ABUSE TRACKER

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

August 21, 2019

Ruling cements Pell’s profile as the Dreyfus or Hiss of the Catholic abuse crisis

ROME (ITALY)
Crux

August 21, 2019

By John Allen

Although Australian Cardinal George Pell’s appeal of a conviction on child sexual abuse charges was rejected Wednesday, that ruling may not be the end of the legal road. As of this writing, Pell’s attorneys were still weighing whether to file a final appeal to Australia’s High Court.

Those attorneys told reporters that Pell continues to maintain his innocence, as he has since the charges first became public in June 2017.

Though Pell’s judicial odyssey may not be over, Wednesday’s ruling likely does represent the final word on another aspect of the case: George Pell is now officially the Alfred Dreyfus of the Catholic abuse crisis, meaning that opinions about his guilt or innocence are at least as much a reflection of one’s ideological convictions as about the actual evidence in the case.

Dreyfus, of course, was the French artillery officer of Jewish descent charged with treason in 1894 for allegedly passing military secrets to the Germans, spending five years on Devil’s Island. Dreyfus was eventually acquitted and reinstated to his army position, but for more than a decade, opinions about his guilt or innocence functioned as a bellwether for broader political and cultural tensions, pitting Catholic and traditionalist “anti-Dreyfusards” against pro-Republican and anti-clerical liberals.

One could, by the way, just as easily compare Pell to Alger Hiss, the urbane American diplomat accused in 1948 of being a Soviet spy. Like Pell, Hiss was tried twice, with the first ending in a hung jury and the second resulting in a conviction. In that case, too, opinions for a long time were far more about the clash between hawks and doves during the Cold War than the facts.

Similarly, opinions about Pell today often reveal far more about the prejudices of the observer than about the actual reality of what happened.

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

Lawsuit accusing Bransfield of sexual misconduct settled

MORGANTOWN (WV)
Dominion Post

August 20, 2019

By David Beard

A lawsuit brought by a former seminarian who alleged that former Bishop Michael Bransfield sexually assaulted him and that Bransfield regularly drank himself drunk before engaging in “grossly inappropriate” sexual behavior with other young seminarians has been settled.

The settlement came abruptly, though the reasons haven’t been revealed.

The civil suit was filed in Ohio County Circuit Court in May. The accuser, who goes by the initials J.E., now lives in Pocahontas County, but during the period covered in the suit lived in St. Clairsville, Ohio, and attended the Cathedral of St. Joseph in Wheeling.

Along with Bransfield, the defendants were the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB), the Diocese of Wheeling-Charleston and 20 “John Does.” Ten of the John Does are employees or agents of the USCCB and 10 are employees or agents of the diocese.

Diocese spokesman Tim Bishop said in an email exchange, “The Diocese can confirm that the case has been dismissed. The case was settled by agreement of the parties. At the request of the plaintiff, the terms of the settlement are confidential. The Diocese will have no further comment regarding the case.”

J.E. was represented by Warner Law Offices of Charleston. The Dominion Post left phone messages and emails over the course of several days seeking information and comment, but neither of his attorneys responded.

J.E. alleged that Bransfield was a binge drinker, consuming nightly a half or full bottle of Cointreau, an orange liqueur. He would “drink until he was intoxicated, at which point he would engage in grossly inappropriate behavior, including … making sexually suggestive gestures, hugging, kissing, inappropriately touching and fondling seminarians.”

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.

North Dakota Priest Under Investigation for Abuse, SNAP Urges Outreach by Church Officials

ST. LOUIS (MO)
Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests

August 20, 2019

A Catholic priest may face criminal child sex abuse charges in North Dakota. We call on church officials to use all their resources to encourage anyone with knowledge about these allegations to call law enforcement immediately.

In early April, the Diocese of Fargo disclosed that police were investigating Fr. Wenceslaus Katanga on allegations of child abuse. Just today the Cass County Attorney’s Office announced there are “no corroborating witnesses or physical evidence to support” the accusations in their county.

However, during the probe more allegations against the priest surfaced in another county, and there is a chance charges can be filed by prosecutors in McHenry County.

We believe it is crucial that serious accusations like this be thoroughly examined by law enforcement professionals. If church officials want what is best for children in their diocese, they should want this a complete investigation too. We call on Bishop John Folda of the Diocese of Fargo to use church bulletins, parish websites and pulpit announcements to reach out to anyone who may have information about these allegations. He should urge current and former churchgoers and staff with pertinent knowledge to immediately call police or prosecutors.

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.

Advocacy group calling for more details from Salina Diocese in priest sex abuse cases

MANHATTAN (KS)
KSNW TV

August 20, 2019

An advocacy group is calling on the Salina Catholic Diocese to be more transparent in allegations of priest sexual abuse.

Standing in front of a Manhattan church where two accused priests once served, David Clohessy and Larry Davis are demanding action.

“We want to bring the people that are suffering, an avenue for peace and justice,” said Davis.

Davis and Clohessy are members of SNAP, the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, Clohessy serving as the Missouri Director. They said they chose the Seven Dolors parish in Manhattan, because two of the priests that served at this parish, were listed as priests with substantiated allegations of abuse against minors.

The Salina Diocese released a list of 14 names of priests in March of 2019 along with the parishes they served in and the estimated time of abuse. Among the names, Father William Merchant, who died in 1975, and Father John Moeder, who died in 2012. Both served at Seven Dolors, although the Diocese does not list when they served there, or where the men were serving when the alleged abuse happened. That’s one of the things that both Davis and Clohessy are asking to be released.

“The Bishop didn’t disclose their whereabouts, didn’t share their photographs and didn’t go into the full details of their work history, we think that’s the absolute bare minimum he should do to both protect kids and heal victims and help the church turn a page,” said Clohessy.

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

The Pell verdict: Various shades of justice

KANSAS CITY (MO)
National Catholic Reporter

August 21, 2019

By Michael Sean Winters

A three-judge panel in Australia has upheld the guilty verdict against Cardinal George Pell. On two of the claims put forward by Pell for overturning the verdict, the three judges were unanimous. On the third claim — the key issue of reasonable doubt — they divided two to one. Pell is already serving a six-year sentence for abusing a minor.

In announcing their decision, the justices emphasized that they found Pell’s accuser credible. In the Anglo-Saxon legal system, great deference is given to a jury’s assessment of credibility. An appeals court may overturn a lower court decision based on an issue of law, but rarely would they overturn a conviction based on a jury’s assessment of credibility. But, the judges went further, positively stating that they agreed with the jury in finding the accuser credible. They also slammed Pell’s attorneys who wanted to present an animation of the scene that the judges labeled “tendentious in the extreme.”

The other fact that was obvious in the judges’ statements was that these cases of sexual abuse rarely have a corroborating witness. That is not how sex abuse works: The perpetrator always tries to conceal the crime. The jury is almost always faced with a “he said/he said” situation. Rarely is there a blue dress offering forensic evidence.

Those of us who were never great fans of Pell can take no delight in this decision: The tragedy of abuse is cancerous, and it affects not only the victim, not only other priests who do not abuse children, not only the entire Body of Christ, but it seems obvious to me that the perpetrator is always himself a sad and sick person, to be pitied as much as punished.

This case, like that of former Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, has left Pell’s friends reeling. Many of them could not bring themselves to believe what 12 jurors found credible. Perhaps they never will.

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.

Illinois attorney general and Cardinal Cupich have private meeting; discuss clergy sex abuse investigation

CHICAGO (IL)
WLS TV

August 20, 2019

By Chuck Goudie, Christine Tressel and Ross Weidner

Amid a protracted state investigation of child sex abuse by Roman Catholic clergy, Illinois’ top law enforcement official has met with Chicago Cardinal Blase Cupich, the ABC7 I-Team has learned.

The one-hour, one-on-one discussion took place at Attorney General Kwame Raoul’s office in the State of Illinois Thompson Center about two weeks ago. The Archdiocese of Chicago and Illinois’ five other Roman Catholic dioceses have been subjects of an ongoing investigation by the state attorney general’s office for the past year.

In an exclusive interview with the I-Team on Wednesday, Attorney General Raoul said it was important for him to personally meet with the leader of the Catholic Church here-even as his staff investigators have been carrying the caseload in the rest of Illinois. Raoul told the I-Team that both his discussion with the cardinal and the state investigation are aimed at “making sure that there’s reconciliation for survivors and make sure abuse doesn’t happen anymore.”

A spokesperson for Cardinal Cupich and the Archdiocese of Chicago confirms the meeting and says that it was requested by Cardinal Cupich. We are awaiting a full statement from the Church.

The state investigation began under former attorney general Lisa Madigan. Shortly before leaving office last December, Madigan announced that the investigation found child sex accusations against at least 500 priests and clergymen in Illinois had never been made public. Madigan had opened a case here after a Pennsylvania grand jury investigation discovered more than 300 “predator priests” in a “systematic cover-up.”

When Raoul was sworn in last January and assumed the clergy sex abuse investigation, he said that it might be necessary to issue subpoenas to Catholic Church leaders in Chicago, Joliet, Rockford, Peoria, Springfield and Belleville if there wasn’t sufficient voluntary cooperation. On Tuesday the attorney general said that no subpoenas have been necessary-although information “hasn’t all come at the same speed. It’s taking prodding at some point and asking more questions.”

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

Pope Refuses to Condemn Pedophile Cardinal Pell, Even After Losing Sex-Abuse Appeal

ROME (ITALY)
Daily Beast

August 21, 2019

By Barbie Latza Nadeau

On Monday, the shutters of Australian Cardinal George Pell’s lavish apartment in the shadow of St. Peter’s Basilica were open and cleaners could be seen dusting the window sills. Pell had clearly hoped that he would be free to return to this upper-floor flat and to the life he once enjoyed. But on Wednesday, three Melbourne judges decided that Pell will be staying in an Australian jail after being convicted of child sexual abuse.

“By a majority of two to one, the court of appeal has dismissed Cardinal Pell’s appeal against his conviction,” Chief Justice Anne Ferguson announced.

Pell was said to have been sitting with his head bowed as the decision was announced, while cheers from outside the building could be heard as Ferguson explained the decision.

Ferguson dismissed an argument made by Pell’s defense that there was room for reasonable doubt by the jury.

“It is not enough that the jury might have had a doubt, but they must have had a doubt,” she said. “This was a compelling witness, clearly not a liar, not a fantasist and was a witness of truth.”

Last February, Pell, 78, was convicted on charges he sexually abused two choir boys in a Melbourne cathedral in the late 1990s. He was sentenced to six years in Melbourne Assessment Prison last February, and has spent the last 175 days in solitary confinement.

Prior to his sentencing, his lawyer, Robert Richter, who has since been dismissed, pleaded for a lenient sentence, calling Pell’s abuses, a “plain vanilla sexual penetration case where the child is not actively participating.” That clearly did not help his client, who denied he had committed the act.

The Vatican did not oppose Pell’s efforts to reverse the verdict.

The day before the verdict, a Vatican spokesperson pointed The Daily Beast back to its original statement on the matter. “Cardinal Pell has reiterated his innocence and has the right to defend himself to the last degree,” it said in a statement. “Waiting for final judgment, we join the Australian bishops in praying for all the victims of abuse.”

