ABUSE TRACKER

NEW JERSEY
Road to Recovery

The reported arrest of Paterson, New Jersey, newly-ordained diocesan priest, Fr. Marcin Nurek, for criminal sexual contact of a child indicates that there are not adequate safeguards in place to protect children in Catholic parishes, schools, and institutions

Fr. Marcin Nurek, who was reportedly arrested for criminal sexual contact of a child in Mountain Lakes, New Jersey, came to the United States approximately two years ago from Poland, appears to have not been properly vetted, trained, and/or supervised, and instead of being ordained in four years, was ordained in two years

The Diocese of Paterson and the Catholic Church still don’t care when it comes to safeguarding children, supervising its clergy, and properly accepting and preparing men for the priesthood

What
A demonstration alerting Catholics, the general public, and the media that the Catholic Church still has not adequately created or effectively implemented policies and procedures that protect children from predatory priests, deacons, and other church personnel

When
Wednesday, August 9, 2017 from 7:30 AM until 9:00 AM

Where
On the public sidewalk in front of the Morris County Superior Court, One Court Street, Morristown, New Jersey 07960 (sidewalk is on Washington Street in front of old courthouse steps)

Who
Members of Road to Recovery, Inc., a non-profit charity that assists victims of sexual abuse and their families, including its co-founder and President, Robert M. Hoatson, Ph.D.; Fred Marigliano, who walked across the State of New Jersey to dramatize the need for legislation to protect children and who was sexually abused by a priest; and Sam Rivera, victim/survivor of sexual abuse by a priest; and others.

Why
Fr. Marcin Nurek was reportedly ordained to the priesthood for the Diocese of Paterson on July 1, 2017. According to reports, he came to the United States in 2015 from Poland. One month after his ordination and approximately two years after arriving in the United States, Fr. Marcin Nurek was reportedly arrested for criminal sexual contact of a child at a parish in Morris County, New Jersey, thus raising significant concerns and questions:

1) Did Fr. Marcin Nurek have issues regarding sexual abuse of children that Bishop Serratelli and the Diocese of Paterson knew or should have known about?
2) What vetting processes were used by the Diocese of Paterson in the acceptance process?
3) It is clear that the Diocese of Paterson still doesn’t care when it comes to safeguarding children and adequately creating and implementing policies and procedures that protect children.

Contacts
Robert M. Hoatson, Ph.D., Road to Recovery, Inc., 862-368-2800 – roberthoatson@gmail.com
Attorney Mitchell Garabedian, Boston, MA – 617-523-6250 – garabedianlaw@msn.com

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

IRELAND
International Business Times

By Josh Robbins
August 8, 2017

A man who survived vaccine trials as a child growing up in a notorious Catholic orphanage says he believes there are more children secretly buried in a cemetery that was attached to the project.

David Kinsella, 59, spent the first four years of his life St Patrick’s on Dublin’s Navan Road – one of nine ‘Mother and Baby Homes’ that operated in Ireland in the last century, accommodating women who fell pregnant out of wedlock and their offspring.

A series of revelations have exposed that some of the homes subjected the children to vaccine trials at the behest of major pharmaceutical companies. They were separated from their mothers at birth, who would then typically work for a year to pay back the Catholic church.

David was hospitalised six times and required a blood transfusion after he was pumped full of drugs at the Navan Road facility, he told the Irish Mirror. He could not talk or walk when he was adopted a the age of four.

Infant mortality rates at the home were high as a result of the drug trials and other mistreatment of the children, including chronic malnutrition. It is estimated that between 2,000 and 3,000 children died there between its opening in 1904 and closure in 1985.

Many of dead were buried in a special mass grave in Glasnevin Cemetery, known as an ‘Angels Plot’, but it has also been revealed that several hundred were donated to medical institutions for research purposes. A memorial is taking place on Sunday 13 August at the plot in Glasnevin and David is attending.

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

CANADA
Sudbury.com

by: Darren MacDonald

Some teachers in Greater Sudbury are facing disciplinary hearings over allegations of misconduct.

The teachers – two from the English Catholic school board and one from Rainbow District – face hearings for a range of issues, from sexual abuse of a student to criminal charges related to an incident outside the classroom.

In the first case, a male teacher with the Catholic board was accused of rubbing a female student’s leg on two different occasions over two school years.

As a result, he’s facing allegations of student sexual abuse, as well as physical and emotional abuse, of failing to live up to professional standards and of engaging in conduct unbecoming to someone in the profession.

In the second case, another Catholic board teacher was found guilty of professional misconduct for a variety of issues, such as swearing at students, losing his temper and tearing cords out of the wall, hugging male and female students, hitting one male student with a yardstick and telling a female student to wear something sexy for a performance.

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

GUAM
Pacific Daily News

Haidee V Eugenio, heugenio@guampdn.com Aug. 8, 2017

A $2 million libel and slander lawsuit against suspended Archbishop Anthony S. Apuron and the Archdiocese of Agana, which was filed more than a year ago, is scheduled to have its first status hearing this week.

Until now, most of the activity in the case has involved judges recusing themselves from hearing it.

Judge Michael J. Bordallo, now assigned to the case, is scheduled to hold a status conference at 9 a.m. Wednesday.

The libel and slander lawsuit was filed by former altar boys Roy Quintanilla, Walter Denton and Roland Sondia along with Doris Concepcion, mother of deceased former altar boy Joseph Quinata, after Apuron accused them of lying about him.

The four plaintiffs, who accused Apuron of sexually abusing or raping altar boys in Agat in the 1970s, sued Apuron and the archdiocese for calling them liars and for accusing them of “instilling hatred, ignorance and violence in the people.”

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ILLINOIS
The Beacon-News

Hannah Leone
Aurora Beacon-News

A Kane County judge decided not to move up the jury trial of a former Aurora priest facing deportation along with felony charges of child sex abuse.

Prosecutors last week filed a motion asking for the trial of Alfredo Pedraza Arias to start sooner. However, Kane County Judge Linda Abrahamson Monday ordered the trial date to remain Sept. 18.

Arias’ attorney, David Camic, said it “didn’t make sense” to try an earlier start. The trial would only have been moved up a week, he said, and people were already subpoenaed for the proceedings as scheduled.

Meanwhile, a deportation order signed in June by a federal immigration judge means Arias could be sent back to Colombia, where he is from, at any time. If that happens, prosecutors could ask to have him tried in absentia, but they’ve said it’s unclear whether that would work or if he could be extradited for proceedings.

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

UNITED STATES
The Worthy Adversary

[with video]

August 8, 2017 Joelle Casteix

In February 2017, Al Jazeera’s 101 East produced this 25-minute documentary feature about sexual abuse in the Catholic Church in the Philippines.

It’s a great primer for anyone interested in learning more about the clergy sexual abuse crisis in this VERY Catholic country.

Here’s a peek at what you’ll see:

* The Catholic Church in the Philippines is the strongest institution in the country, in many ways even stronger than the government.

* Victims who come forward to report abuse are met with intimidation and fear. One girl was beaten by her family for reporting. Even a lawyer for priests—men who are his friends—says that these matters are best handled “behind closed doors.” The only priest who was ever convicted for abuse soon found his conviction overturned.

* Sexually abusive priests are transferred from parish to parish, without church leaders informing local Catholics that the man leading Mass has admitted to molesting children.

* According to Fr. Jaime Achacoso, the secretary for the Canon Law Society of the Philippines, in many dioceses, 1 in 5 priests have fathered children.

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

GUAM
The Guam Daily Post

This new school year, the families of Guam’s 4,424 Catholic school students will fork out an extra $12 monthly fee per student to help pay for the debts left behind by a closed college preparatory school and the financial problems caused by another school – but it shouldn’t be that way, said an official with Concerned Catholics of Guam.

Each student will also be assessed a $25 fee for an administrative office for the 14 Catholic schools.

A closed school left behind $2.4 million worth of debts plus payables of about $60,000, and the obligations were assumed by the archdiocese, said David J. Sablan, president of Concerned Catholics. The other school, which fell behind in paying its past-due accounts, owes approximately $180,000, he said.

“The debts should be assumed by the Archdiocese of Agana, which then should find other ways and means” to pay the debts, Sablan said. …

‘Freeloaders’ living at former hotel

To spare Catholic students from the extra cost, the archdiocese can also charge rent to people who live as “freeloaders” in a prime church property – the former oceanview Hotel Accion in Yona, Sablan said.

The former hotel, which the archdiocese is trying to sell, and which was previously valued at around $40 million, houses more than 30 seminarians from all over the world, according to Sablan.

“There are seminarians there from other countries all wanting to be ordained as presbyters for the Neocatechumenal Way,” Sablan said. “Additionally, there are priests staying there who are NCW presbyters, not doing anything for our archdiocese; yet we probably are paying their monthly stipends as required by Church law.”

“And there are people from other countries living there rent-free,” Sablan said. “There is a term we use to define such individuals: freeloaders.”

The Neocatechumenal Way seminary began occupying the former hotel under the leadership of now-suspended Archbishop Anthony Apuron, who is facing child sex-abuse cases before a Vatican tribunal and in the federal court in Guam.

Until that property is sold to cover claims of sexual abuse by members of the clergy, including Apuron, Sablan said charging rent to the occupants of the former hotel should be done instead of making students pay more to attend Catholic schools.

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NEW JERSEY
WABC

Tuesday, August 08, 2017

MORRISTOWN, New Jersey (WABC) — Authorities say a newly ordained Roman Catholic priest in New Jersey has been charged with groping a teen girl under her skirt.

The Morris County prosecutor’s office said that the Rev. Marcin Nurek was charged last week with endangering the welfare of a child and criminal sexual contact.

Boonton police say the girl, younger than 16 but older than 13, was walking along Main Street with friends last Thursday when she says Nurek put his hand under her dress and commented on how pretty she was.

Authorities say the 37-year-old touched the teen girl’s buttocks over her underwear and told her she was “sexy.”

The incident was reported to police at 4:55 that day. Nurek was arrested less than a half an hour later. Three hours after that, the Diocese of Paterson was informed.

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

MASSACHUSETTS
National Catholic Reporter

Aug 8, 2017
by Maria Benevento

Ex-priest Paul Shanley was released from prison on July 28 after serving 12 years for child sex abuse, but some worry he still poses a danger to children.

Two organizations, Real Women Real Stories and Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, also known as SNAP, are co-sponsoring an online petition, “Victims’ Plea: Place Rapist Ex-Priest in a Secured Treatment Center,” that urges “the Boston Archdiocese and the State of Boston to insist Shanley live in a facility where he can receive treatment and where he will have no access to children, and to wear a GPS bracelet so that his whereabouts can be tracked on anytime.” Organizers clarified to NCR that the state of Massachusetts is the intended government recipient of the petition.

To emphasize the danger of letting Shanley move freely, the petition cites the example of a 72-year-old Irish ex-priest who was convicted of abusing at least 25 children in California, but was later reported to be living yards from a playground in the Netherlands and volunteering at a Catholic parish under an assumed identity.

Although Shanley is 86, the petition warns his advanced age could actually make him more dangerous by allowing him to seem “harmless.”

“Everything we hear about predators says they’ll tend to repeat the crime,” said Barbara Dorris, outreach director for SNAP. “Many people came forward saying Shanley hurt them, yet he’s being turned loose in society.”

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UNITED STATES
The Worthy Adversary

August 8, 2017 Joelle Casteix

In the introduction to this series, I called the Philippines the “Holy Grail” of cover-up.

Simply put, it’s the place where priests accused of abuse can hang out and still be priests. In fact, it doesn’t matter whether or not the priests abused in the Philippines or elsewhere.

The Philippines is a place where treatment centers for sexually abusive clerics thrive, even though the clerics cannot be cured and are not reported to local authorities.

It’s a place where local bishops turn a blind eye to abuse. Unless of course, you break the one, unspoken rule.

Msgr. Arnel Lagarejos broke that rule. He trafficked a 13-year-old child through a pimp last month.

Lagarejos was caught in a police anti-trafficking sting operation and couldn’t be saved by his local bishop. The global media caught wind and jumped on the story. Locals were outraged. They couldn’t believe that a priest would engage in something so horrible.

What locals didn’t realize, however, was how abuse and cover-up have been rampant in the Philippines. Lagareros just made the mistake of getting busted.

And when I say abuse and cover-up are rampant, I mean RAMPANT!

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GUAM
KUAM

Updated: Aug 08, 2017

By Krystal Paco

It appears Archbishop Anthony Apuron could have ammo to fire back should he not be satisfied with the results of his canonical trial in Rome. This according to one expert who chimes in after sexual harassment allegations were made against one of the priest investigating Apuron’s case.

