ABUSE TRACKER

NEW YORK (NY)
Financial Times

February 11, 2018

By Shannon Bond

Potential sale of troubled film studio thrown into doubt

New York’s attorney-general has sued Harvey Weinstein and The Weinstein Company, throwing into doubt the potential sale of the troubled film studio following allegations of serial sexual misconduct by the once powerful producer.

“The Weinstein Company repeatedly broke New York law by failing to protect its employees from pervasive sexual harassment, intimidation, and discrimination,” said Eric Schneiderman, the state’s top prosecutor, on Sunday.

Following a four-month investigation into TWC, the complaint alleges “a years-long gender-based hostile work environment, a pattern of quid pro quo sexual harassment, and routine misuse of corporate resources for unlawful ends” dating back to 2005, the year Mr Weinstein founded the company with his brother Bob, who is also named in the suit.

The complaint alleges that Mr Weinstein engaged in a long-running pattern of harassment and abuse and that the company failed to investigate or stop it. It accuses the brothers and TWC of “repeated, persistent, and egregious violations of law”.

Since the first allegations against him emerged publicly in October, Mr Weinstein has been accused by more than 80 women of harassment or assault. He denies all allegations of non-consensual sex. He was fired from TWC in October and is under criminal investigation by police in New York, Los Angeles and London.

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NEW YORK (NY)
The Washington Post

February 12, 2018

By Samantha Schmidt

New York’s attorney general on Sunday filed a civil rights lawsuit against Harvey Weinstein and his film company, accusing the disgraced Hollywood mogul of repeatedly sexually harassing, intimidating and demeaning female employees and perpetrating a hostile work environment.

Weinstein’s “vicious and exploitative” treatment of employees, coupled with the company’s failure to protect them, presented “egregious violations of New York’s civil rights, human rights, and business laws,” according to the lawsuit, which also names Weinstein’s brother and the studio’s co-founder, Bob.

The lawsuit, announced by state Attorney General Eric T. Schneiderman, appeared to throw a wrench into a deal to sell the Weinstein Co. to Maria Contreras-Sweet, who led the Small Business Administration under President Barack Obama. Negotiations for the $500 million deal halted Sunday, people familiar with the matter told the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times, making it likely that the debt-ridden studio will be forced to file bankruptcy.

Sunday’s lawsuit, filed in New York County Supreme Court, relied on interviews with numerous Weinstein employees, executives and accusers, as well as a trove of company records and emails. The investigation into the Weinstein Co. detailed “a years-long gender-based hostile work environment, a pattern of quid pro quo sexual harassment, and routine misuse of corporate resources for unlawful ends” that extended from about 2005 through October 2017.

Weinstein’s “assistants were exposed to and required to facilitate” his “sex life as a condition of employment,” it alleged.

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NEW YORK (NY)
New York Daily News

February 12, 2018

By Stephen Rex Brown and Leonard Greene

Accused sexual predator Harvey Weinstein hired “wing women” to facilitate his abusive conquests and bragged about having Secret Service contacts who could run interference, according to a lawsuit by the state’s attorney general.

Weinstein, his brother Robert, and their film company were all complicit in the “vicious and exploitative mistreatment of company employees,” said Attorney General Eric Schneiderman, who filed a civil rights lawsuit Sunday against the Weinstein Co. that derailed a $500 million deal to sell the agency, according to a report. Schneiderman had been concerned that the sale would go through without Weinstein’s victims having a chance to be properly compensated.

The suit, filed in Manhattan Supreme Court, included an array of new allegations regarding Weinstein’s depraved behavior.

The disgraced movie mogul has been accused by nearly 100 women of sexual harassment, bullying or rape.

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NEW YORK (NY)
The Irish Times

February 11, 2018

New York attorney general Eric Schneiderman has filed a lawsuit against disgraced movie producer Harvey Weinstein, his brother Bob Weinstein and their film production company alleging serious violations of civil rights, human rights and state business laws.

The lawsuit, which was filed on Sunday with the New York County supreme court, alleges that the Weinsteins created “a years-long gender-based hostile work environment, a pattern of quid pro quo sexual harassment and routine misuse of corporate resources for unlawful ends that extended from in or about 2005 through at least in or about October 2017.”

The complaint comes after four months of investigation and as the company seemed to be nearing a $500m sale to a group led by Maria Contreras-Sweet, who led the Small Business Administration for Barack Obama.

Harvey Weinstein faces sexual misconduct investigations in four separate jurisdictions in the wake of the avalanche of sexual misconduct accusations against him in the last few months, which he denies.

The 39-page suit alleges that unlawful conduct took two primary forms.

First, that as co-chief executive of the Weinstein Company, Harvey Weinstein “repeatedly and persistently sexually harassed female employees at TWC by personally creating a hostile work environment that pervaded the workplace and by demanding that women engage in sexual or demeaning conduct as a quid pro quo for continued employment or career advancement”.

Second, Harvey Weinstein repeatedly and persistently used his position, female employees and the resources at his disposal as a co-chief executive, to serve his interests in seeking sexual contact with women seeking employment at the company.

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NEW YORK (NY)
Al Jazeera

February 12, 2018

New York’s attorney general has filed a lawsuit against scandal-hit Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein, his brother and his former company, alleging that their film studio failed to protect its employees against its cofounder.

Weinstein, 65, was fired from The Weinstein Company last October, after more than 70 women accused him of sexual misconduct, including rape. He has denied all allegations of “non-consensual sex”.

The case was brought forward by Eric Schneiderman on Sunday, following an investigation into accusations against the prominent film producer of sexual harassment by dozens of women in the film industry.

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COLCHESTER (CT)
Burlington Free Press

January 18, 2018

By Adam Silverman

A Colchester-based religious order is among several Roman Catholic institutions that recently settled a priest sex abuse lawsuit in Connecticut for nearly $1 million.

The court case centered on misconduct claims involving defrocked priest Charles Many, a Vermont native and St. Michael’s College graduate who helped lead parishes in Essex Junction and in Groton, Connecticut, and was a member of the Society of St. Edmund.

The society and the Roman Catholic Diocese of Norwich in Connecticut agreed to split the $900,000 settlement paid to Andrew Aspinwall, 50, of New London, said his lawyer, Kelly Reardon. The agreement, which Aspinwall and the defendants reached on the eve of a trial that was set to begin early this month, contained no admission of wrongdoing.

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VATICAN CITY
The Associated Press

February 12, 2018

By Eva Vergara and Nicole Winfield

The Vatican’s sex abuse investigator has agreed to meet with a delegation of lay Catholics and priests from the Chilean diocese of Osorno who have opposed the appointment of a bishop strongly backed by Pope Francis, according to an email seen Monday by The Associated Press.

The Vatican’s embassy in Santiago set the meeting for Feb. 21 in Santiago and asked the Osorno group to select no more than five people to meet with the investigator, Maltese Archbishop Charles Scicluna.

In the email, the Vatican’s ambassador also asked delegation members to send a “detailed” document to him by Friday, five days before the meeting, outlining what they intend to tell Scicluna. The ambassador, or nuncio, said the document would help Scicluna in his fact-finding mission about Bishop Juan Barros.

But Juan Carlos Claret, spokesman for the Osorno laity, expressed concern and said he would only provide general points to the embassy ahead of time. He accused the embassy of long refusing to acknowledge or respond to their complaints about Barros, who is accused by Osorno laity of being unfit and by victims of a prominent Chilean predator priest of having witnessed their abuse and done nothing.

“During these last three years, it has been the nuncio who has blocked all attempts at dialogue, not just with the clergy but with the laity,” Claret told AP.

He said he would, however, provide detailed information directly to Scicluna, who was tasked with taking testimony about Barros after Francis sparked outrage in Chile by strongly defending him and saying accusations against him were slander.

Barros was a protege of the Rev. Fernando Karadima, who was sanctioned by the Vatican in 2011 for sexually and psychologically abusing minors in his Santiago parish community. Victims testified to both Vatican and Chilean prosecutors about how Karadima would kiss and fondle them, and masturbate them behind closed doors.

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LONDON (ENGLAND)
Catholic News Service

February 12, 2018

By Megan Cornwell

Jesuit Father Zollner said some priests are even unsure of the civil laws surrounding the reporting of abuse

The Head of the Pontifical Gregorian University’s Centre for Child Protection has said the Church’s legal process for handling accusations of abuse must be more transparent and that it will take a long time for the culture of the Church to change.

Jesuit Father Hans Zollner was speaking to reporters on Friday at a ceremony awarding 18 people – religious and lay – diplomas for completing a specialisation course in safeguarding minors.

Even though the Catholic Church has all the necessary norms and laws in place to safeguard minors from abuse by clergy, the problem continues to be a lack of understanding or care about those rules and guidelines and applying them effectively, he said.

The legal process must be “more transparent for everyone”, including the victims, the accused and his or her superiors, Father Zollner said at the ceremony.

Victims receive no information during the process and the accused are left “in limbo” for what may be five years or more not knowing if they will be sentenced or even found guilty, he said. Not even the bishop or religious superior of the accused receives information about what’s happening, he added.

So while the Church’s definitions of what constitutes a crime and suggested sentences are clear, he said, what needs addressing is how to beef up the Church’s legal system so that it can “actually bring justice to everyone” and truly protect minors.

Reporters also asked Father Zollner about his thoughts concerning Pope Francis’ decision to believe Bishop Juan Barros of Osorno, Chile, and not victims who claimed the bishop may have been aware of and even present during their abuse by the bishop’s former mentor, Father Fernando Karadima. The priest was sentenced to a life of prayer and penance by the Vatican after he was found guilty of sexually abusing boys.

But when pressed about doubts over whether the Pope listened to a Chilean survivor who had written a letter to the Pope that was to be hand delivered by Cardinal Sean O’Malley, head of the papal commission, Father Zollner said he would have no way of knowing whether the Pope read the letter.

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ENGLAND
The Times

February 12, 2018

By Kaya Burgess

The Church of England faces a painful two years of revelations about sexual abuse and cover-ups as independent inquiries get under way, a bishop has said.

The Bishop of Bath and Wells warned members of the church’s General Synod that they would feel a “deep sense of shame” as accounts emerge of sexual abusers within the church and a lack of support and credence given to their victims.

The Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse will start three weeks of hearings next month to examine the church’s failure to protect vulnerable people from sexual abusers, focusing on the diocese of Chichester, where there have been several allegations.

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WASHINGTON (DC)
CNN

February 11, 2018

By Daniel Burke and MJ Lee

Colbie Holderness says she met Rob Porter at a Mormon student congregation in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Lifelong Mormons, they married in the church in 2003. When Porter turned abusive and their marriage went bad, Holderness said, they turned to the church for guidance.

Porter, who had been a rising star in President Donald Trump’s White House before abruptly resigning on Wednesday, has forcefully denied the abuse accusations from two ex-wives, calling them part of a “smear campaign.” He did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Friday.

Both of the women Porter has been married to — Holderness and Jennie Willoughby — shared with CNN this week the unique role the Mormon church played in their troubled relationships.

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BRENTWOOD (TN)
Brentwood Homepage

February 10, 2018

Posted by Mark Cook

STUDIO TENN

Studio Tenn’s production of Doubt: A Parable, opens Feb. 15 at the Jamison Theater in the Factory at Franklin.

The challenging play by Pulitzer Prize-winning author John Patrick Shanley asks the question, “What do you do when you’re unsure?”

Winner of the Pulitzer Prize and Tony Award for Best play, Doubt is set in the Bronx in 1964 where an unthinkable allegation is leveled against Father Flynn. The watchful, reserved, unsentimental Sister Aloysius, who accuses the beloved priest of misconduct with the school’s first and only African American student, realizes that the only way to get justice is to create it herself.

First performed off Broadway in 2004, Doubt: A Parable featured Tennessee native Cherry Jones in the Tony Award-winning performance as Sister Aloysius. Shanley directed a 2008 film adaptation that starred Meryl Streep, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Amy Adams and Viola Davis, all of which were nominated for Academy Awards for their performance.

Studio Tenn’s rendition of the powerful parable stars Marguerite Lowell as Sister Aloysius, Brent Maddox as Father Flynn, Emily Landham as Sister James and Aleta Myles as Mrs. Muller. Nathaniel McIntyre directs, with set and costume designs from Studio Tenn’s Artistic Director, Matt Logan.

“I have always been so stricken by this play, not for what it tells us, but for what it asks us to examine,” Logan said. “The answer of the play is tied up in the audience’s interpretation, and oftentimes, tied to their own personal experience. It’s a wonderful production to ask our audiences to play along and consider.”

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ENGLAND
The Christian Times

February 10, 2018

By Jardine Malado

The Church of England is dealing with more than 3,000 cases of sexual abuse in the forms of concerns and allegations, prompting concerns that it would have to pay millions in compensation even if only a fraction of the complaints were upheld.

Peter Hancock, bishop of Bath and Wells, has shared the latest figures showing that the total of concerns or allegations of sexual abuse had reached 3,300 by 2016.

The report, which was unveiled during a three-day meeting of the General Synod in London, has sorted out new complaints from longstanding ones, but nearly all cases involve children, young people or vulnerable adults.

The figures have shown that 18 percent of the cases involve church officers, most likely members of the clergy, while others facing sexual abuse allegations in the church setting include lay individuals and other churchgoers.

Hancock stated in documents prepared for the Synod that dioceses made 338 “risk assessments” in 2016 after complaints against individuals, with 19 of the assessed being members of the clergy. The Church has reportedly created 867 “safeguarding agreement” with individuals in order to ensure that someone who has been assessed as a risk is supervised and kept away from possible victims.

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BELFAST (Northern Ireland)
Belfast Telegraph

February 10, 2018

Reverend Peter Hancock, Bishop of Bath and Wells, lead bishop for safeguarding, told the Synod “this will not be an easy couple of years”.

There is a need for a culture change within the Church of England, with some clergy believing that abuse complainants are “simply out for the money”, the General Synod has heard.

Sir Roger Singleton, member of the national safeguarding team, said the church has done “some useful work” in recent years, but added that “an enormous amount” still needs to be done.

He told the Synod there is a “common theme” running through recent reviews and inquiries, and said: “That is a continuing need for culture change within the church.”

Sir Roger was speaking at a session about safeguarding, where there was a presentation on national developments and on the Church’s preparation for the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse.

He said: “I am heartened by the positive affirmation which our archbishops, diocesan bishops and deans continue to give to the importance of creating and sustaining a safe church.

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LONDON (ENGLAND)
The Guardian

February 11, 2018

His defence of an accused bishop appears to put him on the side of the hierarchy against the people in the pews

It is five years since Pope Benedict XVI stunned the Roman Catholic world by announcing he would resign. His time in office had been blighted by the emergence of terrible stories of sex abuse and institutional cover-up. Even though most of these dated from the time of his predecessors, Benedict’s efforts to make things right were clumsy and inadequate to the scale of the problem. His successor, Pope Francis, seemed as if he were going to change all that as part of the openness, energy and realism that has characterised his approach. But developments in recent weeks have cast Francis’s sincerity and seriousness into question and threaten to overshadow many of the other accomplishments of his papacy.

Earlier in his pontificate, Francis had to deal with the enforced departure of one of his closer collaborators, Cardinal George Pell, who left the Vatican to face charges of historic child abuse, which he vigorously denies, in his native Australia. Several members of the church’s commission for the protection of minors, which the pope had set up, resigned in protest at the obstructionism of some parts of the Vatican bureaucracy; but these are the parts that are thought hostile to Francis, too, so he was not widely blamed for what happened.

All that changed with the pope’s visit to Chile. The church there had been convulsed by the discovery that children had been abused by an influential priest for years. It is claimed that many other priests knew or even witnessed what was going on. Among them was Juan Barros, whom Francis made a bishop in 2015 and installed in a southern diocese in the teeth of furious protests from both clergy and congregation. Bishop Barros, who denies the claims, was prominent among the bishops who received Francis on his visit: the two men were photographed embracing; and when Francis was asked on the flight back what he thought of the allegations against the bishop, he replied that they were merely slander, and that he had not seen any proof to back them up.

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VATICAN CITY
La Croix International

February 9, 2018

By Robert Mickens

The biggest error Catholic leaders have made regarding the church’s response to priests abusing children has been the exclusion of women leading the policy-making process

The last couple of weeks have not been what anyone in his or her right mind would call the most brightly shining moment in the current pontificate.

