statute of limitations for child sexual abuse did not “retrospectively revive” the plaintiffs’ time-barred and lapsed claims to file suit against him.

Terlaje wrote, “Every person who cannot defend him or herself due to the passage of time and loss of evidence suffers extreme hardship and oppression.”

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IRELAND
Associated Press

BY NICOLE WINFIELD
ASSOCIATED PRESS

VATICAN CITY (AP) — Bishops in Ireland have created detailed guidelines to address an issue the Roman Catholic Church has tried to keep under wraps for centuries: the plight of children born to Catholic priests and the women who bear them.

The policy, approved in May and made public recently, states that the wellbeing of the child is paramount. It says the mother must be respected and involved in decision-making, and that the priest “should face up to his responsibilities – personal, legal, moral and financial.”

The guidelines are believed to represent the first comprehensive public policy by a national bishops’ conference on the issue, which has long been shrouded in secrecy given the perceived scandal of priests having sex. While eastern rite Catholic priests can be married before ordination, Roman Catholic priests take a vow of celibacy.

The policy is, in many ways, the fruit of a campaign by an Irish psychotherapist, Vincent Doyle, who discovered late in life that his father was a priest.

With the strong backing of the archbishop of Dublin, Doyle launched Coping International, an online self-help resource for the children of priests and their mothers. The aim, he said, was to help eliminate the stigma he and others like him have faced, and educate them and the church about the emotional and psychological problems that can be associated with the secrecy often imposed on them.

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NEW MEXICO
KOAT

Megan Cruz
General Assignment Reporter

CIBOLA COUNTY, N.M. —
The leader and three members of a religious group based in Cibola County were arrested over the weekend for what investigators called horrific crimes against children.

Charges include over 100 counts of criminal sexual penetration of a minor and child abuse.

The Cibola County Sheriff’s Office says deputies arrested Deborah Green, Peter Green, Joshua Green, and Stacey Miller of the Aggressive Christianity Missions Training Corps Sunday morning. According to the group’s website, Deborah and her husband James are the “Generals” and command their army to spread Christian ideals throughout the world. They’re based out of Fence Lake in western Cibola County.

Sheriff Tony Mace says his office first started investigating the group last year when two members claimed they just escaped the commune. They told deputies Deborah and another member Stacey Miller allowed Miller’s 12-year-old son to die of the flu in 2014.

“It was a horrible situation,” said Cibola County Sheriff Tony Mace.

According to arrest warrants, no one took the boy to the hospital. Puss started leaking from his forehead and he lost his ability to speak and move his right side. He was buried on the property and no one reported his death.

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NEW MEXICO
Associated Press

GRANTS, N.M. (AP) — The Latest on a New Mexico military-style Christian sect facing child abuse charges (all times local):

1:30 p.m.

A New Mexico military-style Christian sect says claims of child abuse and child sexual abuse by leaders are false.

The Aggressive Christianity Missions Training Corps in Fence Lake, New Mexico, said in a statement that allegations “are totally false” and similar to others the group has faced over the years.

A criminal complaint says sect leader Peter Green is facing 100 counts of criminal sexual penetration of a child.

Court records show three other members of the group also were charged with child abuse crimes.

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NEW MEXICO
Associated Press

BY RUSSELL CONTRERAS
ASSOCIATED PRESS

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. (AP) — A former member of a military-style Christian sect says that for years she’s been trying to draw attention to the New Mexico group whose leader has been charged with dozens of counts of child sexual abuse.

Maura Alana Schmierer told The Associated Press on Monday that she had been interviewed by investigators recently about the Aggressive Christianity Missions Training Corps.

Schmierer left the sect in the late 1980s. She said she’s “been trying to expose them for years” and appeared in a National Geographic Television show documenting her experience.

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NEW MEXICO
Daily Mail

AP

A leader of a New Mexico military-style Christian sect is facing dozens of child sexual abuse charges in a case that authorities say is connected to widespread abuse by the religious commune.

Peter Green of the Aggressive Christianity Missions Training Corps in the remote community of Fence Lake was charged with 100 counts of criminal sexual penetration of a child.

Sect members Deborah Green, Joshua Green and Stacey Miller also face various charges ranging from child abuse, bribery and not reporting a birth.

All four were arrested on Sunday.

A former member, Maura Alana Schmierer, said on Monday that she’s been trying to draw attention to the New Mexico group for years. Schmierer added that she had been interviewed by investigators recently about the group.

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VIRGINIA
Washington Post

By Dana Hedgpeth and Michelle Boorstein August 22

A Catholic priest in Arlington, Va., is temporarily stepping down after revealing he was a member of the Ku Klux Klan and burned crosses more than 40 years ago before joining the clergy.

In an editorial published Monday in the Arlington Catholic Herald, the Rev. William Aitcheson described himself as “an impressionable young man” when he became a member of the hate group. He wrote that images from the deadly white-supremacist and white-nationalist rally in Charlottesville “brought back memories of a bleak period in my life that I would have preferred to forget.”

“My actions were despicable,” wrote Aitcheson, 62. “When I think back on burning crosses, a threatening letter, and so on, I feel as though I am speaking of somebody else. It’s hard to believe that was me.”

In a statement, Catholic Diocese of Arlington Bishop Michael F. Burbidge called Aitcheson’s past with the Ku Klux Klan “sad and deeply troubling.”

Aitcheson served with the Catholic church in Nevada before being transferred to Arlington, where he is originally from, church officials said in a statement. He was ordained in 1988 and has served in a variety of positions at parishes in Nevada; Arlington; Fredericksburg, Va.; and Woodstock, Md. His latest assignment was as parochial vicar, or assistant to the pastor, at St. Leo the Great in Fairfax City.

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TEXAS
KFOX14

by Adriana Candelaria | Jessica Gonzalez

EL PASO, Texas (KFOX14) —
A priest who once served at El Paso churches has admitted to sexual misconduct with a teenage girl during the 1980s.

Miguel Luna, 67, who served at eight El Paso parishes, was ordained for the Diocese of El Paso on July 1, 1982.

In 2013, Bishop Mark Seitz removed Luna from the ministry upon the recommendation of the Diocesan Review Board.

A spokesperson for the diocese said the recommendation was made because allegations of sexual harassment had been made but not involving a minor.

It wasn’t until last year that a woman who asked to remain anonymous, came forward, saying that Luna had sexually abused her years ago when she was a teenager.

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GUAM
Pacific Daily News

Haidee V Eugenio, heugenio@guampdn.com Aug. 22, 2017

The Boy Scouts of America, which faces 54 lawsuits accusing former Scouts leaders of sexually abusing children on Guam, recently filed a “friend of the court” brief in one of the abuse cases filed against Archbishop Anthony Apuron and the Catholic Church on Guam.

District Court of Guam Magistrate Judge Joaquin Manibusan on Tuesday rejected the brief, stating the Boy Scouts are not a party to the Apuron case, and their brief does not provide unique or relevant information.

The Boy Scouts, which wants the cases dismissed, had asked the court to separately address some of the arguments related to the abuse cases. That’s because the Boy Scouts have presented a different set of arguments as to why the cases should be dismissed.

A 2016 law retroactively removed the statute of limitations on civil cases related to child sex abuse, prompting nearly 100 lawsuits to be filed against the Catholic Church and clergy members. More than half of those lawsuits also accuse the Boy Scouts — primarily because of abuse allegations against former Guam priest Louis Brouillard, who also was a Scoutmaster here. He is accused of sexually abusing boys on church grounds and during outings with the Boy Scouts.

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UNITED KINGDOM
Metro

Georgia Diebelius for Metro.co.uk
Tuesday 22 Aug 2017

A pastor who blindfolded children and whipped them with belts, has been spared jail.

Rose Amadasun was reported to the police by South Norwood Leisure Centre after she was seen hitting youngsters with wires and not feeding them for days on end.

According to witnesses, the pastor of the Shine Forth Evangelistic Ministry in central London, shouted ‘Jesus’ as she beat the children.

If they screamed she would ‘force them to fast’ for several days as punishment.

Amadasun, 49, of South Norwood, South London was arrested on suspicion of causing actual bodily hard on June 30 2016.

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AUSTRALIA
Shepparton News

by TARA WHITSED AUGUST 22, 2017

Coinciding with Child Protection Week (September 4 to 10), the Tatura Sacred Heart Parish will show its support by taking part in the Loud Fences initiative next month.

The parish will hand out coloured ribbons at Mass on September 3 and 10 when parishioners will be invited to tie them to the fence afterwards.

Parishioner Judith Steele said ribbons would also be available in the foyer of the Church.

‘‘So we invite everyone in the community to join with Sacred Heart parishioners in tying a coloured ribbon on our fence throughout the month of September to express support and solidarity for the victims of abuse of any kind,’’ she said.

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AUSTRALIA
Brisbane Times

Jorge Branco

A Queensland boarding school failed to properly care for a student after she was allegedly gang-raped by older boys while boarding there in 2006, a royal commission has been urged to find.

Counsel assisting the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse, David Lloyd, made submissions harshly criticising Townsville’s Uniting Church-run Shalom Christian College’s response to the trauma.

He said, 10 years on, the school still did not have enough money to provide a safe environment for its students.

During hearings in Sydney in November last year, the young woman’s tearful parents said they were pressured not to press charges against the four men involved because they came from “well known and influential families” and that former principal Christopher Shirley was “trying to paint a bad picture of my daughter”.

Mr Shirley gave evidence that he did not try to blame the student, referred to as CLF, and that he did not tell her parents not to report the matter to police.

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AUSTRALIA
ABC News

By Isobel Roe and David Chen

A north Queensland Indigenous boarding school did not have the money to properly care for a student after she was indecently assaulted by older boys, according to the findings of a lawyer assisting a child sex abuse inquiry.

The Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse heard in November last year that the 14-year-old girl was assaulted by four boys behind a classroom at Shalom Christian College near Townsville in 2006, when the students were supposed to be in the boarding house.

The victim’s parents told the royal commission that after the incident, the boys were put into lockdown at the school, and their daughter sent to another school campus and offered no counselling or care.

The findings, by counsel assisting the royal commission David Lloyd, were released on Monday

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PENNSYLVANIA
Tribune-Democrat

By David Hurst
dhurst@tribdem.com

The Roman Catholic Diocese of Altoona-Johnstown is overhauling the Diocesan Review Board initially established 15 years ago to help internally investigate abuse allegations.

In line with a multistep reform plan outlined in March by the diocese and the United States Attorney’s Office, Bishop Mark Bartchak announced the appointment of an all-new, seven-member review board that will now be comprised of area professionals, one Catholic priest and at least two people representing other Christian faiths – a first for the board.

“In the interest of providing objectivity and transparency, two of the review board members are from other Christian churches,” diocese spokesman Tony DeGol wrote in a release to media.

“All of the newly-appointed members were recommended to the bishop because of their personal integrity, expertise and experience,” he added.

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TEXAS
KXAN

Daniel Marin/KTSM
Published: August 21, 2017

EL PASO, Texas (KTSM) – A former El Paso priest accused of committing sexual abuse decades ago served at eight local parishes, the Catholic Diocese of El Paso said Monday.