A decision is expected any day now. This according to Guam’s Coadjutor Archbishop Michael Byrnes who previously reported Archbishop Anthony Apuron’s fate now rests with three unnamed judges. He told KUAM News, “The discovery period of the trial has ended, and the next phase that will happen in the next several weeks, will be a convening of the three judges to deliberate on what they heard.”

“There’s three possibilities: not guilty. Guilty. Or not proven.”

While we wait for a judgment from Rome, it’s recently been revealed that one of Apuron’s investigators stands accused of sexual harassment.

Father Justin Wachs, according to South Dakota news reports, allegedly touched a woman inappropriately and sent her suggestive text messages. The woman, who remained anonymous, worked at his former parish. Patrick J. Wall, an advocate, former priest, and canonist tells KUAM this development could be used to Apuron’s advantage.

Wall said, “So that will be very interesting to see if Archbishop Apuron’s attorneys – canonical attorneys – challenge the canonical process now.”

Father Wachs was on Guam earlier this year along with other members of the Tribunal tasked with investigating Apuron and collecting testimony. Wall says Father Wachs plays a critical role as the notary and should have a reputation that is both unimpaired and above all suspicion.

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IRELAND
Irish Independent

Kathy Armstrong
August 7 2017

A survivor of the Bethany mother and baby home claims he has been “left to rot” by the State because he is a Protestant.

Despite Derek Leinster suffering physically and emotionally after being born in the Dublin institution in 1941, he has never received any kind of redress.

He told Independent.ie he is determined to get justice for survivors, saying, “I won’t give up until the day I die.”

Derek was born to an unwed mother in the home and from when he was seven months old he was “nursed out” to families to be cared for.

He said: “We would be sent to families to be looked after, they would get paid a few shillings.

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IRELAND
Irish Times

Michelle McDonagh

Don Stiffe knew from an early age that he was adopted but while he had always been curious about his birth family, it was not until he was in his late 40s and a father himself that he took the decision to search for his birth mother.

That search was to prove far more torturous than the award-winning singer songwriter could ever have imagined. He did manage to find out who his birth mother but never got to meet her – by the time he discovered her identity, she had been dead two years.

However, Don also learned that he was one of nine children born to his mother, and through his unrelenting search, he has been reunited with some of his siblings. His story mirrors the storyline of the Bafta award-winning movie Philomena – Philomena Lee even plays a part in his tale.

Don Stiffe (now 50) was adopted from the Sean Ross Abbey mother and baby home in Roscrea, Co Tipperary, by Margaret and Dominic Stiffe, who brought him to live in Cooke’s Terrace, Bohermore, when he was three and a half months old.

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NEW JERSEY
New Jersey 101.5

A newly ordained Roman Catholic priest has been charged with groping a teen girl under her skirt.

The Rev. Marcin Nurek was charged last week with endangering the welfare of a child and criminal sexual contact.

The Morris County Prosecutor’s Office says the 37-year-old touched the teen girl’s buttocks in Boonton over her underwear and told her she was “sexy.”

According to a statement from the Diocese of Paterson, Nurek was arrested at approximately 8:45 p.m. on Aug. 3. After learning about the arrest, the diocese’s statement said, the “Rev. Nurek was immediately placed on administrative leave, his faculties were revoked and his assignment as parochial vicar at St. Catherine of Siena Church, Mountain Lakes was concluded.”

The diocese said Nurek came to this country from Poland in March of 2015 and that he had just been ordained on July 1. Prior to his arrest, Nurek was assigned to begin work at the church in August. The statement also said he had undergone a full background check in October of 2014 that came back clear.

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WALES
Daily Post

BY MARC WADDINGTON
8 AUG 2017

The chair of a major inquiry into child sexual abuse said institutions in North Wales failed to protect young victims from sexual predators.

Professor Alexis Jay said she and her team wanted to hear accounts of people who were let down by those who were meant to look after them.

The Truth Project, which is being run as part of the Independent Inquiry Into Child Sexual Abuse, will be in Bangor and Caernarfon in October, where trained staff will be on hand for one-to-one sessions with victims.

Professor Jay OBE (pictured right) said: “For too long the voices of victims and survivors of child sexual abuse have not been heard and many have been made to feel ashamed for reporting the abuse in the first place.

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GUAM
HuffPost

By Antonia Blumberg

The latest sex abuse scandal to rock the Catholic Church shines a spotlight on the small, predominantly Catholic U.S. territory of Guam.

According to an ongoing investigation by the USA TODAY Network’s Pacific Daily News, Guam’s Archdiocese of Agana is listed as a defendant in 96 lawsuits detailing abuses spanning nearly 40 decades.

Two archbishops of Agana, as well as multiple priests, bishops, teachers and even Boy Scouts leaders on the Western Pacific island are implicated in the suits.

The lawsuits alleged that leaders repeatedly preyed on children, some as young as seven years old, and include claims of molestation, rape, and priests exposing themselves and displaying pornography in the company of young altar boys.

Louis Brouillard, who served as a priest and scoutmaster on Guam from 1948 to 1981, is named in 55 lawsuits and has admitted to abusing at least 20 boys on the island. In an interview with the Associated Press last year, Brouillard, now 96, said other priests on the island who he confided in advised him to pray and “do better.”

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GUAM
Church Militant

by Stephen Wynne • ChurchMilitant.com • August 7, 2017

Almost 100 lawsuits filed against clergy, former archbishop

HAGÅTÑA, Guam (ChurchMilitant.com) – The Church in Guam is reeling from a clerical sex abuse scandal.

Since September 2016, the Catholic archdiocese of Agana has been named in 96 sex abuse lawsuits. After lawmakers passed a bill retroactively terminating the statute of limitations for child sex abuse cases, dozens of men came forward, alleging that between 1955 and 1994, as minors, they were raped and subjected to other forms of sexual abuse by priests in the archdiocese.

Some cases involve up to 50 defendants. Among them are 13 priests, a Catholic schoolteacher, a Catholic school janitor and Anthony Apuron, the former archbishop of Agana, who oversaw the Church in Guam for three decades.

As with abuse cases elsewhere, the suits allege that Guam’s Church leaders knew of the abuse but did nothing to stop it. One priest, an admitted molester, confirmed the leadership’s complacency in court testimony.

Apuron has denied accusations of raping altar boys in his care. After the allegations surfaced, he refused to resign forcing Pope Francis’ hand. In June 2016, the Pontiff stepped in, stripping Apuron of his pastoral and administrative authority and appointing Auxiliary Bp. Michael J. Byrnes of Detroit as coadjutor archbishop of Guam.

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NEW JERSEY
San Francisco Chronicle

MORRISTOWN, N.J. (AP) — Authorities say a newly ordained Roman Catholic priest in New Jersey has been charged with groping a teen girl under her skirt.

The Morris County prosecutor’s office said that the Rev. Marcin Nurek was charged last week with endangering the welfare of a child and criminal sexual contact.

They say the 37-year-old touched the teen girl’s buttocks in Boonton over her underwear and told her she was “sexy.”

The Diocese of Paterson put Nurek on administrative leave. He remains in jail pending a detention hearing on Wednesday. It wasn’t immediately known if he had an attorney to comment on his behalf.

Nurek is an immigrant from Poland and was ordained into the priesthood in July.

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NEW JERSEY
Daily Record

Peggy Wright, @PeggyWrightDR Aug. 7, 2017

MORRISTOWN – A newly-ordained priest has been charged with putting his hand under a teenager’s skirt in Boonton, touching her buttocks and telling her “You’re sexy,” according to court records.

The Rev. Marcin A. Nurek, 37, was ordained a priest on July 1 and was supposed to start a post as parochial vicar this month at St. Catherine of Siena Church in Mountain Lakes. That assignment will not take place and Nurek has been placed on administrative leave and cannot function as a priest, said Richard Sokerka, director of communications for the Diocese of Paterson.

The alleged incident occurred in the town of Boonton last Thursday, when Nurek put his hand under the girl’s skirt and touched her buttocks over her underwear. Court records did not state where the incident allegedly occurred but said the teen was upset but not injured.

Nurek was charged with endangering the welfare of a child – whose age was listed as being at least 13 but younger than 16 – and criminal sexual contact. Via a closed-circuit television link between the Morris County jail and Superior Court, Nurek appeared on Friday for an initial review before Judge Ira Cohen.

Morris County Assistant Prosecutor Meg Rodriguez said the state has filed a motion to detain Nurek in the county jail until the charges are resolved. A detention hearing has been scheduled for Wednesday.

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NEW JERSEY
NJ.com

[Rev. Marcin Nurek – Roman Catholic Diocese of Paterson]

August 7, 2017

By Rob Jennings rjennings@njadvancemedia.com,
NJ Advance Media for NJ.com

MORRISTOWN — The Diocese of Paterson has revoked the church assignment of a newly-ordained priest accused of putting his hand under a teenage girl’s skirt and touching her buttocks.

The Rev. Marcin Nurek, 37, was ordained into the priesthood on July 1 and had been expected to start Aug. 15 as Parochial Vicar of Saint Catherine of Siena Church in Mountain Lakes, the diocese’s spokesman told NJ Advance Media.

However, diocesan officials reversed course after Nurek was charged Thursday with endangering the welfare of a child and criminal sexual contact.

He allegedly put his hand under the girl’s skirt, touched her buttocks over her underwear and told her, “You’re sexy,” the Daily Record reported. The girl was described as over the age of 13, but under 16.

Richard Sokerka, spokesman for the Diocese of Paterson, said, “The diocese is deeply saddened by the charges filed against Rev. Nurek and offers its prayers to everyone involved, especially the minor who has come forward.”

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GUAM
The Guam Daily Post

Mindy Aguon | The Guam Daily Post Aug 8, 2017

Suspended Archbishop Anthony Apuron will get his “day in court” as the District Court of Guam will hear his motion to dismiss four child sex abuse lawsuits later this month.

Apuron’s attorney, Jacqueline Terlaje, opposed a stay in the lawsuits involving allegations of sexual abuse filed against her client.

“There is no absolute necessity at this juncture that Apuron participate,” Terlaje told the court during a status hearing yesterday.

The parties in the other 73 cases have agreed to a stay of the cases to participate in non-binding mediation that will be held in Guam beginning Oct. 30. But Terlaje urged the court to proceed with her client’s cases.

“I think it is important for Apuron to have his day in court,” the archbishop’s attorney said. Terlaje asked that the court address her client’s motion to dismiss and weigh the competing interests in the case.

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MINNESOTA
Patch

By William Bornhoft (Patch Staff) – Updated August 7, 2017

WASHINGTON COUNTY, MN — A youth pastor out of Cottage Grove will serve a federal prison sentence after distributing child pornography. William Leonard Helker, 47, pleaded guilty on March 3, to one count of distribution of child pornography. On July 27, United States District Judge Patrick J. Schiltz sentenced Helker to 150 months in federal prison and 15 years of supervised release.

“Helker is a dangerous child predator who disguised himself as a youth pastor. Instead of providing guidance to young people, he used his position as a trusted leader to prey upon them,” said Assistant United States Attorney Katharine Buzicky in a statement.

“This child sexual exploitation case originated in Finland with the arrest there of another child predator,” said J. Alex Khu, special agent in charge of HSI Saint Paul.

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ARIZONA
Phoenix New Times

BY SEAN HOLSTEGE
MONDAY, AUGUST 7, 2017

The dark cloud of child sex-abuse allegations still follows the former bishop of Phoenix.

Years after he resigned from the top post in the Catholic diocese here, after acknowledging he knew that priests he supervised had sexually abused children, 81-year-old Thomas O’Brien now faces new allegations in court that he was himself an abuser.

He has denied the accusation and last week won a partial victory when a judge tossed out four of 14 claims against him in a civil suit brought by a man identified only as Joseph W.

The man claims, in a suit filed in Maricopa County Superior Court in 2016, that O’Brien assaulted him from 1977 to 1982. The suits says the attacks occurred when he attended second to fifth grades at the St. Aquinas and St. Vincent de Paul Catholic schools and parishes in Litchfield Park and Phoenix, respectively.

According to the lawsuit, the abuse occurred before or during church services and involved kissing and touching as well as oral intercourse by and to the priest.

Joseph W., who lives in Tucson, says in court documents that he suppressed the memories of these attacks until two years earlier, when he readied his son for baptism. The abuse caused Joseph W., now 47, to suffer for almost his entire life, the complaint says, naming among other things distress, disgrace, and humiliation prompting psychological therapy and loss of income.