First, the cardinal in charge of the Roman Curia’s office on the laity blocked Ireland’s former president, Mary MacAleese, from speaking at an International Woman’s Day event originally scheduled to take place inside the Vatican. In response, the organizers simply moved the venue to the nearby Jesuit headquarters.

Then, a retired Chinese-born cardinal from Hong Kong blasted the Cardinal Secretary of State — and, by implication, Pope Francis — for being “a man of little faith” and selling out “suffering” Catholics on the Communist-ruled Chinese mainland by adopting a “naïve” strategy of appeasement in dealing with state authorities.

Next, a maverick and irascible bishop who oversees two Vatican think-tanks (the pontifical academies for science and the social sciences) overstepped his institutional boundaries and waded into the controversy over the pope’s China policy. He spouted the unbelievable and embarrassing claim that the Communist nation is the world leader in implementing Catholic social teaching.

The bishop, an Argentine who would have the world believe he’s best friends with Francis (he is not), based his assessment on his first and only visit to China six months ago. If it’s ever proven that Chinese government officials spiked his egg rolls with brainwashing chemicals, perhaps all will be forgive.

However, great damage has already been done.

But that’s not the worst of what has been a very bad period for Pope Francis. The most serious blow to him and his pontificate came from an Associated Press (AP) report that produced some hard and rather convincing evidence that the pope has not been completely forthcoming about what he really knows (and when he first found out) about allegations that Bishop Juan Barros of Chile tried to cover-up abuse of a convicted sex abusing priest.

The AP article included an eight-page letter that one of the Chilean priest’s victims sent to Francis in April 2015, which meticulously outlined Bishop Barros’ alleged actions in unflattering detail. The letter was hand-delivered by Cardinal Sean O’Malley, a member of the pope’s Council of Cardinals (C9) and chairman of the Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors (PCPM). If true, this contradicts Francis’ claim that he had never received evidence of such a cover-up from any of the victims.

This is not good news. And dispatching the Vatican’s former chief prosecutor of clergy sex abuse crimes to Chile to collect more evidence on the Barros case — as laudable and important that this 11th hour operation is — does not address, in any way, the real problems the AP report reveals.

Only one of three of things can be true — either Francis never bothered to read the letter, or he read and dismissed it as unconvincing, or he just forgot that he ever read it.

There is a fourth, even if less plausible, possibility. Perhaps O’Malley, in reality, never gave the pope the letter, even though one of the then-members of the PCPM (who gave it to O’Malley — there is a photo to prove it) and the victim (who wrote it) said the cardinal told them he had delivered it.

None of these possible scenarios is encouraging. Because it means someone is not being completely transparent. Up to now, only one side has spoken publicly about the AP report — the former PCPM member (Marie Collins) and the Chilean abuse victim (Juan Carlos Cruz).

Pope Francis and Cardinal O’Malley have so far kept their silence. In order to shed light on what really happened and reveal who is giving an accurate account of this story they need to speak up.

If O’Malley were to all of a sudden declare that, no, he never gave Cruz’s letter to the pope — whether because he forgot to do so and then lied about it, or because he is trying to protect Francis from the current embarrassment and brewing crisis this is turning into — he would have to step down as PCPM chairman. His credibility among the commission’s members (still to be named in the coming weeks) would be greatly compromised.

And what about the pope?

If Francis received the letter and never read it, or simply forgot about reading it, this becomes yet another piece of evidence that dealing with the sex abuse crisis — particularly by holding negligent bishops accountable — is still not a major priority for the pope, despite whatever his apologists say to the contrary.

However, it would be even more damaging for the pope if he were to admit that, yes, he read the letter, but did not believe that Cruz’s accusations against Bishop Barros were credible. This would mean he was not entirely telling the truth during his visit last month to Chile and Peru when he told reporters he’s never received “proof” — than he corrected that to “evidence” — to support the accusations against the bishop.

This is quickly becoming one, big unholy mess. And it would be devastating to many Catholics and other people of good will if it were to severely cripple a pontificate that has launched a deeply-rooted and long-term project to reform and restore credibility to the Catholic Church and its witness to the Gospel.
So what can be done at this point?

First of all, the pope and his communications department (which is in disastrous disarray and is not serving him well) have to address the contents of the AP report and the fallout that has ensued. One would hope that Cardinal O’Malley could be of assistance in this first, necessary step.

Secondly, assuming that the essentials in the report are correct (the letter exists and it was delivered to the pope), it is difficult to see how Francis can respond without confessing that he was negligent (by failing to read the letter for whatever reason) or was not completely transparent (i.e. by concealing from journalists that he read it but did not believe its contents).

As I’ve written many times before, this pope has not been afraid to be vulnerable and show what some might consider weakness in order to engage others for what he perceives to be the greater good of the church and humanity. His meeting with the Orthodox Patriarch of All Russia, his efforts to constructively engage Donald Trump and other world leaders, and his policy on China are just a few examples.

The pope needs to quickly make the sexual abuse crisis in the church — which, by the way, is nowhere near to being resolved — a bigger priority. Quite frankly, he has not done so up to now.

He can start by coming clean with the members of his church and speaking truthfully to them about his own thinking — his doubts, concerns, apprehension, omissions and even missteps — on the way church authorities (he included) have addressed the abuse crisis to this point.

He still enjoys rock solid credibility and trust among millions and millions of people who would see his candid confession and testimony as a truly human and positive step forward, rather than cry of surrender. But that trust and credibility will erode if he does not say something soon. And the upcoming penitential season of Lent offers the perfect opportunity for such a truly Christian and even dramatic gesture.

One final thought:

Pope Francis also needs to totally revamp the mandate and mission of Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors and set up other mechanisms to deal with the sex abuse crisis. Most of the new PCPM members and his other advisors on this issue should be women. And he should demand that dioceses and national episcopal conferences give women, and especially mothers, the lead role on this issue, too.

This would be an important way for him to make a prophetic and necessary corrective to the, up-to-now, inadequate response the Catholic Church has offered.

Many men in the hierarchy hide and justify their misogyny, fear of women or desire to keep the church’s decision-making structures in the hands of clerics — all men, of course — by repeating Saint John Paul II’s paternalistic paean to something he called “the feminine genius.”

This phrase, which the late pope first wrote about in 1995 — and which Benedict XVI, Francis and countless churchmen have gone on repeating — embodies a catalogue of traits that are somehow especially peculiar to women by virtue of God’s design of nature.

People can debate whether all these characteristics are really exclusive to women. But one thing for certain is that only women can be mothers. And because of the intricate connection between mother and child through pregnancy, birthing and infancy, it can be argued that women — mothers — have unique protective and nurturing instincts that are developed differently from the same instincts in fathers.
The biggest error Catholic leaders in every part of the world have made regarding the church’s response to the phenomenon of priests abusing children and youngsters has been the exclusion of women from actually leading the policy-making process. Where women have been included, they have been mere consultants or experts, often just flowerpots to salve uneasy male consciences and to satisfy the demands of public opinion.

Pope Francis can put this right and show that the church really does believe women have a special “feminine genius” — at least in the area of the relationship between mother and child — by putting women in charge of the church’s response to sex abuse. So far, the “clerical genius” has not produced good fruits.

A leading Catholic layman who has done a tremendous job in helping his country’s bishops deal with the sex abuse crisis loves to repeat this line: “Until the pope has a lay man being the last one to give advice on these matters the clerical instincts will always be a problem!”

That is exactly right. But the layman should be a woman.

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SANTIAGO (CHILE)
La Tercera

>>>The Osorno of Bishop Juan Barros

February 11, 2018

By Pablo Barría

Luego de la visita del Papa Francisco a Chile y la posterior designación del obispo de Malta para indagar el presunto encubrimiento por parte del religioso, La Tercera recorrió la ciudad y constató la visión de religiosos y feligreses ante un caso que divide a la comunidad.

Las últimas semanas han sido intensas para el obispo de Osorno, Juan Barros. La visita del Papa Francisco a Chile, en enero pasado, hizo que su nombre volviera a la palestra pública, de la cual se mantuvo alejado luego de las manifestaciones en su contra tras ser designado como autoridad eclesiástica en la zona.

“No hay una sola prueba contra el obispo Barros, todo es calumnia”, dijo el Papa Francisco cuando estuvo de paso por Iquique. Sus declaraciones levantaron fuertes críticas e, incluso, lo obligaron a pedir disculpas y anunciar la visita del arzobispo de Malta, Charles Scicluna, para recoger los testimonios de quienes acusan a Barros de encubrir los abusos cometidos por el ex párroco Fernando Karadima.

[Google Translation:

The Osorno of Bishop Juan Barros

After the visit of Pope Francis to Chile and the subsequent appointment of the Bishop of Malta to investigate the alleged cover up by the religious, La Tercera toured the city and verified the vision of religious and parishioners before a case that divides the community.
The last weeks have been intense for the Bishop of Osorno, Juan Barros. The visit of Pope Francis to Chile, last January, brought his name back to the public arena, from which he stayed away after the demonstrations against him after being appointed as ecclesiastical authority in the area.

“There is not a single test against Bishop Barros, everything is slander,” said Pope Francis when he was passing through Iquique. His statements raised strong criticism and even forced him to apologize and announce the visit of the archbishop of Malta, Charles Scicluna, to collect the testimonies of those who accuse Barros of covering up the abuses committed by the former parish priest Fernando Karadima.

After the announcement, the decision of the Vatican is taken with moderation in the Catholic Church of the Los Lagos Region. They are close to 7:00 pm on Thursday and a small group of faithful arrive at the Osorno Cathedral, where the parish priest Bernardo Werth will hold a ceremony.

Before beginning, the religious pauses and clarifies his vision about the appointment of Bishop Scicluna: “If the Pope took that step it is to make it clear in the eyes of people all over the world, how is the real situation, for So under my gaze is positive, “he said, then go up to the altar and start the mass.

Outside the Cathedral some young people skate, without paying attention to what happens around them. In the case of Bishop Barros, says Carlos Sandoval, “I have no idea. I know nothing”.

A few meters from them, María Elena Yáñez, a native of the O’Higgins Region, leaves the religious site with a poster of Pope Francisco in her hands. A member of the “Mujeres Iglesia” group, formed by 15 lay women, Yáñez is critical of what is happening with the Bishop of Osorno. Even, he said, his group tried to deliver a letter to the pontiff where they alerted what was happening in the church of Los Lagos.

“In that letter we mentioned to His Holiness our concern for what is happening here in Osorno, but the letter did not reach his hands because it was not easy to reach him,” he said.

Different opinion expressed Nina, an elderly woman who frequently attends the masses of the Cathedral of Osorno. And it was in that same instance where Bishop Juan Barros claimed innocence.

“He told us at Mass a few days ago, when he returned from Santiago, that he was innocent, he said it at Mass and why he is going to be lying to us. Well, if you lie to us, I also forgive you, because I’m not the one to not forgive, “said the woman.

Inside a small kiosk of newspapers, magazines and various products is a lonely man, who prefers not to give his name. According to him, the “tension” that existed in the city when the designation of Barros was known has been appeased with the passage of time. “There were many protests here, all were peaceful, but now nothing is seen, everything is quiet, it seems that everything was fixed,” he said.

Groupings

The group of Laity and Laity of Osorno is the entity that has tried to keep the case of Bishop Juan Barros in force. They have a critical vision on the management of the religious in charge of the bishopric of Osorno and assure that their presence has impacted the level of parishioners who attend the masses.

“For December 8, for example, which is the closing mass of the Month of Mary, before 10,000 people gathered. And now, with luck, 1,000 people gathered last December. Who answers for those who did not attend these Masses? Now you do not see so much fervor, so much enthusiasm, “said Juan Carlos Claret, spokesman for the group.

Claret said that there have even been episodes in which young parishioners have shown their rejection of Juan Barros. “Last Saturday there were confirmations at the Reina de los Mártires church. Bishop Barros went to the trials of these confirmations where he informed the young people that he would preside over the ceremony. Three of these young men told him they did not want him to confirm them and they subtracted from the ceremony. In the end, Barros did not arrive at the ceremony, “he explained.

Jose Manuel Rozas, professor of philosophy and personal secretary of the priest Peter Kliegel, who has made public his rejection of Barros through letters, says that those who have made noise in the city correspond to “an isolated group of lay people who meet on Fridays, the rest of the pastoral agents of the diocese are doing their work in their respective parishes. ”

Rozas says that he, as a faithful person, will respect the decisions that are adopted once the visit of the archbishop of Malta is over. “If at the end of this process, the Church says that Bishop Barros has to leave the diocese, blessed be God, but if he says he must continue, blessed be God also,” he concluded.

They are close to 8:00 pm and the mass of the Cathedral of Osorno came to an end. Slowly the parishioners begin to leave the place to their homes. An image that depicts how Osorno de Juan Barros is, who lately has diminished his public appearances and waits in silence for the decision that his Maltese pair Charles Scicluna and the Vatican will take regarding his case. For now the city of Bishop Barros awaits quietly.]

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SANTIAGO (CHILE)

>>>Episcopal Conference defends Bishop Barros silence after accusations against him

February 10, 2018

By Nicole Briones and Eric Paredes

[Note from BishopAccountability.org: Includes audio clips of statements.]

Desde la nunciatura apostólica se confirmó que la visita del arzobispo de malta Charles Scicluna a Chile, será entre el 20 y 23 de febrero.

Jaime Coiro, portavoz de la Conferencia Episcopal de Chile, afirmó el arribo del enviado del papa Francisco, el cual tendrá como propósito tomar el testimonio de las personas que han acusado al obispo de Osorno, Juan Barros, de encubrir los delitos sexuales de Fernando Karadima.

A partir de esta investigación, Barros se ha referido poco y nada sobre esta situación. Posición que Coiro defiende, explicando que el obispo tiene todo el derecho de no dar declaraciones.

Scicluna se reunirá con Barros en Santiago, y además con James Hamilton y Juan Andrés Murillo, quienes -junto a Juan Carlos Cruz- denuncian al obispo de Osorno haber ocultado los abusos cometidos por Karadima en la parroquia de El Bosque.

[Google Translation:

Episcopal Conference defends Bishop Barros silence after accusations against him

From the apostolic nunciature it was confirmed that the visit of the archbishop of Malta Charles Scicluna to Chile, will be between February 20 and 23 .

Jaime Coiro, spokesman for the Episcopal Conference of Chile, affirmed the arrival of the Pope’s envoy, whose purpose will be to take the testimony of the people who have accused the bishop of Osorno, Juan Barros, of covering up the sexual crimes of Fernando Karadima. .

From this investigation, Barros has referred little and nothing about this situation. Position that Coiro defends, explaining that the bishop has every right not to give statements .

Scicluna will meet with Barros in Santiago, and also with James Hamilton and Juan Andrés Murillo, who – together with Juan Carlos Cruz – denounce the bishop of Osorno to have hidden the abuses committed by Karadima in the parish of El Bosque.]

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BONN (GERMANY)
Deutsche Welle

>>>Peter Kliegel: “The situation of the church is heartbreaking”

February 10, 2018

By Victoria Dannemann

Un sacerdote alemán ha levantado la voz en la Iglesia católica chilena exigiendo la salida del obispo Juan Barros, acusado de encubrir abusos sexuales. Peter Kliegel busca reunificar a una institución dividida.

El sacerdote Peter Kliegel no oculta su molestia y dolor por la crisis que vive la iglesia en Chile. El religioso alemán, nacido en Dillenburg, lleva casi 50 años trabajando en la diócesis de Osorno, en el sur de Chile, la misma en que el 2015 asumió el cuestionado obispo Juan Barros.

Anteriormente obispo castrense, Barros se formó al alero de Fernado Karadima, un sacerdote que durante décadas gozó de gran poder en un parroquia de un barrio acomodado de Santiago. Allí se rodeó de jóvenes y formó a futuros sacerdotes y obispos. El escándalo estalló cuando antiguos seguidores denunciaron abusos de poder y sexuales de parte de Karadima. Asimismo, aseguran que varios sacerdotes y obispos fueron testigos o incurrieron en conductas impropias.