Now that Pell’s appeal has been denied, Pope Francis is in a tight corner. Vatican policy has for years centered on placing blame for the sex-abuse scandal on local dioceses and on the bishops in charge of perverted priests. But in the case of Cardinal Pell, the highest-ranking church official to be convicted, only the pope can decide what to do now. Will he defrock the cardinal who was once in his inner circle? Will he finally take him off the Vatican website, where he is still listed as head of the Holy See Secretariat for the Economy?

Apparently not. The day of the ruling, the Vatican doubled down on its support of Pell’s innocence. “While reiterating its respect for the Australian judicial system, as stated on 26 February after the first instance verdict was announced, the Holy See acknowledges the court’s decision to dismiss Cardinal Pell’s appeal,” the Vatican said in a carefully worded statement. “As the proceedings continue to develop, the Holy See recalls that the Cardinal has always maintained his innocence throughout the judicial process and that it is his right to appeal to the High Court.”

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.

August 20, 2019

Cardinal George Pell Loses Appeal of Sexual-Abuse Conviction

MELBOURNE (AUSTRALIA)
Wall Street Journal

August 20, 2019

By Robb M. Stewart

Australian judges rule 2-1 to uphold conviction for assaulting two young choir boys

Cardinal George Pell, the most senior Catholic cleric ever to be jailed for child sexual abuse, has lost his appeal of his conviction.

A panel of Australian judges ruled 2-1 on Wednesday to uphold the cardinal’s conviction for assaulting two young choir boys inside the cathedral that was the center of his diocese in the late 1990s.

Three judges in the Supreme Court of Victoria, the southeastern state where the 78-year-old cleric first served as a priest and later was archbishop of Melbourne, had been deliberating for months and held an appeal hearing in June.

Cardinal Pell is widely expected to challenge the decision in the country’s top court, the High Court of Australia.

In December, a jury convicted Cardinal Pell on five counts of sexually abusing two choir boys inside a sacristy at a Melbourne cathedral in late 1996 and one of the boys in a cathedral corridor in early 1997, not long after he became archbishop of Melbourne. The former Vatican finance chief was sentenced to six years in prison earlier this year.

The main argument of the cardinal’s appeal was that the guilty verdicts were unreasonable based on the evidence. The cardinal’s lawyers also argued that mistakes were made that prevented him from getting a fair trial. The prosecution countered that the cardinal’s accuser was a compelling and believable witness, who gave testimony a jury could accept.

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.

Cardinal George Pell’s Sexual Abuse Conviction Is Upheld

MELBOURNE (AUSTRALIA)
The New York Times

August 20, 2019

By Livia Albeck-Ripka

An Australian court on Wednesday upheld the sexual abuse conviction of Cardinal George Pell, the highest-ranking Roman Catholic leader ever found guilty in a criminal court in the church’s child sex abuse crisis.

The cardinal, 78, who was once an adviser to Pope Francis, had been sentenced to six years in prison in March.

“He will continue to serve his sentence,” said Chief Justice Anne Ferguson of the Supreme Court of the state of Victoria in Melbourne, who presided over the appeals case with two other top judges.

Cardinal Pell was found guilty in December of molesting two 13-year-old choirboys after a Sunday Mass in 1996 at St. Patrick’s Cathedral in Melbourne, and groping one of them again months later. A gag order meant the verdict was not unsealed until February, after a second trial involving Cardinal Pell was canceled.

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.

Cardinal George Pell loses appeal and likely to be stripped of Order of Australia

LONDON (ENGLAND)
The Guardian

August 20, 2019

By Michael McGowan

Archbishop Mark Coleridge, the president of the Australian Catholic Bishops Conference, has released a statement on the appeal.

He says the conference believes “all Australians must be equal under the law and accept today’s judgement accordingly”.

“The bishops realise that this has been and remains a most difficult time for survivors of child sexual abuse and those who support them,” Coleridge said in the statement.

“We acknowledge the pain that those abused by clergy have experienced through the long process of the trials and appeal of Cardinal Pell. We also acknowledge that this judgement will be distressing to many people.

“We remain committed to doing everything we can to bring healing to those who have suffered greatly and to ensuring that Catholic settings are the safest possible places for all people, but especially for children and vulnerable adults.”

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.

Cardinal George Pell Loses Appeal, Will Continue to Serve Sentence

ST. LOUIS (MO)
Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests

August 20, 2019

Six months ago, one of the world’s most senior Catholic officials was sentenced to six years in prison for sexually abusing children. Today, that cleric has had his appeal denied.

We are grateful for this news and hope it brings comfort to survivors of clergy abuse throughout Australia. Denying the appeal mounted by Cardinal George Pell helps send the message that no matter how powerful a person is, they are still subject to the rule of law. It is extremely rare for any church official to see time behind bars and given the crimes he has been convicted of committing, a prison sentence is clearly deserved.

The sentence imposed on Cardinal Pell – a mere six years in prison – was already light, so we are glad that the sentence was not reduced further on appeal. We are grateful to the police and prosecutors in Australia who have been involved with this case since the beginning and hope that today’s news will encourage others who may have experienced abuse at the hands of Cardinal Pell – or any priest, nun, deacon or other church official – to come forward, find help and start healing.

We also call upon all priests, nuns, prelates and other lay people in the church that have witnessed Cardinal Pell’s behavior over his career to follow Pope Francis’ new motu proprio and report any suspicions about abuse they have. And while the Pope’s law only requires internal reporting, we hope that those with information will report to law enforcement as well. Pope Francis’ new law protects whistle-blowers from punishment or retribution, so we hope that whistleblowers will come forward. Where Catholic leaders once sought to cover up abuse in a dangerously misguided attempt to protect the Church, the pope himself has now demanded the opposite.

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

Victims to leafet at Lawrence church

LAWRENCE (KS)
Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests

August 20, 2019

They ‘out’ 2 new priests accused of abuse
The clerics are not on the archdiocesan list
But other church officials say their accusers are “credible”
So group launches eastern Kansas ‘outreach drive’ to find more victims

WHAT
Holding signs and childhood photos at a sidewalk news conference, clergy sex abuse victims and their supporters will
–ask the KS archdiocese why these two clerics are not on its list,
–reveal the names of two publicly accused priests who are/were in Lawence but have received virtually no attention here, and
–beg those with information or suspicions about abuse to contact the Kansas Bureau of Investigation
They will also hand out fliers door-to-door near churches listing several other accused priests who work/live or worked/lived in Lawrence.
WHEN
Tuesday, August 20 at 10:45 a.m.
WHERE
Outside St. John the Evangelist Catholic Church, 1234 Kentucky St. (corner of E. 13th) in Lawrence (785 843 0109), where a priest accused of exploiting a vulnerable adult worked

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.

NY Catholic sex abuse lawsuit: former Nashville bishop part of ‘racketeering enterprise’

NASHVILLE (TN)
The Tennessean

August 20, 2019

By Anita Wadhwani

Former Nashville Catholic Bishop Edward Kmiec has been named in a sweeping lawsuit filed in New York by 22 plaintiffs alleging the Diocese of Buffalo systematically covered up sexual abuse of minors by pedophile priests.

Kmiec served as Bishop of the New York diocese between 2004 and 2012. He served as Bishop of the Diocese of Nashville between 1992 and 2004. He is now retired.

Kmiec is one of dozens of Catholic leaders and institutions named in a lawsuit filed last week in state court in Tonawanda, New York.

The lawsuit was filed under anti-racketeering laws — also known as RICO statutes — alleging a conspiracy of “harassing, threatening, extorting, and misleading victims of sexual abuse committed by priests” and of “misleading priests’ victims and the media to prevent reporting or disclosure of sexual misconduct.”

Kmiec is singled out for his role in transferring more than $90 million in assets to protect church holdings from victim claims, according to the lawsuit.

A spokeswoman for the Diocese of Buffalo did not respond to request for comment from Kmiec and the Diocese.

The plaintiffs filed anonymously. The lawsuit came on the first day of a one-time year-long window under New York state law to file civil suits alleging sexual abuse beyond the statute of limitations.

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.

Survivors Sue Child Sex Abusers in Droves Under New NY Law

WASHINGTON (DC)
Ms. Magazine

August 20, 2019

By Carrie N. Baker

For years, child survivors of sexual abuse have been blocked from suing their perpetrators for damages by laws requiring these lawsuits be filed within a short period of time. In New York, survivors had to file by their 21st birthdays.

But in January—after years of fierce opposition from the Catholic Church, insurance companies and the former Republican-led state Senate—the New York State Assembly passed the Child Victims Act, extending the time survivors have to file civil suits against perpetrators until they turn 55 years old. The law opens up a one-year “lookback window,” allowing survivors to file civil actions against perpetrators no matter how long ago the abuse occurred.

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Temper shock over sex abuse claims with skepticism

NEW YORK (NY)
Staten Island Advance

August 20, 2019

By Daniel Leddy

New York’s Child Victims Act is well-intended. The sexual abuse of a child is an act of such depravity that it can inflict catastrophic, lifelong damage on an especially vulnerable class of victims. So it’s certainly reasonable that those who commit such atrocities be subject to criminal prosecution and answerable in civil proceedings for compensatory damages.

But – and it’s a huge but – precisely because the sexual abuse of a child is such a heinous act, and an allegation of its commission so damaging to the reputations of those accused, fundamental fairness requires that they be accorded a reasonable opportunity to defend themselves. And therein lies the problem with the Child Victims Act. For far from protecting the due process rights of defendants, the legislation’s dramatically lengthened statute of limitations significantly undermines them.

Its most problematic provision is the creation of a one-year window, which opened last Wednesday, during which any previously time-barred cause of action for child sex abuse can be asserted regardless of how long ago it’s alleged to have occurred. This invites not only questionable claims but cleverly contrived ones, particularly where the individuals cited as abusers are either dead or so incapacitated that they cannot interpose a defense. This, in turn, is extremely prejudicial to the institutions for which they worked or were otherwise affiliated, the real targets of suits under the Child Victims Act. Since these entities are rendered similarly defenseless, the statute effectively gives plaintiffs and their attorneys a license to plunder their treasuries.

Cakewalk to victory

Contrary to a common misconception, a plaintiff need not produce corroborating evidence of claimed abuse. Rather, he can prevail on his word alone, a highly likely outcome in the absence of anyone to challenge the plaintiff’s testimony. It’s this precise cakewalk to victory that has so many lawyers aggressively soliciting cases under the statute.

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.

Activists urge Kansas archbishop to broaden reporting of clergy abuse

TOPEKA (KS)
Capital Journal

August 20, 2019

David Clohessy and Larry Davis stood on a busy Topeka street corner Tuesday for a moment of silence on behalf of people who committed suicide after abused by priests.

“A lot of people who endure this horror don’t survive and end up taking their own lives dealing with the pain,” said Clohessy, representing the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, also known as SNAP.

Both men had plenty to say, however, across the street from Topeka’s Mater Dei Catholic Church about their belief Archbishop Joseph Naumann, of the Archdiocese of Kansas City in Kansas, hadn’t been proactive enough in reaching out to victims nor in identifying alleged perpetrators involved with Catholic churches.

Evidence of a shortcoming, Davis said, was that the Kansas Bureau of Investigation launched an inquiry of claims of misconduct in four Catholic dioceses in Kansas.