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MEXICO
SinEmbarago

[Alberto Athié accused the PGR of giving special treatment to Cardinal Norberto Rivera who is accused of covering-up abuse by priests. Athié has been fighting the silence of the Mexican Catholic Church for 20 years against the crimes of clerical pederasty. In 2003 he resigned from the priesthood for what he considered to be protection of Cardinal Norberto Rivera Carrera and of different popes towards the Mexican priest Marcial Maciel Degollado, founder of the Legionaries of Christ, one of the most well-known cases of sexual abuse against children at even international level. Today he is one of the authors of the lawsuit against Cardinal Rivera for covering up at least 15 pedophile priests.]

Por Dulce Olvera
SinEmbargo
agosto 6, 2017

El ex sacerdote Alberto Athié acusó que la comparecencia del Cardenal Norberto Rivera Carrera ante la Procuraduría General de la República se dio en un contexto de “falta de transparencia” y exigió que no haya “privilegios” durante el proceso.

Athié lleva 20 años en lucha contra el silencio de la Iglesia Católica mexicana ante los crímenes de pederastia clerical. En 2003 renunció al sacerdocio por lo que consideró protección del Cardenal Norberto Rivera Carrera y de diferentes papas hacia el sacerdote mexicano Marcial Maciel Degollado, fundador de los Legionarios de Cristo, uno de los casos más conocidos de abuso sexual contra menores a nivel incluso internacional.Hoy es uno de los autores de la demanda en contra del Cardenal Rivera por encubrimiento a al menos 15 sacerdotes pederastas.

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GUAM
Pacific News Center

By Jolene Toves – August 7, 2017

So as long as there is uncertainty on the validity of the statute, it’s supposed to make everyone scared and come to a quick and cheaper settlement. That’s the scam. — Attorney David Lujan

Guam – US Magistrate Judge Joaquin Manibusan has granted Archbishop Anthony Apuron’s objection to a stay that would allow the church to continue with settlement negotiations in the sex abuse lawsuits related to Apuron.

Meanwhile, Attorney David Lujan, who represents a majority of the alleged victims, is calling the objection a scam.

Both parties argued a motion to stay the proceedings. While the motion was denied in regards to Apuron, the motion stands as granted for all other defendants. Apuron’s leagal counsel, Attorney Jaqcue Terlaje is requesting that the District Court address the merits of Apuron’s motion to dismiss, arguing that the court does not have authority over his case and therefore cannot continue to hear his case.

“We are basically challenging the plaintiffs’ rights to pursue the cause of action of a civil TORT against Archbishop Anthony. Basically, the statute of limitations law that was passed by the legislature is unconstitutional,” she pointed out. “So the plaintiff and the Archdiocese of Agana have asked the court to put that in abeyance while they try to mediate their cases and we said no way. You can’t trample on the rights on a one-party litigant and advance the competing interest of the other interests and so the court agreed with me.”

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GUAM
KUAM

Updated: Aug 07, 2017

By Krystal Paco

Defense Attorney David Lujan has never been one to mince words, and he only needed one to describe what he thinks is happening with mediation in the child sex abuse cases against local clergy. And that word is “scam”.

Loud and clear – Lujan blasted the Archdiocese of Agana and Archbishop Anthony Apuron in federal court on Monday. “Of course it’s a scam,” he professed. When asked the why he elected to proceed with mediation if you believe its a scam, he replied, “Because mediation is non-binding, either.”

In court today, attorney Lujan alleged the plaintiffs and the court are being “played by the Church and Apuron.” Lujan questioned their motive to rush resolution and further alleged there’s a deal to ensure Apuron stay a priest and remain on Church payroll.

“But ask yourself, do you think that Apuron, who has a chance of coming back wants to bankrupt this archdiocese? Ask yourself that,” he said.

Apuron’s attorney Jacque Terlaje fired back, calling Lujan unprofessional for not only his accusations, but also for yelling in the courtroom. Ultimately, the court ruled in Terlaje’s favor and denied the motion to stay on Apuron’s cases.

That means the four lawsuits against Apuron will proceed in the federal court – and soon – a hearing on Apuron’s motion to dismiss is scheduled for August 29.

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GUAM
Pacific Daily News

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

Dozens of clergy abuse lawsuits are scheduled to go through mediation later this year, but David Lujan, the attorney representing those plaintiffs, on Monday said he is prepared to abandon mediation altogether and take the cases to trial.

At issue is four abuse lawsuits filed against Archbishop Anthony Apuron, who does not want to participate in mediation with his accusers and who instead wants the federal court to move forward and rule on his motions to dismiss the cases.

A stay already has been granted for the cases of dozens of accusers represented by Lujan, but a federal judge, during a hearing Monday, denied Lujan’s motion to postpone further action on the Apuron lawsuits.

Apuron, through his attorney, Jacqueline Terlaje, succeeded in blocking Lujan’s request to stop a hearing on the motion to dismiss the cases involving Apuron.

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MASSACHUSETTS
Telegram & Gazette

By Elaine Thompson
Telegram & Gazette Staff

Posted Aug 6, 2017

WARE – Many of the 23 registered Level 3 sex offenders who live in Ware rent from another Level 3 sex offender who owns several properties and plans to provide a home for other offenders who need help.

Joel Pentlarge, 67, a disbarred attorney and former town official, declined to say how many of his tenants are Level 3 sex offenders, the category considered the highest risk of reoffending.

“Not enough,” he said during a recent interview in a basement apartment in his four-unit complex at 14 Park St. that also serves as his office. Another Level 3 sex offender lists the unit as his secondary place of residence.

Mr. Pentlarge, a 1968 graduate of Doherty Memorial High School in Worcester, has served on the Ware Conservation Commission, Zoning Board of Appeals and on the board of directors of a local social service agency. He was imprisoned for three years after pleading guilty in 2000 to the statutory rape of four boys, ages 12 to 15. …

Mr. Pentlarge’s effort to help sex offenders was recently in the spotlight when his latest tenant, high-profile child rapist Paul R. Shanley, moved into an apartment that Mr. Pentlarge owns at 31 Pulaski St. Mr. Shanley had been incarcerated for 12 years for repeatedly raping a boy at a Newton parish in the 1980s. The former street priest was at the center of the Roman Catholic priest sex abuse scandal and was defrocked.

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AUSTRALIA
9 News

A Victorian priest who repeatedly molested boys at Victoria’s notorious Rupertswood boarding school in the 1970s and 1980s has been jailed for two years.

Frank Peter De Dood will spend at least 20 months behind bars after he was sentenced on Monday for indecently assaulting five boys between 1978 and 1983.

The 64-year-old had pleaded guilty in the Victorian County Court to six counts of indecent assault.

Dozens of students were abused by a number of priests at Salesian College Rupertswood in Sunbury in the 1970s and ’80s.

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AUSTRALIA
Herald Sun

SHANNON DEERY, Herald Sun
August 6, 2017

ANOTHER priest is behind bars for sex crimes against children while teaching at the notorious Salesian College, Rupertswood.

Former students say a sickening club of sex abusers roamed its grand halls and manned its dormitories at Sunbury in Melbourne’s northwest for decades, from as early as the 1950s.

Frank de Dood was for a short while in the 1980s in charge of monitoring the dormitories, and like dorm masters before him took his chance to abuse a young boy as he slept.

The child was one of five boys de Dood has admitted abusing between 1978 and 1983.

Four of the students were abused at the Salesian’s Rupertswood college where de Dood taught between 1981 and 1986.

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AUSTRALIA
The Age

Adam Cooper

One of the victims of the latest Salesian priest jailed for sex crimes at a notorious boarding school outside Melbourne hopes his case will encourage others to contact police and seek justice.

Richard Brown was one of five boys sexually assaulted by Frank De Dood​, who was on Monday jailed for three years for abusing children he was either teaching or responsible for between 1978 and 1983.

Four victims attended Salesian College Rupertswood, in Sunbury, the scene of a string of sex assaults when a group of paedophile priests worked at the school and preyed on students.

De Dood also abused one boy at a Salesian residence in Oakleigh before he was posted to Rupertswood.

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PHILIPPINES
ABS-CBN

Anton C. Onato, VERA Files
Posted at Aug 07 2017

On a two-hectare land tucked away somewhere in Tagaytay City stands a gated retreat house run by priests for priests.

At any one time, the center can accommodate up to 45 priests in need of spiritual, physical, emotional and psychological renewal. It also serves as the temporary home of priests “exiled” by their bishops for sexual misconduct, including pedophilia and siring children.

Constructed in 2007, the John Mary Vianney Galilee Development and Retreat Center for Priests, or Galilee Center as it is commonly referred to, serves as a kind of “extended” seminary formation.

Named after the patron saint of priests and the religious, the 54-room institution is a brainchild of now retired Manila Archbishop Gaudencio Cardinal Rosales.

During the Second Plenary Council of the Philippines (PCP II) in 1991, the country’s bishops agreed to build a national center for the ongoing renewal and rehabilitation of clergies to operate under the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines’ Episcopal Commission on Clergy.

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UNITED KINGDOM
The Guardian

Peter Stanford
Monday 7 August 2017

Pope Francis has taken great strides in challenging all sorts of entrenched attitudes and prejudices in the Vatican that have given the Catholic church such a bad name of late. Progress has been disappointingly slow, however, on the commission he appointed in 2014 to tackle the appalling scandal of clerical sexual abuse. In March of this year Marie Collins, the last remaining member of the panel who was a survivor of abuse, resigned after a Vatican department failed to comply with the commission’s recommendation that it respond to every correspondent who writes in with allegations that they have been a victim. If the curia is resisting such simple steps, how to have faith that they will tackle the bigger underlying issues?

Reluctance to face up to the consequences of clerical abuse remains hard-wired into the structures of the church: an instinct to protect the institution at the cost of the individual who has suffered, and a brick-wall resistance to addressing the profound questions about the nature of vocation posed by such abhorrent behaviour. And so church leaders – not all, granted; certainly not Pope Francis –tend to speak of “historical allegations” whenever victims find the courage to speak up 20, 30 or even 40 years after events that are not for them in any way historical, but are a psychological and emotional trauma they will live with until their dying day.

Individuals like Graham Caveney. The Boy With the Perpetual Nervousness recounts with great courage and candour how, in the 1970s, as the clever, awkward, nerdy, only child of devoutly Catholic working-class parents in Accrington, Lancashire, he was groomed by a priest at his local grammar school in Blackburn, and then sexually abused by him.

A casual glance might suggest he has managed to “put it behind him” – he has a successful career as a writer on music (the sounds of the 70s are one thread of this well-structured, rounded memoir) and biographer of William Burroughs and Allen Ginsberg. But as he describes, without self-pity, Caveney dropped out of university, struggled to form adult relationships, turned to drink and drugs to blot out the trauma, and on occasion attempted suicide.

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AUSTRALIA
Herald Sun

WAYNE FLOWER, Herald Sun
August 7, 2017

A DEPRAVED movie director who was a high priest in the Mormon church when he molested young boys has pleaded guilty to a series of child sexual assaults.

Darran Scott — formerly known as Darran Page — faces years behind bars for his sickening acts of depravity committed against vulnerable boys under his care.

Scott, 52, is most notable for writing and directing the independent movie The Spirit of the Game, which told the real-life story of a team of Mormon basketballers who helped the Australian team prepare for the Melbourne Olympics in 1956.

He also worked as an actor and freelance cameraman for Channel 9 affiliate WIN.

Today (Monday) he pleaded guilty in the Latrobe Valley Magistrates’ Court to 21 charges, including two of raping a boy aged under 16.

Scott met six of his young victims through his position of authority with the Church of Jesus Christ.

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AUSTRALIA
The Courier

Adam Cooper
7 Aug 2017

One of the victims of the latest Salesian priest jailed for sex crimes at a notorious boarding school outside Melbourne hopes his case will encourage others to contact police and seek justice.

Richard Brown was one of five boys sexually assaulted by Frank De Dood???, who was on Monday jailed for three years for abusing children he was either teaching or responsible for between 1978 and 1983.

Four victims attended Salesian College Rupertswood, in Sunbury, the scene of a string of sex assaults when a group of paedophile priests worked at the school and preyed on students.

De Dood also abused one boy at a Salesian residence in Oakleigh before he was posted to Rupertswood.

Mr Brown was in the County Court as De Dood was jailed for a minimum 20 months and afterwards urged other victims of sexual assaults to contact police.

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AUSTRALIA
Newcastle Herald

Damon Cronshaw
7 Aug 2017

Topics was strolling along Newcastle foreshore last week, basking in the winter sunshine under a fat blue sky, as the coal ships did their thing.