Uno de ellos sería Barros, acusado de encubrir a su antiguo mentor. A pesar de la fuerte oposición que se ha levantado en Osorno, Barros no sólo se ha negado a dejar su cargo, sino que figuró junto al papa Francisco en su visita a Chile.

Con franqueza y valentía, Kliegel ha manifestado su opinión al nuncio y a la Iglesia. En entrevista con DW, el sacerdote galardonado en Alemania con la Cruz al Mérito en 2017 habla del duro momento que vive la iglesia en Chile y de la necesidad de buscar la verdad.

Deutsche Welle: Usted fue una de las primeras personas que manifestó la inconveniencia de que Juan Barros asumiera como obispo de Osorno. ¿Por qué asumió este rol activo?

Peter Kiegel: Yo vine a Chile hace 52 años y soy parte de esta iglesia, interesado en que tenga un mensaje muy claro en cuanto al encargo que nos hizo nuestro Señor. La situación se originó cuando supimos que el obispo Barros iba a tomar la diócesis de Osorno y que venía desde el ambiente de Fernando Karadima, lo que para nosotros era inaceptable. Por eso empecé a levantar mi voz.

[Google Translation:

Peter Kliegel: “The situation of the church is heartbreaking”

A German priest has raised his voice in the Chilean Catholic Church demanding the departure of Bishop Juan Barros, accused of covering up sexual abuse. Peter Kliegel seeks to reunite a divided institution.

The priest Peter Kliegel does not hide his annoyance and pain because of the crisis that the church in Chile is going through. The German priest, born in Dillenburg, has been working for almost 50 years in the diocese of Osorno, in the south of Chile, the same one in which the questioned bishop Juan Barros assumed office in 2015.

Formerly military bishop, Barros was formed at the eaves of Fernado Karadima, a priest who for decades enjoyed great power in a parish in a well-off neighborhood of Santiago. There he surrounded himself with young people and trained future priests and bishops. The scandal erupted when former followers denounced sexual and power abuses by Karadima. Also, they assure that several priests and bishops were witnesses or incurred improper conduct.

One of them would be Barros, accused of covering up his former mentor. Despite the strong opposition that has arisen in Osorno, Barros not only refused to leave his post, but also appeared with Pope Francisco on his visit to Chile.

Frankly and courageously, Kliegel has expressed his opinion to the nuncio and to the Church. In an interview with DW, the priest awarded in Germany with the Cross of Merit in 2017 speaks of the hard time the church is living in Chile and the need to seek the truth.

Deutsche Welle: You were one of the first people to express the inconvenience that Juan Barros assumed as bishop of Osorno. Why did you assume this active role?

Peter Kiegel: I came to Chile 52 years ago and I am part of this church, interested in having a very clear message regarding the order that our Lord made us. The situation originated when we learned that Bishop Barros was going to take the diocese of Osorno and that he came from the environment of Fernando Karadima, which for us was unacceptable. That’s why I started raising my voice.

What response has he had?

A few days after it was learned that Juan Barros would be our bishop, I manifested myself before the nunciature, first asking, but since we never received an answer, our voice became a little more insistent.

Has the nuncio never answered the requirements that you have asked him?

Never, which is very discourteous.

Why do you think that you or other priests and lay people have not been taken into account?

I think it has to do with administrative power in the Church, which is not fair, because as baptized and part of the church we have the right to be heard, which is what we demand.

What has the presence of Barros in Osorno meant?

The situation has been heartbreaking. The union of the diocese was destroyed. We do not know more than what the victims say, but we suffer the collateral damage of this Karadima environment. The damage he did to the Chilean church is so great that it is not acceptable for someone not to react. And since Rome did not react and our bishop does not understand us, we keep raising our voices to listen to us. We have never been heard, only once in the Episcopal Conference when they told us they could not do anything. And now, for the first time, after so many cries, Rome reacts by sending us to the archbishop of Malta, Bishop (Charles) Scicluna.

What do you expect from the management that he can do in Chile?

We have a lot of hope. We are going to make contact so that they give us the opportunity to make known what we live. It is not about being an opponent, but about seeking peace, which can only be built from the truth. We need an intervener to listen to the bishop and to us, to clarify situations that we can not understand or accept.

Why do you think that Bishop Barros, despite facing so much opposition, has not left office?

This is what we do not understand. He says he has been named, which is a valid argument, but we can not be satisfied because our parishioners do not accept it either. In many parishes they do not accept that the bishop administers the sacrament of confirmation. When he makes a mass, many people get up and leave. It can not be that a shepherd who must take care of his sheep lives in that situation and puts us in this mess.

Messages of Pope Francis’ visit to Chile

Franciso’s pastoral message in Chile, where he advocated for the dignity of women held in prison, for understanding with the Mapuche people or immigrants, for solidarity and also expressed their pain and forgiveness for the abuses committed by members of the Church, went into the background before the scandal of Bishop Barros. Even more when he appeared with the pope at Masses. “He was present as taking refuge behind the pope, which was quite unworthy for us and it hurt us greatly, but the bishop has not been able to confront the victims of Karadima.” When we invited one of them, the bishop was ripped off. In my last letter I wanted to demonstrate with examples of the same words of the Pope in Chile, that we live in an unacceptable situation, “says Liegel.

Do you think that Francisco’s visit deepened the crisis that the church is experiencing in Chile?

Personally I do not think so. You have to read the messages that the Pope gave in Chile, which are very good. I think he made a mistake in his spontaneity, but the messages were very clear. First of all he spoke to us about dignity and that is why we get up, because we demand human and spiritual dignity.

The Pope said in Chile that there was no evidence against Barros, although he later apologized for the pain caused to the victims. Is it possible that Barros knew nothing about abuses?

Only witnesses know that. But the atmosphere of Karadima is so incredibly damaging, that for prudence Bishop Barros should not continue. That is a spiritual, pastoral and human error

Did you expect Pope Francis to take a stand on this in his visit to Chile?

Hope was there, but I thought it would not be possible, for many reasons. There are other dioceses that also have bishops who were born in the environment of Karadima and who have not spoken, but they know that everyone is sitting in the same boat.

Have you had contact with Bishop Barros?

A lot, and he knows that I am very frank with him. I have never acted behind his back. I meet him and I always tell him what we think in the community. I’m telling you face to face.

How would you catalog Barros’ management as a bishop?

We hardly have a pastoral plan and that is what saddens us. We are like swimming in warm waters, which is not good for our work. Besides, he can not show himself in public, he’s afraid, he hides. It is unpleasant when in a ceremony there are people who stand up with signs that say “resign.” He is our head and this hurts us a lot, the best thing would be for him to step aside.

Despite being German, you live this situation as your own …

Of course, Chile is now my homeland, it is my church. This is my faith and also he is administratively my bishop, that is why I fight for a good cause.

Are you free to express your opinion?

Of course, that we will always have and demand, because we are not a dictatorship. We live in the church, although with obedience, but we have a voice and a vote.

What reception has your intervention in this case?

A good number of bishops wrote me very happy with my words. With pain, but satisfied. I have also received responses from laity and priests from Chile and the world. Of course not everyone was satisfied with my words, but I think they were sober and clear. This is why the echo is important, not to expose me but to demand truth and above all truthfulness. We have to be heard. That is the first step to seek the peace we need. The Catholic Church in Chile is unfortunately very discredited because of all this, which is very sad, if one thinks that at the time of the dictatorship the Church was the most valued institution and today is the least appreciated.]

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LAS CRUCES (NM)
Las Cruces Sun-News

February 6, 2017

By Carlos Andres López

A former Hobbs resident allegedly sexually abused by a former Las Cruces priest is suing the priest and the Catholic Diocese of Las Cruces over allegations that church officials facilitated the priest’s abuses and helped him flee the state.

The man’s allegations were detailed in a lawsuit filed Monday in 3rd Judicial District Court in Las Cruces.

In addition to the Las Cruces diocese, Father Ricardo Bauza, the former pastor of St. Genevieve Catholic Church in Las Cruces, was named as a defendant in the lawsuit, as well as St. Helena Catholic Church, where Bauza mostly recently served as a pastor.

The allegations in the lawsuit are related to an alleged criminal incident involving Bauza that allegedly occurred in April 2016 in Hobbs.

The lawsuit accuses of Bauza of sexual battery, alleging he sexually abused the plaintiff — listed as John Doe 81 — in the rectory of the Hobbs parish.

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EL PASO (TX)
KFOX14

February 7, 2018

By Samantha Lewis & Jamel Valencia

Las Cruces NM – A priest who served at a parish in Las Cruces for nine years and the Las Cruces Diocese are facing a lawsuit.

The lawsuit accuses the Rev. Ricardo Bauza of sexual battery, alleging he sexually abused a victim in the rectory at St. Helena Catholic Church in Hobbs, New Mexico, in 2016, according to court records.

Before becoming a priest in Hobbs, Bauza was a priest at St. Genevieve Catholic Church in Las Cruces from 2005 to 2014.

The lawsuit was filed in Las Cruces on Monday, according to court records.

It alleges Bauza abused his power as a priest to sexually harass and sexually abuse the alleged victim and that the Las Cruces Catholic Dioceses and St. Helena facilitated the priest’s abuses and helped him flee New Mexico

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LONDON (ENGLAND)
The Sunday Times

February 11, 2018

By James Gillespie, Caroline Wheeler, Iram Ramzan and Richard Kerbaj

Minister threatens to withdraw aid funding

More than 120 workers for Britain’s leading charities were accused of sexual abuse in the past year alone, fuelling fears that paedophiles are targeting overseas aid organisations.

As new figures emerged revealing the extent of the crisis, Priti Patel, the former international development secretary, warned “predatory paedophiles” had been allowed to exploit the aid sector.

Last night her successor, Penny Mordaunt, threatened to withdraw funding from Oxfam and “any other organisation that has safeguarding issues”. She condemned the “horrific behaviour” of some Oxfam staff and said it was “utterly despicable” that allegations of abuse persisted in the aid sector.

Mordaunt expected charities to “co-operate fully with . . . authorities, and we will cease to fund any organisation that does not”.

Speaking on the Andrew Marr Show this morning, Mordaunt said Oxfam had demonstrated an “absolute absence in leadership”.

“I think it’s shocking and it doesn’t matter how good the safeguarding practices are in an organisation, if that organisation does not have moral leadership to do the right thing, and where in particular they have evidence of criminal activity to pass that information to the relevant authorities including prosecuting authorities, that’s an absolute absence of leadership,” she said.

When pressed as to whether she felt the charity had failed in its moral leadership, Mordaunt said “yes, I do”.

Mordaunt plans to meet Oxfam tomorrow to discuss the scandal and afford the charity “the opportunity to tell me in person what they did after these events”.

Figures collated by charities cover sexual harassment in Britain and abroad. They raise troubling questions about regulation within the charity sector.

Oxfam recorded 87 incidents last year, Save the Children 31 — 10 of which were referred to the police and civil authorities — and Christian Aid two. The British Red Cross admitted there had been a “small number of cases of harassment reported in the UK”, believed to be up to five. All four receive money from the Department for International Development.

Of the Oxfam cases, 53 were referred to the police or other statutory authorities. A total of 20 staff or volunteers were dismissed. The charity employs 5,000 staff and has a further 23,000 volunteers.

Caroline Thomson, Oxfam’s chairwoman of trustees in the UK, said it was working to “address the underlying cultural issues that allowed this behaviour to happen”.

“We also want to satisfy ourselves that we do now have a culture of openness and transparency and that we fully learn the lessons of events in 2011,” she said.

She said Oxfam staff had come forward with concerns about the recruitment and vetting of workers involved in the scandal.

She added: “We will examine these in more detail to ensure we further strengthen the improved safeguarding, recruitment, vetting and staff management procedures that were put in place after 2011.”

Incidents involving charity workers that have come to light since The Times revealed Oxfam workers in Haiti in 2011 were dismissed after using local prostitutes for sex parties include:

● The Charities Commission criticised the Grail Trust, which raises funds for a disadvantaged children’s charity in India, last March for failing to report an allegation of child abuse in India and for initially publicly rejecting the claim.

● Teacher Simon Harris, who was head of a charity in Kenya, abused children at a school there. He was jailed for more than 17 years at Birmingham crown court in 2015.

Andrew MacLeod, a former aid worker for the Red Cross and the UN, told The Sunday Times there was a lack of response to “institutionalised paedophilia” among aid workers. He said he was shocked by what he saw in the Philippines.

“Walk near the Greenbelt Mall [in Manila] and you would see businessmen, tourists and aid workers meeting local girls for the night. You would say: ‘How old do you think these women are?’ They’d look at you with a twinkle in their eye and say: ‘She says she is 18.’

“Many aid workers will have to ask themselves: ‘What did I do to try and stop it?’”

It is not clear from last year’s figures how many allegations were made by other staff or whether the alleged victims were beneficiaries of the charities’ work.

Save the Children said all 31 cases of alleged abuse had taken place abroad and 16 people had been dismissed as a result.

Christian Aid said: “In the past 12 months, Christian Aid has investigated two incidents of sexual misconduct, both of which occurred overseas. One investigation led to the dismissal of a staff member, while the other case resulted in disciplinary action [not dismissal].”

It emerged last night that Oxfam did not give the Charity Commission full details about the use of prostitutes by some aid workers in Haiti seven years ago.

Haiti’s ambassador in London, Bocchit Edmond, criticised Oxfam for failing to inform the country’s authorities about the scandal and said it should publicly apologise.

The commission said: “We have written to the charity as a matter of urgency to request further information regarding the events in Haiti in 2011. This information will be considered as part of an ongoing case regarding the charity’s approach to safeguarding.”

Mordaunt said the Department for International Development was not told about the events at the time.

She said “They [Oxfam] initially said that they were investigating misconduct and when they concluded that report they did not tell us the nature of these events.

“They did tell the Charity Commission that there was sexual inappropriate behaviour, bullying and harassment of employees but they did not report that to us.”

She added that Oxfam also reassured the department that no harm was done and there was no involvement of any beneficiaries.

Andrew Marr said: “That was a lie, wasn’t it?”

Mordaunt replied: “Well, quite.”

She said she did not know what Oxfam’s motivation was for handling the investigation as it did, and warned that its relationship with the government was at risk.

“If the moral leadership at the top of the organisation is not there then we cannot have you as a partner,” she said.

Mordaunt said the charity had done “absolutely the wrong thing” by failing to tell the Charity Commission and prosecuting authorities the full details of the allegations.

She added: “If they do not hand over all the information that they have from their investigation and subsequently to the relevant authorities including the Charity Commission and prosecuting authorities then I cannot work with them any more as an aid delivery partner.”

Former international development secretary Priti Patel told BBC Radio 5 Live’s Pienaar’s Politics she was aware of abuse involving aid workers in disaster zones and had done her own research on the issue

She told the programme: “People knew in DfID, I raised this directly with my department at the time.

“I had quotes from the United Nations reports on the number of people.

“I think even the secretary-general last year said there were 120 cases involving something like over 300 people, and that was just the tip of the iceberg.”

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NEW YORK (NY)
New York Times

February 8, 2018

By Jacey Fortin

An American swimmer who competed in the 2012 Olympics has accused her former coach of sexually abusing her when she was a teenager.

The swimmer, Ariana Kukors, 28, said in a statement on Wednesday that the coach, Sean Hutchison, began sexually abusing her when she was 16 and had been “grooming” her for three years before that.

“I never thought I would share my story because, in so many ways, just surviving was enough,” Ms. Kukors said in the statement. “I was able to leave a horrible monster and build a life I could have never imagined for myself. But in time, I’ve realized that stories like my own are too important to go unwritten.”

In a statement emailed by his lawyer, Mr. Hutchison, 46, said Thursday that the accusations were not true. He said that the two had had a “committed relationship” that began after she was of age and that they had lived together for more than a year after the 2012 Olympic Games.

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UNITED STATES
ArianaJKukors.com

February 9, 2018

By Ariana Kukors

Any swimmer will tell you about the black line on the bottom of every pool . . . the line that we follow day after day. We develop a relationship with that line; it holds our hopes and our dreams, but it also holds our fears. If only that black line could talk, it would tell you of my nightmare.

To those in the swimming community, if you’ve heard the rumors about me, you may have been wondering if and when I’d find the courage to speak my truth.