“Because of the lack of proactive behavior on the part of Archbishop Naumann, for the lack of the archdiocese being totally open and truthful, the Kansas Bureau of Investigation is now investigating,” said Davis, of Olathe.

In January, Naumann released a list of 22 clerics against whom substantiated allegations of sexual abuse of a minor. The list reflected acts occurring from the 1940s to 1990s. Of the 22, served as priests of the Kansas City archdiocese. When the list was published, 11 were deceased and seven others had been withdrawn from clerical duties.

“I thank all victims who have courageously come forward with allegations in order to prevent someone else from being victimized, as well as to assist with the progress of their own healing process,” Naumann said.

The KBI’s inquiry of abuse began in February. In July, the attorney general’s office reported the FBI had opened 74 investigations in 33 counties.

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Lawsuit accuses two priests of sexual abuse

PITTSBURGH (PA)
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

August 20, 2019

By Peter Smith

A Pittsburgh man is suing the Roman Catholic Diocese of Pittsburgh and Holy Family Institute, alleging he was subjected to the “torture” of sexual abuse by two priests when he was a boy living at the Emsworth children’s home in the 1970s.

The lawsuit was filed Aug. 16 in Allegheny County and accuses two priests of sexually molesting him on multiple times.

The lawsuit identifies the alleged perpetrators as the Rev. Larry Smith and a “Father Gerdes.”

Father Smith is a retired diocesan priest. A diocesan statement said as of Tuesday morning, it had not been served with the lawsuit, but it said Father Smith would not engage in public ministry until the diocese could learn more about the allegation. Father Smith “categorically denies the allegation,” the diocese said.

The lawsuit doesn’t give a first name for Father Gerdes but claims he belonged to a religious order, the Spiritans (of the Congregation of the Holy Spirit). However, the order’s Province of the United States says it never had a priest with that or a similar name.

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Melbourne Catholic Archbishop Peter Comensoli would choose jail over breaking confessional seal

AUSTRALIA
ABC Radio Melbourne

August 14, 2019

The Catholic Archbishop of Melbourne has said he would rather go to jail than report admissions of child sexual abuse made in the confessional.

A bill which would make it mandatory for priests to report suspected child abuse to authorities, including abuse revealed in the confessional, was introduced to Victoria’s Parliament on Wednesday morning.

The Catholic Church last year formally rejected the notion that clergy should be legally forced to report abuse revealed during confessions.

Interviewed on ABC Radio Melbourne on Wednesday, Archbishop Peter Comensoli said he did not see the principles of mandatory reporting and the seal of confession as being “mutually exclusive”.

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Cardinal George Pell to find out if child sexual abuse appeal has succeeded

MELBOURNE (AUSTRALIA)
The Guardian

August 19, 2019

By Melissa Davey

Senior Catholic cleric has been in custody in Melbourne since being sentenced in March to six years in prison

On Wednesday the most senior Catholic cleric to be convicted of child sexual abuse, Cardinal George Pell, will find out if his appeal has succeeded and if he will be released from custody.

The 78-year-old has been in Melbourne assessment prison since being sentenced in March to six years in prison for sexually abusing two 13-year-old choirboys in 1996 when he was the archbishop of Melbourne. He was ordered to serve a non-parole period of three years and eight months.

The jurors heard Pell sexually assaulted the two boys after Sunday solemn mass at St Patrick’s Cathedral in Melbourne in the priest’s sacristy. Pell orally raped one of the boys during this incident and indecently assaulted both of them. Pell offended a second time against one of the boys one month later, when he grabbed the boy’s genitals in a church corridor, once more after Sunday solemn mass. He was convicted on four counts of an indecent act with a child under the age of 16 and one count of sexual penetration with a child under the age of 16.

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George Pell’s rise in the Catholic Church

AUSTRALIA
Australian Associated Press

August 19, 2019

CARDINAL GEORGE PELL’S CAREER

JUNE 8, 1941 – Born in Ballarat, Victoria

DECEMBER 16, 1966 – Ordained a Catholic priest

1971-1972 – Assistant priest Swan Hill parish

1973-1983 – Assistant priest Ballarat East parish

1973 – Shared St Alipius presbytery with Gerald Ridsdale (later revealed as Australia’s worst pedophile priest) and Monsignor William McMahon

1973-1984 – Episcopal Vicar for Education in Diocese of Ballarat; founding member of Catholic Education Commission of Victoria

1981-1984 – Principal of Institute of Catholic Education (now merged with Australian Catholic University)

1984 – Administrator of Bungaree parish

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Cardinal Pell’s appeal verdict due but may not be final word

MELBOURNE (AUSTRALIA)
Associated Press

August 20, 2019

By Rod McGuirk

The most senior Catholic cleric found guilty of sexually abusing children will learn the outcome of his appeal on Wednesday though the verdict still may not be the final word on his convictions for molesting two choirboys in an Australian cathedral more than two decades ago.

The Victoria state Court of Appeal heard arguments from Cardinal George Pell’s lawyers and prosecutors in June. In recognition of the intense public interest, the court is taking the unusual step of livestreaming its judgment on his appeal.

The 78-year-old former Vatican finance minister would walk free if the three judges acquit him of the five convictions. They also could order a retrial, in which case Pell would be released on bail, or they could reject his appeal.

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Florida man accuses Rabbi Joel Kolko of sexual abuse under Child Victims Act

NEW YORK (NY)
New York Post

August 16, 2019

By Reuven Fenton and Susan Edelman

A Florida man who says he was sexually abused decades ago by two Brooklyn rabbis — one of them accused serial molester Rabbi Joel Kolko — has filed suit under New York’s new Child Victims Act.

Alleged victim Baruch Sandhaus claims the rabbis “would inappropriately touch” his private parts on various occasions between 1978 and 1980, when he was a student at Yeshiva Torah Temimah in Midwood, according to papers filed Friday in Brooklyn Supreme Court.

“Kolko and [Rabbi Joel] Falk exploited their positions of power and trust … with easy access to the then [underage] plaintiff in committing heinous acts of sexual abuse,” the lawsuit contends.

Prior to the passage of the act, which went into effect Wednesday, New York’s statute of limitations resulted in the dismissal of a suit Sandhaus filed in 2006.

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Sexual abuse lawsuit filings accuse more than clergy, Boy Scouts and doctors

NEW YORK (NY)
Rockland/Westchester Journal News

August 16, 2019

By Frank Esposito

Shorty after midnight Wednesday, lawyers flooded the New York state civil court system with hundreds of new lawsuits accusing a variety of institutions and individuals of an array of sexual abuse incidents dating back decades.

One law firm even live-streamed the filings on Facebook.

By the time courts closed for the day, attorneys had filed 427 sex abuse cases against institutions that many had speculated would be named. Chief among them were several Roman Catholic dioceses, the Boy Scouts of America and Rockefeller University Hospital in New York City.

Filings were drastically down on Thursday with only five cases filed in four counties.

Wednesday was the first day to file suits under the Child Victims Act, which allowed anyone to file a lawsuit against organizations in New York despite the statute of limitations.

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One year later, still no laws to address grand jury recommendations to combat clergy sex abuse

WASHINGTON (PA)
Observer-Reporter

August 14, 2019

By Mike Tony

Today marks the opening of a one-year window allowing people to file civil lawsuits that were previously barred by state statute of limitations – in New York.

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“Somebody had to know:” PA grand jury report one year later

WASHINGTON (PA)
Observer-Reporter

August 14, 2019

By Barbara Miller

As parishioners exited Immaculate Conception Roman Catholic Church in Washington last week, the afternoon was warm and blue-sky sunny, much like Aug. 14, 2018, in this area when state Attorney General Josh Shapiro released an 884-page report based on grand jury testimony on a very dark topic: decades’ worth of sexual abuse by priests.

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Review Details Sex Abuse Claims Against Boys and Girls Clubs

UNITED STATES
NBC Washington

August 15, 2019

Boys & Girls Clubs of America has a congressional charter to work with at-risk youth in communities across the country

At least 250 people have said they were sexually abused as children by employees, volunteers and others at Boys and Girls Clubs of America affiliates, according to an investigation by Hearst Connecticut Media.

The review of criminal convictions and civil lawsuits dating to the 1970s turned up 95 abuse cases in 30 states involving people associated with the nonprofit youth development organization, which serves more than 4.5 million young people a year at its 4,600 local centers. Some of the cases involve more than one accuser.

The cases include allegations that leadership at clubs knew about abuse and did not report it to law enforcement, among other examples of local clubs failing to adhere to national protocols, and that, in some instances, background checks apparently failed to keep adults with violent convictions from working with children.

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‘How America wanted to change the pope.’

VATICAN CITY
La Croix International

August 13, 2019

by Nicolas Senèze

Chapter 1: The man of scandal This book tells how three popes were informed of sexual abuses committed by an American prelate and how this case sparked an attack against Pope Francis

A dazzling rise

Before going any further, we must first look at the face of the man who caused the scandal: Former Cardinal Theodore McCarrick. The accusation filed by Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò is based above all on the fact that the former cardinal would have long benefited from the Vatican’s indulgence – that is far from false – but also that Pope Francis himself would have covered it up, which is much less certain.

Now 88 years old, McCarrick was one of the leading figures of the American Church. The son of a merchant navy captain who died of tuberculosis when he was 3 years old, this New Yorker completed brilliant studies that led him to the prestigious Fordham University in New York City before he entered the seminary.

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George Pell to learn outcome of appeal for child sex abuse conviction

MELBOURNE (AUSTRALIA)
9News.com.au

August 20, 2019

By Benjamin Ansell

Tomorrow, the world’s most senior Catholic to be found guilty of historic child sexual abuse, Cardinal George Pell, will find out whether his appeal has been successful.

Pell, 78, has spent the past five months in the Melbourne Assessment Prison after he was sentenced in March to a maximum of six years in prison for sexually abusing two 13-year-old choirboys in 1996.

Pell was found guilty in December of sexually assaulting the boys at St Patrick’s Cathedral in the priest’s sacristy after Sunday mass.

He was convicted on four counts of an indecent act with a child under the age of 16 and one count of sexual penetration with a child under the age of 16.

Pell’s appeal was heard in June before a full bench of the Supreme Court, made up of Chief Justice Anne Ferguson, the President of the Court of Appeal Chris Maxwell, and Justice Mark Weinberg.

Pell’s conviction was appealed on three grounds by high-profile barrister Bret Walker SC, with the defence relying most heavily on the argument that the jury was “unreasonable” in reaching its verdict.

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Cardinal Pell, the highest Vatican official to face justice over abuse, appeals guilty verdict

SYDNEY (AUSTRALIA)
Washington Post

August 20, 2019

By A. Odysseus Patrick

The most senior priest jailed for child abuse in the 2,000-year history of the Catholic Church will face a 21st century form of justice: a decision on his appeal beamed live over the Internet.

Australian Cardinal George Pell will appear before three judges of the Victorian Supreme Court on Wednesday morning in Australia, and learn if he has been able to overturn a conviction for sexually assaulting two choir boys.

Justices Anne Ferguson, Chris Maxwell and Mark Weinberg could uphold the conviction, order a retrial, or dismiss some or all of the charges and allow the 78 year-old to walk out of the court building in downtown Melbourne a free man.