We were surprised to see a teddy bear out the corner of our eye.

This teddy was looking very relaxed, lying back on an anchor. It was put there in memory of merchant mariners lost in wartime. The anchor, that is, not the teddy.

As it turns out, the teddy was also doing a very important job.

A note was left with the cuddly toy, saying it was to honour children who suffered sex abuse “within the congregations of Jehovah’s Witnesses”.

Jehovah’s Witnesses were castigated at the Royal Commission for refusing to accept accusations of sex abuse, unless there were two witnesses.

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IRELAND
Sunday World

By Nicola Tallant

A priest who caused upset in his parish when he mentioned Fr Brendan Smyth during a sermon says he regrets bringing him up at all.

The priest, from Grange in Carlingford, says he was not trying to defend Fr Smyth when he spoke about his experience of hearing of his death from a newspaper headline exclaiming ‘The Beast is Dead’.

A number of parishioners had claimed that he said prayers for the paedophile priest and said he was not a “beast”.

But the priest has denied the allegations and said he was merely taken up wrong.

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AUSTRALIA
9 News

A Victorian priest is due to find out how long he will spend in jail after pleading guilty to molesting boys at Victoria’s notorious Rupertswood boarding school.

Frank Peter De Dood, 64, is scheduled to face the Victorian County Court for sentencing on Monday after pleading guilty in July to six counts of indecently assaulting five boys.

De Dood’s victims were aged 11 to 16 when they were abused between 1978 and 1983 at Rupertswood and at a theological residence at suburban Oakleigh.

One remembers wearing his altar boy robe when molested, while another woke to find the priest assaulting him.

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PHILIPPINES
GMA News

The National Youth Commission on Friday asked both houses of Congress to raise the legal coverage of statutory rape from 12 years old to 16 years old.

In a statement, the chair of the NYC’s Committee on Social Inclusion and Equity called attention to the bigger picture behind the priest who was recently arrested for allegedly soliciting sex with a 13-year-old girl.

“If only our laws recognize teen prostitution as rape, that monsignor who allegedly abused that 13-year girl would be charged with rape and most probably he would not be out on bail today,” Commissioner Perci Cendaña was quoted to have said.

“With the proposal of the NYC, sexual intercourse or sexual relations with a child under 16 years of age would be penalized as rape, regardless of whether or not there was force, threat, intimidation, deprivation of reason, fraud, or grave abuse of authority,” the statement added.

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UNITED STATES
These Stone Walls

Published on August 6, 2017

Gordon J. MacRae

A year before the 2002 wave of clergy sex abuse claims rippled out of Boston across the country, Sean Murphy, age 37, and his mother, Sylvia, demanded $850,000 from the Archdiocese of Boston. Sean claimed that three decades earlier, he and his brother were repeatedly molested by their parish priest. In support of the claim, Mrs. Murphy produced old school records placing her sons in a community where the priest was once assigned. No other corroboration was needed. Shortly thereafter, Byron Worth, age 41, recounted molestation by the same priest and demanded his own six-figure settlement.

The men were following an established practice of “mediated settlements,” a precedent set in the early 1990s when a multitude of molestation claims from the 1960s and 1970s emerged against Father James Porter and a few other priests. In 1993, the Diocese of Fall River settled some 80 such claims in a single negotiated deal. Other Church institutions followed that lead on the advice of insurers and attorneys.

Before the Murphys’ $850,000 demand was paid, however, Sean, his mother, and Byron Worth were indicted by a Massachusetts grand jury for conspiracy, attempted larceny, and soliciting others to commit larceny. It turned out that Sean and Byron were once inmates together at the Massachusetts Correctional Institute at Shirley where they concocted their fraudulent plan to score a windfall from their beleaguered Church.

On November 16, 2001, Sean Murphy and Byron Worth pleaded guilty to fraud charges and were sentenced to less than two years in prison for the scam. The younger Murphy brother was never charged, and Mrs. Murphy died before facing court proceedings.

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GUAM
The Guam Daily Post

Mindy Aguon |The Guam Daily Post Aug 7, 2017

“I’ve been clear. I don’t trust them.”

Attorney David Lujan has not minced words when it comes to how he feels about current and former members of the clergy in the Archdiocese of Agana as well as players involved in the settlement discussions for clergy sex abuse cases filed by more than 70 of Lujan’s clients.

“If there’s one reason I didn’t hesitate going into the mediation, it’s because it allows for a quick resolution especially with a portion of my clients who want a resolution,” Lujan told The Guam Daily Post.

With many clients in their 60s and 70s and several of them ill, Lujan said he believes his clients would want to get “something” for their families before they pass away.

District Court Magistrate Judge Joaquin Manibusan Jr. recently issued a temporary stay in dozens of the sex abuse cases. A separate hearing is scheduled for today for the lawsuits filed against Archbishop Anthony Apuron.

Retired federal Judge Michael Hogan, of Oregon, has agreed to serve as alternative dispute resolution mediator in the cases and mediation is expected to begin as early as October.

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PHILIPPINES
The Gulf Today

By Manolo B. Jara August 06, 2017

MANILA: Police on Saturday said the Filipino priest arrested and indicted for allegedly “booking” the sexual services of a 13-year-old girl could face up to 12 years in jail if convicted by a regional court.

Police explained the stiff jail term was the maximum penalty that a court could impose for those accused and found guilty of violating the country’s Anti-Trafficking in Persons Act of 2003.

At the same time, Chief Superintendent Romulo Sapitula, the head of the Metro Manila Eastern Police District, appealed to other victims to surface and file charges against Monsignor Arnel Lagarejos, 55, who was arrested in suburban Marikina City on July 28 along with a minor aboard a late model sport utility vehicle he was driving on their way to a motel.

Sapitula said his office has received reports that Lagarejos allegedly victimised other minors in Marikina and Rizal province in Southern Luzon but they were afraid to file complaints because the priest allegedly threatened them with a gun.

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PHILIPPINES
ABS-CBN

MANILA – Pope Francis will have the final say on whether the Filipino priest caught with a 13-year old girl will be expelled from the priesthood or not, Archbishop Emeritus Oscar Cruz said on Sunday.

Cruz told radio DZMM that the most serious punishment the Church can impose on Msgr. Arnel Lagarejos is to strip him of his priesthood.

Lagarejos was arrested in Marikina last July 28 while allegedly on his way to a motel with a 13-year-old girl.

Cruz said Lagarejos’ case will be sent to a congregation of the clergy who will then make a recommendation to Pope Francis.

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MINNESOTA
Minnesota Public Radio

Martin Moylan St. Paul · Aug 5, 2017

The bankrupt Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis says the latest reorganization plan proposed for the church by creditors would strip it of all assets required to pursue the church’s mission.

The archdiocese filed its objections to the creditors’ plan Friday and urged acceptance of its own $156 million settlement.

“The committee’s plan isn’t a reorganization plan, it’s an unlawful dismantling of the Catholic Church in the Twin Cities,” read a joint statement from Tom Abood, chair of the Archdiocesan Finance Council and Brian Short, a member of the Archdiocesan Corporate Board of Directors. “The committee’s plan is also simply unworkable from a legal or practical basis.”

The Twin Cities archdiocese filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in January 2015, motivated by hundreds of claims of sex abuse against archdiocesan priests.

The archdiocese says to fulfill the creditors’ demands, assets would include all cash and the cash value of property, including religious vestments and relics. Also included would be the church’s financial stake as landlord in the Cathedral of St. Paul and two high schools.

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MASSACHUSETTS
Boston Globe

By Danny McDonald GLOBE STAFF AUGUST 05, 2017

This story has been updated.

Thousands have signed an online petition calling for convicted child rapist and former priest Paul Shanley to live in a treatment facility where he will have no access to children.

As of Saturday afternoon, more than 15,000 people had signed the petition, which also calls for Shanley’s whereabouts to be monitored with a GPS bracelet.

“This is a dangerous man and we all know it,” said Matan Uziel , the founder of a women’s rights advocacy group, who launched the petition.

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MASSACHUSETTS
WRAL

BOSTON — The Latest on the release from prison of a former Boston priest who served 12 years for a child rape conviction (all times local):

7:20 p.m.

A lawyer representing a former Boston priest recently released from prison after serving time for a child rape conviction says he’s in “frail health” and isn’t a danger to anyone.

Attorney Robert Shaw Jr. says 86-year-old Paul Shanley has served his sentence and it’s time for people to “leave him alone.”

Shanley was convicted of raping a boy in the 1980s and served 12 years in prison. Last week he settled into an apartment near a children’s dance studio in Ware, 65 miles (105 kilometers) west of Boston.

A St. Louis-based group representing survivors of priest sex abuse said Thursday it wants Shanley to be placed in a secure treatment facility far from children. Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests says the facilities “are quite nice.”

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MICHIGAN
MLive

By Michael Kransz mkransz@mlive.com

MOUNT PLEASANT, MI — Lawyers for the Roman Catholic Diocese of Saginaw and an ousted priest want a lawsuit against both parties relating to a sexual relationship the priest had with a Central Michigan University student dismissed.

Motions, both filed in mid-July, claim the lawsuit is baseless on a number of grounds and that they should be awarded fees and costs associated with battling the suit.

The lawyer for the then-student and parishioner who filed the lawsuit, Megan Winans, has not yet responded to the motions.

Winans brought the lawsuit against former-priest Denis Heames, the Roman Catholic Diocese of Saginaw and Saint Mary’s University Parish in January of 2016, stating she should be awarded funds for a number of things suffered during and after her secret, intimate relationship with Heames.

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PHILIPPINES
ABS-CBN

Anton C. Onato, VERA Files
Posted at Aug 06 2017

The human trafficking case filed against Taytay-based priest Arnel Lagarejos is one of the rare instances a member of the Roman Catholic clergy has been haled into a criminal court.

But the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines (CBCP) is no stranger to complaints of sexual misconduct, including child molestation, against priests.

Retired Archbishop Emeritus Oscar Cruz, who is investigating 55-year-old Lagarejos following his arrest on July 28 for bringing a 13-year-old to a motel, has been leading the CBCP’s national tribunal that probes about 60 cases of clergy misconduct every year, including those against priests involved in money scandals, priests siring children, and pedophilic priests.

Last year, the tribunal looked into 14 cases of pedophilia, Cruz said in an interview months before the Lagarejos incident.

“As per experience, there are more cases of pedophilia. More of it,” he said.

The figure, however, is but a fraction of the actual number of cases, he pointed out, adding that bishops are empowered to conduct the investigation at the diocesan level and not all cases end up at the national tribunal.

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AUSTRALIA
ABC News

By Emma Younger

The Catholic Church in Ballarat is being accused of breaking its own guidelines in its legal fight against a compensation claim from a victim of notorious paedophile priest Gerald Ridsdale.

The church released new guidelines for dealing with civil claims for child sexual abuse in November 2015, which it said would promote a more compassionate approach towards victims.

They state a claimant would not be required to prove the elements of an abuse case that the church authority had already accepted to be true.

But lawyer Paula Shelton said the Ballarat Diocese was challenging parts of her client’s claim that were accepted by a court when Ridsdale was convicted of the abuse.

“What is very irritating and irking to our clients is that we have these bishops who show up … at the royal commission and say they’re going to treat these plaintiffs compassionately and this is what we get,” lawyer Paula Shelton said.

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AUSTRALIA
ABC News

ANALYSIS

By Paul Kennedy

In public, the Catholic Church has made promises of compassion to survivors of child sexual assault for decades.

Privately, however, it empowered lawyers to “strenuously” defend every Common Law claim brought against the institution.

“The way the church is treating us now is actually adding to the abuse we suffered when we were kids,” a survivor confided.

The church has built a ruthless reputation for its range of legal tactics, from stonewalling to counter-attack.

One of the worst known examples of intimidation occurred in the 1990s, when a long-suffering survivor sued the church for allowing a paedophile priest to work in several parishes, leading to horrendous crimes.

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CHILE
Religion Digital

[The lay people of Osorno continue in their struggle to get rid of the bishop Juan Barros, who is alleged to have known of the sexual abuse of priest Fernando Karadima but did nothing about it. They will request a hearing with President Michelle Bachelet in the hope that the president will send her complaints to the pope when he visits the country in January. Meanwhile, Bishop Barros has said that although he is aware of the controversies surrounding him, these will not lead him to resign.]