At a news conference, El Paso Bishop Mark Seitz said the ex-priest, Miguel Luna, 67, admitted to sexual misconduct with a “young female adolescent” in the 1980s. Luna has since been removed from the ministry.

The allegation came to light last November, according to Seitz who declined to say which parish was involved to protect the identity of the accuser.

The diocese said it has contacted El Paso police but the victim, now an adult, wishes to remain anonymous and no criminal charges have been filed.

The state of Texas has no statute of limitations for felony criminal cases involving sexual assault of a minor or indecency with a child. There is a limitation of 15 years from the victim’s 18th birthday for civil cases.

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UNITED KINGDOM
Nottingham Post

BY HANNAH MITCHELL
21 AUG 2017

A Nottinghamshire MP has been named as a “core participant” in the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse in Nottinghamshire.

The inquiry will look into claims of abuse over a 60 year period in Notitinghamshire after it was announced in 2015 that Nottinghamshire’s councils would be among the first to be investigated by the independent inquiry.

John Mann, Member of Parliament for Bassetlaw, first applied to be a core participant in March but was declined by the chairman Professor Alexis Jay on the grounds that he had not played a significant role in relation to the matters.

However, Prof Jay announced in May that she had reconsidered her view and the MP would play an important role in the inquiry.

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PENNSYLVANIA
Altoona Mirror

Aug 22, 2017

Ryan Brown
Staff Writer
rbrown@altoonamirror.com

Bishop Mark Bartchak named a new slate of members for the Diocese of Altoona-Johnstown’s Dio­cesan Review Board, fulfilling a plan he first publicly detailed in March.

The new membership sweeps out past members of the board, which the state attorney general once described as a tool for concealing sexual abuse allegations. The revamped board is part of a series of changes Bartchak promised at a March press conference alongside federal prosecutors.

The Review Board’s seven new members are the Rev. Leo F. Arnone, Joyce Cunningham, Joseph Grappone, Todd Mahalko, Robert Skelly, Brent Stoltzfus and the Rev. Miles Zdinak. They are set to review sexual abuse allegations and determine clergymen’s suitability for the ministry.

Diocese Secretary for Communications Tony DeGol said he was unable to immediately provide further biographical information on the new members Monday. Searches online, however, suggest the new board includes a licensed social worker, a former state police trooper and a Carpatho-Russian Orthodox priest, among others.

“(Bartchak) feels that each of them brings a great deal of expertise in their respective fields,” DeGol said. “You have some who have backgrounds in law enforcement, in pastoral care, some in psychological treatment.”

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UNITED STATES
National Catholic Reporter

Aug 21, 2017
by Patricia Lefevere

No one knows the number of sons and daughters of Catholic priests in the United States or in the world, but what is known is that hundreds — perhaps thousands — of these offspring have lived in secret, hiding their fathers’ past from the world, frequently even from family members.

Still other children of clergy dads have grown up not knowing who their real father was, often mistaking him for an uncle, godfather or some other male friend or relative whom they have known from their youth. In many instances, the children of Catholic priests have failed to have their emotional, legal and financial needs met.

When they have discovered who their real father is — often later in life — some of these daughters and sons have undergone spiritual disillusionment, unable to separate themselves from the faith they love and have been raised in, and the man who did not, or could not, come forward and be a genuine dad to them. Some have experienced psychological trauma from having to carry a secret — a lie — for life.

These are among disclosures presented in a two-part series on the progeny of priests published by The Boston Globe’s Spotlight team Aug. 19 and 20 and written by Pulitzer-Prize-winning journalist Michael Rezendes. In interviews over many months, the investigative news team found that children of Catholic priests “form an invisible legion of secrecy and neglect.”

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LOUISIANA
The Advocate

BY JOE GYAN JR. | JGYAN@THEADVOCATE.COM AUG 21, 2017

A state judge refused Monday to dismiss the Roman Catholic Diocese of Baton Rouge and a priest from a 2009 lawsuit by a woman who says that when she was a teenager she told the priest she was being sexually abused by a church parishioner, but he did not stop the alleged abuse or report it.

A legal battle over whether a Louisiana priest should have reported a teenager’s claims of s…
District Judge Mike Caldwell said it will be up to an East Baton Rouge Parish jury to decide whether what Rebecca Mayeux allegedly told the Rev. Jeff Bayhi in the confessional was in fact a confession as defined by the Catholic Church, and therefore confidential, or whether she was merely seeking support and guidance instead of confessing sins.

Caldwell and a state appeals court both ruled last year that Mayeux can tell a jury what she allegedly told Bayhi in the confessional.

The Louisiana Supreme Court also ruled last fall in the long-running case that a priest has no duty to report confidential information heard during the sacrament of confession.

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TEXAS
KVIA

EL PASO, Texas – The Diocese of El Paso announced on Monday Miguel Luna, a former priest, allegedly admitted to sexual misconduct with a young girl in the 1980s.

The victim reached out to the diocese in November of 2016, and the Diocese conducted an investigation.

“It is directly contradictory to the sacrificial love to which a priest has committed himself before God,” Bishop Mark Seitz said. “I am deeply sorry for the pain caused by these actions of Miguel Luna, and ask those who know of other situations of misconduct or abuse to please inform law enforcement and the Diocese.”

Luna was removed from ministry back in 2013.

“There had been some accusations against him that would probably be labeled sexual harassment,” Seitz said. “We determined after an investigation from the review board that he needed simply to be removed from ministry.”

The Diocese said Luna was ordained July 1, 1982. Here is where Luna has served:

Blessed Sacrament
Corpus Christi
Our Lady of Assumption
Our Lady of Peace — Alpine
San Antonio De Padua
San Lorenzo
St. Joseph Mission — Fort Davis
St. Mary Mission — Marathon
St. Matthew
St. Pius X
St. Thomas Aquina
St. Thomas/St. Joseph — Kermit

The Diocese of El Paso said it is reaching out to all of its parishes to learn if there any more potential victims. The victim who came forward in 2016 wishes to stay anonymous and is not pressing charges.

“We have informed the El Paso Police about this case, about Luna. They’re ready with their Crimes Against Children, that respond and would help any victims who come forward to them after this notification.” Seitz said.

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PENNSYLVANIA
We Are Central PA

Hollidaysburgh, Blair County, Pa – Bishop Mark Bartchak has announced the appointment of an entirely new membership for the Diocesan Review Board. The group assists in the assessment of allegations of sexual abuse of minors and if a cleric is suitable for ministry.

The members of the review board are as follows: Rev. Leo F. Arnone, Joyce Cunningham, Joseph Grappone, Todd Mahalko, Robert Skelly, Brent Stoltzfus and Rev. Miles Zdinak.

According to the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops Charter for the Protection of Children and Youth, every diocese is to have a review board. The majority of the members must be Catholic lay persons not employed by the diocese. The board is a confidential consultative body.

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PENNSYLVANIA
WJAC

by Matthew Stevens

HOLLIDAYSBURG – The Diocese of Altoona-Johnstown has named the members of its new review board.

The objective of the board is to assess allegations of sexual abuse of minors.

The board consists of Catholic members not employed by the diocese and two members of other Christian members.

The new members are Rev. Leo Arnone, Joyce Cunningham, Joseph Grappone, Todd Mahalko, Robert Skelly, Brent Stoltzfus and Rev. Miles Zdinak.

The newly-appointed members were recommended to Bishop Mark Bartchak and have experience in pastoral care, education of children, safe environment for children, psychological care and treatment of sexual abuse of minors and law enforcement.

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PHILADELPHIA (PA)
TheMediaReport

Philadelphia Catholic school teacher Bernard Shero, who was falsely convicted in 2013 along with the late Rev. Charles Engelhardt in a high-profile trial for child sex abuse that never occurred, is finally going to be a free man.

After being falsely accused of sex abuse by a lying drug addict named Danny Gallagher, Shero will exit prison after serving four-and-a-half years of a maximum 16-year sentence.

The news was first reported by journalist Ralph Cipriano at BigTrial.net.

An insider blows the lid off

Regular readers of this site have long known that Gallagher’s claims of abuse are wildly false (see this and this for background). It is now an incontrovertible fact that the Philadelphia D.A.’s office – spearheaded by D.A. Seth Williams, who now sits in solitary confinement on multiple charges of corruption and bribery – orchestrated a malicious scheme against innocent men and the Catholic Church based on Gallagher’s bogus stories.

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AUSTRALIA
The Courier-Mail

Alexandra Patrikios, The Courier-Mail
August 21, 2017

A CATHOLIC brother who inflicted “sheer terror” on vulnerable boys at a Queensland orphanage, sexually abusing nine of them, has been jailed for his historical crimes.

“Your legacy disgusts me and every right-minded member of society,” Brisbane District Court Judge William Everson told Francis Brophy today.

The 87-year-old, who was found guilty by a jury of five offences and sentenced for more than 30 counts in total, sexually abused the orphans at BoysTown, near Beaudesert, between 1978 and 1983.

Judge Everson denounced him as “a cowardly, evil paedophile” who masqueraded as a follower of God while inflicting lifelong damage on the children who were meant to be in his care.

He said Brophy presided over a “Gulag right in our midst” that left some of his victims ravaged by nightmares and post-traumatic stress disorder as adults.

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TEXAS
El Paso Proud

[with video]

EL PASO, TEXAS – The El Paso Catholic Diocese says a former local priest has been removed for sexual misconduct.

Bishop Mark Seitz is expected to hold a news conference at the Diocese of El Paso Pastoral Center’s Flores Conference room at 10 a.m. on Monday to inform the public.

The Diocese tells us the priest in question is named Miguel Luna and that the case goes back to the 1980s.

The Diocese says Luna recently admitted to sexual misconduct with someone, who they only describe as a ‘young female adolescent.’

According to the Diocese Luna has since been removed from the ministry and all parishes have been given notice of Luna’s removal.

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IRELAND
Crux

The bishops of Ireland say that in the case of a child fathered by a Catholic priest, the priest should not walk away from his responsibilities – legal, moral and financial. The guidelines written by the Irish Bishops’ Conference were written as the Vatican faces a deadline to respond to UN recommendations to “assess the number of children fathered by Catholic priests, find out who they are and take all necessary measures to ensure that the rights of those children to know and to be cared for by their fathers is respected.”

If a priest father’s a child, the needs of the child should be given the first consideration, according to guidelines agreed to in May by the Irish Catholic Bishops’ Conference.

The guidelines have not been published on the conference website, nor on any individual diocesan website, but were obtained by The Irish Times newspaper.

The document – called “Principles of Responsibility Regarding Priests who Father Children While in Ministry” – was written in consultation with Vincent Doyle, an Irish psychotherapist whose own father was a diocesan priest.

Doyle helped found Coping International, which seeks to protect the rights of the children of priests. (Doyle’s story was the subject of a feature last week in The Boston Globe.)

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AUSTRALIA
Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse

21 August, 2017

The Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse has published written submissions for the public hearing into children with problematic or harmful sexual behaviours in schools (Case Study 45).

The public hearing was held in October-November 2016 and inquired into the response of Trinity Grammar School, Summer Hill NSW, The King’s School, Parramatta NSW and Shalom Christian College, Condon QLD to incidents of problematic or harmful sexual behaviours by students which occurred at those schools.