This is the truth.

I recently came across a quote by Thich Naht Hahn that said, “People have a hard time letting go of their suffering. Out of a fear of the unknown, they prefer suffering that is familiar.” This quote is ironic, because I can still picture Hahn’s books lying on his bedside table.

I grew up in a family of 5 just outside of Seattle. I was the middle sister of 3 girls, the Kukors Sisters, as we were often referred to. When I was little we used to take our family boat out in the Puget Sound and many of my first memories are of water. The water has always felt natural to me. My older sister, Emily, joined a swim team when she was nine. I was five and eager to follow in her footsteps. That was when my swimming career began, and all three of us girls, my Mom’s mermaids, fell in love with the sport. In 2008, the three of us competed at the US Olympic Swim Trials, a moment in time I will never forget. I trained with my sisters, dreamed with them, won and lost with them. Before each race, we would always tell each other the same message: “I’m sending you my strength”.

I poured everything into my training. I had talent at a young age and progressed quickly with the help of extraordinary age group coaches; coaches who supported, developed, and challenged me in all the right ways. When I was 13, just on the cusp of making the USA National Team, I was handed off to a new coach, Sean Hutchison.

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AURORA (IL)
Associated Press via U.S. News and World Report

February 10, 2018

A former Catholic priest in suburban Chicago who was charged with sexually abusing two girls is likely returning to his native Colombia soon after pleading guilty to misdemeanor battery.

The Kane County State’s Attorney’s office says it agreed to the plea deal Friday after prosecutors analyzed evidence, communicated with the victims’ families and received assurances that Alfredo Pedraza-Arias will be “removed from the United States.”

A jail official says Pedraza-Arias was released Saturday “to the custody of another agency” but wouldn’t elaborate. His attorney says he expects Pedraza-Arias to leave the country soon.

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LONDON (ENGLAND)
The Guardian

February 10, 2018

By Harriet Sherwood

Bishop tells synod ‘it will not be an easy couple of years’ as IICSA prepares to take evidence

Church of England spending on issues relating to sexual abuse has increased fivefold since 2014 and the most recent figures show it is facing more than 3,300 allegations.

The disclosures come as the church prepares to face intense scrutiny by the independent inquiry into child sexual abuse (IICSA), which starts hearing evidence next month.

“This will not be an easy couple of years – we will hear deeply painful accounts of abuse, of poor response, of ‘cover-up’. We will … feel a deep sense of shame,” Peter Hancock, the bishop of Bath and Wells and the C of E’s lead bishop on safeguarding, told the general synod in London.

Professional safeguarding advisers have been appointed to every diocese to deal with disclosures of abuse, but Hancock said the pace of change needed to accelerate. “For too long the church has not responded well to those who allege abuse within our church communities. This is now changing and further change is needed.”

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LONDON (ENGLAND)
The Guardian

By Amanda Gearing and Steven Morris

February 9, 2018

Man says he was abused by Cistercian monk during family holidays on Welsh island

A man has come forward to describe how he was groomed and sexually abused as a child by a Benedictine monk on Caldey Island, intensifying calls for an inquiry into what happened at the abbey in south-west Wales.

The victim, who has told police of the abuse he was subject to during summer holiday trips to Caldey Island, is the first man to allege he was sexually assaulted by Father Thaddeus Kotik.

More than a dozen women have come forward to report offences committed by Kotik, a member of the Cistercian order of Benedictine monks who lived at Caldey Abbey on the Pembrokeshire island from 1947 until his death in 1992.

The Guardian has learned that two other men who lived and worked on Caldey Island were subsequently convicted of child sex offences.

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ARLINGTON HEIGHTS (IL)
Daily Herald

February 10, 2018

By Marie Wilson

A former Aurora priest pleaded guilty to misdemeanor battery and was released from jail Saturday without prosecution on charges of sexual abuse.

Now it’s likely the former priest, 51-year-old Alfredo Pedraza-Arias, will leave the country, his attorney David Camic said Saturday — whether on his own or possibly by deportation to his native Colombia.

Pedraza-Arias was charged in February 2016 with aggravated criminal sexual abuse of two girls younger than 13, whom he was accused of abusing between January 2009 and November 2014, one at Sacred Heart Church in Aurora and another at her Aurora home.

Camic said his client did not commit any sexual offense, which is why he pleaded guilty only to misdemeanor battery in a deal reached Friday with the Kane County state’s attorney’s office.

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SAN FRANCISCO (CA)
Salon

February 11, 2018

By Marci Hamilton

It is difficult not to be stunned into silence by the testimony of 156 female gymnasts against serial pedophile Dr. Larry Nassar. His “practice” was a factory assembly line of abuse — one girl after the other, day after day. He was prolific but not a rarity: child sex abuse in the United States is a mass epidemic that saturates our culture and even impacts the economy. And as the national #MeToo movement has shown, the time is now, to say, “enough is enough.”

Ignorance, discomfort and a legal system geared toward adults rather than children have kept these stories from the public. The numbers are staggering: research by the Centers for Disease Control estimates that 1 in 4 girls and 1 in 6 boys will be sexually abused before their 18th birthday. That means that in every classroom, team and congregation it is likely that there are children who have been or are being victimized.

Victims often do not disclose their abuse until they are in their 40s, according to the University of Georgia School of Law’s Child Endangerment and Sexual Exploitation Clinic. While 38 states have eliminated the criminal statute of limitations (SOL) for at least some child sex crimes, most have not done so for all of them, leaving large loopholes that protect many perpetrators whose “lesser” abuse can still yield enormous harm. Many more states have not yet eliminated the civil SOL, which means institutions and their insurers have not been adequately incentivized to change their practices to deter child sex abuse effectively. Indeed, the worst states, like New York, Alabama and Michigan, permit institutions and predators to revel in SOLs that cut off claims once the victim reaches their early 20s.

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PORTLAND (ME)
Portland Press Herald

February 11, 2018

By Edward D. Murphy

St. John’s in Brunswick said reinforced policies, plus a new administration and a focus on the future, will help the school going forward.

More than 16 months after Henry Eichman was arrested for the sexual abuse of multiple children, the Brunswick parochial school where he taught is trying to put the episode behind it.

Eichman, who was sentenced Jan. 3 for abusing eight children in Sagadahoc County, was arrested in September 2016 and charged with abusing children at his home in Topsham, where he had started a theater group. He was subsequently charged with abusing one child at St. John’s Catholic School, where he worked as a drama teacher and helped with an after-school day care program.

Eichman was sentenced to 10 years in prison on 10 counts, including nine felonies. But the start last month of his prison term doesn’t signal the end of the impact his actions have had in two midcoast communities. At St. John’s, a new administration has pledged to enforce policies to protect children. And although no charges were ever filed because of contact Eichman had with children at his Midcoast Youth Theater in Topsham, the drama group points to its policy that no adult is ever alone with a child involved in a theater activity as a shield against abuse.

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.

MELBOURNE (AUSTRALIA)
The Age

February 12, 2018

By Royce Millar, Ben Schneiders & Chris Vedelago

An Age investigation reveals for the first time the value of the Catholic Church’s wealth in Australia and raises serious questions about compensation payments to victims of child sex abuse.

The Catholic Church in Victoria is worth more than $9 billion, making it the biggest non-government property owner in the state and much wealthier than it has admitted in evidence to major inquiries into child sexual abuse.

A six-month investigation by The Age has found that the church misled the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse by grossly undervaluing its property portfolio while claiming that increased payments to abuse survivors would likely require cuts to its social programs.

Figures extrapolated from a huge volume of Victorian council valuation data show the church has more than $30 billion in property and other assets, Australia wide.

Based on these figures, the church is clearly the largest non-government property owner, by value, in the state, and close to the largest in Australia, rivalling giant Westfield, with its vast network of shopping centres and other assets.

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.

LAS CRUCES (NM)
Las Cruces Sun-News

February 10, 2018

[Note from BishopAccountability.org: This editorial references a statement by Bishop Oscar Cantú. That statement is available here.]

The allegations against a former priest in the Catholic Diocese of Las Cruces that are contained in a recent lawsuit are disturbing. The alleged cover-up by church officials, if true, would be beyond disturbing.

The lawsuit involves Father Ricardo Bauza, who had previously served as pastor of St. Genevieve Catholic Church in Las Cruces. The allegations in the lawsuit involve complaints made by several people after Bauza had been moved to St. Helena Catholic Church in Hobbs.

The adult man who filed the lawsuit claims that on two different occasions when he was using the shower at the parish rectory, Bauza entered the shower naked and began to wash the other man’s body, including his genitals.

The complaint also accused Bauza of showing photos of his penis and other sexually explicit images to church workers.

One worker also alleged that Bauza had engaged in sexual activities with other men in the church rectory. And, a cleaning lady told investigators that when she was cleaning the rectory one day, she saw Bauza standing naked in the hallway with his backside exposed to her.

Court records show that Bauza was charged in October with one misdemeanor count of criminal sexual contact. There is an active court warrant for his arrest.

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.

NEW LONDON (CT)
The Day

February 10, 2018

By Karen Florin

[Note from BishopAccountability.org: Includes an important video interview with John Waddington, a survivor of abuse by Fr Charles Many SSE, an Edmundite priest. This article appeared on the front page of the Sunday paper.]

John Waddington felt the blood drain from his face when his girlfriend called him last month to say a former altar boy at Sacred Heart Church in Groton who was molested by a priest in the late 1970s and early 1980s received a $900,000 settlement from Catholic church officials.

Waddington’s cubemates at Electric Boat saw his face go pale and thought somebody in his family had died, the 54-year-old electrical designer said during an interview Thursday.

The news of Andrew Aspinwall’s settlement brought Waddington back to the day in 1978 when he, a 14-year-old altar boy at Sacred Heart, was sexually assaulted by former priest Charles Many.

Same church, same priest, same time period.

“It was like it happened to me again,” Waddington said.

The now-disgraced former priest had arrived at Sacred Heart a few years earlier and started a youth group. Waddington said Many kept asking him to watch a movie in his room at the rectory. The priest was “a really soft-spoken, mellow kind of guy,” Waddington said, and he relented.

“He puts on ‘The Exorcist’ and molests me, and I didn’t remember it until I was 28,” Waddington said. The intense feelings associated with a divorce from his first wife and a confrontation at work triggered the memory, he said. He suffers from depression, post-traumatic stress disorder and anxiety. He’s been married and divorced three times, and has had years of counseling.

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.

WASHINGTON (DC)
The Hill

February 8, 2018

Nassar has been sentenced to up to more than a century in prison for serially sexually abusing young gymnasts who sought treatment for their sports injuries.

A total of 156 women testified about his abuse at his sentencing hearing last month, as well as another 60 women at another sentencing hearing last week.

Oversight Committee leaders are asking entities involved, including the U.S. Olympic Committee, USA Gymnastics and Michigan State University, for documentation of how they handled complaints against Nassar.

“To ensure this never happens again, the Committee is seeking to understand what failed within our Olympic and collegiate systems, and why,” a letter from Oversight Committee members to USA Gymnastics President Kerry Perry reads.

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.

INDIANAPOLIS (IN)
Indianapolis Star via USA Today

February 9, 2018

By Kristen Chatman

I am a mom who was in the exam room while Dr. Larry Nassar treated my daughter.

She had extreme back pain — to the point that it was difficult to walk. So of course, we called Larry. There was no other option in our minds. He was world-renowned. THE gymnastics doctor. Simply the best. No question. You see, we had been his patients at that point for nearly three years. So, we trusted him implicitly.

Frankly, I had been a bit skeptical of those in the medical profession — for a lot of reasons. We had seen numerous doctors on numerous occasions with the same outcome. No help. From inaccurate diagnoses to no diagnosis at all, our experiences jaded me. I was untrusting. Even cynical. Until I met Larry.

On our very first visit, he gave us an accurate diagnosis and charted a course of action as well. And it worked. And then, when another issue arose, we called Larry again. True to form, he helped solve the problem and put my daughter on the road to healing. This happened off and on for years. No problems. No questions.

And then the back pain came. Desperate for answers and relief, we called our favorite doc, Larry. Due to our mutually busy schedules, we met him off hours. “How nice of him!” we thought. Little did we know that this was a pattern of his behavior. He proceeded to evaluate my girl and then gave her (the) treatment.

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.

LANSING (MI)
Lansing State Journal

February 9, 2018

By Justin A. Hinkley

Michigan State University was expected on Friday to have turned over some 45,000 pages of documents to investigators at the Michigan Attorney General’s Office, with more to come on “a rolling basis,” according to a letter from the university’s attorneys to investigators.

Meanwhile, lawmakers on Friday gave the university until Wednesday to hand over documents in their own investigation into how MSU officials responded to Larry Nassar scandal.

According to a letter penned by attorney Patrick Fitzgerald of the law firm Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom and posted online by the university, among some 20,000 pages to be turned over Friday to the Attorney General’s Office were:
• University investigatory files related to former MSU physician and convicted sexual abuser Larry Nassar and other MSU employees,
• Personnel files for employees involved in the Nassar case,
• Policies for MSU doctors and the university’s sexual misconduct policies,
• Organizational charts, and
• Nassar-related documents that MSU has released through the state’s Freedom of Information Act.

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.

NEW YORK (NY)
New York

February 8, 2018

By Jeffrey Toobin

Cameras in the courtroom used to be a hot topic. In the nineteen-eighties and early nineties, many states began to allow broad media access to their judicial proceedings, and even the federal courts were experimenting with cameras. Court TV, a network devoted almost exclusively to live coverage of trials, was flourishing. But then the momentum stopped with a thud, and everyone remembers why: the trial of O. J. Simpson.

One can debate, and I have, whether the cameras in Judge Lance Ito’s courtroom during the case, in which Simpson was charged with the murder, in 1994, of his former wife Nicole Brown Simpson and her friend Ronald Goldman, affected the conduct of everyone involved and the verdict. (Simpson was acquitted.) Advocates for cameras saw the case as an opportunity for public education about the judicial process; opponents regarded the cameras as accessories to, and a cause of, a demeaning circus. But there is no doubt that the case poisoned the atmosphere for multimedia access to trials. In the two decades since, the trend has been toward fewer cameras, not more. New York is a prime example. The state allowed cameras in its courts for a decade, from 1987 to 1997, but then, post-O. J., forbade them again. (An experiment with expanding access is only now under way.) Court TV died a much mourned death, in 2008. To the extent that the subject of cameras in the courtroom came up at all, the negative example of the Simpson case drowned out much of the debate on the matter.

But recent events in Michigan serve as a reminder that cameras can be better than a necessary evil: they can be a positive good. Over the course of several days last month, Judge Rosemarie Aquilina allowed the victims of Lawrence G. Nassar, the former USA Gymnastics and Michigan State University sports-medicine doctor, to recount the stories of the abuse they suffered at his hands. (Michigan gives judges the discretion to allow or prohibit cameras in their courtrooms.)

More than a hundred and fifty victims testified, and their stories were harrowing. Sometimes standing with family members, sometimes alone, the young women told of how Nassar abused the trust they had placed in him and how their lives had been shaped, and often shattered, by what he did to them. Their stories reverberated well beyond the courtroom. As a result of the outrage people around the country expressed, the president of Michigan State University and the entire board of USA Gymnastics were forced to resign. With all respect to the power of the printed (and pixelated) word, this might never have happened if coverage had been limited to the stories produced by the journalists who covered the proceedings. We live in a culture that is saturated with video, from movie theatres to our phones, and we have come to expect to see news events for ourselves. Judge Aquilina did the right thing, and justice was served. (Nassar received multiple sentences, totalling well over a hundred years.)

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.

NEW YORK (NY)
New York Times

February 9, 2018

By Bret Stephens

Soon after Rolling Stone published a sensational — and, as it turned out, false — account of a gang rape at a University of Virginia fraternity, Richard Bradley, the editor of Worth magazine, suspected that something was amiss.

Basic journalistic rules, such as seeking comment from the alleged perpetrators, had not been observed, he noted on his blog. Details of the assault, one of which seemed ripped from “Silence of the Lambs,” were lurid past the point of plausibility.

But what most stirred Bradley’s doubt was how perfectly the story played “into existing biases,” especially the sorts of biases Rolling Stone readers might harbor about fraternity life at Southern universities.