(C.D.).- Los laicos y laicas de Osorno siguen en su lucha para librarse del obispo Juan Barros, encubridor del sacerdote pederasta Fernando Karadima. Solicitarán una audiencia con la presidenta Michelle Bachelet con la esperanza de que la mandataria lleve sus quejas al Papa cuando éste visite el país en enero de 2018. Mientras tanto, el obispo Barros ha afirmado que aunque es consciente de las controversias en torno a su figura, éstas no le llevarán a renunciar, tal y como informan Dennys Salazar y Eduardo Palacios en Bío Bío Chile.

Los representantes del Movimiento de Laicos y Laicas de Osorno pidieron a Benito Baranda, nombrado por el Gobierno como coordinador de la visita del Papa Francisco a Chile, que les ayude a conseguir una audiencia con la presidenta Bachelet, para que ella se transforme en el puente con el líder del Estado Vaticano.

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MASSACHUSETTS
Boston Globe

By Danny McDonald GLOBE STAFF AUGUST 05, 2017

Thousands have signed an online petition calling for convicted child rapist and former priest Paul Shanley to live in a treatment facility where he will have no access to children.

As of 10 p.m. Friday, more than 13,700 people signed the petition, which also calls for Shanley’s whereabouts to be monitored with a GPS bracelet.

“This is a dangerous man and we all know it,” said Matan Uziel , the founder of a women’s rights advocacy group, who launched the petition.

Uziel hopes the petition will create “positive pressure” that will prompt authorities to do something

The petition urges the Archdiocese of Boston and the state — misidentified as “the State of Boston” — to work to place Shanley in a treatment facility.

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MICHIGAN
Crux

AP

MASON, Michigan – The attorney for a Michigan priest accused of bilking a Catholic church that’s missing millions of dollars asked a judge Friday to authorize the release of $800,000 seized by police to his client.

Father Jonathan Wehrle (WUR’-lee) is charged with embezzling $100,000 or more from St. Martha Parish in Okemos, Michigan, but prosecutors say an ongoing audit shows an estimated $5 million is missing from the Lansing-area Roman Catholic church.

Wehrle’s attorney argued during a Friday court hearing that the priest and his mother should have access to nearly $800,000 seized by Michigan State Police as part of the ongoing investigation, the Lansing State Journal reported.

A judge who heard that request must decide whether there’s enough evidence to send Wehrle to trial. The hearing resumes Sept. 1 with testimony from Bishop Earl Boyea.

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PHILIPPINES
The Manila Times

BY FR. SHAY CULLEN ON AUGUST 6, 2017

The recent arrest of a Catholic parish priest, accused of trafficking a 13-year-old in Marikina City, is highly unusual. He was charged with violation of the Anti-Trafficking in Persons Act. Most cases of clerical child abuse go unreported or are covered up in the Philippines. In other countries, the scandal of clerical child abuse has also left thousands of victims without redress, help, therapy or a chance for justice.

The Philippines’ Child Protection Law, otherwise known as Republic Act 7610, has a provision in Section 6 that punishes acts such as the taking of a child to a secluded place, in a vehicle or a motel, by an adult not her relative for purposes of sexual abuse. This provision of the law is to prevent rape and to bring the suspect to justice.

The institutional church, that is, the hierarchy in many countries, has failed in its obligation and duty to protect children and actively pursue child abusers when the evidence was strong. In the past, the church institutions in different countries even facilitated payoffs to parents of child victims and tried to use influence with the authorities to have charges against priests and members of religious groups dropped. Other clergy were moved to other parishes when complaints of child abuse were made.

In many cases, no action was taken by church authorities to protect the child and report the alleged abuser to the authorities. Now, there have been big changes in church procedures in dealing with child abuse cases and a zero tolerance policy is in place, thanks to Pope Francis.

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DEUTSCHLAND
Regensburg Digital

[Notes on the Domspatzen final report: Over two years after lawyer Ulrich Weber jumped into a basin, the depth of which he did not know, he came up with an outstanding final report. Its importance is to be assessed all the more highly, since its diocesan clients, with their temporal, local, and personnel restrictions relative to the Domspatzen institutions, apparently did not strive for a comprehensive explanation, but rather strove for an act of liberation and probably a tactical pacification of the publicly affected victims.]

Von Robert Werner

Über zwei Jahren nachdem Rechtsanwalt Ulrich Weber in ein Becken sprang, dessen Tiefe er nicht kannte, ist er mit einem herausragenden Abschlussbericht aufgetaucht. Seine Bedeutung ist umso höher zu bewerten, da seine diözesanen Auftraggeber mit ihren zeitlichen, örtlichen und personellen Einschränkungen bezogen auf die Domspatzen-Einrichtungen offenbar keine umfassende Aufklärung angestrebt, sondern eher einen Befreiungsschlag und wohl eine taktische Befriedung der öffentlich aufgetretenen Betroffenen angestrebt haben. Eine kritische Auseinandersetzung.

Der neulich veröffentlichte Abschlussbericht von Rechtsanwalt Ulrich Weber („Vorfälle von Gewaltausübung an Schutzbefohlenen bei den Regensburger Domspatzen“) hat die Debattenlage in Regensburg wesentlich verändert. Seine sehr reichhaltige Materialfülle und wichtigen Ergebnisse sind von wegweisender Bedeutung und dürften das diffamierende Gerede, die öffentliche auftretende Betroffenen seien vor allem Kirchenfeinde, geldgierige Figuren und oder Trittbrettfahrer, zumindest eindämmen.

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DEUTSCHLAND
Regensburg Digital

[Notes on the Domspatzen final report: Over two years after lawyer Ulrich Weber jumped into a basin, the depth of which he did not know, he came up with an outstanding final report. Its importance is to be assessed all the more highly, since its diocesan clients, with their temporal, local, and personnel restrictions relative to the Domspatzen institutions, apparently did not strive for a comprehensive explanation, but rather strove for an act of liberation and probably a tactical pacification of the publicly affected victims.]

Von Robert Werner

Über zwei Jahren nachdem Rechtsanwalt Ulrich Weber in ein Becken sprang, dessen Tiefe er nicht kannte, ist er mit einem herausragenden Abschlussbericht aufgetaucht. Seine Bedeutung ist umso höher zu bewerten, da seine diözesanen Auftraggeber mit ihren zeitlichen, örtlichen und personellen Einschränkungen bezogen auf die Domspatzen-Einrichtungen offenbar keine umfassende Aufklärung angestrebt, sondern eher einen Befreiungsschlag und wohl eine taktische Befriedung der öffentlich aufgetretenen Betroffenen angestrebt haben. Eine kritische Auseinandersetzung.

Der neulich veröffentlichte Abschlussbericht von Rechtsanwalt Ulrich Weber („Vorfälle von Gewaltausübung an Schutzbefohlenen bei den Regensburger Domspatzen“) hat die Debattenlage in Regensburg wesentlich verändert. Seine sehr reichhaltige Materialfülle und wichtigen Ergebnisse sind von wegweisender Bedeutung und dürften das diffamierende Gerede, die öffentliche auftretende Betroffenen seien vor allem Kirchenfeinde, geldgierige Figuren und oder Trittbrettfahrer, zumindest eindämmen.

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GUAM
Pacific Daily News

Guam’s clergy abuse scandal reaches a national audience Saturday in a story published by USA TODAY.

The story, available at usatoday.com, will also be published in the print edition of the newspaper next week.

Guam residents are familiar with the allegations of clergy sex abuse, which have made headlines for more than a year on island, and which started with accusations against Archbishop Anthony Apuron.

Nearly 100 lawsuits have been filed in federal and local court, accusing clergy members or others associated with the Catholic Church on Guam of sexually abusing children decades ago.

The USA TODAY story summarizes the issue for a national audience, including interviews with church experts and Guam residents.

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MASSACHUSETTS
Care 2 Petitions

On Friday, July the 28th, Mr. Paul Shanley, one of the most notorious figures in the Boston Archdiocese sex abuse scandal, has been released from prison. He will not be ordered to wear a GPS bracelet, and will not be staying in a secure treatment facility.

The Catholic Church has many treatment facilities for clergy and former clergy with sexual issues. Please sign this petition to urge the Boston Archdiocese and the State of Boston to insist Shanley live in a facility where he can receive treatment and where he will have no access to children.

Many survivors of priest sexual abuse around the world are very disturbed by this news. Age and prison time do not cure pedophilia. Mr. Shanley has a long history of rampant child sexual abuse, much of which was covered up by the Church. Pedophile priests are a very real danger, a threat to women, men and children, especially young boys. Hurting a child like that scars them forever.Research and experience teach us that age does not cure pedophilia. Often age gives predators an advantage. People may see an old man and assume he is harmless. That is not the case.

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MASSACHUSETTS
Patch

[the petition]

By Jenna Fisher (Patch Staff) – Updated August 4, 2017

NEWTON, MA — Now that he’s out of prison, more than 13,000 people want the 86-year old former priest convicted of raping a small boy while he was a pastor at Newton’s St. Jean L’Evangeliste church to get special treatment.

Thousands of people from near and far have signed a Care2 petition asking the state and the Boston Archdiocese put the former priest, Paul Shanley, who was released after serving 12 years in prison for raping a boy while he was head of a Newton church, in a secure treatment center.

He will now begin 10 years of supervised probation, but Matan Uziel who started the petition says it’s not enough. (( Follow the Newton Patch for all the latest news on Newton))

Uziel, founder of Real Women, Real Stories, a video project that seeks to promote awareness of the hardships women face, says he is concerned because prison does not treat pedophilia, and because Shanley will not be ordered to wear a GPS bracelet.

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UNITED STATES
The Open Tabernacle: Here Comes Everybody

August 5, 2017 by Betty Clermont

The most powerful man in the Vatican after Pope Francis, Secretary of State Cardinal Pietro Parolin, will make an “historic visit” to Moscow to meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin at the end of August “with the aim of improving Holy See relations both with the Kremlin and the Russian Orthodox Church.” The trip “will also pave the way for a potential visit by Pope Francis which some believe could happen as early as next year,” according to Vatican reporter Edward Pentin.

Pope Francis has met Putin twice at the Vatican in November 2013 and June 2015.
In February 2016, the pope made a stop at the José Martí airport in Havana on his way to Mexico for a meeting with Russian Orthodox Patriarch Kirill. That meeting would not have happened “without a green light from Putin.”

Pope Francis said that Metropolitan Archbishop Hilarion, foreign minister of the Russian Orthodox Church, “has come many times to speak with me.”

“One of the most skilled and experienced Vatican diplomats,” Archbishop Celestino Migliore, was appointed as the pope’s ambassador to Russia in May 2016 after serving as his ambassador to the United Nations, reported Vatican expert Andrea Gagliarducci.

Migliore’s predecessor in Moscow, Archbishop Ivan Jurkovic, was then assigned as ambassador to the UN in Geneva. The “widespread saying among Vatican diplomats” is that “Geneva is where the UN headquarters’ decisions are prepared” and Jurkovic “knows very well the Russian world and its sensitivities,” Gagliarducci attested.

Before Jurkovic, Archbishop Antonio Mennini was the papal representative to Moscow from 2002 to 2010. (The Vatican and Russia established full diplomatic relations in 2009.) Mennini was made an official in the Vatican Secretariat of State in January 2017.

Within two months of Pope Francis’ election, Putin appointed Alexander Avdeev as his ambassador to the Vatican. Avdeev was Russia’s deputy Foreign Affairs minister from 1998 to 2002, special ambassador and plenipotentiary of the Russian Federation to Paris until 2008 and then the Kremlin Minister of Culture until his appointment to the Vatican.

In view of the above, it would be safe to say that the Vatican is closer to Russia than any other country and the Russian Orthodox Church more than any other religion.

TRADITIONAL VALUES

Tom Heneghan, Religion Editor at Reuters, explained the alliance between Putin and the Russian Orthodox Church. “With strong financial backing from oligarchs, [the Russian Orthodox Church’s] global reach amounts to a network of the new Russian presence around the world, parallel to Moscow’s embassies and trade missions.”

Under Putin, “the Church has developed into a thriving institution that works closely with the Kremlin to promote common interests.”

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ILLINOIS
The Beacon-News

Dan Campana
Aurora Beacon-News

With custody issues seemingly settled at the moment for Alfredo Pedraza-Arias, the former Aurora priest accused of sexually abusing two young girls, Kane County prosecutors plan to go to before a judge Monday to ask for an earlier trial date than scheduled, court records show.

Recently, Kane County Judge Linda Abrahamson ordered Arias to stand trial beginning Sept. 18 on multiple counts of aggravated criminal sexual abuse involving two girls who were under the age of 6 when, according to prosecutors, Arias fondled them at Sacred Heart Church in Aurora between 2012 and 2014. He was charged in February 2016.