It also inquired into the systems, policies, procedures and practices for responding to allegations of problematic or harmful sexual behaviours of children within educational institutions promoted and implemented by the schools listed above as well as St Ignatius’ College, Riverview NSW, the NSW Department of Education, the Association of Independent Schools NSW and the NSW Department of Family and Community Services.

Read the submissions.

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RHODE ISLAND
GoLocalProv

Saturday, August 19, 2017
GoLocal News Team

The bankruptcy of St. Joseph Health Services pension fund will hit between 3,600 and 3,800 existing or future pensioners — and the loss of pension payments may be 40 percent, according to the court appointed receiver Steven Del Sesto, a partner at Donoghue Barrett & Singal. But, DelSesto said the plan for winding down the pension fund is only in the preliminary phase.

The loss of benefits and the total number of beneficiaries impacted may both be records for Rhode Island. The now pending plan before the court, the draft documents would treat all existing and future retirees the same and both classes would take a 40 percent cut to their existing and future benefits, according to court documents. That plan is not final said DelSesto in an interview with GoLocal on Friday afternoon.

Del Sesto was appointed by the court late Thursday afternoon and is yet to talk to many of the players in the collapse. He is scheduled to talk to the Attorney General’s office on Monday.

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DEUTSCHLAND
Focus

[Pope Francis wrote the foreword to the book. Papst bittet Missbrauchsopfer um Vergebung – Bild]

[For four years Daniel Pittet was raped as a young boy by a Capuchin monk and even forced to view porno films. Pittet has written a book on this martyrdom.]

Vier Jahre lang wurde Daniel Pittet als kleiner Junge von einem Kapuzinermönch vergewaltigt und sogar zu Porno-Aufnahmen gezwungen. Pittet hat ein Buch über dieses Martyrium geschrieben. Das Ende des Buches bildet ein Interview mit Pittets Peiniger. FOCUS Online veröffentlicht das Gespräch in Auszügen.

Daniel Pittet war der Überzeugung, dass eine Aussage seines Schänders einen interessanten Beitrag zur Aufklärung leisten könne, heißt es in seinem Buch. Ihn persönlich zu treffen lehnt er aber ab. Das Gespräch führte die Co-Autorin des Buches, Micheline Repond.

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SCOTLAND
Daily Record

JOHN FERGUSON
21 AUG 2017

A Catholic priest at the centre of gay mafia accusations is set to return to a Scottish parish.

Father Matthew Despard, 52, was forced to quit after being rapped by the church over explosive claims in his book Priesthood in Crisis.

He wrote that a “powerful gay mafia” was operating at the top of the Catholic hierarchy and was responsible for sexual ­bullying.

Despard was forced to stand down from his post at St John Ogilvie’s Parish in Blantyre, Lanarkshire.

But he could now return after a Vatican court “partly reversed” the decision of a Scottish church tribunal.

Bishop of Motherwell Joseph Toal said: “Fr Despard has requested he be allowed to return to public priestly ministry by being given a new pastoral assignment.”

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AUSTRALIA
Deniliquin Pastoral Times

A Catholic brother who inflicted “sheer terror” on vulnerable boys at a Queensland orphanage, sexually abusing nine of them, has been jailed for his historical crimes.

“Your legacy disgusts me and every right-minded member of society,” Brisbane District Court Judge William Everson told Francis Brophy on Monday.

The 87-year-old, who was found guilty by a jury of five offences and sentenced for more than 30 counts in total, sexually abused the orphans at BoysTown, near Beaudesert, between 1978 and 1983.

Judge Everson denounced him as “a cowardly, evil pedophile” who masqueraded as a follower of God while inflicting lifelong damage on the children who were meant to be in his care.

He said Brophy presided over a “Gulag right in our midst” that left some of his victims ravaged by nightmares and post-traumatic stress disorder as adults.

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AUSTRALIA
Bunbury Mail

Bunbury Detectives have charged a 64-year-old man of Bicton with sexual offences against two children at homes in Bunbury and Willetton.

The charges are a result of ongoing investigations stemming from the Royal Commission into institutional responses to child sexual offences.

It will be alleged that between 1979 and 1983 the man, who was a teacher at the Bunbury Seventh Day Adventist Primary School, sexually abused a student at his home.

The child was aged between five and 10 years of age at the time.

It is further alleged that between 1987 and 1988 the man sexually abused a second student from the school at his home in Willetton.

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AUSTRALIA
Sydney Morning Herald

Rachel Browne

The King’s School in Sydney demonstrated a “catastrophic failure” in its handling of a child-sexual assault allegation, a submission to a royal commission states.

The submission by David Lloyd, counsel assisting the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse, stated that the school was advised to report the allegation to police but failed to do so.

The claim relates to a 2013 incident at a cadet camp in which one student was alleged to have masturbated on another student’s sleeping bag.

In a public hearing into harmful sexual behaviour in schools, the royal commission was told the Parramatta school sought advice from a police officer who wrote an email saying a formal report should be made.

The commission heard The King’s School’s then headmaster Timothy Hawkes did not make a report to police.

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AUSTRALIA
Western Advocate

Nadine Morton
@nadine_morton

21 Aug 2017

HISTORIC cases of sexual abuse, and the subsequent Royal Commission inquiry, has impacted the number of believers, Bathurst’s religious leaders say.

The number of Bathurst people who say they are not religious has tripled compared to 15 years ago, recently-released 2016 Census data shows.

In Bathurst, 22.4 per cent (9532 people) of the population said they have ‘no religion’ on the form, this has spiked dramatically compared to the 9.6 per cent (3435 people) who selected this answer in the 2001 Census.

Catholicism has recorded the biggest fall in Bathurst believers – from 35.4 per cent in 2001 to 31.1 per cent last year.

The percentage of Anglicans in Bathurst has also dropped – from 26.3 per cent to 19.2; while Presbyterian and Reformed has fallen from 5.2 to 4.2 per cent.

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AUSTRALIA
Newcastle Herald

As I watch the growing protest in the Catholic Church against the call for priests to be required to report child abuse confessions, my mind goes to Islam’s Sharia law. Forgive me, I can’t help it.

The church is fighting, as you have read in this paper, the call by the child abuse royal commission for priests to face criminal charges when they fail to report child sexual abuse that has become known to them in the confessional.

Confession is a cornerstone of Catholic religious practice, a regular event, often weekly, for practising Catholics.

The person confessing to a priest who may be seated behind a partition opens with the words “Forgive me, father, for I have sinned”, discusses those sins with the priest, is given a penance that may be a prayer to recite a certain number of times, and is absolved of those sins.

Catholics believe, or are supposed to believe, that the priest in the confessional is channelling God, that they are talking with God through the priest, although I suspect the godliness of priests has been reduced more than a modicum in the past decade.

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NEW ZEALAND
Stuff

MIKE MATHER

A former Catholic priest jailed for molesting boys in the 1970s and 80s has again been jailed for 26 months, on charges against three new historic victims.

Before Mark Mannix Brown was sentenced in the Hamilton District Court on Monday, one of his victims revealed harrowing details of the consequences of his abuse.

Brown, 74, had earlier plead guilty to four charges of indecent assault and attempted sodomy. Some of those charges were representative, meaning they cover a variety of incidents.

He had been jailed for 15 months in 1990 for sexual offending against altar boys.

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NEW ZEALAND
New Zealand Herald

Two sex abuse victims of former priest Mark Mannix Brown say his jail sentence brings them closure but say anything less would have belittled his actions.

It is now the second prison term Brown, 74, will have served for molesting young boys while he worked as a priest in the Catholic Church around Hamilton and Auckland in the 1970s and 80s.

Brown pleaded guilty to four representative charges after a sentence indication in the Hamilton District Court in May this year.

Today, Judge Simon Menzies sentenced Brown to 26 months’ jail.

He was first jailed for 15 months in March 1990 for indecently assaulting two altar boys in the 1980s when he was at St Mary’s Church, Hamilton.

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UNITED STATES
National Catholic Reporter

Aug 21, 2017
by Tom Roberts

ALEXANDRIA, VA. — SNAP, the organization that has become synonymous with uncovering the clergy sex abuse scandal, may be outpacing its acronym.

The Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, established in 1988, has been at the forefront of advocating for victims of clergy abuse and at pressing for accountability by church leadership. However, it was evident at a gathering of 300 victims, advocates and supporters Aug. 11-13 in Alexandria, Virginia, that the organization is in the midst of change.

“We’re in transition,” said Barbara Dorris, who took over as president when the group was left leaderless when founder Barbara Blaine and longtime national director David Clohessy, resigned within weeks of each other. Both longtime leaders said their resignations has been in the works for months and were not connected to a lawsuit filed in January in which both were named.

“We’ve gone from founder-led into an organization that is going to work more trying to build partnerships with other organizations, to build a stronger voice to protect children and do more outreach,” said Dorris. She also expressed a willingness to discuss a suggestion advanced by an expert that SNAP do more to connect victims with professional counselors.

The outreach is evidently underway. Dorris said this year’s conference included representatives of a number of other denominations as well as organizations such as the Boy Scouts.

“So, where we were focused on Catholics, we feel we’ll be stronger and have a better chance of accomplishing our goals if we become more inclusive,” she said.

If there is a natural expansion to the project — Joelle Casteix, a western regional leader for SNAP, reports that the vast majority of calls she now receives are not related to church abuse — the Catholic Church remains a central component of the group’s work. Survivors of abuse by priests are still predominant in its membership, the preponderant conversation is about elements of the church scandal and the new areas of the globe where reports of priest abuse are now beginning to surface.

Dominican Fr. Thomas Doyle and former Benedictine priest Richard Sipe both took the main stage at different times to recount their personal history in the struggle and to exhort survivors to work together in support of each other and the pursuit of justice.

The back page of the conference program was further evidence that the Catholic piece of the problem is still prominent. Bishopaccountability.org, an extensive digital repository of information and data about the scandal, lists 59 new names of those considered credibly accused that made it into the organization’s database in the past year. The database, which contains voluminous documentation, including legal transcripts and depositions as well as correspondence, currently lists as credibly accused of sexual abuse 27 bishops, 3,774 priests, 59 deacons, 23 seminarians, 290 brothers and 95 women religious. Not included, according to those managing the website, are 2,645 priests counted as credibly accused by the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops but not yet identified.

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GUAM
Pacific News Center

By Jolene Toves – August 21, 2017

The alleged victim is represented by Attorney David Lujan.

Guam – Over 90 sexual abuse lawsuits have been filed against the Archdiocese of Guam and its agents, last Friday, another suit was filed seeking $10 million in punitive damages against retired Catholic priest Louis Broulliard.

Retired priest Louis Broulliard has been named as the perpetrator in a majority of the sex abuse cases filed against the Archdiocese. Last Friday, another alleged victim identified as V.Q. came forward sharing his recollections of sexual abuse that occurred at the hands of Louis Broulliard when V.Q. was just 14 years old. Broulliard served as a priest on Guam for over four decades, holding many positions within the church as well as serving as a Scoutmaster for the Boy Scouts of America.