The global broadcast is ironic given the judge who oversaw Pell’s original trial threatened to charge many of Australia’s top newspaper editors, and some overseas, for flouting a gag order covering Pell’s guilty finding by a jury last December.

The Washington Post was among the media outlets that reported on the verdict. Some of the journalists were cited for contempt of court charges that are still pending. The gag order was dropped two months later.

Huge domestic and global interest then led to the broadcast, live on Australian television, of Pell’s sentencing to six years in jail on March 13, and Wednesday’s planned live stream of the appeal decision. The broadcast will be delayed by 15 seconds to allow the court to censor any interruption or other unexpected event.

Lawyers said it was impossible to predict if the cardinal’s appeal would succeed. In their submissions, Pell’s lawyers argued the original trial was unfair because the cardinal wasn’t able to present evidence they say demonstrated it would have been impractical for him to molest the boys given the amount of time available after conducting mass at Melbourne’s grand Catholic cathedral, St Patrick’s, in December 1996.

Pell, who oversaw the Vatican’s finances before he was charged, was found guilty of sexually assaulting two 13-year-old boys who had snuck into his change room, or sacristy, and drunk sacramental wine.

The conservative prelate’s fate has created a schism among Catholics. Supporters believe Pell, who was convicted on the testimony of a single witness, a victim, is being used to punish an entire church for decades of child abuse around the world.

Detractors say Pell, as Australia’s most senior Catholic, personifies the church’s institutional indifference to the welfare of thousands of boys and girls who were abused in its care.

David Hamer, a professor of evidence law at the University of Sydney, said the case would hinge on the perceived credibility of the alleged victim, whose identity has never been revealed to the public.

Although the three appeal judges didn’t hear from the man in person, they watched a video recording of his allegations against Pell, and the cardinal’s denials in an interview with police detectives.

“So the appeal court, in this sense, can put itself in the position of the jury,” Hamer said in an email. “And appeal courts are more prepared to intervene where cases turn on circumstantial evidence — in this case, the argument that it would have been impossible for Pell to commit the crime.”

Last August the church publicly apologized for the thousands of victims of abuse in Australia and pledged that it would never happen again.

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Group accuses Salina diocese of withholding names of priests linked to abuse cases

MANHATTAN (KS)
KWCH TV

August 20, 2019

A group working to raise awareness on the issue of clergy abuse accuses the Catholic Diocese of Salina of holding names of priests linked to cases of abuse.

Tuesday, the Survivors Newtork of those Abused by Priests (SNAP) organized protests across the state, including a small group gathered outside the Seven Dolors Catholic Church in Manhattan.

The group has a message for Bishop Gerald Vincke to come clean. In March, the Catholic Diocese of Salina said an investigation found 14 clergy members with “substantial allegations of abuse by a minor.”

Vincke hired outside counsel to conduct that investigation and only released names of the 14 clergy members in the investigation.

Members with SNAP chose to gather at the church in Manhattan because they say two priests on the bishop’s list worked there at one point. The group also says it found other priests, “credibly accuses” of abusing minors, and says the bishop’s list should include these names.

Tuesday afternoon, the Catholic Diocese of Salina released a statement addressing SNAP’s allegations that it omitted names of of priests credibly accused of abuse.

“SNAP alleges the Salina Diocese omitted the following names: diocesan priest Father Donald McCarthy, who died in 2017, and two priests from the Capuchin Province of St. Conrad, based in Denver: Capuchin Father Ronald Gilardi and Father Thaddeus Posey,” the Catholic Diocese of Salina says. “The Capuchin Province released a list of substantiated allegations at the same time the Salina Diocese released its list. Both Father Gilardi and Father Posey were mentioned in the Capuchin list when it was released in March.”

The Cathlic Diocese of Salina says it’s cooperated with any agency involved with investigating abuse claims, including the Kansas Bureau of Investigation.

Full statement from Catholic Diocese of Salina

Today (Tuesday), the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAP) organized protests across the state of Kansas, including one in Manhattan. A statement dated Aug. 20 on the group’s website claims the Salina Diocese failed to include the names of three priests when the report of substantiated cases of clergy abuse of minors was released by the diocese in March.

SNAP alleges the Salina Diocese omitted the following names: diocesan priest Father Donald McCarthy, who died in 2017, and two priests from the Capuchin Province of St. Conrad, based in Denver: Capuchin Father Ronald Gilardi and Father Thaddeus Posey.

The Capuchin Province released a list of substantiated allegations at the same time the Salina Diocese released its list. Both Father Gilardi and Father Posey were mentioned in the Capuchin list when it was released in March.

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The ‘Jeffrey Epsteins’ Who Wear Crosses and Clerical Collars

Full Heart, Empty Arms blog

August 16, 2019

By Ivy Blonwyn

Jeffrey Epstein, with his ever present little pædo smile, was a horrible person but his victims were spared one thing: he didn’t abuse, groom and rape them with a Bible in his hand. He considered it though. James Stewart writes in the New York Times that Epstein was seriously considering becoming a minister to earn trust and maintain secrecy in 2018.

There are many like him. But they don’t merely ‘consider’ it. They actually do it. College, seminary, ordination, a ‘calling’, sermons, funerals, Bible studies, praying at deathbeds. They do it all with their motivation carefully hidden: easy access to obedient, brainwashed, intimidated, shame-filled children.

The problem is that it’s terribly hard to tell which clergymen enter the ministry for all the right reasons and which ones have these horrifying ulterior motives. If adults can’t tell, imagine how hard it is for their targeted victims: trusting children. Children who might have an instinctive distrust of certain members of the ministry, but are shamed into submission and obedience.

Although Jeffrey Epstein has allegedly gone to his Eternal judgement for the horrible things he did in life, what about all the ‘Jeffrey Epsteins’ still running around free, leveraging their clerical collar to dominate, their Bible to groom and the privacy of Sunday school classrooms to carry out horrific acts of sexual abuse on children? Who are they? Where are they?

Beyond the physical, sexual and psychological wounds they inflict, they are alienating their victims from God because all the accoutrements of religion bring horrific memories flooding back. What about that? No cash settlement can comfort your soul.

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Cardinal Pell’s Groundbreaking Record on Dealing With Clergy Sexual Abuse

DENVER (CO)
National Catholic Register

August 20, 2019

By Father Raymond J. de Souza

In the discussion of clerical sexual abuse, Cardinal George Pell now occupies a unique place. He is in fact the highest-ranking Catholic official ever to be criminally charged with the sexual abuse of minors. Other cardinals have had allegations confirmed against them in Church processes — Theodore McCarrick of Washington, Hans Hermann Groër of Vienna — but faced neither criminal charges nor subsequent conviction to date.

The appeals-court verdict, to be delivered Wednesday morning in Melbourne (Tuesday evening in North America), is supremely important, not least for Cardinal Pell’s liberty. But the facts of the case are now widely known, and the appeals-court verdict may not change very many minds. Cardinal Pell, should the conviction be upheld, will remain a man falsely convicted in the considered judgment of many, including this writer.

Should the conviction be overturned, those who have been after Cardinal Pell — including the Melbourne police, who confessed to want to “get Pell” long before there were any allegations against him — will remain convinced that he is guilty of horrible crimes. They were convinced of that before there was any evidence and will remain convinced even if the appellate court rules that that evidence is false.

But before that story dominates the days and weeks ahead, it is important to remember that Cardinal Pell was a key figure in the Church’s sex-abuse scandals long before the current charges were made in 2017. He was, in fact, widely considered to be a pioneering reformer. The travails of the past two years have obscured that.

In two major respects, the Church universal is catching up to where Cardinal Pell was decades ago.

George Pell was named an auxiliary bishop of Melbourne in 1987 and elevated to archbishop in August 1996. Seventy-five days later he established the “Melbourne Response” for victims of alleged sexual abuse.

The Melbourne Response invited victims to come forward, established an independent body to investigate claims and provided apologies, counseling and compensation — at the time, up to $50,000 in Australian currency. (It was later increased to $75,000, and then to $150,000, after Cardinal Pell had left Melbourne.)

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A reader puzzles over criticism of the Pope/hierarchy

Patheos blog

August 16, 2019

By Mark Shea

They write:
I want to start by saying the I appreciate your writings, especially on poverty. I was coming to the conclusion that American churches alignment with Ayn Randian economics was related to “faith alone”/antinomian theology, which claims that the Christian life ought to require no sacrifice, and you expressed these thoughts very well in your books and blogging. Some protestants have also come around to that idea, as articulated in David Platt’s book.

I’m unfamiliar with Platt, but I am struck by how much conservative Catholicism in particular (in the US) has taken on the flavor, culture, and sometimes the theology of Evangelicalism. The false political soteriology that opposition to abortion (and voting Republican) taketh away the sins of the world is, in particular, everywhere in the culture right now, to the degree that Trump and FOX, far more than the Holy Father and the Magisterium, tend to form the thoughts and minds of conservative Catholics. This deeply troubles me, as you have no doubt noticed. The idea of comparing one’s thinking to the Magisterium and not to Democrats is foreign to many American conservative Catholics now. And the idea of the Catholic both/and (expressed in, among other things, the concept of the Seamless Garment) is regarded with reflexive contempt. Much that I loved and appreciated in coming into the Church, precisely because it was more capacious than American Evangelicalism’s cramped either/or is now dismissed with a sneer. The Rules, rather than the Person, have come to matter most. The Randian habit of subjecting the person to diagrams, property, and things is one manifestation of this. It breaks my heart.

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Why childhood victims stay silent about abuse for decades

BUFFALO (NY)
Buffalo News

August 20, 2019

By Jay Tokasz

It took Ann Fossler more than 25 years to reveal that she had been repeatedly molested when she was as young as 6 years old.

Fossler said she first confided in a counselor in the 1980s that a Buffalo Diocese Catholic priest who was a close family friend sexually abused her for several years and that she kept it secret because she feared her parents, who adored the priest and were devout Catholics, would be crushed by the revelation.

“Basically, he said, ‘I can listen, but there isn’t anything you can do about any of this because of the statute of limitations,’ ” said Fossler. “So, then, my decision becomes, do I blow up the family by coming out when there isn’t anything I can really do about this anyway?”

Fossler, 68, stayed silent for decades more.

She’s making a statement in court now, though, joining more than 100 plaintiffs who have filed or will file lawsuits in Western New York under the Child Victims Act, alleging they were sexually abused as children.

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Some of the abuse alleged dates back as far as 1948.

CHILD VICTIMS ACT
WHY IS THE CHILD VICTIMS ACT ‘LOOK-BACK’ WINDOW SO SHORT?
Does Catholic Church have bigger abuse problem than other religions?
Batches of Boy Scouts lawsuits could be next
Sean Kirst: 40 years after a child’s days of pain, a search for justice
What is New York State’s Child Victims Act?
Child Victims Act filings detail heart-wrenching stories of sexual abuse
The statute of limitations for childhood sex abuse victims to file civil claims going forward changes to age 55, from age 23, under the Child Victims Act. The new law also includes a one-year look-back window that opened Wednesday and allows childhood abuse victims of any age to file claims that previously were time-barred.