The case took a turn in May when, while free on bond, Arias was taken into custody by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials. A few weeks later, a federal judge ordered Arias to be deported to his native Colombia. That move prompted prosecutors to ask Abrahamson to revoke or increase Arias’ bail, which she did by $100,000 in July.

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AUSTRALIA
Ararat Advertiser

A former Ararat Catholic parish priest accused of historic child sexual abuse in regional and suburban Victoria has not appeared in court for health reasons.

Paul David Ryan, 68, was summoned to appear in Melbourne Magistrates’ Court on Friday on seven charges including rape and indecent assault at Warrnambool and the Melbourne suburb of Lower Plenty in the 1980s.

At least some of the allegations relate to a victim aged 16 and 17 at the time.

The court was told Ryan, now living in Western Australia, has prostate cancer and could not be in court for health reasons.

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GEORGIA
Joplin Globe

By Jill Nolin | CNHI State Reporter Aug 4, 2017

ATLANTA – Victims of child sexual abuse will have more time to pursue legal action against their abuser and, in some cases, the institutions that failed to protect them as children, under a bill that awaits state lawmakers.

The proposal, sponsored by Rep. Jason Spencer, R-Woodbine, seeks to build on a 2015 measure that temporarily lifted the statute of limitations and allowed older victims to come forward and take their abuser to civil court.

State law gives victims until they 23 years old to file a civil lawsuit. That age cut-off was suspended for two years, during which time 13 cases were filed all across the state, Spencer said.

But Spencer said those cases have revealed a major flaw in the 2015 bill, known as the Hidden Predator Act: These older victims could not go after the institutions that may have covered up the abuse.

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GUAM
The Guam Daily Post

Mindy Aguon | The Guam Daily Post

The Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests is outraged to learn the note-taker of the Vatican tribunal involved in the canonical trial of suspended Archbishop Anthony Apuron had been accused of sexual harassment in 2014 in Sioux Falls, South Dakota.

Rev. Justin Wachs is accused of sexually harassing a female employee of the Sioux Falls Diocese in 2014.

“The presence of Father Wachs, without his disclosing the accusations against him to the survivors, their attorneys and the Catholic faithful – was a complete violation of that trust,” said SNAP Western Regional Leader Joelle Casteix.

Keloland Investigates, a television program in Sioux Falls, uncovered the allegations and interviewed the parish employee. The woman accused Wachs of inappropriately touching and speaking with her on multiple occasions, and said the priest resigned and sought medical treatment after certain parameters had been set for his contact with her.

“We believe this violation proves once again that neither the Vatican nor its representatives take Apuron’s alleged sexual abuse of children seriously,” Casteix said.

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UNITED STATES
The Daily Caller

JOSHUA GILL

Nearly 100 lawsuits alleging sexual abuses over four decades were filed against the Catholic Church and the Boy Scouts of America in Guam, beginning in 2016.

Ninety-six lawsuits named the Archdiocese of Agana as a defendant, while 52 lawsuits named the Boy Scouts of America as a codefendant for enabling the priests to continue their abuse, according to a Friday report from USA Today’s Pacific Daily News (PDF). The allegations of sexual abuse span from 1955 to 1994, and involve an archbishop, 13 priest (one of whom was also a Boy Scout leader), and a janitor and a teacher from a Catholic school.

The population of Guam, a U.S. island territory, is 85 percent Catholic, with a total of 26 parishes on the island. The ongoing legal battle bears echoes of the Boston sex abuse scandal uncovered in 2002 by the Boston Globe, but Guam’s scandal goes deeper. Guam has a population of fewer than 163,000, with 59 lawsuits per 100,000 people in this case, compared to 12 lawsuits per 100,000 in the Boston scandal. The Catholic church’s influence in Guam goes far beyond the walls of the cathedrals, as certain priests allegedly wield political power rivaled only by the local military.

Many of the instances of sexual abuse alleged in these lawsuits previously went unreported, as the defendants allegedly used their positions as figures of spiritual and political authority to prey on vulnerable children. Those allegedly abused said the piety of the local population and the threat of retribution from their local church authorities discouraged them from telling anyone.

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ARKANSAS
Harrison Daily

Friday, August 4, 2017

By JAMES L. WHITE jamesw@harrisondaily.com

Larry Berkley, the former Harrison pastor facing numerous charges regarding abuse of juveniles, was booked back into the Boone County Jail late Wednesday on those charges.

A Harrison Police daily log of activity shows Boone County authorities contacted the HPD about 9:30 p.m. Wednesday for warrant confirmation on Berkley, 38, for sexual solicitation, four counts of first-degree sexual assault, seven counts of second-degree sexual assault, six counts of knowingly furnishing alcohol to a minor, four counts of contributing to the delinquency of a minor and two counts of loaning pornography to minors.

The log said the warrant was confirmed valid and he remained incarcerated with a hold for the HPD.

Berkley is accused of allowing minors and juveniles go to his house to smoke marijuana and drink alcohol. In addition, he is accused of sexually assaulting young males, all over 14 but under 18, and allowing them to watch pornography.

One of the victims told police Berkley had taken him to the funeral home where he worked part time and showed him a dead body. The victim said Berkley had stored marijuana in a very expensive casket he didn’t think people could afford to buy.

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ARKANSAS
Raw Story

BOB BRIGHAM
04 AUG 2017

A Baptist pastor who has been charged for child rape in multiple states is back in jail in Arkansas.

The Boone County Arkansas Sheriff’s Office booked Pastor Larry Berkley on charges of failure to appear, the latest in a three year legal battle against the former pastor of Shiloh Baptist Church in Harrison, AR.

“A Harrison Police daily log of activity shows Boone County authorities contacted the HPD about 9:30 p.m. Wednesday for warrant confirmation on Berkley, 38, for sexual solicitation, four counts of first-degree sexual assault, seven counts of second-degree sexual assault, six counts of knowingly furnishing alcohol to a minor, four counts of contributing to the delinquency of a minor and two counts of loaning pornography to minors,” the Harrison Daily reports.

Berkley is accused of furnishing drugs and alcohol to teenage boys that he sexually assaulted.

After posting bond in Arkansas, Pastor Berkley was indicted by a Lauderdale County, Tennessee grand jury on two counts of rape, four counts of aggravated statutory rape, sexual battery by an authority figure and statutory rape by an authority figure. The charges date to the time Berkley worked as a pastor at Victory Baptist Church in Henning, Tennessee.

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ARIZONA
12 News

William Pitts, KPNX August 04, 2017

PHOENIX – A Tucson man alleges Bishop Emeritus Thomas J. O’Brien sexually abused him more than 35 years ago.

O’Brien has already admitted to helping cover up suspected pedophile priest, but this is the first lawsuit to allege O’Brien was personally responsible for abuse. O’Brien stepped down as bishop in 2003.

The lawsuit, filed by a Tucson man going only by “Joseph W.”, alleges O’Brien molested him between 1977 and 1982, when the boy was in second to fifth grades. The lawsuit was filed in September of 2016.

“The abuse often took place before or during church services attended by Joseph W. and his family,” the lawsuit claims, “and under the guise of Bishop O’Brien showing Joseph W. how to assist with some aspect of the ceremony.”

The lawsuit alleges the abuse happened at St. Thomas Aquinas Catholic School and St. Vincent de Paul Catholic School.4, 2017

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KANSAS
KSHB

[with video]

KANSAS CITY, Kans. –
A local priest accused of child sex crimes is back in Kansas after his recent arrest in Maryland.

Father Scott Kallal was in Maryland for counseling, but he was accused of inappropriately touching a young girl while serving at Saint Patrick Church in Kansas City, Kansas.

He has been charged with two counts of aggravated indecent liberties with a child.

Thursday night, Kallal was booked into the Wyandotte county jail on $250,000 bond. Friday, though, Kallal had his first appearance and a judge reduced his bond to $50,000.

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KANSAS
The Kansas City Star

BY TONY RIZZO
trizzo@kcstar.com

AUGUST 04, 2017

A Catholic priest charged in Wyandotte County in a child sex case has been returned from Maryland where he was arrested last month.

The Rev. Scott Kallal, 35, was booked into the Wyandotte County Detention Center Thursday night and is being held on a bond of $250,000.

Kallal is charged in Wyandotte County District Court with two felony counts of aggravated indecent liberties with a child. The incidents allegedly occurred in 2015, according to prosecutors.

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UNITED KINGDOM
Hull Daily Mail

BY DAVID SPEREALL
4 AUG 2017

A man who was sexually abused by Catholic priests in an East Yorkshire children’s home is marching to Downing Street to campaign for a change in the law in how alleged victims are treated by the courts.

Darren Furness, 52, was one of a number of children to have suffered abuse at St William’s Catholic School in Market Weighton in the 1970s and 1980s.

Former headmaster James Carragher and the school’s then chaplain Anthony McCallen were jailed for a total of 24 years when the cases of 18 victims were brought to Leeds Crown Court in January 2016.

It came after the biggest child abuse investigation ever undertaken by Humberside Police.

Now Mr Furness is marching to the Prime Minister’s official residence to ask for a public inquiry into the crimes.

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PHILIPPINES
The Manila Times

BY ANTONIO P. CONTRERAS ON AUGUST 5, 2017

OF the figures in the Catholic Church, it is the parish priest who works at the grassroots. He is tasked to counsel those who are lost and those who are last. He is the representative of Rome with the people. He receives confessions from the sinners and gives communion to the faithful. He directly touches and ministers to his flock. His position embodies not only one that is holy, but also one that is trusted.

Thus, it is utterly offensive that a priest should be the one who should break that trust, and undermine his representation of the sacred.

This is the sin of that priest who now stands accused of violating the Anti-Human Trafficking in Persons Act, after he was arrested for allegedly procuring the services of a 13-year-old sex worker whom he was caught taking to a motel.,

That the girl was a minor, and that her pimp was also a minor, only affirm what is fairly known. Child prostitution is already pervasive, where boys and girls render sexual services for as low as the cost of a mobile phone loads.

These are loud indictments of moral decadence, things which adults, more so spiritual leaders like priests, must address.

And this is where the crime of this priest becomes more repugnant.

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MEXICO
e-Consulta

[Cardinal Norberto Rivera Carrera appeared last week before the Special Prosecutor for Violence Against Women and Trafficking in Persons (Fevimtra) of the PGR. Armando Martínez Gómez , president of the Association of Catholic Lawyers, said Cardinal Norberto Rivera Carrera attended a judicial proceeding because former priest Alberto Athié denounced him for covering up 15 priests accused of pedophilia.]

El cardenal Norberto Rivera Carrera compareció la semana pasada ante la Fiscalía Especial para los Delitos de Violencia contra las Mujeres y Trata de Personas (Fevimtra) de la PGR.

Armando Martínez Gómez, presidente del Colegio de Abogados Católicos, afirmó que el cardenal Norberto Rivera Carrera asistió a una diligencia judicial, debido a que el ex sacerdote Alberto Athié lo denunció por encubrir a 15 sacerdotes acusados de pederastia.

El presidente del Colegio de Abogados Católicos le dijo al portal Noticias MVS que el cardenal compareció en calidad de persona investigada, no como imputado, y que su declaración la realizó en su oficina, debido a que es una persona de la tercera edad.

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UNITED KINGDOM
Gloucestershire Live

BY ANDREW MERRELL
4 AUG 2017

Ecclesiastical Insurance has vehemently denied it advised the Church of England to sever ties with sex abuse victims after compensation has been paid and stressed its independence.

The Church withdrew support for victims of abuse on the advice of its insurers, Ecclesiastical, according to an independent report by child safeguarding specialist Ian Elliot.

Mr Elliot’s independent review into the case said the insurance firm’s advice has “directly conflicted” with the pastoral and compassionate duties of the church and “financial interests were allowed to impact practice”.

One victim who was paid £35,000 compensation after being raped by a member of the clergy in the 1970s blamed the Gloucester-headquartered insurer for the church cutting ties with him.

Justin Welby, the Archbishop of Canterbury – the most senior bishop of the Church of England – is said to have accepted in full the findings of the review.

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DEUTSCHLAND
Mitteldeutsche Zeitung

[Pictures and videos with child pornography: Pedophile priest from Braunsbedra, diocese Magdeburg is condemned.]

Von Diana Dünschel

Braunsbedra –
Der ehemalige katholische Pfarrer von Braunsbedra ist wegen des Besitzes kinderpornografischer Schriften zu einer Freiheitsstrafe von einem Jahr auf Bewährung verurteilt worden. Der Strafbefehl des Amtsgerichtes Merseburg ist rechtskräftig. Außerdem wurde gegen den Mann ein Ausbildungs- und Beschäftigungsverbot von Jugendlichen ausgesprochen. Er darf damit Kindern und Jugendlichen zum Beispiel keine Anweisungen mehr erteilen oder sie unterrichten. Das teilte Staatsanwalt Dennis Cernota auf Nachfrage der MZ mit.