According to court documents, V.Q. joined the Mongmong Troop 18 Boy Scouts in 1977, when Broulliard was scoutmaster. As part of the requirements, the boy scouts met several times a week at the Mongmong parish to study the Scout Oaths, Laws and practice marching, drills and map reading. The Boy Scouts of America also encouraged their scouts to be faithful in their religious duties and as a result V.Q.’s participation revolved around the church in order to fulfill the Scout oath and laws.

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GUAM
The Guam Daily Post

Mindy Aguon | The Guam Daily Post

A new survey shows a strong decline in trust for religious institutions in Guam. The decline is attributed to the filing of more than 100 sex abuse cases against former and current members of the clergy and the loss of trust in the Catholic Church.

The poll was conducted by a private entity at the request of attorney David Lujan who represents dozens of child sex abuse victims. The results are expected to be released to the Archdiocese of Agana in the coming weeks.

During the last status conference before District Court Judge Joaquin Manibusan Jr., Lujan mentioned that the poll found an unfavorable attitude toward the church from those surveyed.

Three hundred Guam voters were surveyed over the telephone in May. The average age of those polled was 40. Individuals between ages 18 and 90 participated in the poll and surveyors noted a sample error of +/- 3 percent

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MEXICO
Concentrado

[Organizations called for investigation into cases such as the “Ciudad de los Niños” in the state of Guanajuato to continue. They also ask that the ecclesial structure and the code of canon law be modified “in order to eliminate the cover-up of crimes of clerical pederasty”. Among the plaintiffs are Catholics for the Right to Decide.]

Organizaciones pidieron que las investigaciones por casos como la “Ciudad de los Niños” en el estado de Guanajuato, continúen, y se entreguen responsabilidades penales. También que sea modificada la estructura eclesial y el código de derecho canónico “a fin de eliminar el encubrimiento de los crímenes de pederastia clerical”. Entre los demandantes está Católicas por el Derecho a Decidir.

Ciudad de México, 18 de agosto (EFE).- Organizaciones de la sociedad civil exigieron ayer la reapertura de la investigación con el fin de atribuir responsabilidades penales a los supuestos autores de abusos sexuales perpetrados en el refugio juvenil “Ciudad de los Niños” en el estado de Guanajuato, entre otros albergues.

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PERU
El Nacional

[Seven months imprisonment of a Spanish priest for sexual abuse in Peru. The Catholic priest abused the four students of the John Paul II Minor Seminary between 2014 and 2017. The newspaper La Republica says that the clergyman used his spiritual guidance to infiltrate the students’ rooms and assault them sexually.]

Un tribunal peruano de justicia dictó siete meses de prisión preventiva al sacerdote español Santiago Martínez Valentín-Gamazo, acusado de presuntos tocamientos indebidos a cuatro menores de edad alumnos de un seminario religioso en Perú, informó el sábado el diario limeño La República.

El fallo de la Sala Penal de Apelaciones de Moyobamba (nororiente) revocó la decisión de un juez instructor de primera instancia, quien semanas atrás desestimó el pedido de prisión preventiva que presentó la fiscalía alegando falta de pruebas. Ello le permitía al denunciado afrontar el proceso en libertad.

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ARGENTINE
Ambito

[The director of the traditional Marist School Champagnat, located in the microcenter of Buenos Aires, Angel Duples, admitted having abused a student 38 years ago, according to a statement issued by that institution. The accused was removed from office and transferred to a geriatric hospital.]

El director del tradicional Colegio Marista Champagnat, situado en el microcentro porteño, Ángel Duples, admitió haber abusado de un alumno hace 38 años, según se aseguró en un comunicado difundido por esa institución. El acusado fue removido del cargo y trasladado a un geriátrico.

“El Instituto de los Hermanos Maristas tomó conocimiento de un hecho ocurrido hace aproximadamente 38 años en el que un exalumno del colegio marista de Morón padeció un manoseo agraviante, por parte de un Hermano, en el contexto de un campamento”, expresó el colegio en el comunicado.

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NEW MEXICO
Las Cruces Sun-News

LAS CRUCES — A Vado man was sentenced Monday to 18 months in prison after pleading guilty to sexually assaulting a child, according to the 3rd Judicial District Attorney’s Office.

Jesus Luna-Armenta, 29, pleaded guilty to three counts of criminal sexual penetration of child (between 13 and 16 years old) and one count of selling or giving alcoholic beverages to a minor.

According to prosecutors, Luna-Armenta had sought a relationship with the 14-year-old victim through Facebook. His advances escalated, and on at least three occasions, he picked the victim up from her house with the intent to have sex, according to police reports.

On one occasion, Luna-Armenta took the girl to his house while his fiancée was not at home and forced her to engage in sexual activity, despite her objections, prosecutors said. In another instance, he took her to a motel room in Anthony, Texas, intending to force her to perform a sexual act.

At his sentencing, Luna-Armenta told the court that he teaches confirmation classes to teens at his church in Del Cerro, according to prosecutors. He also said he hopes to pursue a career in youth counseling one day.

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NEW MEXICO
El Diario de El Paso

[A teacher who taught confirmation classes at a Catholic church in New Mexico was sentenced to 18 months in jail for having sex with a 14-year-old girl. Jesús Luna Armenta, 29, pleaded guilty to three counts of criminal sexual penetration of one minor and one for giving or selling liquor to a minor.]

Karla Valdez
El Diario de El Paso

Un maestro que impartía clases de confirmación en una iglesia católica de Nuevo México, fue sentenciado a 18 meses de cárcel por sostener relaciones sexuales con una adolescente de 14 años.

Jesús Luna Armenta, de 29 años, se declaró culpable de tres cargos por penetración sexual criminal de una menor y otro por dar o vender bebidas alcohólicas a un menor de edad.

Luna Armenta dijo haber conocido a la víctima por Facebook y admitió tener relaciones sexuales con ella por lo menos en tres ocasiones.

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PEROU
kath.ch

[Peru: Spanish priest detained for sexual abuse of minors.The Moyobamba Criminal Appeals Chamber in Peru ordered the seven-month pre-trial detention of a Spanish priest accused of sexual abuse of four minors committed between 2014 and 2017 at the John Paul II seminary which is located in the region of San Martín.]

19.08.2017 par Maurice Page

La Chambre d’appel pénale de Moyobamba, au Pérou, a ordonné la mise en détention préventive pour sept mois d’un prêtre espagnol accusé d’abus sexuels sur quatre mineurs commis entre 2014 et 2017 au petit séminaire Jean-Paul II, situé dans cette localité de la région de San Martín.

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UNITED KINGDOM
Sunday Telegraph

Olivia Rudgard, social and religious affairs correspondent
19 AUGUST 2017

The Catholic Church and local authorities have been criticised after trying to claim child sex abuse victims “consented” in a bid to avoid compensation payouts.

Lawyers who represent some of the victims have told the Sunday Telegraph that the defence is more frequently being used by private schools, religious groups and local authorities when trying to defend compensation claims.

The revelation comes after news that the Criminal Injuries Compensation Scheme, a Government agency, was denying some children compensation because it said they had “consented” to abuse – even if they were of an age where they could not do so legally.

Siobhán Crawford, of London-based firm Bolt Burdon Kemp, one of the largest firms in the field, said the defence is normally used where a child turns 16 during the abuse.

She said the firm had dealt with ten such cases, and there had been an increase in the past two years as authorities became aware that it was an option.

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UNITED STATES
Christian Today

Lorraine Caballero 20 August, 2017

Mormon church leaders are now facing several lawsuits over their alleged failure to protect children from sexual abuse under a now-defunct foster program which ran from the 1940s to 2000.

Five lawsuits have been filed against the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in 2016 on behalf of Navajo tribal members who alleged that the Mormon church failed to protect children from sexual abuse at the hands of foster families. Three other similar lawsuits were recently filed in Navajo Nation court and Washington state, The Associated Press detailed.

During a news conference in Phoenix on Aug. 15, a new Navajo plaintiff identified as A.H. said she told her local bishop that her foster father was abusing her. However, the bishop told her not to talk about it and that the matter would be addressed.

According to A.H., the abuse continued and the Church did not report it to authorities. She sought legal advice after she observed that the same thing was happening to other Navajos such as a woman identified only as J.C.

The attorneys of the plaintiffs said the Church leaders failed to report the abuse to authorities or to other church members even though they knew about what was happening. They also allege that the Mormon church did not properly monitor foster families.

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IRELAND
The Times

Lynne Kelleher
August 19 2017
The Times

A Leitrim priest had a local doctor murdered in 1923 because he knew the priest had fathered a child with his teenage housekeeper, the GP’s relatives have claimed.

An RTÉ radio documentary reveals that the priest was never charged with the murder but did go on trial for abandoning a two-week-old girl a month before the shooting.

Father Edward Ryans, 37, and Kate Brown, his 19-year-old housekeeper, were caught leaving the baby, Rose Brown, opposite the Black Church in Dublin in February 1923.

A month later, Paddy Muldoon, 32, was shot dead in the town of Mohill, Co Leitrim, when walking out on to the street after a card game during the final months of the Civil War. He had treated the housekeeper during the early stages of her pregnancy, and, asked by her family to arrange an illegal abortion, had refused.

The story of an IRA-supporting rebel priest allegedly arranging the execution of the local doctor and the efforts by the state, church and rebel forces to keep it under wraps will be aired on RTÉ Radio 1 at 1pm today.

Newly discovered archive material from sources, including the Muldoon family, are used to piece together the events surrounding the murder and the maverick priest who once used his car to ferry escaped IRA convicts.

In archive footage, Thomas William Muldoon, a nephew of the doctor, tells how his father was told who killed the GP by a canon at the funeral.

“On the day of the funeral, a priest, he was a Canon Pitman, told my father, ‘I believe it was Father Ryans who shot him’.”

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IRELAND
Belfast Telegraph

Fr Edward Ryans was the prime suspect in the killing of a GP, Paddy Muldoon, in Dublin, but the crime was never solved. A new documentary, however, claims there may have been a conspiracy of silence. Kim Bielenberg looks at the evidence

August 19 2017

In February 1923, as the Irish civil war was drawing to a close, a Catholic priest was arrested with his housekeeper on a charge of abandoning a baby on the doorstep of a house in Dublin’s north inner city.

Three local women had noticed the curate, Fr Edward Ryans, and the teenage girl acting suspiciously before they left the infant and a package wrapped in brown paper near the Black Church in Broadstone.

The vigilant women apprehended the couple from Leitrim as they tried to hurry away, before reporting them to police.

A month later, Paddy Muldoon, a young doctor from the same area in Leitrim, was walking late at night down the street in Mohill with a friend, Edward Geelan, when suddenly three men appeared in trenchcoats.

Muldoon and his friend were just saying goodbye near the bridge, when one of the men opened fire at Dr Muldoon.

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IRELAND
Irish Times

Patsy McGarry

The wellbeing of the child should be the primary consideration for any Catholic priest who becomes a father, guidelines approved by Ireland’s Catholic bishops state.

The guidelines say the priest “should face up to his responsibilities – legal, moral and financial. At a minimum, no priest should walk away from his responsibilities.”