Since the account of the rape “felt” true, it was easy to assume it was. Since the alleged victim had supposedly suffered grievous harm, it was awkward to challenge her version of events. Since important people took the story on faith and sought to press it into the service of an undeniably noble cause, the story’s moral truth overwhelmed its factual one.

All this, Bradley knew, was the surest way to fall for the biggest lies. It’s a caution that could serve journalists and the wider public well in the case of Woody Allen’s alleged molestation, in 1992, of his then-7-year-old adoptive daughter, Dylan Farrow.

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.

NEW YORK (NY)
New York Times

February 10, 2018

By Mark Landler

President Trump complained on Saturday about allegations that he said were destroying the lives of those accused — appearing to express doubts about the #MeToo movement after the resignations this week of two White House aides facing claims of domestic violence.

In an early morning Twitter post, Mr. Trump did not name the former aides, but said: “Peoples lives are being shattered and destroyed by a mere allegation. Some are true and some are false. Some are old and some are new. There is no recovery for someone falsely accused — life and career are gone. Is there no such thing any longer as Due Process?”

Mr. Trump’s claim ran counter to the White House’s portrayal of its actions in response to the abuse allegations. Administration officials maintained that they acted decisively in the cases of Rob Porter, the staff secretary, and David Sorensen, a speechwriter, both of whom stepped down after their former wives accused them of emotional and physical abuse.

But the president’s defense is in keeping with the White House’s initially defensive reaction to the charges against Mr. Porter — as well as his tendency to dismiss allegations made against him and other powerful men by women who say they were sexually harassed.

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.

VATICAN CITY
Associated Press via Bozeman Daily Chronicle

February 9, 2018

By Nicole Winfield

The #MeToo movement and the controversy over a Chilean bishop show the need for a broader response to “the abuse of power and conscience,” the head of the Catholic Church’s leading center on preventing priestly sexual abuse said Friday.

The Rev. Hans Zollner spoke at the graduation ceremony for students who have completed a course in safeguarding people from abuse held at the Jesuit-run Pontifical Gregorian University.

In addition to his role at the Gregorian, Zollner is also one of the founding members of the Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors, Pope Francis’ hand-picked group of experts on sexual abuse.

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.

MELBOURNE (AUSTRALIA)
Australian Broadcasting Corporation

February 9, 2018

By Emma Younger

Lawyers for Cardinal George Pell are seeking access to the medical records of complainants in the case against him.

Cardinal Pell, 76, is set to face a four-week committal hearing in the Melbourne Magistrates’ Court next month as he fights historical sexual offence charges involving multiple complainants.

No other details of the case against him can be reported for legal reasons.

One of Cardinal Pell’s defence barristers, Ruth Shann, made what she described as a “responsible and considered” application to access the medial records of complainants in the case.

Ms Shann told the court the records would have substantial probative value, meaning they would contain important evidence to the case.

She said a complainant may not be in the best position to describe their own mental health.

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.

LONDON (ENGLAND)
The Guardian

February 9, 2018

Pell’s legal team denies their request for access to records of those who have accused the Cardinal of sexual offences is a “fishing expedition”

Cardinal Pell’s legal team argued the particular features of the case warrant access to the information, including that it involved a high-profile person. Photograph: Joel Carrett/AAP
Cardinal George Pell’s lawyers want access to the medical records of people who have accused him of sexual offences, denying it is “a fishing expedition”.

Prosecutors oppose the defence application for access to the complainants’ treatment information.

The crown Prosecutor Mark Gibson SC said there was no substantial probative value in the material being provided.

“It’s tantamount to a fishing expedition rather than having a legitimate forensic purpose,” Gibson told Melbourne magistrates court on Friday.

The defence application came three weeks before a hearing that will determine if Australia’s most senior Catholic stands trial on historical sexual offence charges.

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

DUBLIN (IRELAND)
Irish Times

February 4, 2018

By Elaine Edwards

Charity ‘extremely concerned’ about allegations involving Irish Brother

A charity has suspended its funding to the St John of God Order for a project in Malawi following allegations of child abuse against a former school principal and member of the order.

Misean Cara, which gets funding from the State’s overseas development programme Irish Aid, said it was “extremely concerned” about issues raised involving Brother Aidan Clohessy. It said it had requested “a number of clarifications” from the order.

Br Clohessy was head of St Augustine’s, a school for boys with special needs in Blackrock, Co Dublin, from 1970 until 1993, when he was relocated to Malawi. The first serious child-abuse allegation was made against him in 1985 and two new claims by former St Augustine’s pupils emerged as late as last month.

The St John of God order has confirmed it has told the Garda Síochána about the new allegations.

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.

DUBLIN (IRELAND)
Irish Mail on Sunday via NewsScoops.org

February 4, 2018.

By: Michael O’Farrell

[Note from BishopAccountability.org: See also a PDF of the newspaper version of this article.]

The provision of Irish taxpayer funds to the St John of God order in Malawi has been suspended in the wake of the coverup of child abuse allegations, exposed by the Irish Mail on Sunday.

The order’s Malawi operations are supported by Misean Cara – a missionary charity that distributes a 16m euro block grant from the taxpayer-funded Irish Aid each year.

Misean Cara’s accounts show the St John of God order got more than €2.3m in public funds since 2009 – an unknown proportion of which went to Malawi.

In order to receive the funds for Malawi the order – currently led by Brother Donatus Forkan – signed contracts that included statements that child safeguarding policies are being implemented. Failure to make a declaration of compliance would have disqualified St John of God (SJOG) from eligibility for funding.

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.

MZUZU (MALAWI)
Nyasa Times

January 26, 2018

By Michael O’Farrell and Collins Mtika

[Note from BishopAccountability.org: The text below is a brief introduction to Part 2 of this feature. See the full report in PDFs of the original newspapers, with photographs, a timeline, and survivor profiles:
• Brother Accused of Abuse Was Left in Africa, with related articles, by Michael O’Farrell et al. (January 21, 2018)
• Breaking 35-Year Silence on Abuse, with related articles, by Michael O’Farrell et al. (January 28, 2018)
• Taxpayers’ Funding to St John of God Mission in Africa Is Suspended, by Michael O’Farrell (February 4, 2018)]

The St John of God order covered up 20 child abuse allegations against a school principal and allowed him to work and live with vulnerable children in Malawi for decades – even as payouts were made to his Irish accusers.

Brother Aidan Clohessy was principal of St Augustine’s in Blackrock in south Dublin – a school for special needs boys – from 1970 until 1993 when he was relocated to a Mzuzu city in Malawi. The first serious child abuse allegation was made against Brother Aidan in 1985 and claims continue to emerge.

As recently as this week, two new sets of allegations of sex abuse against Brother Aidan – unearthed by the Irish Mail on Sunday – have been referred to Irish police called gardaí and child and family agency Tusla for investigation.

The newspaper has also confirmed that a number of alleged victims in Ireland received compensation through the Redress Board – even as Brother Aidan remained working and living with children in Malawi.

Despite this the order appear to have ignored the danger Brother Aidan may have posed to children in Mzuzu city, Malawi – where many children were housed at the brother’s home – and its own childprotection guidelines. As a result of one allegation in Ireland, the order says it instructed Brother Aidan ‘not to work with children’ in 1997.

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.

DUBLIN (IRELAND)
Irish Times

January 21, 2018

By Elaine Edwards

[Note from BishopAccountability.org: This article cites as source an unnamed “newspaper report.” That report is Brother Accused of Abuse Was Left in Africa, by Michael O’Farrell, Irish Mail on Sunday, January 21, 2018. The article also alludes to Bringing hope to Africa’s poorest, by Eithne Donnellan, Irish Times, December 14, 2010.]

Br Aidan Clohessy ‘still worked with children in Africa’ after Irish sex abuse claims

The St John of God order has said it has told the Garda Síochána about new allegations of child abuse against a former school principal who subsequently went to work with children in Africa.

Br Aidan Clohessy was head of St Augustine’s, a school for boys with special needs in Blackrock, Co Dublin, from 1970 until 1993, when he was relocated to Malawi. The first serious child-abuse allegation was made against him in 1985; two new claims by former St Augustine’s pupils emerged as late as this week, a newspaper report said on Sunday.

The report claimed that up to 20 allegations were made against Br Clohessy up to 2014, and that when the State established the Residential Institutions Redress Board, in 2002, payouts were made to Irish accusers of Br Clohessy but he continued to work with children in Africa after that time. It also alleged that he had converted a garage at his home to house boys who had been on the streets.

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.

DUBLIN (IRELAND)
Irish Mail on Sunday via NewsScoops.org

January 21, 2018

By Michael O’Farrell

[Note from BishopAccountability.org: The text below is a brief introduction. See the full report in PDFs of the original newspapers, with photographs, a timeline, and survivor profiles:
• Brother Accused of Abuse Was Left in Africa, with related articles, by Michael O’Farrell et al. (January 21, 2018)
• Breaking 35-Year Silence on Abuse, with related articles, by Michael O’Farrell et al. (January 28, 2018)
• Taxpayers’ Funding to St John of God Mission in Africa Is Suspended, by Michael O’Farrell (February 4, 2018)]

The St John of God order covered up 20 child abuse allegations against a school principal and allowed him to work and live with vulnerable children in Africa for decades – even as payouts were made to his Irish accusers.

Brother Aidan Clohessy was principal of St Augustine’s in Blackrock in south Dublin – a school for special needs boys – from 1970 until 1993 when he was relocated to a city in Malawi.

The first serious child abuse allegation was made against Brother Aidan in 1985 and claims continue to emerge. As recently as this week, two new sets of allegations of sex abuse against Brother Aidan – unearthed by the Irish Mail on Sunday – have been referred to gardaí and child and family agency Tusla for investigation.

The MoS has also confirmed that a number of alleged victims in Ireland received compensation through the Redress Board – even as Brother Aidan remained working and living with children in Malawi.

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.

DENVER (CO)
Crux

February 7, 2018

By Charles Collins

Marie Collins, who was a founding member of Pope Francis’s Commission for the Protection of Minors but resigned in early 2017, says his handling of a letter from a Chilean abuse survivor has “definitely undermined credibility, trust, and hope” in the pontiff.

“He has said all the right things and he has expressed all the right views on abuse, and the harm and the hurt, but in this case at least it would seem his actions have not matched the words, and that is sad,” she said.

In 2015, the Irish abuse survivor personally handed the letter from Juan Carlos Cruz to Cardinal Sean O’Malley, the Boston archbishop who heads the commission, in an attempt to stop Francis from transferring Bishop Juan Barros to the Diocese of Osorno.

In the eight-page letter, Cruz detailed the abuse, kissing and fondling he says he suffered at the hands of Father Fernando Karadima, Chile’s most notorious priest-abuser.

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.

BOISE (ID)
Catholic News Service via National Catholic Reporter

February 8, 2018

The arrest of a retired Boise Catholic priest on multiple charges of sexual exploitation of a child, distribution of child pornography and drug possession has shocked Catholics in the statewide Diocese of Boise.

“When I first heard of these allegations, I was absolutely stunned,” Boise Bishop Peter Christensen said in a statement Feb. 6. He said that “there are no excuses” for the behavior described in the charges.

Fr. Thomas Faucher, 72, was arrested Feb. 2 and charged with 10 counts of sexual exploitation of a child, two counts of distributing sexually exploitative material involving children and two counts of drug possession. “All of the charges, except one of the drug counts, are felonies. If convicted, he faces a lifetime in prison,” reported the Idaho Statesman daily newspaper.

“If these allegations are true and proven in court, they are a betrayal of the trust we place in all ministers such as Father Faucher. Anyone who takes advantage of and exploits children for their own gratification is absolutely wrong. There are no excuses for such behavior by any one of our clergy,” Christensen said.

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

VATICAN
National Catholic Register

February 8, 2018

By Christopher Lamb

From his advocacy for migrants to opening up the Sistine Chapel to Rome’s homeless, Pope Francis has been an outspoken voice for people suffering on the margins.

But the 81-year-old pontiff’s appeals on behalf of the downtrodden are being overshadowed by the way he is dealing with victims of clerical sexual abuse.

“This is a situation which the Pope has mishandled, and it’s gone from bad to worse,” Marie Collins, a former member of a pontifical commission on clerical sex abuse, who herself was abused by a priest when she was 13 years old, told Religion News Service.

The Pope — who has repeatedly been accused of having a tin ear on this issue — is coming under pressure after it emerged he was handed a letter detailing abuse committed by the Rev. Fernando Karadima, a prominent Chilean priest, and how a future bishop witnessed it but did nothing.

It contradicted Francis’ comments to journalists last month that no victims had come forward with evidence of a cover-up by Bishop Juan Barros, whom the Pope appointed in 2015 to lead the Diocese of Osorno. During a trip to Chile in January, Francis also upset survivors by describing the claims against Barros — many of them made by victims — as “calumny.”

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.

VATICAN CITY
Associated Press via Salt Lake Tribune

February 10, 2018

By Nicole Winfield and Eva Vergara
·
The Vatican’s sex-crimes expert is changing plans and will fly to New York to take in-person testimony from a Chilean sex abuse victim after his pleas to be heard by Pope Francis were previously ignored, the victim told The Associated Press on Wednesday.

The switch from a planned Skype interview came after the AP reported that Francis received a letter in 2015 from Juan Carlos Cruz, a survivor of Chile’s most notorious pedophile priest. Cruz wrote the pope that one of the priest’s proteges, Bishop Juan Barros, was present for his abuse and did nothing, and questioned Francis’ decision to make him a diocesan bishop.

Barros has denied seeing or knowing of any abuse committed by the Rev. Fernando Karadima, a charismatic priest sanctioned by the Vatican in 2011 for sexually abusing minors.

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.

VATICAN CITY
National Catholic Register/Catholic News Agency/EWTN

February 6, 2018

A Chilean survivor of sexual abuse says that he wrote to the Holy Father and that the pontiff failed to act on the information.

A Chilean survivor of sexual abuse says that he wrote a letter to Pope Francis in 2015 claiming that Bishop Juan Barros of Chile witnessed abuse perpetrated by his friend Father Fernando Karadima and that the Pope failed to act on the letter.

In April 2015, Marie Collins, then a member of the Vatican’s Pontifical Commission for Minors, along with three other members of the commission, met with Cardinal Sean O’Malley, the Pope’s top advisor on sex abuse, giving him a letter from a victim of Father Karadima to deliver to the Pope, according to a Feb. 5 report from The Associated Press.

The meeting followed Francis’ controversial appointment of Bishop Barros to lead the Diocese of Osorno, Chile, in January 2015.

Collins told the AP that Cardinal O’Malley said he would deliver the letter to Pope Francis. The letter’s author, Juan Carlos Cruz, now living and working in Philadelphia, told the AP that Cardinal O’Malley told him in 2015 that the letter had been delivered to Francis.

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.

ROME (ITALY)
Reuters

February 9, 2018

By Philip Pullella

A Chilean victim of clerical sexual abuse who is the key witness in the case of a bishop accused of covering it up says a Vatican investigation must be rigorous and fair if the church is to salvage its reputation on the issue.

In a telephone interview with Reuters from his home in the United States on Thursday night, Juan Carlos Cruz said Pope Francis had “set the clock back years and years” with his recent comments casting doubt on the credibility of victims of abuse.

On Jan. 30, the Vatican said the pope had appointed the church’s most experienced sexual abuse investigator to look into accusations that Bishop Juan Barros of the diocese of Osorno in Chile had covered up crimes against minors.

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.

LONDON (ENGLAND)
Catholic Herald

February 10, 2018

By Christopher Altieri

At this point, there are only four possible explanations for what happened to a crucial letter

“How bad is it?” That was the question a friend put to me, à propos the leadership crisis in the Catholic Church. Pope Francis precipitated the crisis by levelling repeated accusations of calumny against survivors of sexual abuse perpetrated by a prominent Chilean cleric, Fernando Karadima, who was convicted of his crimes by a Vatican court in 2011. Karadima’s victims claim one of their abuser’s protégés, Juan Barros – ordained bishop in 1995 and appointed by Pope Francis to head the diocese of Osorno, Chile, in 2015 – witnessed the abuse they suffered at Karadima’s hands, covered for his mentor and enabled his abusive behaviour. Put just like that, it is bad enough.