Die Ermittlungen der Staatsanwaltschaft hatten aufgrund des umfangreichen Materials an Daten, die bei dem Pfarrer gefunden wurden, sehr lange gedauert. USB-Sticks, Festplatten und Digitalkameras mussten ausgewertet werden. Die beschlagnahmte Technik umfasste insgesamt 46 Terrabyte, das entspricht zirka 46.000 Gigabytes oder einer Speicherkapazität von mehr 9,6 Millionen Musiktiteln. „Eine überwältigende Menge“, wie Dennis Cernota sagte. Letztlich verurteilt wurde der Angeklagte aufgrund des Besitzes von mindestens 30.000 Bilddateien und knapp 300 Videodateien mit Kinderpornografie.

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OSTERREICH
Katholisch

[Christian churches also need the media public as a “critical corrective” seven years after the exposure of the abuse crisis. This was underscored by Marianne Heimbach-Steins, a social ethics professor from Münster, during a lecture at the “Salzburg University Week”.]

Die christlichen Kirchen brauchen auch sieben Jahre nach der Aufdeckung der Missbrauchskrise weiterhin die mediale Öffentlichkeit als “kritisches Korrektiv”: Das hat die Münsteraner Sozialethikerin Marianne Heimbach-Steins bei einem Vortrag im Rahmen der “Salzburger Hochschulwochen” unterstrichen. So wie die jahrzehntelange kirchliche Praxis der Vertuschung und des Herunterspielens der Missbrauchsfälle nur durch eine öffentliche Aufdeckung durchbrochen werden konnte, so brauche es weiterhin das wache Auge der Medien und einer kritischen Öffentlichkeit: “Kirche ist auf das kritische Potenzial der Öffentlichkeit angewiesen, um Strukturen der Sünde in ihr aufzudecken und zu überwinden”, so die Theologin.

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PHILIPPINEN
Heute

Priest (55) had sex with 13-year-olds: A Catholic priest has been arrested in the Philippines for sexual abuse of a child. His victim is only 13 years old.]

Der Priester soll das Mädchen bereits mehrere Male über einen Zuhälter bestellt haben, teilte die Polizei am Dienstag mit. Die Mutter des Kindes meldete den Zuhälter bei den Beamten und erstattete Anzeige.

Die Festnahme des 55-Jährigen ereignete sich bereits am Freitag im Zuge einer Polizeiaktion. Der Priester brachte das kleine Mädchen gerade in ein Motel, vermutlich um mit ihr Geschlechtsverkehr zu haben.

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DEUTSCHLAND
Heute

[Abuse in the Protestant Church: The struggle for justice for many years. Not only the incidents at the Domspatzen show how important the elucidation of abuse and sexual abuse within the church is. But what does it mean for the victims to go public with their accusations?]

von Sandra Theiß, Magdeburg

Nicht nur die Vorfälle bei den Domspatzen zeigen, wie wichtig die Aufklärung von Misshandlungen und sexuellem Missbrauch innerhalb der Kirche ist. Doch was heißt es für die Opfer, mit ihren Vorwürfen an die Öffentlichkeit zu gehen?

“Unterdrückt keuchend, stark schwitzend und penetrant stinkend presst sich der alte Mann an meinen jungen Körper. Die wollüstigen Grunzlaute, die er kurzatmig ausstößt, sind leise, klingen aber dennoch laut in meinen Ohren.” Mit diesen Worten beschreibt Joachim Schwarze in seinem Tagebuchroman “Der Trümmermann”, was der Pfarrer ihm angetan hat. Die Übergriffe liegen mehr als 40 Jahre zurück, sie ereigneten sich in Bad Lauchstädt, einer Kleinstadt in Sachsen-Anhalt.

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DEUTSCHLAND
Bash

[S * x instead of blessings – When priests abused children and the church hushed it up. The German Basic Law allows the church to have its own legal system and to sort out cases of any kind internally so that they do not penetrate the outside world. Sexual assaults on children are omnipresent in the Catholic Church.]

Ich war sein kleiner Liebling. Jeden Abend schlich er sich leise in den großen Schlafsaal des katholischen Jungeninternats, setzte sich auf mein Bett und strich mir zärtlich über die Wange. Dann küsste er mich, legte sich zu mir und schob langsam seine Hand in meine Hose. Er begann mich zu berühren und ich spürte ihn an meiner Hüfte hart werden. Dann nahm er meine Hand und zwang mich, ihn anzufassen. So lange, bis er gekommen war. Dann ging er und ich schwieg. Jahrelang. Damals verstand ich nicht, wieso alle um mich herum behaupteten, dass er ein guter Mensch sei. Tun gute Menschen so etwas? Oder sind sie nur gut, weil sie Priester sind, egal was sie uns wirklich antun? Und wie kann es sein, dass so viel vertuscht wird?!

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ITALIEN
Katholisch

[In Sicily, an allegedly Catholic organization is investigeated. The head of the association is called “archangel” and is said to have forced minors to engage in sexual acts.]

In Sizilien wird gegen eine vorgeblich katholische Organisation ermittelt. Der Leiter der Vereinigung bezeichnet sich als “Erzengel” und soll Minderjährige zu sexuellen Handlungen gezwungen haben.

Missbrauch | Catania – 04.08.2017

Vier Mitglieder der Organisation “Associazione Cattolica Cultura ed ambiente” (“Katholische Vereinigung für Kultur und Umwelt”), darunter ihr Vorsitzender, wurden in Sizilien wegen des Verdachts auf sexuellen Missbrauch Minderjähriger verhaftet. Die Festnahme fand italienischen Medien zufolge bereits am Montag im sizilianischen Aci Bonaccorsi statt. Der Leiter, Pietro C., bezeichnet sich Medienberichten zufolge selbst als “Erzengel” und habe der Organisation eine sektenartige Struktur gegeben. Dem Laien wird vorgeworfen, mindestens sechs weibliche minderjährige Mitglieder seiner Organisation zu sexuellen Handlungen gezwungen zu haben.

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MARYLAND
Inside Baltimore

—All six of the still-unsolved killings may be connected
to rapes by two “serial abuser-priests” at former Archbishop Keough High School, investigators say.

“That’s beyond coincidence – something’s going on.”
–A Top Maryland Law Enforcement Official, July 2017

By Tom Nugent

BALTIMORE – More than four decades after the still-unsolved murder of a Baltimore nun who was reportedly killed while attempting to blow the whistle on widespread sexual abuse at her Catholic girls’ high school, law enforcement officials in Maryland say they’re concerned about new findings that may link six different unsolved murders to two priests who were involved in the abuse during the late 1960s and much of the 1970s.

“This [new information] is deeply troubling and it absolutely should be checked out,” said one former high-ranking law enforcement investigator in Maryland recently, after reviewing the new findings by Inside Baltimore. Added the now-retired officer: “As a former investigator, I’m concerned that there may be a pattern here which points to involvement by the abusing priests.”

Another top law enforcement official in Maryland said after learning about new information related to the cold cases: “That’s beyond coincidence – something’s going on and these unsolved murders should be reviewed carefully.”

Three of the unsolved murder victims were teenaged girls and another was a 14-year-old boy. The nun was 26 at the time of her death, and Joyce Malecki was only 20 years old when she died. Malecki’s still-unsolved murder took place only a few days after the disappearance of Sister Catherine Ann Cesnik in November of 1969.

All but one of the killings, which occurred between 1969 and 1981, involved victims with alleged ties to two priests involved in the abuse – Father A. Joseph Maskell and Father Edward Neil Magnus, both of whom taught at the former Archbishop Keough High School in southwest Baltimore – or to two Catholic Baltimore-area parishes (St. Clement in Lansdowne and Our Lady of Victory in Catonsville) where Maskell served or lived frequently for many of the years during the 11-year period of the unsolved murders.

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CANADA
Sudbury.com

by: Darren MacDonald

A $5 million lawsuit by one of the molestation victims of a Catholic priest in Sudbury will be back in court this fall to set a trial date.

The victim, now 61, was just 12 years old when he attended St. Charles College in the late 1960s, where Fr. William Hodgson Marshall was a teacher and sports coach. The sexual assaults lasted for more than a year, and, in the statement of claim, the victim says he was expelled from the school for reporting the abuse to school officials.

Marshall was convicted in 2011 of indecent assault of 15 boys and one girl, and of sexually assaulting another boy. Six of his victims are from Sudbury, while most of the others are from Toronto or Windsor. He died in 2014.

Named in the lawsuit are Marshall, the Sudbury Catholic District School Board, the Basilian Fathers, the Roman Catholic Diocese of Sault Ste. Marie and Bishop Ronald Fabbro, a former head of the Basilians.

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IRELAND
Breaking News

03/08/2017

The board of a south side school is taking a case against the Christian Brothers in a row over its playing fields.

7 and a half acres of land at Clonkeen College in Deansgrange is being sold, in a deal reportedly worth €18m.

The religious congregation owes money to a redress scheme for survivors of clerical abuse.

But principal Edward Melly has said the sale has not closed and they are taking legal action to block it.

The case will be filed based on an agreement made with the Brothers in 2006 which guaranteed the land for the schools use.

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NORTH CAROLINA
Associated Press

BY MITCH WEISS
ASSOCIATED PRESS

SPINDALE, N.C. (AP) — An evangelical North Carolina sect that is the focus of an ongoing Associated Press investigation has issued a statement denying former members’ allegations that they were brought to the U.S. from congregations in Brazil and forced to work for little or no pay.

The statement, issued by Word of Faith Fellowship attorney Josh Farmer, comes a week after the AP published reports about what dozens of former members described as a human pipeline from two churches in Brazil to the sect’s headquarters in rural Spindale, North Carolina.

“We are appalled to learn of the allegations published by the Associated Press regarding foreign members of our church being ‘enslaved,'” the statement read. “Many of these allegations are obviously preposterous on their face and they are all false. It is ludicrous that people now claim they were in an abusive environment at our church but admit that they traveled from Brazil to the United States many different times, returning repeatedly to their place of alleged enslavement.”

Word of Faith Fellowship and both churches in Brazil had not responded to numerous requests for comment before publication of the AP’s stories.

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UNITED KINGDOM
Sunday World

A “well-regarded” clergyman who filmed men using a public toilet in a shopping centre has been sentenced to a suspended four-month jail term.

The Very Rev Martin Thrower admitted two counts of voyeurism at an earlier hearing at Norwich Crown Court.

William Carter, prosecuting, said the 56-year-old rector was caught when a 17-year-old heard a noise above him as he sat on the toilet at the Buttermarket shopping centre in Ipswich, Suffolk.

The teenager saw someone’s hand holding a mobile phone that was filming him over the cubicle partition. He grabbed the phone and Thrower was arrested.

Judge Katharine Moore, sentencing on Thursday, told Thrower he had been “well-regarded” by those he helped, adding he had been a listening ear “in times of great sadness and some in happier times”.

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UNITED KINGDOM
Church Times

by TIM WYATT 28 JULY 2017

TWO survivors of sexual abuse in the Church of England have demanded that the Church overhaul its process for handling abuse claims, and have criticised its relationship with its insurer, Ecclesiastical.

The survivors say that they were treated poorly, and that their pastoral care and counselling were cut off, because of an overly defensive approach and legal advice from Ecclesiastical.

The survivors are: Gilo, a man who was sexually assaulted by the late Garth Moore, a former diocesan chancellor (News, 4 December 2015); and Teresa Cooper, who blew the whistle on the decades of abuse at a C of E-run children’s home, Kendall House, in Kent (News, 15 July 2016).

Gilo does not want his surname published, to protect his identity, and was previously known only by the pseudonym “Joe”.

After he made a compensation claim against the Church, having tried for years to report his ordeal, with little response, the pastoral support finally being offered to him was temporarily cut off. An independent review of the case concluded that this was because of incorrect advice from Ecclesiastical (News, 18 March 2016).

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UNITED KINGDOM
Church Times

04 AUGUST 2017

John Titchener responds to recent criticism of Ecclesiastical’s handling of claims

THERE has been much recent discussion in the media about Ecclesiastical’s handling of abuse claims brought against the Church of England, with particular focus on the experience of one survivor at the centre of the Church of England’s Elliott review (News, 28 July).

As the only insurer to publish our approach on handling abuse claims, we believe in making the claims-handling process transparent and understandable. Recent media discussion has misrepresented our claims process to such an extent that we feel we must put the record straight.