In arriving at any decision concerning his child, it is “vital” that the mother, “as the primary caregiver, and as a moral agent in her own right, be fully involved”. It was also “important that a mother and child should not be left isolated or excluded”.

The guidelines, Principles of Responsibility Regarding Priests who Father Children While in Ministry, were approved by the bishops last May, but have yet to be published on their website or any Catholic diocesan website in Ireland.

They were prepared following discussions with Galway-based psychotherapist Vincent Doyle (34), whose father, Co Longford priest Fr JJ Doyle, died of lung cancer in 1995.

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AUSTRALIA
The Advertiser

Meagan Dillon, Court Reporter, Sunday Mail (SA)
August 19, 2017

A FORMER South Australian church pastor has been found guilty of sexually exploiting two young sisters more than 40 years ago — crimes that were examined by the Royal Commission into Institutional Sexual Abuse.

District Court Judge Gordon Barrett this month found ex-Salvation Army officer Christian Siebert guilty of two counts of the persistent sexual exploitation of two girls — then aged four and six — between 1976 and 1978.

Both victims first made statements to Victoria Police in 2004, and went on to give evidence at the royal commission two years ago.

The District Court heard a Salvation Army couple were posted to an SA country town and moved there with their two daughters and son in 1976.

Siebert, who would later become a pastor, was aged 20 at the time and was an active member of the church congregation where he spent a lot of time with the siblings, who lived next to the church.

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DEUTSCHLAND
kath.net

[Diocese of Hildesheim: The abuse report is now available. However, the results will be publicized in October. According to the NDR, the current Hildesheimer Bishop Norbert Trelle will no longer be in office at the time of publicizing the results because he will have to submit the request for retirement to Pope Francis in September since he will be 75 years old.]

Die Ergebnisse werden allerdings erst im Oktober der Öffentlichkeit bekannt gemacht.

Hildesheim (kath.net) Das Gutachten über die Missbrauchsfälle im Bistum Hildesheim liegt jetzt der Bistumsleitung vor. Die Ergebnisse werden aber erst im Oktober der Öffentlichkeit bekanntgemacht, wie der NDR berichtete. „Wir werden das Gutachten jetzt genau lesen und schauen, welche Schlüsse wir aus den Ergebnissen ziehen müssen“, erläuterte dazu Weihbischof Heinz-Günter Bongartz. Das Bistum hatte das Gutachten vor einem Jahr selbst beim Münchner Institut IPP in Auftrag gegeben, es geht nicht zuletzt um Missbrauchsvorwürfe gegen den 1988 verstorbenen früheren Hildesheimer Bischof Heinrich Maria Janssen und gegen den pensionierten Priester Peter R. zu prüfen.

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DETUSCHLAND
WDR

[The Wittgenstein Protestant Church District has dismissed its senior youth counselor. The 54-year-old is said to have sexually abused a teenager.]

Der Evangelische Kirchenkreis Wittgenstein hat seinen leitenden Jugendreferenten entlassen. Der 54-Jährige soll eine Jugendliche sexuell missbraucht haben.

Die Tat soll sich in einem Reisebus auf der Rückfahrt von einer Jugendreise ereignet haben, wie am Freitag (18.08.2017) bekannt wurde. Laut Siegener Staatsanwaltschaft und Kirchenkreis hat sich der Mann selbst angezeigt. Die Ermittlungen wegen des sexuellen Missbrauchs einer Schutzbefohlenen laufen.

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RHODE ISLAND
GoLocalProv

Friday, August 18, 2017
GoLocal News Team

United Nurses and Allied Professionals (UNAP) general counsel Christopher Callaci released the following statement today after GoLocal Prov unveiled the bankrupcty on Friday:

“We are deeply troubled by the potential impact this receivership may have on our members and their families who, for years, have been told they would be able to rely on this fund when they needed it the most.”

We expect the Roman Catholic Diocese of Providence to be transparent about how the fund has been bled and left with a $43 million shortfall and what they plan to do to about it. There is a moral obligation to act soon so that people may retire with dignity and the financial stability the plan was supposed to provide.

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TENNESSEE
Tennessean

Anita Wadhwani and Holly Meyer, Knoxville Aug. 18, 2017

At the center of allegations that a 12-year-old boy was raped in 2015 in the locker room of an elite Brentwood Christian school are questions about how school officials respond to student misconduct.

A review of a Brentwood Academy student handbook reveals a biblical-based approach to student conduct.

Sexual abuse prevention advocates said portions of that guidance may be sending a troubling message to students.

And a comparison of Brentwood Academy student conduct and discipline guidelines to other local Christian and public schools shows a different approach to communicating how the academy responds to allegations of sexual misconduct.

‘Treat that person as a pagan or a corrupt taxpayer’

The academy’s “Student Conduct and Discipline” policy begins by quoting this version of Matthew 18:15-17 as its model:

“If another believer sins against you, go privately and point out the offense. If the other person listens and confesses it, you have won the person back.

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UNITED STATES
National Catholic Reporter

Aug 18, 2017
by Brian Roewe

A defamation case brought against Bill Donohue by a Kansas City man, whose account of clergy sexual abuse the Catholic League head doubted, closed Aug. 17 after the plaintiff opted not to appeal its dismissal by lower courts to the U.S. Supreme Court.

In April, the 8th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals upheld a federal district court’s October 2015 ruling to dismiss charges of defamation, invasion of privacy, and intentional and negligent infliction of emotional distress brought by Jon David Couzens. The claims against Donohue traced to past press statements he issued about Couzens with regard to a 2011 lawsuit he brought against the Kansas City-St. Joseph, Missouri, Diocese.

The 90-day window to appeal the appeals court’s ruling closed on Thursday.

Both the district and appeals courts ruled that because the statements originated in New York, where Donohue and the Catholic League are based, that the case was subject to the state’s one-year statute of limitations, rather than Missouri law and its two-year statute of limitations. Couzens’ attorney argued that the Missouri statute applied because the state was the site where he sustained the alleged injuries.

Rebecca Randles, Couzens’ attorney, told NCR in an email an appeal was not pursued due to a belief that the case presented more of a state, rather than federal, issue, and the “slim chance” the Supreme Court would take it up. While she disagreed with the courts’ ruling on the statute of limitations, she added, “The opinion of the lower court is pretty clear that Donohue defamed my client.”

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RHODE ISLAND
GoLocalProv

Friday, August 18, 2017
GoLocalProv News Team

GoLocalProv has learned that the St. Joseph Health Services of Rhode Island pension fund has filed for receivership — the filing puts thousands of pensions at risk.

This is one of the largest pension failures in Rhode Island in recent history. It will take months to determine the total financial impact on the pensioners.

Kilmartin Signed Off

According to sources close to the matter, somewhere between 2,000 and 3,000 pension accounts will be impacted, but the exact number of individuals affected is not known.

The triggering event was a decision by the Diocese of Providence to exit the system. The fund is not connected to CharterCARE or their parent company, Prospect.

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GUAM
The Guam Daily Post

Mindy Aguon | The Guam Daily Post

“Brouillard would swim completely naked and routinely instructed V.Q. and the other boys to remove their clothes. Brouillard would grope and touch their private parts.”

– Lawsuit filed by attorney David Lujan on behalf of “V.Q.”

In 1977, “V.Q.” – using initials in recent court documents to protect his identity – joined the Mongmong Troop 18 Boy Scouts in hopes of participating in new activities and learning new things.

V.Q. said he was 14 when he joined the organization. He recalls attending meetings several times a week at the Nuestra Señora De Las Aguas Catholic Church in Mongmong to study the scout oaths and laws, and to practice marching, drills and map reading.

During those troop meetings, the boy met Father Louis Brouilard, who not only served as a priest for the Archdiocese of Agana but also as scoutmaster for the Boy Scouts.

According to a civil complaint filed yesterday in the District Court of Guam, during weekly outings with Brouillard to earn his swimming merit badge, V.Q. said he was sexually molested and abused on “numerous occasions” by the priest.

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UNITED STATES
Baptist News

BOB ALLEN | AUGUST 18, 2017

U.S. immigration officials have deported a former British Baptist minister and convicted sexual predator wanted for additional alleged sex crimes in the United Kingdom.

The U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement announced Aug. 16 that upon his release from a Virginia prison, 53-year-old Robert John Dando was accompanied by deportation officers on a commercial flight from Washington Dulles International Airport to Heathrow Airport in London and turned over to authorities there.

Dando, one-time unpaid traveling assistant to British Baptist leader David Coffey when Coffey served as president of the Baptist World Alliance, appeared at Banbury Magistrates’ Court on Wednesday. He is charged with 15 counts of sexual abuse relating to nine victims over 23 years. Charges include rape and sexual assault of boys in the south of England and Wales between 1986 and 2009.

At the time senior minister at Worcester Park Baptist Church in suburban London, Dando entered the United States in July 2010 under a program that allows citizens of certain countries into the country for tourism, business or while in transit up to 90 days without having to obtain a visa.

He was arrested in Oakton, Va., on July 24, 2010, and eventually pleaded guilty to four counts of sexually molesting the young sons of family friends while on visits to their Northern Virginia home over a period of several years. He was sentenced to eight years in prison in Fairfax County Circuit Court in 2011.

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AUSTRALIA
National Catholic Reporter

Aug 18, 2017

by Kieran Tapsell

The Australian Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse has just released its Criminal Justice Report in which it deals with many matters relating to the way child sexual abuse within institutions is handled by the Australian criminal justice system. In the course of that report, it recommends mandatory reporting of all suspected child sexual abuse within institutions and the creation of new offences of failing to take proper care to prevent such abuse.

One recommendation that understandably created some media interest is that there should be no exemption to the reporting requirements for information provided in confession.

The commission’s report produces convincing evidence, not only in Australia, but also overseas, that priest sex abusers used confession as a means of assuaging their guilt. It made it easier for them to repeat their crimes because confession was always available.

In a response to the report, Jesuit Fr. Frank Brennan stated that a civil law requirement for priests to break the seal of confession was unlikely to lead to better protection for children because abusers would not confess such matters if they knew they had to be reported. Brennan said that he would disobey any such law and accept the consequences.

Archbishop Denis Hart, president of the Australian Catholic Bishops Conference, in his response said that the secret of the confessional is a “fundamental part of the freedom of religion…and it must remain so here in Australia.” In an interview on ABC Radio, Hart said he would go to jail rather than breach the secret.

It is surprising that no church representative has mentioned a way in which the church could significantly reduce the risk of breach of the seal by a fairly simple change to canon law based on a problem that has a long history.

Ever since private confession became the practice in the church in the early Middle Ages, there has been a continual problem of priests soliciting sex in the confessional. The church was so worried about the practice that the Council of Treves in 1227 required such priests to be excommunicated. In 1622, Pope Gregory XV required penitents to denounce such priests to the Inquisition or to the bishop, and that confessors should advise penitents of their obligation to do so. In 1741, Pope Benedict XIV confirmed this decree, and added that absolution should be refused to solicited penitents until they denounced their confessors. He also decreed that only popes could give absolution to penitents who falsely accused priests of soliciting.