It gets worse.

Pope Francis first accused the victims of calumny in a heat-of-the-moment exchange with a reporter in a press gaggle at the gate of the Iquique venue where he was heading to say Mass on the last day of his recent visit to Chile. News of the Pope’s “hot takes” overshadowed the final, Peruvian leg of his South American tour. The Pope then used his in-flight press conference – days later – on the return trip to Rome, to double down on his accusations of calumny, saying he has not received any evidence of Barros’ alleged wrongdoing, and that the victims had never brought their case to him. “You [reporters], in all good will, tell me that there are victims, but I haven’t seen any, because they haven’t come forward,” Pope Francis said.

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ROME (ITALY)
Crux

February 10, 2018

By Claire Giangravè

After six months in a Sicilian prison, the leader of a lay Catholic association charged with having sexually abused at least six underage girls has been released and allowed to await trial under house arrest.

In previous reporting, Crux has followed the story of Piero Alfio Capuana, a banker turner charismatic religious leader of the “Catholic Culture and Environment Association,” or ACCA, a lay association not officially recognized by the Church, that counted more than 5,000 members in the highly devout Sicilian inland near Catania.

Over the span of 25 years, Capuana, 73, who was regarded as an incarnation of the Archangel Gabriel by his followers, now stands charged with sexually abusing young girls between the ages of 11 and 16 with the help of three of his “Apostles,” meaning aides, who allegedly coaxed victims into interpreting his sexual advances as “pure love” and “love from above.”

In August of last year, an investigation conducted by the Italian police led to the arrest of Capuana, who was kept in isolation inside the Cavadonna prison in Syracuse until a review court found Feb. 8 that there are insufficient requirements for his remaining behind bars awaiting trial.

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ROME (ITALY)
Catholic News Service via National Catholic Reporter

February 9, 2018

By Carol Glatz

Even though the Catholic Church has all the necessary norms and laws in place to safeguard minors from abuse by clergy, the problem continues to be a lack in understanding or caring about those rules and guidelines and applying them effectively, said one Jesuit expert.

But what must change, “without a doubt,” are church procedures for handling accusations of abuse, said Jesuit Father Hans Zollner, head of the Pontifical Gregorian University’s Center for Child Protection.

Joy-of-the-Family-Guide.jpgExplore Pope Francis’ apostolic exhortation on the family. Download our free study guide.

The legal process “must be more transparent and more transparent for everyone,” including the victims, the accused and his or her superiors, Zollner told reporters Feb. 9 at a ceremony awarding 18 people — religious and laity — diplomas for completing a specialization course in safeguarding minors.

Victims receive no information during the process and the accused are left “in limbo” for what may be five years or more not knowing if they will be sentenced or even found guilty, he said. Not even the bishop or religious superior of the accused receives information about what’s happening, he added.

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CHICAGO (IL)
Beacon News and Chicago Tribune

February 9, 2018

By Hannah Leone

An Aurora priest who was charged with sexually abusing two young girls pleaded guilty Friday to a misdemeanor that does not require him to register as a sex offender.

Even if it did, he’d still face deportation to his native Colombia — one of the reasons his trial had been rescheduled so many times. Set for Feb. 20, the trial was likely about to be pushed again, according to a recent court order and the priest’s lawyer.

Alfredo Pedraza Arias was sentenced to 205 days in county jail with credit for time served after his guilty plea. With credit for time already spent in jail, Arias was set to be released Saturday morning, Attorney David Camic said.

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WILMINGTON (DE)
News Journal

February 9, 2018

By Xerxes Wilson

John Sarro, a former priest with the Catholic Diocese of Wilmington, on Friday pleaded not guilty to charges that he raped a pre-teen girl in the ’90s.

Sarro, 76, is charged with first-degree unlawful sexual intercourse and second-degree unlawful sexual contact. He is accused of fondling and raping a girl who court documents said was less than 16 years old between 1991 and 1994 when the abuse is said to have occurred. He was a pastor at St. Helena Parish in Bellefonte at the time.

On Friday, his first court appearance in Delaware, he spoke briefly from a wheelchair only to tell the judge that he has to tell the management of his assisted living home when he is coming or going. After entering his plea, he was assigned a public defender and allowed to leave.

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SANTIAGO (CHILE)
Associated Press via Yahoo News

February 9, 2018

The Marist Brothers in Chile opened a canonical investigation Friday into the sexual abuse accusations shaking their order with the first testimony from one of the alleged victims.

Isaac Givovich Contador testified for more than three hours to the Salesian priest in charge of the investigation, David Albornoz. When he left, a visibly affected Givovich was unable to talk to reporters at a news conference even though he was to speak on behalf of four other victims.

“What Isaac has just gone through in this place is part of a tremendously traumatic and re-victimizing process,” said Jose Andres Murillo, one of the victims of Chilean priest Fernando Karadima, the most visible face of sexual abuse in the South American country. Karadima’s case is not related to the Marists.

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BOISE (ID)
Idaho Statesman

Updated February 9, 2018

By Michael Katz, Ruth Brown, and Katy Moeller

Church spokesman Gene Fadness says Rev. W. Thomas Faucher will be served an eviction notice Friday afternoon. A certified letter regarding the eviction will also be sent to Faucher.

Faucher pays to rent his home from the Diocese of Boise. Fadness earlier this week told the Statesman that Faucher’s lease agreement prevented the church from evicting Faucher following recent charges of child porn and drug possession.

Friday, Fadness said the church does have options regarding the lease that he was previously unaware of. Friday’s action by the church would start the process laid out in Idaho law for an eviction.

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NEW YORK (NY)
Psychology Today

February 8, 2018

By Elizabeth Letourneau, Ph.D.

Why must we wait for hundreds of victims to come forward before we act?

Last week after days of emotional testimony by victims, Judge Rosemarie Aquilina sentenced Dr. Larry Nassar, the doctor who assaulted at least 150 girls while working as a doctor for USA Gymnastics, to 40 to 175 years in prison. On February 5, a Michigan judge sentenced Nassar to an additional 40 to 125 year sentence, which brought the criminal proceedings against Nassar to a close. Nassar’s previous sentence is a 60 year federal term for child pornograghy crimes.

What makes this case and other similar cases deeply upsetting is how many victims Nassar harmed while acting in the role of a trusted adult and caretaker. Many victims tried to come forward over the years, but their allegations were not believed.

In the United States, 25 percent of girls and 8 percent of boys are sexually abused before they turn 18. It’s incredible then that with a staggering number of victims, it often takes a critical mass—and time—before we’re willing to acknowledge that people we admire or trust are capable of sexually abusing children. People who abuse children often appear to be regular, normal folks, and we often don’t recognize that child sexual abuse is occurring because it is committed by people we know.

What can we do to make sure there are fewer victims and abusers? We desperately need to change the way we think about and react to child sexual abuse in our country. The days of waiting until abuse is detected is untenable.

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ROCKVILLE CENTRE (NY)
LI Herald

February 8, 2018

By Ben Strack

Phase Two of Reconciliation and Compensation Program begins

The second phase of the Diocese of Rockville Centre’s Independent Reconciliation and Compensation Program has begun, and will allow more survivors of sexual abuse by clergy members to seek financial compensation.

Victims who had previously notified the diocese that they had suffered abuse by a member of the clergy were invited to participate in Phase One of the program. Phase Two was set up to allow those who had never reported abuse to apply. To receive monetary compensation, victims must agree that they will not pursue legal action against the church in the future.

“…While no amount of monetary compensation could ever erase or undo the unimaginable harm suffered by victims of child abuse,” states a letter by Mary McMahon, director of the diocese’s Office for the Protection of Children and Young People, which was sent to survivors last year, “it is the sincere hope of the [Diocese of Rockville Centre] that those who have been alienated and distanced from the Church as a result of any abuse committed by [diocese] clergy will be empowered to begin the journey toward reconciliation with us.”

Any person wishing to file a new claim alleging sexual abuse not previously reported to the diocese should visit www.rockvillecentredioceseircp.com to register and receive the claim form and other documents needed to file a Phase Two Claim. The information will be turned over to the appropriate District Attorney’s office and be investigated fully.

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LONDON (ENGLAND)
Church Times

February 9, 2018

By Andrew Graystone

Andrew Graystone asked abuse victims how the Church could better help them

OVER the past two years, I have come to know a great many abuse victims as friends. Some remain faithful members of their Church. Others, understandably, never want to enter a church or meet a priest again. Some do not wish to revisit their abusive experiences. Others cannot get through an hour of the day or night without reliving their personal horror.

I have wanted the leaders of the Church to take on board some of the insights I have been given into the experience of victims. So I asked a number of people who have been abused within a church context to answer my questions about the ways in which the Church had responded to them. Their verbatim replies are contained in a booklet, Stones Not Bread, which will be presented to all members of the General Synod as they meet this week. Below is an extract from the booklet.

They come from nine different individuals who were abused. Most of them do not know each other, and they answered individually. All of them have been physically or sexually abused in situations where the Church has accepted some responsibility. They represent at least eight otherwise unrelated instances of church abuse. All of them are “recent”, in that they have been dealing with the Church’s safeguarding procedures in the past few months and years, even if in some cases the abuse is non-recent.

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LONDON (ENGLAND)
Church Times

February 9, 2018

By Hattie Williams

The term “spiritual abuse” should not be written into safeguarding policies or law because it is “unworkable” and “potentially discriminatory” towards religious communities, the Evangelical Alliance (EA) has said.

In a report, Reviewing the Discourse of “Spiritual Abuse”: logical problems and unintended consequences, published on Monday, the theology advisory group of the EA said that recent attempts to categorise “emotional and psychological abuse in religious contexts” as “spiritual” were also damaging to interfaith relations.

In the foreword, the chairman of the group, the Revd Dr David Hilborn, and the general director of Evangelical Alliance UK, Steve Clifford, wrote: “[Spiritual abuse] is a seriously problematic term partly because of its own inherent ambiguity, and also because attempts by some to embed it within statutory safeguarding discourse and secular law would be unworkable in practice, potentially discriminatory towards religious communities, and damaging to interfaith relations.”

While the report “in no way downplays” the harm that spiritual abuse caused, they said, more “precise, well-founded, workable definitions of abuse” were needed to help survivors.

The report comes after the Churches’ Child Protection Advisory Service (CCPAS) conducted a survey last month of more than 1500 Christians, two-thirds of whom said that they had been victims of spiritual abuse (News, 12 January). The study acknowledges that definitions of spiritual abuse are not clear cut, and suggests that this lack of clarity may be a significant barrier to responding appropriately to its victims within the Church.

The EA report states that its members had met the CCPAS to discuss spiritual abuse, but concluded that the term was “not a legally recognised category of abuse”, and that they had become “increasingly uneasy” about its application.

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MARTINSBURG (WV)
The Associated Press

February 8, 2018

A man accused in a West Virginia lawsuit along with The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints of covering up years of child sexual abuse testified he was unaware of the allegations that led to his son’s conviction until he was charged.

The Journal reports Chris Jensen testified Tuesday in Berkeley County Circuit Court in the trial of a lawsuit filed by plaintiffs on behalf of nine families.

Plaintiffs contend the Mormon church and others knew about 26-year-old member Christopher Michael Jensen’s sexual abuse convictions and allegations but “did nothing to warn and protect” their children.

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UNITED STATES
USA Today Network

February 9, 2018

By Kristen Chatman

I am a mom who was in the exam room while Dr. Larry Nassar treated my daughter.

She had extreme back pain — to the point that it was difficult to walk. So of course, we called Larry. There was no other option in our minds. He was world-renowned. THE gymnastics doctor. Simply the best. No question. You see, we had been his patients at that point for nearly three years. So, we trusted him implicitly.

Frankly, I had been a bit skeptical of those in the medical profession — for a lot of reasons. We had seen numerous doctors on numerous occasions with the same outcome. No help. From inaccurate diagnoses to no diagnosis at all, our experiences jaded me. I was untrusting. Even cynical. Until I met Larry.

On our very first visit, he gave us an accurate diagnosis and charted a course of action as well. And it worked. And then, when another issue arose, we called Larry again. True to form, he helped solve the problem and put my daughter on the road to healing. This happened off and on for years. No problems. No questions.

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SALT LAKE CITY (UT)
The Salt Lake Tribune

February 8, 2018

By Thomas Burr

The LDS Church declared Thursday that it has “zero tolerance” for abuse of any kind but couldn’t speak directly to allegations by the ex-wives of a former White House official who reported they received no help from their Mormon clergy when they were being abused.

Jennifer Willoughby and Colbie Holderness — former wives of Rob Porter, who resigned as White House staff secretary this week — said their LDS bishops either didn’t believe them or didn’t step in to help when they alleged Porter had physically abused them.

Porter has denied the charges.

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UNITED STATES
Medium

February 7, 2018

By Anne Ursu

Sometimes, it’s in the form of inappropriate comments.

An author wrote, “An editor who was considering my work commented very thoroughly on my body type as a possible personal advantage of working with me.” For her now, “it makes submissions feel like a minefield.”

For an author/illustrator, it was at a book party with a famous illustrator; “I introduce myself to him,” she writes, “and he makes a crack about my breasts.” After enough incidents like these she’s “completely stopped socializing in this business because each time it becomes another abuse story.”

Sometimes the comments are more pointed, like for the publicist who says her supervisor told her he had a crush on her and if he wasn’t married and twice her age he would ask her out. Or a writer’s conference attendee who says that a faculty member asked her if she was “kinky” at the opening mixer. Or the aspiring illustrator who won a mentorship contest, and at the end of her meeting with the mentor she said she had to go get a drink of water because she was hot. According to her, “he said ‘Yes, you are.’ And squeezed my arm. And raised his eyebrows in a suggestive way.”

These are the sort of events we’re told to brush off — they’re jokes, they’re flattering, no big deal. But when you believe you are a professional and someone informs you they see you as a sex object, it can shatter your sense of self and your sense of safety.

Sometimes, it’s inappropriate touching and groping: as in “a senior editor of a division I don’t work in being a tad too handsy;” or the author who says another author groped her while taking pictures at a conference; or an agent who says she was sitting in the backseat with a bestselling author during a conference, and as he pretended to be searching for his seatbelt, he fondled her.

Sometimes, it’s stories of women being invited to a networking opportunity only to get propositioned; or of male conference faculty and staff acting like all female paying attendees are potential and willing conquests; or of powerful men trying to ruin the reputations of women who won’t sleep with them.

And sometimes, the stories reveal serial predators unchecked by an industry that does not want to acknowledge such things could be possible of its men.

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MODESTO (CA)
The Modesto Bee

February 8, 2018

By John Holland

A priest who served in Modesto and throughout Stanislaus County has been accused of sexual misconduct with a child.

Father Eduardo De Jesus Perez Torrez is the focus of a review by Diocesan Review Board, the Diocese of Stockton wrote in a statement on Thursday afternoon.

The alleged incident apparently took place in 1999.

“In accord with the diocesan policy, the Modesto Police Department was notified,” the statement said. “The Diocese will continue to fully cooperate with law enforcement.”

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UNITED STATES
America: The Jesuit Review

February 8, 2018

In response to the question above, asked on social media and in our email newsletter, America readers gave mostly lukewarm responses. Thirty-one percent of readers rated Pope Francis’ handling of sex abuse in the church as “somewhat positive,” while 30 percent of readers told us it was “somewhat negative.”

On the whole, respondents who answered either “very positive” (14 percent) or “somewhat positive” (31 percent) highlighted how Pope Francis is listening to victims of abuse. “Pope Francis has been a very heartfelt contributor to those families who are still suffering from the effects of sex abuse at the hands of clergy,” wrote Rylee Hartwell of Joplin, Mo.

Most of those in the “somewhat positive” camp expressed a desire for Pope Francis to do more to prevent and address sex abuse in the church. Chris Carroll of Philadelphia alluded to Pope Francis’ defense of Bishop Juan Barros, who has been accused of being present during instances of sex abuse by the notorious Chilean predator, the Rev. Fernando Karadima. “The pope has not gone as far as I would like,” said Mr. Carroll. “The church is still protecting some clergy.”