Child abuse is reprehensible and traumatising. We agree with the broad thrust of the Elliott review in promoting the needs of survivors and the importance of listening to them. But its assertion that Ecclesiastical instructed the Church of England to deny a survivor pastoral care is untrue. Unfortunately, we were not asked to participate in the review, and so had no opportunity to provide the evidence that showed this. On the contrary, we have always been clear that pastoral care and counselling can and should continue in parallel with an insurance claim.

This inaccuracy has led to broader misperceptions among victims and survivors about what actually happened, about how abuse claims are managed, about our own claims-handling record, the nature of our business, and our independence.

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GUAM
The Guam Daily Post

Mindy Aguon | The Guam Daily Post Aug 3, 2017

A former altar boy at Santa Barbara Catholic Church has filed a civil lawsuit alleging he was sexually abused when he was 10. He filed the lawsuit against the Archdiocese of Agana and former priest Raymond Cepeda.

A.C.J., who filed using initials to protect his identity, alleges Cepeda sexually molested and abused him while he served as an altar boy at the Dededo parish in 1980.

Cepeda was the priest at Santa Barbara Church in the early ’80s and resided at the rectory.

The plaintiff, who is represented by attorney David Lujan, alleges that one day after Mass and cleaning the church, Cepeda instructed the boy to follow him to the sacristy.

Cepeda allegedly fondled and raped the boy.

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FLORIDA
ABC Action News

HILLSBOROUGH COUNTY, Fla. – Hillsborough County deputies arrested a youth pastor accused of molesting a 13-year-old girl who knew him through his ministry that he runs out of his home.

Court documents say the girl was spending the weekend at 43-year-old Timothy Peterkin’s home. After playing outside with some neighborhood children, she asked Peterkin for some medicinal cream for an allergic reaction on her legs. The report says Peterkin took the girl into his bathroom, applied the ointment and asked her to take her shorts off to see if the reaction was on other parts of her body. The pastor is then accused of placing the child on his lap and putting his hands in her underwear.

Peterkin didn’t wish to speak with ABC Action News on camera or in detail about the accusations, saying he would be willing to talk after the legal process is handled. However, Peterkin did deny the allegations, saying he believes someone has a vendetta against him.

The Hillsborough County Sheriff’s Office says, due to his position as a youth pastor, they are looking into the possibility of more victims.

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CANADA
CBC News

By Gabrielle Fahmy, CBC News Posted: Aug 03, 2017

Disgraced catholic priest Yvon Arsenault will pleading not guilty to a new charge of indecent assault.

Arsenault is already serving four years behind bars. He was sentenced in February after he pleaded guilty to molesting nine young boys in the seventies, when he was priest around Shediac and Collette.

The boys were all between nine and 17 years-old.

Arsenault was almost unrecognizable as he appeared in Moncton provincial court Thursday to elect a mode of trial in front of judge Troy Sweet.

He looked around the courtroom appearing confused after being brought in to the prisoner’s box by a sheriff.

He was wearing a blue T-shirt, had grown a beard and appeared heavier since going to prison.

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AUSTRALIA
The Age

Emily Woods

An Anglican vicar who enjoys acting and writing in his spare time has appeared in court on child pornography charges, after he was arrested at his church in suburban Melbourne during a police raid.

Father Philip John Murphy, 52, faced Melbourne Magistrates Court on Friday, charged with 10 offences allegedly committed in East Burwood over five months, from September last year to February this year.

Detectives searched the Holy Apostles’ Anglican Church, on Anderson Road in Sunshine West, on Thursday morning and arrested Father Murphy.

Police said the arrest was part of a 12-month investigation into online child exploitation, by the joint anti-child exploitation team.

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KENYA
The Star

Controversial preacher Gilbert Deya, 65, has been extradited to Kenya to face child trafficking charges.

Deya arrived at 5 am on Friday aboard a KQ flight.

This is after his appeal over the extradition request was rejected by a UK court.

The preacher runs an evangelical church in Peckham, south-east London.

He has been on the list of most wanted persons for human trafficking since 2004.

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AUSTRALIA
The Austrlaian Jewish News

The Adass Israel School appears to have backflipped on its appointment of Rabbi Meir Shlomo Kluwgant as principal.

In June, Abe Weiszberger, Adass board secretary wrote to all staff informing them that Rabbi Kluwgant would assume the role of principal and CEO next year. Several victims of child sexual abuse were outraged at the appointment. While there has never been any claim or implication that Rabbi Kluwgant acted inappropriately with children himself, concerns were raised over how he had previously handled issues related to child sexual abuse.

Dassi Erlich, an abuse victim of former Adass principal Malka Leifer, met with the board last week and was informed that Rabbi Kluwgant’s position is not secure.

Weiszberger told Erlich, who was accompanied by former Victoria Premier Ted Baillieu that Rabbi Kluwgant is currently “a consultant” and that he would only take over as principal if victims’ advocacy group Tzedek gave Adass “the go ahead”.

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AUSTRALIA
9 News

A former Catholic priest accused of historic child sexual abuse in regional and suburban Victoria has not appeared in court for health reasons.

Paul David Ryan, 68, was summonsed to appear in Melbourne Magistrates’ Court on Friday on seven charges including rape and indecent assault at Warrnambool and the Melbourne suburb of Lower Plenty in the 1980s.

At least some of the allegations relate to a victim aged 16 and 17 at the time.

The court was told Ryan, now living in Western Australia, has prostate cancer and could not be in court for health reasons.

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GUAM
KUAM

Updated: Aug 04, 2017

By Krystal Paco

One of the priests charged with investigating Guam’s Archbishop Anthony Apuron now faces accusations of sexual harassment himself. Could this compromise Apuron’s ongoing canonical trial? It depends on who you ask, as this now has two leading clergy sex abuse victim advocates at odds with one another.

Archbishop Anthony Apuron may be undergoing a canonical trial in Rome, but its Father Justin Wachs, one of the men involved in investigating Apuron, who’s now in the spotlight. On Friday, Survivors Network for Those Abused by Priests (SNAP) Western Regional Leader Joelle Casteix firing at the Vatican for failing to put victims first.

According to South Dakota’s Keloland TV, Father Wachs is subject to allegations of sexual harassment. His accuser alleges that in 2014 the priest touched her in ways that made her feel uncomfortable and sent suggestive texts. Wachs then resigned and was assigned to Rome.

Among his duties – serving as notary for the Tribunal – the group tasked with investigating Apuron in light of four allegations of clergy sex abuse.

Wachs, and other Vatican officials met one by one with Apuron’s accusers in closed door meetings earlier this year.

“We were horribly dismayed to find this out,” said Casteix. “This is a horrible breach of trust. We believe that this puts the entire canonical trial in some state of limbo. How can we trust the process if these are the men they put in charge?” She added, “Those victims were not notified. They were not told that Wachs had these allegations against him. The victims were not allowed to have their attorneys present – they were told that the men in the interview were trustworthy.”

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GUAM
Pacific News Center

By Janela Carrera – August 4, 2017

“The Vatican is full of notaries. They could’ve chosen a million other ones to go to Guam. They didn’t have to choose Justin Wachs.” — Joelle Casteix, SNAP Western Regional Director.

Guam – An alarming twist has surfaced in the canonical trial of Archbishop Anthony Apuron–Father Justin Wachs, one of the investigators from the Vatican who worked on Apuron’s sex abuse case, has been previously accused of sexual harassment but this was never disclosed before Father Wachs paid the Archdiocese of Agana a visit back in February.

Father Wachs was among three Vatican officials who visited Guam back in February with the goal of taking depositions from the alleged victims of ousted Archbishop Anthony Apuron. His role was as a notary—essentially, a note taker.

While no statements were taken during that trip, the tribunal eventually took depositions from other Apuron accusers in the mainland and Hawaii. As it turns out, Father Wachs is no stranger to allegations of sexual misconduct himself. Back in 2014, Wachs was accused of sexual harassment by a parish employee in Sioux Falls, South Dakota.

“We have copies of the letters he wrote the woman. We have memos of the meetings where guidelines were set. We have all kinds of stuff that was laid out. We have the alleged victim’s recorded–these meetings,” said Joelle Casteix, western regional director of SNAP or Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests.

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GUAM
Pacific News Center

By Jolene Toves – August 4, 2017

A.C.J. was only 10 or 11 years old at the time he says he was raped by Raymond Cepeda.

Guam – The Archdiocese of Agana and its agents, “priests,” are charged with the protecting children who are under their care and supervision but according to the latest lawsuit filed in District Court on Thursday, this was not the case.

The latest lawsuit was filed by A.C.J. who was about 10 or 11 years old when he alleges that now-defrocked priest Raymond Cepeda sexually molested and abused him. According to court documents, A.C.J. was an altar server at Santa Barbara Catholic Church in Dededo when Cepeda took him to the sacristy, began touching and rubbing his private area before raping him.

The complaint further states that the Archdiocese knew that Cepeda had sexually abused and molested A.C.J. and other minor children for years, alleging that the Archdiocese did nothing to prevent Cepeda from engaging in additional instances of sexual abuse.

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UNITED STATES
Ocean City Today

By Greg Ellison | Aug 03, 2017

(Aug. 4, 2017) Since the Emmy-nominated Netflix documentary series, “The Keepers,” debuted in May, Ocean City residents Gemma Hoskins and Abbie Schaub’s campaign to solve a nearly half-century-old murder and sexual abuse scandal has gained a global audience.

The seven-part series delves into the November 1969 murder of Sister Cathy Cesnik an instructor at Archbishop Keough High School, a private all-girls Roman Catholic school in Southwest Baltimore. Two months later on Jan. 3, 1970, her body was discovered in a nearby wooded area.

Although still unsolved, former Keough alumni, including Hoskins and Schaub, have connected the Cesnik’s murder to alleged sexual abuse by Father Joseph Maskell.

Victims and others have theorized that Maskell killed Cesnik because she was about to reveal information about the abuse. He was removed from the ministry in 1994 and went to his grave in 2001 denying having any knowledge of abuse at the school. Keough was officially closed this June.

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GUAM
USA Today

Haidee V Eugenio, Steve Limtiaco and Dana M Williams, Pacific Daily News Aug. 4, 2017

Editor’s note: Some details in this report, while important to the understanding of the story, are graphic. Also, the USA TODAY Network does not identify alleged sexual abuse victims who do not wish to come forward.

HAGÅTÑA, Guam — It started off innocently: a 15-year-old boy helping out at San Miguel, a local church named for Archangel Michael, the leader of all angels.

There was yardwork and cleaning, followed by invitations to the rectory to eat and watch TV. Soon, there were offers to drink sacramental wine and watch X-rated movies. Then sexual assault.

More than 50 times over three years.

By the parish priest.

Those jarring allegations come from a recent lawsuit claiming assault from 1985 to 1988. It is one of nearly 100 lawsuits that describe rampant child sexual abuse by some of Guam’s most revered men: the Catholic clergy.

An investigation by the USA TODAY Network’s Pacific Daily News unearthed allegations of decades of assault, manipulation and intimidation of children reared on this remote, predominantly Catholic U.S. territory. Among the accusations: a boy fondled on the way to his grandmother’s burial, and another molested for the first time on his seventh birthday, then raped or assaulted 100 more times.

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ITALIA
La Sicilia

03/08/2017

di Mario Barresi

Ascesa e (recente) oblìo degli “acchiappavoti”, ben radicati nel cenacolo, dove oggi – dopo l’inchiesta sugli abusi sessuali mascherati da riti religiosi – in molti si chiedono: «Ma dove siamo stati in tutti questi anni?».

ACI BONACCORSI – Il risveglio è un pugno nello stomaco. E una ferita nell’anima, di quelle difficili da far rimarginare. Il chiacchiericcio assurge a cronaca (nera), il pettegolezzo riposto con distratto fastidio in un armadio diventa un rimorso di coscienza. «Ma dove siamo stati in tutti questi anni?».

La domanda rimbalza fra centinaia di persone – tutte perbene – che non riescono a darsi pace. Circa cinquemila, di tutto il Catanese, i frequentatori della “Associazione cattolica cultura e ambiente” con sede ad Aci Bonaccorsi in via Roma 51. Ovvero in quella che era la casa di don Stefano Cavalli, 97 anni, parroco della chiesa di Lavina, frazione di Aci Bonaccorsi. Il sacerdote, morto a 97 anni nell’ottobre del 2015, fu il primo parroco e rettore del Santuario di Maria Ss. Ritornata. Qui tutti lo ricordano, «padre Cavalli».

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