The persons solicited were mostly women, less so men, but rarely young children because until 1910, they did not go to confession until they reached the age of 12 to 14 years. In 2010, Pope Pius X reduced the age to 7 years thus broadening the opportunities for paedophiles to find their victims. A number of case studies examined by the Australian Royal Commission confirmed that such soliciting of young children in the confessional had occurred in Australia.

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AUSTRALIA
The Weekend Australian

August 19, 2017

GREG CRAVEN
Columnist
Melbourne

Have things ever seemed worse for the Catholic Church in Australia? If it were a boxer, it would look tangled in the ropes, sliding towards the canvas and spitting blood. The past four years have been horrendous. Endless, horrifying accounts of historical child abuse. A royal commission relentlessly critiquing failures of bishops and processes. The media baying for yet more blood. Cardinal ­George Pell charged with abuse offences. The cardinal has the full presumption of innocence, but the communal trauma is palpable.

And now, a report from the commission eviscerating the Catholic sacrament of confession. How much worse can this get?

The entire spectacle has been relished by journalists, activists and downright bigots praying fervently to a non-existent God for the implosion of the Catholic Church. It would not be fair to say such critics have no interest in child abuse. No one can stomach the victimisation of children, by Catholics or others.

But to inveterate enemies of the church, the appalling reality of the scandal is incidental. They have battled Catholicism bitterly for decades on issues such as abortion, euthanasia and same-sex marriage. To anti-Catholic enthusiasts such as David Marr and Peter Fitzsimons, Catholicism has stood — if not alone, then lonely — against their self-focused creed of secular politics. This is their opportunity to kick the church hard when it is down. In normal circumstances, you could make these points without tarring and feathering. But these are not normal times.

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BOTSWANA
Mmegi blogs

By KGOSIETSILE NGAKAAGAE Fri 18 Aug 2017

It often takes a lifetime to build a reputation and a moment to have it all come crumbing down. Sexual scandals, in particular, make interesting reading but behind each, there is a hurting human being who may very well be totally innocent.

When news surrounding the resignation of the Roman Catholic Bishop broke out in a screaming headline last Friday, and went viral in social media, I paused to think of the hurt that the man was inevitably going through. I focused on him not out of lack of empathy for his accusers but because he was, at that moment, the one at the wrong end of the stick. Overnight, he had moved from being a symbol of all things right to one of all things wrong with the Catholic Church and the Christian clergy. His fate was sealed before his trial commenced. He stood disgraced, his reputation in tatters and social media gnawing at whatever remained of it.

I don’t know the Bishop from Jack. I have heard of him but I have never seen or met him. I do not purport to speak for him but purely for principle. Further, I do not know if he actually did the things he is alleged to have done. My point is that whilst it is impossible not to be concerned at such allegations, it is important to refrain from judgment on matters affecting people’s reputations until all facts are on the table. Any person would ask for that, similarly circumstanced. The need is especially pronounced in his case where, ex facie, the complaint as narrated, elicited more questions than answers. Let us consider the allegations, briefly.

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NEW YORK
New York Post

By Emily Saul August 17, 2017

These Yeshiva school “suppers” were definitely not kosher.

Two former leaders of a prestigious, Brooklyn-based chain of Yeshivas are facing up to 20 years prison for claiming they were serving kids federally subsidized suppers five nights a week — and instead pocketing the $3 million in subsidies, the feds said Thursday.

Elozer Porges and Joel Lowy, formerly executive director and assistant director of Central United Talmudic Academy, pleaded not guilty to conspiracy and fraud at their arraignment in Brooklyn federal court.

The yeshiva bigwigs had submitted phony documents claiming that between 2014 and 2016, low-income and at-risk children stayed late and ate supper every weeknight at three of their schools — at 762 Wythe Ave., 25 Franklin St. and 84-88 Sandford St. — the charges allege.

But while many of the schools’ kids ate federally subsidized breakfasts, lunches and snacks, they wouldn’t stay for supper, the feds said.

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UNITED STATES
Catholic League

Catholic League president Bill Donohue comments on the Boston Globe’s selective concern about fatherless children:

The Boston Globe’s “Spotlight” team is out with another attack on the Catholic priesthood: this one a two-part series on “Children of Catholic priests” who “live with secrets and sorrow.”

Using a few highly publicized cases, and several anecdotal stories, reporter Michael Rezendes concludes that by “any reasonable measure, there are thousands” of children around the world “who have strong evidence that they are the sons and daughters of Catholic priests.” Yet as he acknowledges, with over 400,000 priests worldwide, even if the unsubstantiated “thousands” estimate is accepted, that could amount to as little as one percent or less of priests having fathered a child. And as he further acknowledges, some of these priests “took their responsibility seriously.”

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TENNESSEE
Tennessean

Holly Meyer, USA TODAY NETWORK – Tennessee Aug. 18, 2017

A Nashville priest reminded his congregation recently that suspected child abuse within their church community should be immediately reported to civil authorities.

Prompted by news of a lawsuit filed against Brentwood Academy, the Rev. Thomas McKenzie, who leads Church of the Redeemer, sent a letter to members reiterating the church’s reporting policy.

“This is just one of those moments where it’s now in the public consciousness and so I felt like we need to remind people of how this is supposed to be done,” said McKenzie, whose church is not connected to the school.

The lawsuit accuses the prestigious Christian school of not protecting a 12-year-old boy from repeated sexual assaults by teen boys in a locker room at the school.

McKenzie emphasized that he did not know what happened at Brentwood Academy, but the allegations prompted the need to revisit the congregation’s responsibility to children in its care.

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NEW YORK
New York Daily News

BY
ANDREW KESHNER
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS
Thursday, August 17, 2017

Two ex-administrators at a Brooklyn Hasidic school system are accused of taking food out of the mouths of children.

Elozer Porges, 43, and Joel Lowy, 29, formerly of the Central United Talmudic Academy, were indicted Thursday on charges that they bilked a federal school meal program out of $3 million — putting in claims on food that was never served.

Brooklyn federal prosecutors said the unreal meal scheme took place between 2013 and 2015. They said the pair padded reimbursement claims so they could reap larger checks from the U.S. Child and Adult Care Food Program — a program meant to feed at-risk children.

The FBI and the city Department of Investigation launched a joint investigation into the reimbursement process in 2014 — specifically looking at whether dinners were actually served at the Williamsburg schools.

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MASSACHUSETTS
Esquire

A new Spotlight investigation in The Boston Globe shows it’s high time.

BY CHARLES P. PIERCE
AUG 17, 2017

Now that all that pesky Oscar Buzz has died down, it’s important to note that my old Boston Phoenix running buddy, Mike Rezendes, is Still On The Case. As part of The Boston Globe’s Spotlight team, Mike has written a sad and remarkable series about people who are the sons and daughters of purportedly celibate Roman Catholic clergy, and the shameful abandonment of those people by the institution for which their fathers worked.

Jim Graham couldn’t know in that moment that the stunning secret which had seemed his alone was not that unusual. By any reasonable measure, there are thousands of others who have strong evidence that they are the sons and daughters of Catholic priests, though most are unaware that they have so much company in their pain. In Ireland, Mexico, Poland, Paraguay, and other countries, in American cities big and small — indeed, virtually anywhere the church has a presence — the children of priests form an invisible legion of secrecy and neglect, a Spotlight Team review has found. Their exact number can’t be known, but with more than 400,000 priests worldwide, many of them inconstant in their promise of celibacy, the potential for unplanned children is vast.

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MINNESOTA
KEYC

By Kelsey Barchenger, Morning/Midday Anchor

A retired priest with the Diocese of New Ulm faces an allegation of sexual abuse.

A statement from the diocese says police and parishioners have been notified.

The alleged abuse dates back to the 1990s when Fr. James Devorak was assigned to the St. Pius X parish in Glencoe.

A statement from Bishop John LeVoir goes on to say Fr. Devorak’s last assignment in the Diocese of New Ulm ended in July of 2015 and the Diocese is unaware of any other abuse allegations.

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GUAM
Pacific Daily News

Haidee V Eugenio, heugenio@guampdn.com Aug. 18, 2017

A former Boy Scout accused former priest Louis Brouillard of sexually abusing him around 1977 or 1978 at Lonfit River, according to a lawsuit filed in the District Court of Guam.

The accuser, identified in court documents only by his initials V.Q., filed a $10 million lawsuit Friday afternoon against Brouillard, the Archdiocese of Agana, the Boy Scouts of America and its Aloha Council Chamorro District.

V.Q., represented by attorney David J. Lujan, is the 98th person to file a childhood sexual abuse lawsuit on Guam involving the Catholic Church.

As Scouts, V.Q. and other boys were required to meet several times a week at the Nuestra Senora De Las Aguas Catholic Church in Mongmong, the complaint says.

The lawsuit says Brouillard’s sexually predatory practices included weekly outings in which he would take V.Q. and other Scouts to the Lonfit River in Ordot Chalan Pago to compete for their swimming badges.

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NORTHERN IRELAND
BBC News

Victims of institutional abuse have said they are angry that NI Secretary James Brokenshire will not to use his powers to make interim compensation payments.

The Historical Institutional Abuse (HIA) Inquiry recommended a state apology and compensation for victims.

The collapse of Stormont in January meant the process was put on hold.

A spokesperson said Mr Brokenshire had made “no decisions” on the issue.

The government spokesperson added that it “remains a devolved issue” and that abuse compensation was “one of the many reasons (Mr Brokenshire) remains determined to get an NI Executive back up and running”.

“He continues to urge the parties to seek urgent resolution to restore the executive so that a response can be provided to Sir Anthony’s (HIA) report at the earliest opportunity.”

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AUSTRALIA
7 News

Lisa Martin
AAP

The royal commission into child sex abuse may need to have separate public and confidential volumes in order to avoid prejudicing Cardinal George Pell’s legal case.

The final report is expected to be in the order of 15,000 pages long and goes to the federal government on December 15.

AAP understands the commission and government are grappling with potential legal issues over the Pell case.

The royal commission has only examined Pell’s handling of abuse allegations against other clergy in the church while he was Melbourne Archbishop and a Ballarat priest and not claims against him personally.

Pell, Australia’s highest-ranking Catholic official and ranked number three in the Vatican, was charged in June with multiple historical sex offence charges involving multiple complainants.

There has been speculation in legal circles that the public release of the final report and Melbourne and Ballarat case studies may have to be delayed.

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AUSTRALIA
Wollondilly Advertiser

The region’s highest-ranking Catholic does not believe priests should be compelled to report child abuse admissions made during the sanctity of Confession.

Bishop Peter Ingham, head of the Catholic Diocese of Wollongong – which encompasses the entire Macarthur region – says Catholic faith dictates the Seal of Confession “cannot be broken” and it is equally important to “preserve the sanctity” of confession and “protect, defend and help children”.

He said it was not an “either or” situation, but rather a “both and”.

The Bishop has clarified his position in response to a recent recommendation out of the Royal Commission into child abuse within the Catholic church.

The recommendation suggested priests should be compelled by law to report to authorities any instances of child abuse admitted to them during Confession.