Experts said it’s common for childhood victims of sexual abuse not to tell anyone about it for many years. A 2014 study out of Germany found that the average age for disclosing childhood sex abuse was 52. Another study last year showed that it took 24 years, on average, for childhood sex abuse victims to disclose the abuse to anyone.

Marci A. Hamilton, law professor at the University of Pennsylvania and expert on the effects of child sexual abuse, said children don’t understand sex and don’t have a framework of experience to distinguish a truly loving adult from someone who is taking advantage of them.

“These are people who don’t have life experience to help them through situations they just don’t understand and can’t possibly process,” said Hamilton, who founded and runs Child USA, a national think tank and child advocacy organization.

In addition, the trauma of the sex abuse often produces psychological and physical ailments in victims, including post-traumatic stress disorder, depression, thoughts of suicide and alcohol and drug abuse.

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SNAP leader: Catholic churches need better vetting for priests

CINCINNATI (OH)
WPCO TV

August 20, 2019

The Rev. Geoff Drew, suspended last month after allegations of inappropriate behavior, now stands charged with nine counts of rape — all for incidents that allegedly happened before he entered the priesthood. Dan Frondorf, a local leader of the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, said Drew never should have been able to become a priest — and the Catholic church should develop a better process for keeping predators out of its clergy.

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Real-life priest who starred in ‘The Exorcist’ accused of sexually assaulting student in the ’80’s

WASHINGTON (DC)
Raw Story

August 16, 2019

By Tom Boggioni

According to a report at TMZ, a real-life priest who played Father Dyer in the 1973 film “The Exorcist” has been accused in court documents of sexually assaulting a student during the ’80s while teaching at McQuaid Jesuit High in Rochester, New York.

The report states that Father William J. O’Malley is one of multiple alleged assailants listed in a recently filed lawsuit and accuses him of abusing a then-17-year-old student “multiple times” in 1985 and 1986.

According to the lawsuit, those assaults occurred, “in a classroom, in school hallways and also at school-sponsored events.”

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Priest won’t face child sex abuse charges in Fargo

FARGO (ND)
Bismark Tribune

August 20, 2019

By April Baumgarten

A Catholic priest in south-central North Dakota will not face criminal charges after being accused of sexual misconduct involving a child in Fargo, but the case could go to a prosecutor in McHenry County after an investigation revealed one incident allegedly happened there.

The Cass County Attorney’s Office announced Monday it would not pursue a criminal case against the Rev. Wenceslaus Katanga, who has served as a priest at three North Dakota churches in McIntosh County since 2010. The Fargo Diocese announced in early April that the Fargo Police Department was investigating Katanga concerning “interaction with a youth while ministering at Sts. Anne and Joachim Catholic Church in Fargo.”

Prosecutors will not be able to prove Katanga allegedly had sexual contact with the child twice in Fargo because there are “no corroborating witnesses or physical evidence to support” the accusations, Cass County Assistant State’s Attorney Joshua Traiser said in a letter declining charges.

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August 19, 2019

Two More Priests Accused of Sexual Abuse in Pittsburgh

ST. LOUIS (MO)
Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests

August 19, 2019

Two more priests from the Diocese of Pittsburgh have been named in a lawsuit and accused of child sexual abuse.

The complaint alleges that Fr. Joseph Girdis and Fr. Larry Smith both abused the same unnamed plaintiff when he was 12-years-old and living at the Holy Family Institute in Emsworth, PA. Since neither priest was named in last year’s bombshell grand jury report that examined 6 dioceses, including Pittsburgh, we call on Bishop David Zubik and other Pittsburgh church officials to use every means at their disposal to publicize these accusations and urge anyone who may have information related to them to contact law enforcement immediately.

We also hope that this news will encourage others who may have been abused in Pittsburgh to come forward, make a report to police and prosecutors, and find support from family, independent therapists, or support groups like ours.

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Long Island Hit With Dozens Of Sexual Abuse Lawsuits Under Child Victims Act

LONG ISLAND (NY)
Long Island Weekly News

August 19, 2019

By Marco Schaden

Since Aug. 14, hundreds of lawsuits have been filed across New York State related to the Child Victims Act, which went into effect that day. The law, signed in February by Governor Andrew Cuomo, gives a one-year grace period, eliminating the statute of limitations for sexual abuse victims. Suits have already been filed against every Catholic diocese in the state, Boy Scouts of America, Rockefeller University, schools, hospitals, nonprofits and other organizations.

In the coming months, more lawsuits are expected to be filed. Other states have passed a similar law, including California, Delaware, Hawaii, Minnesota, Arizona and New Jersey, whose grace period starts in December. California is looking at legislation for a second grace period.

“It just makes this whole thing very real,” Brian Toale said, a member of Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAP) who filed a lawsuit against the Diocese of Rockville Centre and Chaminade High School. “At this point, I really want to get a lot of information and [a lawsuit] is the only way to get it. But to actually have it done—to get a text from my lawyer saying your ‘complaint has been filed’—I don’t think it has really sunk in yet.”

Marsh Law Firm PLLC and Pfau, Cochran, Vertetis, Amala PLLC filed a suit against Rockefeller University on Aug. 14 with 45 plaintiffs. They claim to represent 200 sexual abuse survivors of Dr. Reginald Archibald, a professor and physician employed at the university for approximately 40 years. Several of the plaintiffs that filed suit are from Long Island.

“It’s probably one of, if not the largest, sexual abuse cases in the United States,” said attorney Michael Pfau.

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In disturbing allegations anonymously filed, three priests accused of abusing seven-year-old together

BUFFALO (NY)
WIBV TV

August 19, 2019

In a graphic and disturbing case filed under the Child Victims Act, three priests are accused of sexually abusing a seven-year-old at St. Francis High School in the late 1970s.

The anonymous plaintiff says that in 1977, Father James Smyka, Father Aurelian Brzezniak and Father Patrick Mendola sexually abused him in a shower room in front of an audience of between 15 to 20 other priests.

The complaint states that afterward, they would console him while he cried, only to sexually abuse him again at least 15 times in a single night.

The lawsuit states the abuse continued until the boy was eight years old.

Both Mendola and Brzezniak are deceased.

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Prosecutor: Rev. Geoffrey Drew indicted on 9 counts of rape

CINCINNATI (OH)
WCPO TV

August 19, 2019

A priest who was placed on leave from St. Ignatius of Loyola last month has been indicted on nine counts of rape, according to the Hamilton County prosecutor.

Hamilton County Prosecutor Joe Deters announced the indictment for Rev. Geoffrey D. Drew during a Monday afternoon press conference.

The incidents occurred between 1988 and 1991 when Drew was employed as a music minister at St. Jude School in Green Township, Deters said. He was not a priest at the time; he was ordained in 2004.

A Hamilton County Grand Jury handed down the indictment Monday. If convicted, Drew faces life in prison, Deters said.

A 41-year-old man testified before a grand jury last week after the meetings at St. Ignatius of Loyola were publicized, Deters said. The man said he was 10 and 11 years old and was an altar boy when the incidents occurred, Deters said.

“It was very emotional,” Deters said. “It was emotional for him. It was emotional for the grand jury. It was a very emotional piece of testimony. And he deserves a lot of credit for coming forward, as difficult as it is. He could’ve just said, ‘I’m moving on with my life,’ but he wanted to stop this behavior. And he’s going to.”

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Diocese says more abuse victims have come forward

CASPER (WY)
Northern Wyoming News

August 19, 2019

More people who say they’re victims of sexual abuse at the hands of Wyoming clergymen have come forward since the release in early June of a list of 11 men who the Diocese of Cheyenne deemed had faced substantiated accusations of abuse.

That list identified 30 known and substantiated victims of the 11 men. Twenty-nine victims were juvenile boys and girls, while one was identified by the diocese as a vulnerable adult. It’s unclear how many more victims have come forward since the list was released in the diocese’s newsletter and on its website June 12.

“The Diocese of Cheyenne respects the privacy of all victims and survivors of sexual abuse and therefore does not publish their names,” Patti Loehrer, the diocese’s chancellor, told the Star-Tribune in an emailed response to a list of questions previously sent by the newspaper.

Loehrer said the diocese’s list is a “living document and will be updated on the diocesan website if new allegations are made and substantiated.”

The list has not been updated to include new victims or new clergy since it was published two months ago, suggesting the diocese has not completed any subsequent investigations brought by the new victims who’ve come forward. Loehrer said the diocese “does not publicize if it is conducting an investigation. We publicize the results.”

As part of its process in crafting the list of credibly accused priests, Loehrer wrote, the diocese hired Nussbaum Spier LLC, which has a history of conducting such reviews. The law firm interviewed victims and reviewed files, a process that included considering bishops, 253 priests and 45 deacons.”

Diocese “files were studied, and they reflected the previous reports of allegations,” the chancellor added.

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Filings detail clergy, school abuse in Niagara CountyFilings detail clergy, school abuse in Niagara County

NIAGARA FALLS (NY)
Niagara Gazette

August 19, 2019

By Philip Gambini

Lawsuits filed in Niagara County reveal the details of abuse suffered by scores of children over the past several decades.

The filings are among the hundreds of court documents that flooded state courts after the opening of the Child Victims Act “look-back window,” which allows survivors to submit civil lawsuits against their abusers that may have lapsed due to the legal statute of limitations.

The majority of the civil legal complaints accuse clergy or employees of the Diocese of Buffalo of sexual and physical abuse. The diocese has named the majority of the accused as having substantiated claims of sexual abuse lodged against them.

More lawsuits are expected to arrive over the next year.

Paul Barr, a local attorney, was among the first in Niagara County to publicly discuss a personal account of abuse by a member of the clergy. Barr said Freeman, who died in 2010, used his position and stature at Sacred Heart parish in the City of Niagara Falls to take advantage of him as a young man.

According to the lawsuit, Freeman served beer to Barr, who was then a minor, while the two were alone in the parish rectory about 1980. The priest told the intoxicated Barr a false story about a medical condition he had encountered as a chaplain at the nearby airbase.

Freeman could examine Barr, but it required Barr to remove his pants and underwear to do so, the priest said, according to Barr. Freeman then backed Barr onto a couch and forcibly fondled Barr’s genitals. When he tried to leave, he found the door dead bolted. Freeman unlocked it and Barr left.

“Barr was scared and confused by Freeman’s conduct,” the lawsuit said. “He felt conflicted and betrayed because these unspeakable acts were being committed by a figure cloaked with spiritual authority and benevolence: the pastor whom Barr had come to trust and admire, and who had claimed that he was simply acting in Barr’s best interest,” the lawsuit said.

Barr refused a $45,000 settlement offer from the diocese Independent Reconciliation and Compensation Program (IRCP), a fund established by the faith-based organization as a compensation mechanism for survivors, earlier this year.

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.

Fr. Geoff Drew Indicted on 9 Counts of Rape, SNAP Responds

ST. LOUIS (MO)
Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests

August 19, 2019

Less than a month after being placed on leave, a Cincinnati-area priest has been indicted on nine counts of rape. We hope that today’s charges bring comfort to his victim and encourages others who may have seen, suspected, or suffered his abuse to come forward and make a report to police and prosecutors.