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BUFFALO (NY)
WGRZ

February 8, 2018

By Steve Brown and Dave Harrington

2 On Your Side’s Steve Brown has been sharing his “Seeking a Confession” series all week about how a man, born in Buffalo in 1945, wants the Catholic Church to admit a priest is his biological father. You can watch the entire series here.

PART 5 GOING PUBLIC

Jim Graham had a story and he wanted the world to know it.

Among the artifacts and documents Jim Graham has dug up, one item is most prized.

It is a large, heavy crucifix. It belonged to Father Thomas P. Sullivan.

Graham claimed it at the Oblate Mission national headquarters in Washington. He told a priest there that he was a relative.

“It’s a piece of him. I knew this was bouncing off his chest for 59 years. It makes me feel close to him” says Graham.

But the accumulated treasures from almost a quarter-century of searching left him short of his goal: to get the Catholic Church to admit Father Sullivan was his parent.

Then, Graham saw the movie “Spotlight”, which told the story of the Boston Globe’s Pulitzer Prize winning investigation into widespread sexual abuse committed by priests. It gave Graham an idea.

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UNITED STATES
The Independent

February 7, 2018

By Mythili Sampathkumar

The US Olympic Committee may have known about his crimes as far back as 2015

A bipartisan group of Senators has called for an investigation into the US Olympic Committee and USA Gymnastics after former team doctor Larry Nasser was convicted of several counts of sex abuse.

A special committee is set to be established to carry out the investigation after allegations from young and aspiring athletes that the groups knew about the abuse but ignored it.

Senator Joni Ernst said the time has come to “put an end to this type of outrageous abuse” and “stand up for athletes.”

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UNITED STATES
Reuters

February 8, 2018

(Reuters) – Three-time Olympic gold medalist Aly Raisman told CNN that her former coach, John Geddert, might have known about sexual abuse by former USA Gymnastics team doctor Larry Nassar as early as 2011.

“We would talk about it amongst ourselves,” she said in an interview that aired on Thursday. “And one of my teammates described in graphic detail what Nassar had done to her the night before. And John Geddert was in the car with us and he just didn’t say anything.”

Raisman, who previously said Nassar abused her, told CNN that conversation occurred in 2011, five years before Nassar was exposed.

Neither Geddert nor his attorney, Cameron Getto, could immediately be reached to comment.

Geddert, who worked with Nassar at his Lansing, Michigan-area gymnastics center Twistars, was suspended in January by USA Gymnastics (USAG), the sport’s governing body, and subsequently retired.

The Eaton County Sheriff’s Office in Michigan on Tuesday said it was investigating complaints against Geddert, but did not provide further details.

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SACRAMENTO (CA)
The Associated Press

February 8, 2018

By Kathleen Ronayne

California Democratic Assemblywoman Cristina Garcia, the head of the Legislative Women’s Caucus and a leading figure in the state’s anti-sexual harassment movement, is accused of groping a male staffer from another lawmaker’s office.

Daniel Fierro told The Associated Press on Thursday that Garcia stroked his back, squeezed his buttocks and attempted to touch his crotch in a dugout after a legislative softball game in 2014.

Fierro didn’t report it at the time but in January told his former boss, Democratic Assemblyman Ian Calderon, who reported it to Assembly leaders. The Assembly is now investigating Garcia.

Politico first reported Fierro’s accusation.

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LOWELL (MA)
The Boston Pilot

February 9, 2018

By Mark Labbe

During a Mass of Prayer and Penance at St. Michael Church in Lowell, Feb. 4, Cardinal Seán P. O’Malley reiterated the Church’s commitment to work for healing and reconciliation for all those affected by clergy sexual abuse.

“I am here today aware that many parishioners in this community were seriously affected. I wish once again to ask pardon and assure you of our commitment to work for healing and reconciliation,” said the cardinal in his homily.

In the Church, the “work of healing and child protection is an ongoing task, a sacred one,” he said.

The Mass was held in response to a call last year from Pope Francis for all episcopal conferences across the world to have a Day of Prayer and Penance in recognition of harm done by clergy sexual abuse within the Church. At the request of Cardinal O’Malley, all Masses held in the Archdiocese of Boston for Sunday, Feb. 4 were offered for Prayer and Penance.

In his homily, the cardinal requested prayers “for forgiveness of the Church, and healing for those who were harmed, “as well as for “those who have died from suicide and substance abuse because of what happened to them.”

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WASHINGTON (DC)
The Associated Press

February 8, 2018

By Lolita C. Baldor

The number of sexual assaults reported at the U.S. Military Academy roughly doubled during the last school year, according to data reviewed by The Associated Press, in the latest example of the armed forces’ persistent struggle to root out such misconduct.

It’s the fourth year in a row that sexual assault reports increased at the school in West Point, New York. There were 50 cases in the school year that ended last summer, compared with 26 made during the 2015-2016 school year. By comparison, the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland, and the U.S. Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs, Colorado, saw only slight increases.

Defense Department and West Point officials said the big jump at the Military Academy resulted from a concerted effort to encourage victims to come forward. But the dramatic and consistent increases may suggest more assaults are happening.

“I’m very encouraged by the reporting,” Lt. Gen. Robert Caslen, superintendent at West Point, told the AP in an interview. “I recognize that people are not going to understand” the desire for increased reporting, he said. But, he added, “I’ve got the steel stomach to take the criticism.”

The annual report on sexual assaults at the three military academies is due out this month. The Naval Academy’s reports increased to 29 last year from 28. The Air Force Academy’s edged up by one, to 33.

About 12,000 students are enrolled across all three institutions. The AP reviewed the data ahead of its public release.

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SAFED (ISRAEL)
The Times of Israel

February 6, 2018

By Raoul Wootliff

Ezra Sheinberg, ex-yeshiva head, confessed to using his position as spiritual leader to take advantage of 8 women

A well-known rabbi and yeshiva head from the northern city of Safed was sentenced Tuesday to seven and a half years in prison for committing a slew of sexual crimes against eight women, including multiple counts of sexual assault.

Rabbi Ezra Sheinberg, 49, was convicted last July in Nazareth District Court as part of a plea deal over a series of crimes committed against women who came to him for advice and counseling.

The specific charges were not publicized by the court. The criminal proceedings were under a gag order preventing publication of any details of the incidents due to the “egregious nature” of the crimes and to protect the privacy of the victims.

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WASHINGTON (DC)
The Washington Post

February 8, 2018

By Julie Zauzmer

Benedict XVI spent almost eight years as pope, and the past five years as something no man has been since the 15th century — pope emeritus.

Now, the pontiff who stunned the Vatican by retiring from the position in February 2013 says he is headed toward his next step: “I am on a pilgrimage toward Home.”

Writing in the Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera, he capitalized the word “Casa” to refer to his heavenly home.

Now 90 years old, Benedict says he has heard from many well-wishers, including readers of the Italian paper, who “want to know how I am experiencing this last period of my life.”

According to widely published translations of Benedict’s short letter, he said that his physical strength is diminishing. “It is a great grace in this last, sometimes tiring stage of my journey, to be surrounded by a love and kindness that I never could have imagined,” he wrote.

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SAN JOSE (CA)
KTVU

February 7, 2018

By Jesse Gary

The list of alleged abuse victims at a prestigious San Jose all-girl’s high school continues to grow. Now, 20 former students say they were sexually abused or assaulted while attending Presentation High School.

“I can not understand how they can be a catholic school and respond to victims like this. I can’t. I can’t wrap my head around it,” said Cheryl Hodgin Marshall, who attended the school from 1987-1991.

20 accusers have now come forward, targeting Presentation High School for an internal investigation and sweeping change. This comes after multiple victims who attended the all-girl’s school say administrators did not report instances of sexual abuse and assault by at least eight teachers and coaches – stretching back three decades..

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NORTHERN IRELAND
The Irish News

February 9, 2018

A MAN who was sexually abused by a priest as a child said the cleric warned it would “ruin” his life if he spoke out.

Sean Faloon from Hilltown was a 10-year-old altar boy when he was first abused by Fr Malachy Finnegan.

Fr Finnegan, who died in 2002, also abused boys at St Colman’s College in Newry.

He taught at the school from 1973 to 1976 and was school president between 1976 and 1987.

The first of 12 abuse allegations was reported to the Diocese of Dromore in 1994.

The diocese has settled a claim with one of the victims.

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STOCKTON (CA)
KCRA

February 8, 2018

By Jonathan Ayestas

Diocese of Stockton reported allegations to Modesto police

A priest is being accused of sexual misconduct with a minor, the Diocese of Stockton said.

The district reported the accusation against Father Eduardo De Jesus Perez Torrez from 1999 to the Modesto Police Department. Perez worked in the Diocese of Stockton from 1999 to 2014.

The allegation is also being reviewed by the Diocesan Review Board.

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Washington (DC)
CNN

February 8, 2018

By Saba Hamedy

Olympic gold medalist Aly Raisman is calling for a thorough, publicly-released investigation into the sexual abuse of gymnasts, expressing doubt that current probes launched in the wake of the Larry Nassar scandal go far enough.

Raisman is among more than 200 women who have publicly come forward with stories of abuse at the hands of Nassar, a former team physician. The disgraced doctor was sentenced Monday in Michigan to 40 to 125 years in prison.

“If we were that successful while we were being molested, wouldn’t we have been more successful if we had the right doctor that actually helped heal our injuries, that didn’t traumatize us? If we had people around us that genuinely wanted to help us?” she told CNN’s Jake Tapper in an interview that aired Thursday on “The Lead.”

The interview aired the day before the start of the 2018 Winter Olympics amid uproar around the way the US Olympic Committee and USA Gymnastics handled the Nassar matter.

“I met a lot of incredible women and young girls … it was just really incredible how even though we didn’t know each other, we just felt an instant connection to each other because we’ve all been through something so horrible,” Raisman said, recalling her experience testifying in the courtroom against Nassar. “And we all feel let down by the organization … I think we all deserve to have answers. We’ve already all been through enough.”

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NEW YORK (NY)
The New York Post

February 7, 2018

By Mark Moore

​The ​number of sexual assaults at West Point nearly doubled in the last school year, ​the fourth straight year the military academy recorded an increase, a report said Wednesday.

The school in upstate New York had 50 cases in the school year that ended last summer, compared with the 26 during the 2015-2016 school year, the Associated Press reported after reviewing data from the Defense Department.

That rate outpaces sexual assaults at the Naval Academy, which showed an increase from 28 to 29, and the Air Force Academy, which edged up one to 33, over the same period​, the wire service reported.

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BOISE (ID)
7KTVB

February 8, 2018

By Dean Johnson

Some neighbors are calling on St. Mary’s Parish to evict Father W. Thomas Faucher, who’s facing multiple felony counts of sexual exploitation of a child.

BOISE – A retired Boise priest facing multiple felony counts of sexual exploitation of a child bonded out of the Ada County Jail Tuesday night, the Ada County Sheriff’s Office confirmed.

Sheriff’s office spokesman Patrick Orr said Father W. Thomas Faucher – a retired priest at St. Mary’s Catholic Church in Boise – bonded out at around 6 p.m. His bond was set at $250,000.

Some neighbors are now calling on his landlord, Saint Mary’s Parish, to evict him.

Those neighbors are aware of an Idaho law that says, if a landlord has reasonable grounds to believe any person is or has been engaged in the unlawful delivery, production or use of a controlled substance on the leased premises, the landlord can move to evict that tenant.

Father Faucher was also charged with possession of marijuana and ecstasy, which some of Faucher’s neighbors say gives the church grounds to evict him.

“Shock and surprise and fear are always the first feelings I think you have,” Wendy Wong said.

Wong has lived just a few doors down from Father Faucher for more than a decade.

“There’s not a ton that we can do as a neighborhood,” Wong said.

Wong feels St. Mary’s, the church Faucher has a rental lease agreement with, should evict him. She cites the fact that they live just a couple of blocks away from Cynthia Mann Elementary School in northwest Boise. Wong also claims the charges of possession of marijuana and ecstasy warrant an eviction.

“I think it is unfair of the landlord to say because he pays rent he can stay. I know there are other ways to get a tenant out that have nothing to do with rent and I would like to make sure that we’re at least exploring all of those options before we decide that this is where he needs to be,” Wong said.

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SAN JOSE (CA)
KRON

February 8, 2018

By Rob Fladeboe

SAN JOSE (KRON) — A 1991 Presentation High School graduate says she was sexually abused by a teacher, who is now dead, and more accusers have come forward.

Since Kathryn Leehane and a classmate went public with their stories, 18 other former students have also come forward, implicating at least eight teachers and staff members from the Catholic high school.

“My incident was in the 1990s, but we have incidents going right up to 2017,” Leehane said.

“I was not surprised by the additional victims by my abuser, but to find out that there are additional abusers and violations of the law has been shocking and horrifying,” Leehane added.

Last fall, Leehane went public with her story about how she was sexually abused by a teacher, who is now deceased, and how the administration failed to fully investigate.

“The teacher had me in his office, and he put his arm around me…and, and was intimate with me and kissed my hand and later showed me a picture of a naked woman,” Leehane said.

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BELFAST (NORTHERN IRELAND)
Irish News

February 9, 2018

A man who was sexually abused by a priest as a child said the cleric warned it would “ruin” his life if he spoke out.

Sean Faloon from Hilltown was a 10-year-old altar boy when he was first abused by Fr Malachy Finnegan.

Fr Finnegan, who died in 2002, also abused boys at St Colman’s College in Newry.

He taught at the school from 1973 to 1976 and was school president between 1976 and 1987.

The first of 12 abuse allegations was reported to the Diocese of Dromore in 1994.

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BOSTON (MA)
Boston Globe

February 8, 2018

By Kevin Cullen

Last month, after I had the temerity to criticize Pope Francis because he smeared survivors of clerical sexual abuse in Chile, I got a phone call at my desk at the Globe.

* * *

“Is this Mr. Cullen?” a raspy voice asked.

For a fleeting moment, I thought it was one of my favorite aunts, Aunt Junie, who looked like my dad, but then I quickly remembered that my Aunt Junie died some years ago.

“Yes, this is me,” I answered.

“Mr. Cullen,” the woman on the other end of the line said, “I just want to let you know that you are going to hell.”

* * *

I got thinking about the Church Lady who condemned me to eternal fire the other day as I was reading a story about how, despite the pope’s denials, he was, in fact, told about how his protege, a Chilean bishop named Juan Barros, was credibly accused of having ignored the crimes of a priest whom the Vatican later found guilty of sexually abusing young people.

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BELFAST (NORTHERN IRELAND)
Belfast Telegraph

February 9, 2018

By Malachi O’Doherty

Bishop John McAreavey’s apology over paedophile priest Malachy Finnegan was welcome but long overdue, writes Malachi O’Doherty

Malachy Finnegan was escorted to his grave by people who revered and respected him. We don’t all get a bishop to officiate in the ceremony.

He met his end in the knowledge and confidence that he was thought well of, that he had not been found out, that the young people he had molested and abused – physically, sexually and emotionally – had not ratted on him.

We don’t know the state of his conscience then, whether he was ashamed of himself, whether he trusted in God’s forgiveness, or if, harbouring his horrid secrets and believing in the teaching of his Church, he stared Hell in the face.

One of the questions over paedophile priests is whether they were believers at all, or just opportunistic hypocrites.

If you were cynical enough and wanted work that would give you access to children, the priesthood and the religious orders were your natural refuge.

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BOSTON (MA)
WBUR

February 9, 2018

By Rich Barlow

As a Catholic, I’ve disagreed with critics of Pope Francis from both ends of the spectrum.

Right-wing whining (he’s for the poor and the environment? Marxism!) is just daft; leftist grousing (he’s all style and no substance, as when declining to condemn gays while upholding church teaching on the sinfulness of homosexual acts) ignores the effect of personal example on a conservative culture. Airing out a musty attic makes breathing easier, even if the attic still needs some cleaning.

But now comes news that Francis personally received a letter two years ago from a man who claimed Chilean Bishop Juan Barros stood by and watched a priest abuse the letter writer. Yet just last month, the pope dissed accusations against Barros as “calumny” (derived from the Latin that the church is fond of, that’s “lies” in the King’s English).

There’s no defending the pope here. Catholics, especially victims of abuse in Chile and everywhere, need an explanation and probably an apology from the pontiff. Sooner, not later.