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AUSTRALIA
The Age

Editorial

It is understandable that the hierarchy of the Catholic Church in Australia is resistant to the recommendation by the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse that priests be legally compelled to report to police information received via the confessional. But the church’s hostility is not reasonable, and legislators should implement this and other recommendations in the commission’s Criminal Justice Report, one of the publications flowing from the four-year investigation.

Transgression of the centuries-old seal of the confessional (the duty of priests to never divulge what penitents have confessed) is penalised with automatic excommunication. The commission has heard evidence of the misuse of the confessional. Priests guilty of serial child rape have used it to seek absolution before repeating their crime. Predatory paedophile priests have used it to groom victims. The commission concludes: “The report recommends there be no exemption, excuse, protection or privilege from the offence granted to clergy for failing to report information disclosed in connection with a religious confession.”

That is a just and logical proposal. Notwithstanding the separation of church and state (which protects religious freedom, entrusts lawmaking to the polity and enshrines a secular society), priests, like everyone else, are not above the law. Mandatory reporting is seen as effective in other professions that work with children. Tradition per se is an insufficient argument against change. The priority is the protection of children. The seal of the confessional has protected paedophile priests.

The commission’s other recommendations include: allowing multiple victims to give evidence against a single alleged abuser; increased sentences for historical offences; criminalising an institution’s failure to protect a child or report abuse; and stronger anti-grooming laws. The rule of law – and the associated principles that we are all equal under the law and that justice is blind – is fundamental to our social, economic and political stability. In this case of a clash between canonical law (law stemming from papal edict) and statute, it is in the public interest that child protection trump all other considerations.

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IRELAND
Irish Independent

Claire Fox and Cillian Sherlock
August 17 2017

A Magdalene Laundries campaigner has called for the removal of a statue dedicated to the Sisters of Mercy outside a former laundry in Dublin.

Patricia McDonald, founder of Justice for Magdalene Laundries, told Joe Duffy on RTE Radio One’s Liveline that the statue of a nun welcoming a poor woman and baby outside the Sisters of Mercy convent does not reflect the suffering that women experienced at the laundry.

“It does not record the actual reality of suffering and distress experienced by generations of women. It’s inappropriate. I’m not decrying the piece. It’s a nice piece of art,” she said.

Ms McDonald grew up in the Baggot Street area of Dublin and recalled how she would see the women emerging from the back of laundry but didn’t understand the significance of what they were doing.

“I remembered as a child seeing huge wooden doors open occasionally and steam coming out and women in uniforms appearing out in the lane way. As a child I didn’t know the significance of that and that it was in fact a laundry,” she added.

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MASSACHUSETTS
Church Militant

by Stephen Wynne • ChurchMilitant.com • August 17, 2017

New investigation uncovers more evidence of Church in crisis

BOSTON (ChurchMilitant.com) – Fifteen years after its bombshell report on clerical sex abuse, the Boston Globe is again throwing light on a dark corner of the Church — this time exposing the plight of children fathered by unchaste priests.

In a two-part series published Wednesday and Thursday, the paper released findings from an investigation led by Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Michael Rezendes, who in 2002 first unmasked the sexual abuse crisis in the Church.

Rezendes’ new report reveals that across the world, thousands of people are uncovering “strong evidence that they are the sons and daughters of Catholic priests.” The prevalence of the phenomenon is such that in 2014, Vincent Doyle, the son of an Irish priest, established Coping International, an organization devoted to providing support to offspring of Catholic priests and religious.

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AUSTRALIA
Sydney Morning Herald

Nick O’Malley

Father Michael McArdle was reportedly so distressed by his acts of child sexual abuse in Queensland that he would often seek the succour of the confessional. Over a 25-year period, before he was convicted in 2002, he confessed to sexually assaulting children an estimated 1500 times to 30 different priests. In keeping with Catholic tradition in Australia, the priests did not report to his crimes to authorities, but moved him on to different parishes, to greener pastures.

McArdle’s case resonates this week because on Monday the royal commission into child sex abuse released 85 recommendations on improvements to the criminal justice system. Among them was the proposal that the seal of the religious confessional be broken and that clergy who fail to report child abuse revealed in confession face criminal prosecution, just as anyone else in Australia would. Since the Catholic Church is the only major religion in Australia that still insists its canon law be held above secular law in this regard, this was rightly seen as a challenge, and the Catholic Church, defensive of its significant privileges, responded.

On Tuesday Melbourne’s archbishop, Denis Hart, told the ABC: “I believe that this is an absolutely sacrosanct communication of a higher order which priests by nature respect, they don’t ever want to do anything that would hurt children,” he said.

Writing for Fairfax Media this week, Father Frank Brennan said he would go to jail before abiding by such a law and sought to explain his reasoning. “Common sense tells me that a sex abuser would be even less likely to present for confession if he knew that the confessional seal did not apply,” he wrote. “If the seal of the confessional were maintained, there is a chance, just a chance, that a child sex abuser might be convinced by the priest to turn himself in. Take away the seal, and that ever so slim chance will be snuffed out.”

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CONNECTICUT/NEW HAMPSHIRE
The Connecticut Law Tribune

ROBERT STORACE, The Connecticut Law Tribune
August 17, 2017

A 48-year-old California man allegedly raped as a teenager by an employee at the Connecticut-based Legion of Christ has filed a federal lawsuit seeking millions of dollars in damages.

The lawsuit, filed Thursday in U.S. District Court for the District of Connecticut, claims the victim identified only as John Doe was first sexually assaulted at the now-defunct Immaculate Conception Apostolic School in New Hampshire when he was 13 years old. The teenager was allegedly raped every two to three weeks for about three and half years at the Roman Catholic boarding school for boys grades 7-12.

Cheshire-based Legion of Christ oversaw the school.

It’s alleged that a man known as Brother Fernando Cutanda abused John Doe and another boy at the school, and that officials did nothing to stop it, according to the lawsuit. John Doe claims he told Father Patrick O’Carroll about the alleged abuse during confession, he was told to pray “five rosaries for his sins, gave him penance and said ‘God will take care of things.'”

Jeffrey Herman, one of John Doe’s three attorneys, said his client “is strong, but deeply damaged. He thought it was time to come forward.”

Herman said Cutanda allegedly “groomed” the boy for sex. Herman said he does not know where Cutanda is today.

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ARGENTINA
Associated Press

BY ALMUDENA CALATRAVA
ASSOCIATED PRESS

BUENOS AIRES, Argentina (AP) — The general director of an elite school founded by the Marist Brothers in Argentina has admitted he sexually abused a student 38 years ago, an official for the order said Thursday.

Gonzalo Santa Coloma, the order’s official for protecting children in Buenos Aires province, told The Associated Press that Brother Angel Duples acknowledged the abuse after the order began an investigation following a report by a former student who had talked with the victim.

At the time of the abuse, Duples was a lay brother working at a branch of the Champagnat school on the outskirts of Buenos Aires. He has been director of the school’s main branch in downtown Buenos Aires over the past decade.

“I asked him: Did this really happen or is it just another tale? And he told me that it had happened, that there was fondling,” Santa Coloma said in recounting a conversation he had with Duples.

“He realizes the seriousness of this issue and the evil that he might have done,” the official said, adding that Duples asked to be removed from his duties at the school.

Santa Coloma declined to let AP contact Duples, saying he is “depressed and medicated” and has been sent to a nursing home owned by the Marist Brothers where he has no contact with children.

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UNITED STATES
America

The Editors

In a scene reminiscent of many Hollywood movies, Archbishop Denis Hart of Melbourne has announced that he would rather go to prison than report an allegation of sexual abuse he heard during a sacramental confession. “It is a sacred trust,” Hart told a radio station in Melbourne on Aug. 15. Archbishop Hart’s defense of the confessional seal was prompted by a report released the day before by Australia’s Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse that included a recommendation to criminalize priests’ failures to report sexual abuse heard during confession. While the commissioners noted the Catholic mandate that the seal never be broken, “we heard evidence of a number of instances where disclosures of child sexual abuse were made in religious confession, by both victims and perpetrators,” the report added.

In 2012 in Ireland, horror at the extent of sexual abuse of minors (as well as a gimlet eye toward a church that had long operated with a heavy hand in Irish civic life) led legislators to propose a similar law. Here in the United States, legislative battles have been waged from Louisiana to Massachusetts to California over “confession carve-outs” in laws that allow for exemptions to mandated reporting for sacramental confessions.

Such stories always draw media attention, in part because of our cultural obsession (and not just among Catholics) with the mysteries and terrors of the confessional box. Nary a cop drama has existed in the history of television without a police officer hiding in a confessional to hear evidence of a crime. Alfred Hitchcock’s 1953 film “I Confess” has as its major plot point a priest who hears a murderer’s confession; the 1994 film “Priest”also features a cleric who is unable to act on a confession of sexual abuse because of the inviolability of the seal.

To the secular mind, the confessional seal is madness—a loophole in the law, a violation of state neutrality with regard to religion, a “medieval law” (to quote a member of the Australian Parliament), a tool for institutional corruption and coverup. And who, after all, wants to see abusers hide behind the sacraments?

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UNITED STATES
Catholic League

Catholic League president Bill Donohue comments on a lawsuit brought against him and the Catholic League:

At every step of the way, a lawsuit filed by Rebecca Randles against me and the Catholic League was knocked down by the courts. I never libeled anyone, and she knows it. She lost in the U.S. District Court, and then lost again in the 8th Circuit Court of Appeals. She wisely decided not to appeal her bogus lawsuit to the U.S. Supreme Court, though it would have been fun to watch her lose again.

Randles tried to silence me, and she failed. She should have known better.

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AUSTRALIA
The Guardian

Mary-Rose MacColl

Melbourne Archbishop Denis Hart has said he’ll risk going to jail rather than report what’s said to him in the sacrament of confession, even if what’s confessed relates to child sexual abuse.

His latest comments, made on ABC radio, were responding to a recommendation from the royal commission into institutional responses to child sexual abuse to make reporting child sexual abuse allegations mandatory in institutions including when an allegation is made in religious confession. Failure to report would be a criminal offence.

The recommendation is one of a suite of proposed reforms to improve transparency and reporting of sexual abuse and improve the law’s effectiveness to apprehend sexual abusers and protect children.

Archbishop Hart wouldn’t report something said in confession by a child who’s been abused or by an abuser. Non-Catholics don’t understand confession, he said. Confession is sacrosanct, above the law, which is what makes it different from other forms of telling. It’s communication with God of a higher order.

Like many Catholics, I spent my childhood in fortnightly confession and frankly I don’t understand confession either. I recall the queasy light and the slightly creepy whispering of the priest in that little tardis of shame that sat on one side of the church. I got the same penance every fortnight by making up the same sins. I’d say I lied, I stole, because I couldn’t think of any actual sins. My penance was always a couple of Hail Marys.

The seal of confession, its secrecy, was important, we were told in religion class at school. A priest was hanged for a murder he didn’t commit because he wouldn’t reveal the murderer’s true identity, which he’d learned through confession. That’s how tight the seal was. It amazed us.

When I was 16, I went to confession for real. I’d been sexually abused by a Catholic high school teacher and her husband. I went to see a priest on the suggestion of one of my abusers, because I was so upset.