Fr. Geoff Drew, the former head of St. Ignatius Loyola Paris, allegedly abused a young boy while he was employed as the Music Minister at St. Jude School in Cincinnati. Our hearts ache for the victim and we hope that he is finding help as he navigates his healing journey.

While we are glad that Fr. Drew has been indicted, we cannot help but worry that there are other survivors who have yet to come forward. However, we know that the Archdiocese of Cincinnati had been warned about Fr. Drew’s inappropriate behavior for at least six years without taking action to keep him away from children, so we are afraid that there are others who are suffering in silence. We call on Archbishop Dennis Schnurr to personally visit every parish where Fr. Drew worked or attended and beg others who have information to come forward to police and prosecutors now.

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Priest accused of sex abuse while pastor of Portville’s Sacred Heart

OLEAN (NY)
Times Herald

August 19, 2019

By Danielle Gamble

A lawsuit filed last week brought the number of Cattaraugus County priests accused of sexual abuse to four.

The Rev. Duane G. Fimbel was accused of sexually abusing a child more than 40 years ago while serving as pastor of Sacred Heart Roman Catholic Church in Portville by an anonymous plaintiff in a Child Victims Act lawsuit filed Wednesday.

Fimbel, who died in 2011 at age 80, is accused of sexually abusing a then-14-year-old child from 1976 to 1977. Defendants in the case include the Catholic Diocese of Buffalo and the Basilica of St. Mary of the Angels, as Sacred Heart merged with St. Mary’s in 2007.

The Rev. Patrick Melfi, pastor of the basilica, said he was not aware of the lawsuit until reached by the Times Herald on Friday.

“We certainly are heartbroken by these stories that are coming out and we continue to pray for the victims, and certainly call for healing in these situations,” Melfi said, directing further comment to the diocese.

Olean Times Herald archives show Fimbel became pastor of Sacred Heart on June 27, 1976. It was announced a year and a half later, Dec. 17, 1977, that Fimbel would be transferred to Frewsburg to become pastor of Our Lady of Victory.

According to his obituary published in The Buffalo News, Fimbel was born in Buffalo and served in 10 locations in the Buffalo area in addition to serving at Sacred Heart.

Fimbel was also a graduate of St. Bonaventure University, according to archived articles.

His case was one of more than 250 suits filed last week in New York state by Jeff Anderson & Associates, a Minnesota-based law firm, under the new “lookback” window established under the Child Victims Act, or CVA. The one-year opening gives sex abuse victims a chance to file formerly expired claims in civil court.

Fimbel was one of 14 priests accused by the firm last week as a sex abuser who had not been previously named by the diocese.

Another former Sacred Heart priest accused of abuse was the Rev. Norbert Orsolits, who kicked off Western New York’s priest sexual abuse scandal in 2018 by admitting to The Buffalo News that he sexually abused “probably dozens” of teenage boys during the late 1970s and early 1980s.

Orsolits became pastor in Portville in 1983 after serving as associate pastor at St. Mary of the Angels Church in Olean. He also taught at Archbishop Walsh High School.

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Father hopes for justice as Cardinal Pell waits on appeal verdict

PARIS (FRANCE)
Agence France-Presse

August 19, 2019

The father of one of the victims of jailed Australian Cardinal George Pell said Monday he hoped “justice would prevail” as a court prepared to rule on an appeal against his conviction of child sex abuse crimes.

Pell, the former Vatican number three, is appealing against his conviction on five counts of sexually abusing two 13-year-old choirboys in the 1990s, with a court due to hand down its decision on Wednesday.

The case against the 78-year-old relied solely on the testimony of Pell’s surviving victim, as the other — who never spoke of the abuse — died of a drug overdose in 2014. Neither man can be identified for legal reasons.

Lawyer Lisa Flynn, who represents the dead man’s father, said he was anxious about the judgment, as were victims of child sexual abuse worldwide.

She told AFP they were waiting with “bated breath” ahead of “one of the most significant legal decisions in recent history”.

“He just wants closure so he can try to get on with his life and stop thinking about it every single day,” she said of her client.

“He has expressed that he would like to see justice prevail and George Pell kept behind bars where he cannot prey on more unsuspecting children.”

Pell was convicted in December of sexually abusing the two boys in 1996 and 1997 at St Patrick’s Cathedral shortly after he was appointed Archbishop of Melbourne.

The prosecution called the surviving victim “a witness of truth” and defended the jury verdict as “unimpeachable”.

A three-judge panel deliberating since a two-day appeal hearing in early June can either dismiss the appeal, order a retrial or quash his conviction.

Lawyers for Pell, the most senior Catholic church figure to be convicted of child sex abuse, branded the verdict “a disturbing failure of our jury system”.

They raised 13 objections to his convictions including that it was “physically impossible” for the cleric to have committed the crimes in a crowded cathedral.

If the judges accept these arguments and rule in Pell’s favour, he could walk free immediately.

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St. Louis County priest already deemed sexually violent sentenced again

ST. LOUIS (MO)
Associated Press

August 18, 2019

The first U.S. Catholic priest to be labeled sexually violent when he was convicted in Illinois has been sentenced to 10 years in prison for abusing two boys in Missouri in the 1990s.

Fred Lenczycki pleaded guilty in May to two counts of sodomy for abuse that occurred at a St. Louis County parish in Bridgeton. Lenczycki is 75.

Lenczycki was removed from the ministry in 2002, when he was charged with abusing three boys in the 1980s in Illinois. He pleaded guilty in 2004 and was sentenced to five years in prison.

In 2008, he was labeled sexually violent under Illinois’ Sexually Violent Persons Commitment Act. Church and court files show that Lenczycki has admitted abusing up to 30 boys in Illinois, Missouri and California over 25 years.

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Things Were Simpler Then

Vanishing Predators blog

August 19, 2019

By Daniel Carlson

Growing up, I had the immense good fortune to spend a great deal of time at the home of my grandparents. While each of them influenced me in very powerful and positive ways, it was my grandmother who guided me in the world of the Catholic Church. An unwavering example of faith and devotion, it was she who introduced me to that important part of my life.

Through her, I learned the language and rituals of my religion … prayer … regular confessions … the Rosary … Stations of the Cross … Holy Days of Obligation … and, for those who remember the “old” days … no meat on Friday … no such thing as Saturday Mass … and, of course, if receiving Communion on Sunday, nothing to eat after midnight on Saturday.

Today, though, living the Catholic religion requires much more than simple knowledge of historic liturgical rituals and prayers. Instead, a modern working vocabulary for the faithful has been expanded to include terms like … credibly accused … statute of limitations … laicization …and mandatory reporting. And, of course, if you are a parishioner interested in volunteering in any capacity, make sure you have completed your Safe Environment training.

Clearly, things have changed in the Catholic Church, and the tumult continues. In New York State, for example, the newly enacted Child Victims Act extended the statute of limitations for future acts of child sex abuse, while providing a one-year “look back” window during which charges can be brought regardless of when the abuse occurred. This new legislation, which went into effect on August 14, is expected to result in hundreds of new lawsuits against the Catholic Church and other entities in New York.

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The reader from Friday writes back

Patheos blog

August 19, 2019

By Mark Shea

They say:

Thank you for getting back to me with this reply. Although I appreciate all of it, two things in it stand out in particular:

While the ChurchMilitant crowd does call out sin in the hierarchy, it fundamentally has a false view that the problem can be fixed by replacing everyone without conservative views or who is gay. So many of those implicated in the abuse crises as enabling abusers, like the Diocese of Lincoln or Cardinal Hoyos, were theologically Orthodox and defenders of the Latin Mass.CM and others in that crowd are, in their own way, covering up the problem by trying to pin everything on one side of the church.

Precisely. Recently, news broke that the Trad priest who happens to be Michael Voris’ priest not only was accused of abuse and removed from his duties but he was co-founder of a group that helped priests accused of abuse under the radar, including priests who had confessed to abuse.
Instead of his customary railing at the evil corrupt Church of Damn Libruls, Voris’ response has been to do nothing but instruct Premium Subscribers that Fr. Perrone categorically denies the charges.

How does Voris Just Know the priest is innocent? Well, he’s a Traditional priest, of course.

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School districts face sex abuse claims under Child Victims Act

ALBANY ⁠(NY)
Times Union

August 19, 2019

By Rachel Silberstein

A female gym teacher who allegedly groomed and sexually abused a 13-year-old girl at a western New York middle school in the 1970s gained access to the pupil by visiting her home to offer comfort when the girl’s mother died.

A former science teacher at Buffalo Public Schools is accused of harassing, exposing, and molesting a male student approximately five days a week over the course of two years in the 1980s when the teen was 14 and 15. He was placed in the alleged pedophile’s care for study hall, class, tutoring, after-school activities, and summer school, according to court documents.

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Face facts, says LCWR president: Sisters have been part of Catholic Church sexual abuse scandal

SCOTTSDALE (AZ)
National Catholic Reporter

August 16, 2019

By Dan Stockman

Catholic sisters must face the reality that they have also been part of the sexual abuse scandal in the church, said the president of the leadership conference representing most women religious in the United States.

Holy Cross Sr. Sharlet Wagner, the 2018-2019 president of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious (LCWR), spoke on the issue in her Aug. 15 presidential address at the organization’s annual assembly, which drew nearly 700 women religious and guests to the Aug. 13-16 event.

“We have all been affected by this scandal. We have listened to the trauma of survivors, and we have felt shame for the church we love and outrage over the crimes committed,” Wagner told the assembly. “We have journeyed with our lay sisters and brothers as they have grappled with what it means to continue to be faithful in this moment in our church. And we have heard the stories of women religious, both in the United States and around the world, who have themselves been abused by clergy or other religious.”

But the guilt does not fall on priests and bishops alone, she said.

“It is a source of deep pain for us that in some instances, our own sisters have been perpetrators of the abuse,” she said. “This is a truth we must not attempt to avoid.”

Wagner said sisters must also recognize that abuse has made it difficult for many to see religious leaders as signs of hope.

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Why is the Child Victims Act ‘look-back’ window so short?

BUFFALO (NY)
Buffalo News

August 19, 2019

By Lou Michel and Qina Liu

Buffalo News readers have asked a number of questions since Wednesday, when the Child Victims Act opened a one-year window for filing civil lawsuits over old allegations of childhood sexual abuse.

The questions ranged from why the look-back is only a year long to why steps are not being taken against the Vatican.

To answer the questions, The News gathered information from attorneys representing people who say they were abused, attorneys representing priests accused of molesting children, the Buffalo Catholic Diocese and past stories in The News.

Digital Engagement Editor Qina Liu helped compile questions from readers.

From Tim Finnegan: Is the Catholic diocese performing better screening of new priests and all the old priests to make sure there are not any more child abusers in the Catholic diocese?

Answer: Don Blowey, safe environment coordinator for the Catholic Diocese of Buffalo, said the diocese conducts criminal background checks every six years on all adults, including active priests and deacons, who work with “youth or vulnerable persons” on behalf of the diocese. These checks involve national data sources and checks of where the person lived in the last seven years. Follow-up checks are conducted on a quarterly basis.

Each month, the diocese sends a list of all new employees or volunteers who work with young people and vulnerable adults to New York State’s Sex Offender Registry, according to Blowey. That enables the diocese to determine if the individuals have been designated in any of the three offender classification levels.