If that sounds impertinent, I cite both Francis’s admirable humility — the pope is not God — and the fact that the sin of sexual abuse, and the church’s cover-up thereof, have always been sui generis. No crisis since the Reformation so rocked Catholicism; selling indulgences seems penny-ante by comparison.

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BELFAST (NORTHERN IRELAND)
BBC

February 8, 2018

[Note from BishopAccountability.org: Includes brief video of interview with a Finnegan survivor.]

A County Down man who was sexually abused by a priest as a child said he did not speak out as he was told it would “ruin” the rest of his life.

Sean Faloon from Hilltown was first abused as an altar boy from the age of 10 by Fr Malachy Finnegan.

Fr Finnegan, who died in 2002, also abused boys at St Colman’s College in Newry, where he taught from 1967 to 1976.

Twelve victims have come forward to the Catholic Diocese of Dromore.

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SAN JOSE (CA)
The Mercury News

February 7, 2018

By John Woolfolk

The number of women claiming they were sexually abused as students at a prestigious San Jose Catholic girls high school has swelled to 20 while the number of accused staff has grown to eight. The mounting accusations surfaced as nearly 5,000 former students and their supporters have signed a petition demanding an independent investigation of how the administration handled reported abuse.

But even amid a global “#MeToo” reckoning of sexual abuse, the accusers say, Presentation High School officials are ignoring their demands, and the former students are urging alumnae to withhold financial support until school officials call for an independent investigation.

“It sounds like they’re hoping we’ll go away,” said Kathryn Leehane, who wrote Oct. 20 in the Washington Post about how she and a classmate complained decades ago about abuse by a former Presentation teacher to no avail. The teacher remained on the job and has since died.

Since her article, 18 other students and graduates have come forward with similar stories involving eight Presentation teachers or other staff, according to “#PresentationToo,” a group of alumnae, students, parents and others.

“It’s definitely gotten much bigger,” Leehane said. “I had no idea the can of worms I was opening. But once I heard from so many young women, I couldn’t turn my back. That’s not what Presentation taught me. They taught me to fight for the unrepresented.”

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AUSTRALIA
Gulf News

February 8, 2018

Australia’s decision to issue a sincere apology to childhood victims of violation deserves praise

Like in so many other nations, children in Australia have suffered at the hands of men in positions of moral, educational and administrative authority, subjected to systemic sexual, emotional and physical abuse by dark figures in the Roman Catholic church and its hierarchy.

The pattern of abuse is similar, whether it be in schools in Australia, residential institutions for First Nations Child and Family Caring Society of Canada, in parishes across Ireland, or where depraved and criminal minds were able to carry out their dark deeds under the veneer of doing charitable or spiritual work.

The issue of child abuse is something that impacts societies around the world.

In India, for instance, a child is sexually abused every 15 minutes, according to the latest government figures.

The systemic abuse that occurs to young and vulnerable children is a crisis that has yet to be fully addressed. Indeed, there are those still in the corridors of power who would prefer if those who suffered abuse at the hands of priests, simply went away. But the violations, scars and trauma inflicted by the abusers on the young remain and rarely ever go away.

A recent royal commission in Australia into the abuse of children placed in the care of institutions in which the church had control contains a litany of abuses that, in its very own words, “has shaken Australia to its core”.

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UNITED STATES
The Huffington Post

February 8, 2018

By Alanna Vagianos

Ariana Kukors says her longtime coach Sean Hutchison began “grooming” her when she was 13.

Olympic swimmer Ariana Kukors says former U.S. Olympic swimming coach Sean Hutchison began sexually abusing her when she was 16.

Kukors, now 28, said in a statement late Wednesday night that Hutchison began “grooming” her when she was 13 years old after he became her coach at King Aquatic swimming club in Seattle.

“I never thought I would share my story because, in so many ways, just surviving was enough,” Kukors said in a statement. “I was able to leave a horrible monster and build a life I could have never imagined for myself. But in time, I’ve realized that stories like my own are too important to go unwritten.”

Kukors is the 2009 world champion in the 200-meter individual medley and placed fifth in the 200-meter individual medley in the 2012 Summer Olympics. Hutchison was an assistant USA Swimming Olympic coach in 2008, but resigned from the position in 2010 amid rumors that he was having a sexual relationship with one of his swimmers. He still coaches swimmers in Seattle and is still listed as the owner of King Aquatic.

The former swimmer said she only recently realized Hutchison abused her. Delayed reporting is somewhat common for victims of child sexual abuse.

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WASHINGTON (DC)
The Washington Post

February 8, 2018

By William Wan

When Rebecca Thurston read the accounts of 150 women and girls sexually abused by a Michigan athletic doctor, one of the first things she worried about was their health — not the psychological effect of the abuse, but the long-term physical toll it could take on their bodies.

An epidemiologist, Thurston has spent the past four years studying women who have suffered sexual abuse and harassment. Over time, she discovered, sexual harassment can work like a poison, stiffening women’s blood vessels, worsening blood flow and harming the inner lining of their hearts.

“People need to understand that trauma is not just something that happens in the mind,” said Thurston, who published her cardiovascular findings this winter in the scientific journal Menopause. “It has real implications on the body.”

After being dismissed for decades, denied funding and greeted with skepticism, researchers studying sexual harassment say their field is undergoing a renaissance — injected with newfound energy and relevance amid the growing #MeToo movement.

In particular, recent studies like Thurston’s research on cardiovascular health have begun to quantify the vast toll of harassment, which detractors — often men — have tried to play down for decades.

“The field suddenly feels alive and vibrant,” said Louise Fitzgerald, who pioneered much of the earliest work in the field.

In more than a dozen other studies over the past decade, researchers have documented other physical symptoms caused by sexual harassment, such as headaches, gastrointestinal problems and disrupted sleep.

“People often think of harassment as a single event, but much more commonly, it’s a process that happens over time. You keep going to work day after day while this stuff keeps happening,” said Fitzgerald, who has studied harassment in utility workers, office settings and factories. “It’s that prolonged exposure to stress that turns into a physiological reaction.”

In her most recent work, Thurston and a team of researchers at University of Pittsburgh’s School of Medicine measured the cardiovascular health of 272 women who also completed detailed surveys about trauma they had experienced in their lifetimes, including car crashes, natural disaster and the death of a child.

Most women, roughly 60 percent, reported experiencing some form of trauma. The most common, reported by 22 percent of the women, was unwanted sexual contact. Roughly 20 percent had experienced sexual harassment, with some overlap between the two groups.

Healthy blood vessels are able to expand and contract to transport the right amount of blood. But women who experienced trauma, Thurston found, had decreased flexibility in their blood vessels. The more trauma each woman experienced, the more impaired their blood vessels were.

This held true even after her team accounted for other factors like diet, exercise, cholesterol, depression and anxiety. “We kept looking at other explanations. Is what we’re seeing due to education, race, ethnicity? There was very clear link to trauma,” Thurston said.

Thurston and others have replicated the cardiovascular findings in three large surveys, including two national studies. She and others are now doing more research to try to pinpoint how and why trauma has this effect.

She suspects sleep may play a pivotal role. In her team’s studies, women who slept more than six hours a night seemed to create a buffer of sorts against the cardiovascular harm of trauma. “We need to help women cope with this trauma and protect their health because this is happening on such a wide scale,” Thurston said.

Sexual harassment often lasts for longer than six months in more than a quarter of cases, according to surveys of harassment in the military, which are required by law and therefore among the most comprehensive.

During that period, researchers say, a woman’s body reacts as if to high stress: Immune systems function more poorly. Inflammation increases. The body begins secreting higher levels of the hormone cortisol, which contributes to high blood pressure, high cholesterol, weight gain, impaired memory function and depression. The negative effects can linger for years.

One of the most comprehensive studies tracked 1,654 employees at an unnamed Midwestern university over the course of six years. The 2005 study, published in the Journal of Business and Psychology, found that those who experienced sexual harassment were more prone to sickness, illness and accident, and not just around the time they experienced the harassment. When researchers surveyed the group again years later, the harassment continued to have an enduring effect on their rates of illness, injury and accident.

The mental strain of harassment also often leads to depression, anxiety and other disorders. In recent years, studies have shown sexual harassment makes women more likely to drink as a way of coping. Harassed women are also more likely to develop eating disorders. Researchers have shown the harmful effects even trickle down to co-workers who witness or hear of the harassment, a phenomenon analogous to secondhand smoke.

Among the most debilitating effects is post-traumatic stress disorder. A 2015 study found that 20 percent of female veterans of the Vietnam War suffered from PTSD — not because of the war itself but largely due to sexual harassment they suffered from their male counterparts.

The study — commissioned by the Department of Veterans Affairs — shocked military researchers because a similar study of male Vietnam veterans had shown a PTSD incidence of just 17 percent — a rate already considered high.

“The numbers for the women were mind-boggling. We couldn’t understand why,” said Kathryn Magruder, the epidemiologist who led both surveys for VA. Among female veterans, nearly 16 percent were still suffering from PTSD some 50 years after the war.

Because most of the female veterans had served as nurses, researchers at first assumed the PTSD was caused by exposure to gruesome injuries or danger. But after surveying the experiences of more than 4,219 women, they found that sexual harassment and gender discrimination were the leading causes.

“For the most part, these were not necessarily major traumas like rape. It was touching and fondling, snide remarks, constant comments, pressure to fraternize,” said Magruder, who has since retired as a researcher for VA.

“The awful thing is that we often think of the horrors of war as unavoidable,” Magruder said. “But this PTSD came from something that’s completely avoidable, and it was troops from our own side doing it.”

Harassment researchers have had to overcome a lot of obstacles. When Louise Fitzgerald began her first study on the topic in 1983, she knew of only one other researcher working on the issue. Many in America weren’t even familiar with the term “sexual harassment.”

Now a professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Fitzgerald said that when she focused her research on sex harassment among students, professors and employees earlier in her career at two other institutions, administrators tried to shut her work down.

Men in her department, she said, spread rumors that she was making up data. And almost every company and workplace she approached refused to cooperate.

“In the early days, people either didn’t take it seriously or they took it as a threat,” said Fitzgerald, who said she witnessed two female colleagues studying campus harassment and assault be pushed out of research positions.

When the Clarence Thomas hearings captured national attention in 1991, it looked like a turning point for the field at large and for Fitzgerald, who was retained as a consultant by Anita Hill’s legal team.

“I remember thinking that the cultural moment had come and everything would change,” she said. “But here we are, 20-some years later when people are suddenly rediscovering yet again that sexual harassment exists.”

To seize this cultural moment, Fitzgerald said, society needs to support more comprehensive research to understand its roots, its perpetrators, its victims and its effects.

After three decades of work, she notes, researchers still have not answered one of the most basic questions: How prevalent is sexual harassment in America?

In 2016, a federal task force on harassment concluded that the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission should work with the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the Census Bureau and private partners to create a national survey of sexual harassment. So far, however, nothing has happened.

“If you want to fight harassment, you need to know if it’s increasing or decreasing. We don’t even have the basic measurement to use as a benchmark,” Fitzgerald said. “It’s like trying to treat a fever when you don’t have the thermometer.”

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SYDNEY (AUSTRALIA)
AFP

February 8, 2018

Australia will apologise to survivors of institutional child sex abuse by the end of the year, Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull said Thursday (Feb 8) after a five-year inquiry detailed harrowing stories from victims.

A royal commission established in 2012 to investigate abuse was contacted by more than 15,000 survivors with claims – some decades-old – involving churches, orphanages, sporting clubs, youth groups and schools.

Turnbull told parliament he would consult with survivors before making the apology on behalf of the nation “before the end of the year”.

“As a nation, we must mark this occasion in a form that reflects the wishes of survivors and affords them the dignity to which they were entitled as children, but which was denied to them by the very people who were tasked with their care,” he said.

“Reading some of the witness statements, it’s clear that being heard and being believed means so much to the survivors … Three words: ‘I believe you,’ coming after years, often decades, of authorities’ denial of responsibility.”

The royal commission released its final report in December and said more than 4,000 institutions were accused of abuse, with many of them Catholic-managed facilities.

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AUSTRALIA
NPR

February 8, 2018

By James Doubek

Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull says he will offer a national apology to victims of institutional child sexual abuse before the end of the year.

It comes after a five-year investigation by a government commission found that 7 percent of Catholic priests allegedly sexually abused children between 1950 and 2010.

“We owe it to the survivors not to waste this moment and we must continue to be guided by their wishes,” Turnbull told Australia’s House of Representatives Thursday. He said a “survivor-focused reference group” would help to write the apology.

The Royal Commission into the Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse, which issued its final report in December, heard from more than 8,000 people about abuse in more than 4,000 institutions.

The report said people “in religious ministry and teachers were the perpetrators we heard about most commonly,” though abuse was reported at childcare centers, youth detention facilities, health service centers, in home care, youth clubs, at jobs, sports events and the armed forces.

“Now that those stories have been told, now that they are on the record, we must do everything within our power to honor those stories and to act,” Turnbull said. “I am committed and my government is committed to doing everything possible to make sure that this national tragedy is never repeated.”

The commission’s report made 409 recommendations, including a lifting of celibacy requirements for Catholic clergy and a requirement to report abuse mentioned in confessions.

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WASHINGTON (DC)
Business Insider

February 7, 2018

By Eliza Relman

– White House staff secretary Rob Porter resigned Wednesday after his two ex-wives publicly alleged years of physical and emotional abuse.
– Both women told the FBI about the alleged abuse in interviews conducted last year as part of Porter’s application for a security clearance.
– Porter called the allegations a “coordinated smear campaign” on Wednesday.

White House staff secretary Rob Porter, an integral part of President Donald Trump’s inner circle, resigned Wednesday after both of his ex-wives came forward to allege years of physical and mental abuse.

Colbie Holderness and Jennifer Willoughby alleged that Porter physically and mentally abused them during their marriages. Holderness, married to Porter from 2003 to 2008, provided photos of a black eye she claimed she suffered from Porter. Willoughby, married to Porter from 2009 to 2013, provided a copy of a 2010 restraining order she filed against Porter.

The Daily Mail reported last week that Porter is romantically involved with White House communications director Hope Hicks.

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COLUMBIA (SC)
The State

February 7, 2018

By John Monk

A bill aimed at expanding child-safety protections against molesters and other abusers took a small but significant step forward Wednesday.

The bill, sponsored by state Rep. Bruce Bannister, R-Greenville, would add coaches, camp counselors, Scout leaders, firefighters, school and college administrators, as well as “clerical or nonclerical religious counselors” to those who are required by law to report cases of suspected child abuse or neglect.

A “mandated reporter” is a person who the law requires to report suspected abuse to either law enforcement or the S.C. Department of Social Services. Already, nurses, doctors, members of the clergy, teachers, principals, mental health professionals, social workers and judges are required to report suspected abuse.

Bannister, chair of the subcommittee that on Wednesday sent the bill to the full House Judiciary Committee, told his panel that he was proposing the change because there is a growing religious group in Greenville whose members “are holding themselves out as counselors” but who are not part of any organized church.

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HUNLOCK CREEK (PA)
WBRE/WYOU

February 7, 2018

By Chelsea Titlow

The search warrant was sealed until Wednesday.

HUNLOCK CREEK, LUZERNE COUNTY (WBRE/WYOU)- Back in December, there was a lot of police activity at a Luzerne County church.

Eyewitness News confirmed there was a state police raid, but at the time, no one would say why troopers were there. But now, we have the court documents explaining what led up to the raid.

Troopers are investigating allegations that the pastor of the church had sexual contact with a young man at the church.

The search warrant served on the pastor had been sealed by court order until Wednesday. The warrant contains details, allegations only at this time, of child sex abuse at the church.

In early December, state police could be scene removing boxes of documents and computers from inside Roaring Brook Baptist Church in Hunlock Creek.

The search warrant used at the time of the raid indicates troopers are investigating allegations that Pastor Dan Brubaker had sexual contact with a young boy at the church.

The young boy was taking part in a youth group class when, according to the warrant, Brubaker called him out of the class, took him to a basement room, and allegedly forced the boy to perform a sex act on him. According to the search warrant Brubaker told him, “God would want you to do this.”

The day of the raid, Brubaker told Eyewitness New he wasn’t going to answer any questions.

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