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MINNESOTA
Hutchinson Leader

BY JEREMY JONES jones@hutchinsonleader.com Aug 17, 2017

Glencoe Police Chief Jim Raiter confirmed Thursday morning that police are investigating an accusation of sexual abuse against the Rev. James Devorak.

Devorak was assigned to St. Pius X parish in Glencoe from 1985 to 1995, and at St. Anastasia parish in Hutchinson and St. Boniface parish of Stewart from 1995 to 2000.

According to the New Ulm Diocese, he has been accused of sexual abuse while serving in Glencoe. Raiter said he could provide no other details about the investigation.

“Police, the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis, and affected parishes are being notified of this allegation,” Bishop John M. LeVoir of the Diocese of New Ulm said in a statement. “Fr. Devorak is a retired priest of the Diocese of New Ulm. His last assignment in the Diocese of New Ulm ended in July 2015. From July 2015 to July 31, 2017, he was assigned within the Archdiocese of Saint Paul and Minneapolis as a parochial vicar.”

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UNITED KINGDOM
The Canary

AUGUST 17TH, 2017 Kerry-anne Mendoza

The Guardian has published a call that confidentiality rules should protect Catholics who admit to child sexual abuse in confession. While the author rightly calls on us to consider our own humanity, she neglects entirely the issue of widespread child abuse within the church. Abuse is about shame, and silence. And it’s time to break both.

The priest abuse scandal

First, we need to set the piece in the context of the priest abuse scandal. Representatives of the Roman Catholic church have engaged in child sexual abuse on an industrial scale.

The church abused children in the US, Austria, Germany, the Netherlands, Belgium, Italy, Malta, Spain, Switzerland, Brazil, Ireland, the Dominican Republic and Australia. From local priests to cardinals, church leaders conspired to rape and sexually assault children; and protect each other (and the church) from justice. In 2012, experts advised the Vatican that there could be 100,000 victims of clerical child sexual abuse in the US alone.

Australia provided one of the most robust responses to the scandal. It launched a royal commission into both the abuse and the cover up, with extraordinary powers of subpoena. And it found that, between 1950 and 2015, 7% of Australian priests were accused of abusing children. In some orders, up to 40% of brothers had allegations of abuse against them. The commission later established a key reason that so few accusations ever made it to the police.

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UNITED STATES
The Worthy Adversary

August 17, 2017 Joelle Casteix

Rita Milla had a horror story.

It was a story that no one could believe.

It was 1978. The California teenager said she was being sexually abused by seven priests from the Philippines. She was 16.

Who would believe a horrible story like that?

The abuse continued.

Then she got pregnant. One of the priests, Santiago Tamayo, urged her to have an abortion. When she wouldn’t, he and the father of the child, Father Valentine Tugade, convinced Rita’s mother to send the now-19-year-old to the Philippines, where she could have the child in secret. Rita’s mother didn’t know her daughter was pregnant.

Rita gave birth to a healthy and beautiful daughter. In 1983, Rita went public.

Milla and her family demanded answers from the Archdiocese. All hell broke loose.

Scattered priests

The priests scattered … All under the protection of the Archdiocese of Los Angeles and bishops in the Philippines.

Why? Rita’s allegations had merit.

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AUSTRALIA
The Australian

CHRISSIE FOSTER
The Australian
August 18, 2017

This week saw the publication of the Criminal Justice report by the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse. It calls for sweeping change to the Catholic Church’s seal of confession.

The confessional seal can be hideous: it has been proven to be so in the case of former Catholic priest Michael McArdle and shows emphatically why change is needed.

This case is not from some far-away Third World country; it is from here in Australia, in Queensland. It is an expose of blatant criminal behaviour that can be hidden by the confessional seal — a noxious secret between a priest and a pedophile colleague that facilitates and enables heinous crimes to continue and be swept under the carpet at the expense of children, their lives and their wellbeing, all of which neither sinner nor holy forgiver give a damn about.

It is rare to obtain powerful insight into a pedophile’s private, secret confessions because the “good” priest will not tell and neither will the criminal priest … usually. That’s what makes the Mc­Ardle case gold; this one example we have needs careful examination because it exposes what happens behind the private and closed seal of the confessional for criminal child clergy rapists.

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MASSACHUSETTS
Boston Globe

By Michael Rezendes
Photos by Suzanne Kreiter, Globe Staff August 17, 2017

This is one story in a two-part Spotlight series. Click here to read part one.

HE CARRIED HIS DOUBTS and disappointment across miles and decades, from childhood to adulthood, and finally at the age of 48 to the kitchen table of a modest house outside of Buffalo. There, he would ask an elderly aunt and uncle to help him answer the question that had troubled him all his life: Why had his father always seemed to dislike him so much?

With his parents already dead, Jim Graham pleaded with his Aunt Kathryn and Uncle Otto to tell him the truth about his family. Finally, Kathryn unfolded a newsletter published by a Catholic religious order and slid it across the table. She jabbed a finger at a picture of a sad, balding figure wearing a priest’s clerical collar.

“Only the principals know for sure,” she said, “but this may be your father.”

Jim Graham studied the picture. Those were his eyes, his nose, his mouth. Then he skimmed the obituary of the priest, the Rev. Thomas Sullivan, a cleric who had graduated from Boston College and trained for the priesthood in Tewksbury.

If a life can have a crystallizing moment, for Jim Graham that 1993 meeting was it, discovering that his father might have been a Catholic priest, rather than John Graham, the distant man who raised him with scarcely a kind or comforting word.

Jim Graham couldn’t know in that moment that the stunning secret which had seemed his alone was not that unusual. By any reasonable measure, there are thousands of others who have strong evidence that they are the sons and daughters of Catholic priests, though most are unaware that they have so much company in their pain. In Ireland, Mexico, Poland, Paraguay, and other countries, in American cities big and small — indeed, virtually anywhere the church has a presence — the children of priests form an invisible legion of secrecy and neglect, a Spotlight Team review has found.

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MISSISSIPPI
Sun Herald

BY JEFF CLARK
jclark@sunherald.com

AUGUST 16, 2017

A former pastor at a Pearl River County church is facing jail time after pleading guilty to two sex crime charges in Hancock County.

The Sea Coast Echo reports that David Matthew Thorne, 35, of Picayune, on Monday pleaded guilty in Hancock County Circuit Court to one count of sexual battery and one count of touching a child for lustful purposes. He will be sentenced Sept. 25.

Thorne was arrested in March 2016 for molesting a 15-year-old girl in a church van while he was the youth pastor at Goodyear Baptist Church in Picayune.

He was also arrested on a charge of sexual battery, his third sex crime charge, in Pearl River County less than 24 hours after his arrest in Hancock County. The alleged crimes came under investigation after the child’s parents notified law enforcement officials.

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UNITED STATES
The Open Tabernacle: Here Comes Everybody

Posted on August 17, 2017 by Betty Clermont

The phrase Ad Majorem Dei Gloriam – For the Greater Glory of God – is the motto of the Jesuits and their founder, St. Ignatius of Loyola. The point of Jesuit Fr. Antonio Spadaro and Presbyterian pastor Marcelo Figueroa’s July 13 article in the Jesuit weekly, La Civiltà Cattolica, is the greater glory of Pope Francis. He is the “courageous” pontiff opposed to the “ecumenism of hate” formed by American “Evangelical fundamentalists and Catholic Integralists.”

Spadaro is an Italian theologian and editor of La Civiltà Cattolica, the content of which is approved by the Vatican Secretariat of State. Spadaro’s book, Cybertheology: Thinking Christianity in the Era of the Internet, was published in 2012. He built a website in the early ‘90s, then a blog, “was on Twitter in 2005 and Facebook pretty much as soon as it opened to the public,” he said in an interview.

Spadaro was contacted by Pope Francis shortly after his election. His first interview with the pope eventually took place soon after “Who am I to judge,” taken out of context, made headlines and went viral. The comment by the pope in Spadaro’s interview that “It is not necessary to talk about abortion, gay marriage and the use of contraceptive methods all the time,” extracted from a very lengthy interview, also made headlines.

Spadaro did several more interviews with Pope Francis becoming his “mouthpiece” and one of his “trusted advisers.”

The Argentine Figueroa is a longtime friend of Pope Francis. The pope was not satisfied with the Spanish edition of the official Vatican newspaper, L’Osservatore Romano, as directed by the Argentine Silvina Pérez, according to Vatican reporter, Sandro Magister. He wanted an edition just for Argentina to “promote direct access to [his] actions, gestures and texts,” wrote papal biographer, Austen Ivereigh.

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AUSTRALIA
The Courier-Mail

Terry Sweetman, The Courier-Mail

POLITICS is where good ideas go to die, to be crushed by raw numbers, suffocated by belief or prejudice, or left to perish in the face of expediency.

One such good idea is the recommendation by the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Abuse that priests be forced to accept the same legal responsibilities as the rest of us.

Among its wish list of 85 recommendations was that failing to report child sexual abuse be a criminal offence and there should be “no excuse, protection, nor privilege” for priests who fail to alert police because the information was received in confession.

The commission noted evidence of multiple cases in which priest penitents went unreported, unpunished, and protected.

Worse, it heard of cases where abuse disclosed by child victims was kept close to the confessional chest.

“We are satisfied 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,’’ it said.

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AUSTRALIA
Newcastle Herald

Joanne McCarthy
17 Aug 2017

IN October, 1995 a Hunter Catholic priest took down a short statement from a woman who had been sexually abused by a priest from when she was eight, once while he was hearing her confession.

The child sex offender priest was Denis McAlinden, an Irish cleric sent to Australia at the age of 26.

The woman told of repeated sexual abuse over three or four years.

I’ve spoken with her many times. I’ve spoken with two other McAlinden victims who were also sexually assaulted by him while in the confessional.

If you go to the Vatican website and find the Code of Canon Law it includes Canon 1387. It says that a priest who “under the pretext of confession solicits a penitent to sin against the sixth commandment” – thou shalt not commit adultery – “is to be punished . . . by suspension, prohibitions and privations”. In graver cases “he is to be dismissed from the clerical state”.

It’s accepted by some theologians that the sixth commandment covers the whole of human sexuality, and not just the strict interpretation of adultery. In other words, sexually abusing a child in the confessional could invoke Canon 1387.

Documents show retiring Maitland-Newcastle Bishop Leo Clarke, Father Brian Lucas, incoming bishop Michael Malone and the priest who took the statement had roles to play in an unsuccessful attempt to defrock McAlinden in 1995, with his “good name protected by the confidential nature of this process”.

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AUSTRALIA
Australian Jewish News

RABBI Meir Shlomo Kluwgant has resigned as principal and CEO of Melbourne’s Adass Israel School.

The AJN can reveal that Rabbi Kluwgant tendered his resignation because of concerns raised by child sexual abuse survivor Dassi Erlich, who met with the board last month.

Erlich was sexually abused by former Adass principal Malka Leifer, who was spirited out of the country by members of the Adass community in 2008 after allegations of her abuse became public.

Welcoming news of Rabbi Kluwgant’s resignation, Erlich told The AJN, “I feel heartened that I was able to speak out for the students past and present of the school and the school board heard my concerns and acted. It really gives me hope that the school is moving in the right direction and positive change is happening.”

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