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Child Victims Act tears open North Country’s history of sexual abuse

WESTPORT (NY)
North Country Public Radio

August 19, 2019

By Brian Mann

Lawsuits filed last week under the Child Victims Act claim children were targeted by abusers and pedophiles over a period of decades in dozens of communities across the North Country. The Boy Scouts are named in at least one of the suits, but most of the cases target the Roman Catholic Diocese of Ogdensburg.

More than 400 lawsuits were filed statewide last week under the Child Victims Act, after New York temporarily lifted the statute of limitations on sexual violence cases.

At a press conference in Watertown, attorney Taylor Stippel unveiled 14 new lawsuits against the Diocese of Ogdensburg.

Stippel said she and other attorneys are still trying to understand the scope of the sexual violence that happened here.

“Over one third of the list that the diocese has deemed as credibly accused [priests] are still alive,” said Stippel, with the firm Anderson Advocates. “We don’t know where they are. That’s a problem. That’s a public safety hazard.”

North Country Bishop Terry LaValley has officially identified 30 priests who face credible allegations of abuse – the most recent case nearly 20 years old. But Stippel says these lawsuits already name four clergy not on the official list.

“How many more survivors have come to the diocese with reports of what they suffered? How many perpetrators are not on that list?” Stippel said.

Stippel says one case filed last week identifies a priest, Father John Downs, still living and working in semi-retirement in Ogdensburg.

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August 18, 2019

Priest who starred in ‘The Exorcist’ accused of sexually abusing student in the 1980s

ROCHESTER (NY)
USA TODAY and Rochester Democrat and Chronicle

August 16, 2019

By Steve Orr, Rochester Democrat and Chronicle

Father Bill O’Malley, an outgoing Jesuit teacher who became a Rochester, New York, celebrity after a star turn in the supernatural film “The Exorcist,” has been accused of sexually abusing one of his students at McQuaid Jesuit High School three decades ago.

The Rev. William J. O’Malley S.J. joined the McQuaid faculty in 1965. By the time he left the Brighton school in the mid-1980s, he was one of the best-known clergy members in town.

He now lives, at age 87, in the Jesuit community at Fordham University in the Bronx. He is widely known not only for his Hollywood stint, but as the author of more than three dozen books and as a lively ambassador for the Jesuit order and Catholic faith.

Until last week, his reputation had been sullied only by his abrupt dismissal in 2012 from Fordham Prep, whose authorities told the New York Post that O’Malley’s old-school teaching style was too “abrasive.”

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Recovering and Recreating the Institutions We Need

UNITED STATES
The Catholic Thing (blog)

August 18, 2019

By Adam A.J. DeVille

Catholics today are caught between two understandable but equally incomplete approaches to the sex-abuse crisis. On the more “liberal” side, Massimo Faggioli has recently rightly written that in an age of profound corruption in the Church, we must resist the temptation of “institutional iconoclasm,” the mentality that leads some people to say “burn the whole thing down.” No serious Catholic can support that.

On the more “conservative” side, Bishop Robert Barron says something similar in Letter to a Suffering Church: A Bishop Speaks on the Sexual Abuse Crisis, which seems incapable of considering any sort of institutional change. This, too, is unworthy of support from Catholics who are truly serious about major and lasting reform.

What is good in both Faggioli and Barron is the awareness, as Faggioli acknowledges, that “we keep institutions because institutions keep us. On the other hand, institutions need change.” But which institutions? What changes? What if those institutions, even dramatically reformed, prove insufficient to our present moment? Surely there is room in the Church today to contemplate the recovery of institutions that were once common but have, often for no good reason, fallen into desuetude?

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OKC man shares story about priest’s abuse

OKLAHAMA CITY (OK)
The Oklahoman

August 18, 2019

By Carla Hinton

The “monster” that haunted Nick Yascavage for decades didn’t come creeping out from under his childhood bed.

It wasn’t some faceless stranger that his parents had warned him about.

The Oklahoma City man’s nightmare walked into his parents’ Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, home one afternoon as a revered guest of honor.

The “monster” came wearing a clerical collar and eventually asked his mother and father if 12-year-old Nicky wanted to go with him to get ice cream

This was no troll or bogeyman. The nightmare was real.

It was the new priest in town.

Yascavage, 53, has spent more than 40 years trying to repress the memories of his encounters with the man who started out as his youth pastor only to turn into his abuser.

The U.S. Army veteran and one-time restaurateur told only one person, a spouse, about the experiences that tainted his childhood.

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Opinion: Why my heart and soul remain Catholic

ARIZONA
Arizona Daily Star via Tucson.com

August 18, 2019

By Renée Schafer Horton

The following column is the opinion and analysis of the writer.

Last August in this space, I wrote about the Pennsylvania grand jury report detailing Catholic clergy abuse against more than 1,000 children. The report, which covered a 70-year period ending in the early 2000s, provided evidence that bishops had hid the abuse over decades and that some recently retired bishops knew about this duplicity.

Nearly 17 years after Catholics had been assured our house was swept clean, we discovered that the system that hid abuse hadn’t actually changed. It was a come-to-Jesus moment for many Catholics and I wrote that the only way to prod the U.S. Catholic Conference of Bishops to get their act together was to hold back donations.

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Defrocked Irish American bishop named in ground-breaking child abuse lawsuits

UNITED STATES
Irish Central

August 18, 2019

An Irish American bishop defrocked for sexual abuse has been named in several suits on the first day of a ground-breaking new child sex abuse law in New York.

August 15 was the first day of a one-year window which will allow victims of child sexual abuse to file lawsuits, regardless of age, including those victims whose cases had expired under the old statute of limitations. Over 400 lawsuits were filed in the state on the first day, reports the Catholic News Agency.

Sexual abuse victims in New York were previously required to file civil lawsuits by their 23rd birthdays. Under the Child Victims Act, which was approved in January, individuals now have until age 55, and for this first year of the law, they can be any age.

Former archbishop Theodore E. McCarrick, who was defrocked earlier this year for sexual abuse, was named in a number of the suits.

The 89-year-old former cardinal and archbishop of Washington, was expelled from the priesthood in February this year, marking the first time a bishop has ever been defrocked in the history of the church.

McCarrick, who in 1990 was awarded the Ellis Island Hall of Fame membership in honor of his Irish immigrant roots, was defrocked, or laicized, from the Roman Catholic Church after being found guilty of decades of sexual abuse of minors and adult seminarians. According to Susan Gibbe, his former spokeswoman, McCarrick is currently living in a friary in Kansas.

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A year later, Pa. Senate still dodging grand jury findings on clergy abuse | Editorial

LEHIGH VALLEY (PA)
The Express-Times

August 18, 2019

One year after an investigating grand jury gave Pennsylvania legislators all the evidence they needed to update laws on child sexual abuse — in fact, Pennsylvania’s groundbreaking work led to reforms in other states, including New Jersey — the response in Harrisburg has been little more than “we’ll get to it.”

Someday.

The grand jury report identified more than 300 priests as sexual predators and thousands of victims. It spawned investigations by other states’ attorneys general and a probe by the U.S. Department of Justice.

Instead of acting to extend the legal redress of survivors who suffered at the hands of Catholic Church clergy throughout the state, as painstakingly detailed by the Pennsylvania grand jury, state Senate Republican leaders have balked at proposals to set up retroactive “windows,” which would allow long-ago victims to file civil claims in court.

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Your View by Allentown Catholic bishop: ‘We can never forget the victims, we can never erase the past’

ALLENTOWN (PA)
The Morning Call

August 18, 2019

By Bishop Alfred A. Schlert

The one-year anniversary of the Pennsylvania grand jury report on clergy sexual abuse provides an opportunity for me to report on what the Diocese of Allentown has done, and what we will continue to do, to prevent abuse and to keep children safe.

On this issue, we can never forget the victims, we can never erase the past, and we can never let down our guard.

We have taken many concrete actions during the past year, in addition to the robust prevention and safety programs we already have in place. My first priority is keeping our children safe.

The grand jury acknowledged in its report that much had changed for the better in the Catholic Church in the previous 15 years. Here’s a look at what we have done in the Diocese of Allentown over the past 12 months:

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Your View by Allentown Catholic bishop: ‘We can never forget the victims, we can never erase the past’

ALLENTOWN (PA)
The Morning Call

August 18, 2019

By Bishop Alfred A. Schlert

The one-year anniversary of the Pennsylvania grand jury report on clergy sexual abuse provides an opportunity for me to report on what the Diocese of Allentown has done, and what we will continue to do, to prevent abuse and to keep children safe.

On this issue, we can never forget the victims, we can never erase the past, and we can never let down our guard.

We have taken many concrete actions during the past year, in addition to the robust prevention and safety programs we already have in place. My first priority is keeping our children safe.

The grand jury acknowledged in its report that much had changed for the better in the Catholic Church in the previous 15 years. Here’s a look at what we have done in the Diocese of Allentown over the past 12 months:

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.

St. Louis County priest already deemed sexually violent sentenced again

CLAYTON (MO)
Associated Press via KSDK-TV (Channel 5)

August 18, 2019

Fred Lenczycki pleaded guilty in May to two counts of sodomy for abuse that occurred at a St. Louis County parish in Bridgeton.

The first U.S. Catholic priest to be labeled sexually violent when he was convicted in Illinois has been sentenced to 10 years in prison for abusing two boys in Missouri in the 1990s.

Fred Lenczycki pleaded guilty in May to two counts of sodomy for abuse that occurred at a St. Louis County parish in Bridgeton. Lenczycki is 75.

Lenczycki was removed from the ministry in 2002, when he was charged with abusing three boys in the 1980s in Illinois. He pleaded guilty in 2004 and was sentenced to five years in prison.

In 2008, he was labeled sexually violent under Illinois’ Sexually Violent Persons Commitment Act. Church and court files show that Lenczycki has admitted abusing up to 30 boys in Illinois, Missouri and California over 25 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.

St. Louis County priest already deemed sexually violent sentenced again

CLAYTON (MO)
Associated Press via KSDK-TV (Channel 5)

August 18, 2019

Fred Lenczycki pleaded guilty in May to two counts of sodomy for abuse that occurred at a St. Louis County parish in Bridgeton.

The first U.S. Catholic priest to be labeled sexually violent when he was convicted in Illinois has been sentenced to 10 years in prison for abusing two boys in Missouri in the 1990s.

Fred Lenczycki pleaded guilty in May to two counts of sodomy for abuse that occurred at a St. Louis County parish in Bridgeton. Lenczycki is 75.

Lenczycki was removed from the ministry in 2002, when he was charged with abusing three boys in the 1980s in Illinois. He pleaded guilty in 2004 and was sentenced to five years in prison.

In 2008, he was labeled sexually violent under Illinois’ Sexually Violent Persons Commitment Act. Church and court files show that Lenczycki has admitted abusing up to 30 boys in Illinois, Missouri and California over 25 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.

All San Diego diocesan employees meet to hear new steps in abuse fight

SAN DIEGO (CA)
Catholic News Service via Crux

August 18, 2019

By Aida Bustos

Bishop Robert W. McElroy of San Diego gathered all 2,500-plus diocesan employees for the first time in its history to announce an expansion of the fight against the sexual abuse of children not just within the local church but in the greater society.

U.S. Church reforms adopted in the early 2000s have contributed to a dramatic decline in cases of child abuse by clergy. The San Diego Diocese has not had a confirmed incident of sexual abuse of a minor by any of its priests in the past 20 years, records show.

But much more remains to be done to confront abuse, McElroy told the employees at the Aug. 13 meeting at the University of San Diego.

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All San Diego diocesan employees meet to hear new steps in abuse fight

SAN DIEGO (CA)
Catholic News Service via Crux

August 18, 2019

By Aida Bustos

Bishop Robert W. McElroy of San Diego gathered all 2,500-plus diocesan employees for the first time in its history to announce an expansion of the fight against the sexual abuse of children not just within the local church but in the greater society.

U.S. Church reforms adopted in the early 2000s have contributed to a dramatic decline in cases of child abuse by clergy. The San Diego Diocese has not had a confirmed incident of sexual abuse of a minor by any of its priests in the past 20 years, records show.

But much more remains to be done to confront abuse, McElroy told the employees at the Aug. 13 meeting at the University of San Diego.

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.

Local bishop stepping back from public appearances during sexual abuse lawsuit

CHARLESTON (SC)
WCIV-TV (ABC affiliate)

August 18, 2019

The bishop of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Charleston will be staying out of the public eye as a sexual abuse lawsuit is ongoing.

ABC News 4 has learned that Bishop Robert Guglielmone said in a letter to Diocese of Charleston churches that he will step back from public appearances until the lawsuit is settled.

More: Lawsuit accuses Charleston Catholic bishop of sex abuse in 1970s

In a letter to @DioceseChas churches, Bishop Robert Guglielmone says he’ll step back from public appearances until a lawsuit against him is settled. He’s accused of sexual abuse of a minor in NY. The bishop denies wrongdoing. @FOX24Charleston #chsnews

The lawsuit alleges that Guglielmone sexually abused a minor in the late 70s while he was a priest at St. Martin of Tours Catholic Church in Amityville, New York, according to the diocese.

He has denied what he calls “baseless” allegations, and is cooperating with an investigation requested by the Vatican, according to Charleston Diocese spokesperson Maria Aselage.

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Local bishop stepping back from public appearances during sexual abuse lawsuit

CHARLESTON (SC)
WCIV-TV (ABC affiliate)

August 18, 2019

The bishop of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Charleston will be staying out of the public eye as a sexual abuse lawsuit is ongoing.

ABC News 4 has learned that Bishop Robert Guglielmone said in a letter to Diocese of Charleston churches that he will step back from public appearances until the lawsuit is settled.

More: Lawsuit accuses Charleston Catholic bishop of sex abuse in 1970s

In a letter to @DioceseChas churches, Bishop Robert Guglielmone says he’ll step back from public appearances until a lawsuit against him is settled. He’s accused of sexual abuse of a minor in NY. The bishop denies wrongdoing. @FOX24Charleston #chsnews

The lawsuit alleges that Guglielmone sexually abused a minor in the late 70s while he was a priest at St. Martin of Tours Catholic Church in Amityville, New York, according to the diocese.

He has denied what he calls “baseless” allegations, and is cooperating with an investigation requested by the Vatican, according to Charleston Diocese spokesperson Maria Aselage.

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Retired Albany Bishop Hubbard says he has ‘never sexually abused anyone’

ALBANY (NY)
Catholic News Service via Crux

August 17, 2019

Retired Bishop Howard J. Hubbard of Albany said in a statement Aug. 16 he “never sexually abused anyone” and is taking a voluntary leave of absence from the Diocese of Albany to deal with the allegations.

The Evangelist, Albany’s diocesan newspaper, reported that a lawsuit filed Aug. 14 accuses Hubbard of sexually assaulting a 16-year-old in the late 1990s. The suit was filed the day New York state’s Child Victims Act went into effect.

The new law opens a yearlong “window” in the statute of limitations, allowing suits to be filed by victims alleging abuse by priests, church workers and employees of public schools, hospitals and other institutions no matter how long ago the alleged abuse occurred.

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.

Retired Albany Bishop Hubbard says he has ‘never sexually abused anyone’

ALBANY (NY)
Catholic News Service via Crux

August 17, 2019

Retired Bishop Howard J. Hubbard of Albany said in a statement Aug. 16 he “never sexually abused anyone” and is taking a voluntary leave of absence from the Diocese of Albany to deal with the allegations.

The Evangelist, Albany’s diocesan newspaper, reported that a lawsuit filed Aug. 14 accuses Hubbard of sexually assaulting a 16-year-old in the late 1990s. The suit was filed the day New York state’s Child Victims Act went into effect.

The new law opens a yearlong “window” in the statute of limitations, allowing suits to be filed by victims alleging abuse by priests, church workers and employees of public schools, hospitals and other institutions no matter how long ago the alleged abuse occurred.

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.

Before victims filed claims, some targets of abuse lawsuits moved to shield assets

ALBANY (NY)
Albany Times-Union

August 17, 2019

By Brendan J. Lyons

It could take years, and protracted legal battles, for victims of rape and sexual abuse to receive any compensation from the hundreds of lawsuits they began filing across the state last week against their alleged childhood predators or the organizations that employed them.

The lawsuits were among the first round of what are expected to be thousands of claims that will be filed in the coming year, after New York lifted its civil statute of limitations on sexual crimes and opened a one-year window for victims to sue those responsible.

The one-year period was enabled by the Child Victims Act, which was signed into law by Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo in February. Its ratification suddenly became a reality last November — after more than a decade of political gridlock in the state Legislature — when Democrats who long supported the measure seized control of the Senate chamber from Republicans.

That political shift also provided a months-long warning to abusers and the institutions that harbored them that the Democratic-controlled state Legislature may pass the measure, lowering a shield that had long protected the abusers from being sued for allegations dating back decades.

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.

Before victims filed claims, some targets of abuse lawsuits moved to shield assets

ALBANY (NY)
Albany Times-Union

August 17, 2019

By Brendan J. Lyons

It could take years, and protracted legal battles, for victims of rape and sexual abuse to receive any compensation from the hundreds of lawsuits they began filing across the state last week against their alleged childhood predators or the organizations that employed them.

The lawsuits were among the first round of what are expected to be thousands of claims that will be filed in the coming year, after New York lifted its civil statute of limitations on sexual crimes and opened a one-year window for victims to sue those responsible.

The one-year period was enabled by the Child Victims Act, which was signed into law by Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo in February. Its ratification suddenly became a reality last November — after more than a decade of political gridlock in the state Legislature — when Democrats who long supported the measure seized control of the Senate chamber from Republicans.

That political shift also provided a months-long warning to abusers and the institutions that harbored them that the Democratic-controlled state Legislature may pass the measure, lowering a shield that had long protected the abusers from being sued for allegations dating back decades.

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.

Religious leaders set to face punishment if they cover up child abuse

VICTORIA (AUSTRALIA)
1 News, TVNZ, New Zealand

August 18, 2019

Victoria’s premier says the culture of covering up child sexual abuse must end after Melbourne’s most senior Catholic said he’d rather go to jail than reveal if someone confessed to him.

Archbishop Peter Comensoli also said priests who hear confessions have a similar privileged relationship to journalists and their sources, or lawyers and their clients.

Victoria is introducing new laws making it mandatory for religious leaders to report allegations of child abuse, including if they’re made during confession.

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.

Religious leaders set to face punishment if they cover up child abuse

VICTORIA (AUSTRALIA)
1 News, TVNZ, New Zealand

August 18, 2019

Victoria’s premier says the culture of covering up child sexual abuse must end after Melbourne’s most senior Catholic said he’d rather go to jail than reveal if someone confessed to him.

Archbishop Peter Comensoli also said priests who hear confessions have a similar privileged relationship to journalists and their sources, or lawyers and their clients.

Victoria is introducing new laws making it mandatory for religious leaders to report allegations of child abuse, including if they’re made during confession.

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.

Abuse survivor Richard Jabara lashes Archbishop Peter Comensoli

AUSTRALIA
The Australian

August 18, 2019

By Rachel Baxendale

Child sex abuse survivor Richard Jabara was among 52 Catholic Church abuse survivors who lit up the In Good Faith Foundation’s switchboard with phone calls expressing their disgust earlier this month, after The Australian reported the Melbourne Archbishop Peter Comensoli had bought himself a country retreat with an indoor pool as the Church sacks dozens of people as part of his reform agenda.

The charity, which provides case management, advocacy and support services to those affected by institutional sexual abuse, received another flood of calls last week when Archbishop Comensoli told ABC radio he would sooner go to jail than comply with the Andrews government’s proposed law compelling priests to report evidence of abuse revealed in the confessional.

Archbishop Comensoli meanwhile maintains that he does not believe mandatory reporting of abuse and preservation of the sanctity of confession are mutually exclusive, and that he was “deeply hurt” by the reaction to his private purchase of the country property with money left to him by his parents.

Mr Jabara, who was raped as a 13-year-old by Catholic priest and serial child abuse Terrence Pidoto, said he was deeply disappointed in Archbishop Comensoli, who commenced his role just over a year ago.

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.

Abuse survivor Richard Jabara lashes Archbishop Peter Comensoli

AUSTRALIA
The Australian

August 18, 2019

By Rachel Baxendale

Child sex abuse survivor Richard Jabara was among 52 Catholic Church abuse survivors who lit up the In Good Faith Foundation’s switchboard with phone calls expressing their disgust earlier this month, after The Australian reported the Melbourne Archbishop Peter Comensoli had bought himself a country retreat with an indoor pool as the Church sacks dozens of people as part of his reform agenda.

The charity, which provides case management, advocacy and support services to those affected by institutional sexual abuse, received another flood of calls last week when Archbishop Comensoli told ABC radio he would sooner go to jail than comply with the Andrews government’s proposed law compelling priests to report evidence of abuse revealed in the confessional.

Archbishop Comensoli meanwhile maintains that he does not believe mandatory reporting of abuse and preservation of the sanctity of confession are mutually exclusive, and that he was “deeply hurt” by the reaction to his private purchase of the country property with money left to him by his parents.

Mr Jabara, who was raped as a 13-year-old by Catholic priest and serial child abuse Terrence Pidoto, said he was deeply disappointed in Archbishop Comensoli, who commenced his role just over a year ago.

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.

August 17, 2019

Priest Guilty Of Sex Abuse; List Of DC, Baltimore Accused Priests

WASHINGTON (DC)
Patch

August 17, 2019

By Deb Belt

A Catholic priest who served in both Maryland and Washington, D.C., was convicted Thursday of four counts of child sexual abuse against two children that happened on the grounds of his parish, Shrine of the Sacred Heart Parish in Northwest Washington. The Rev. Urbano Vazquez, 47, of Washington, D.C., committed the abuse from 2015 to 2017, prosecutors said. He was arrested in November 2018.

Father Vazquez served his diaconate internship at Our Lady of the Mountains Parish (Western Maryland) from 2013-2014 and later celebrated Mass there on a few occasions. He was on a list of Catholic priests credibly accused of sexual abuse against children that was released in late 2018, including the Baltimore archdiocese. (See below for a list of priests in both the Baltimore and Washington archdioceses who have been accused.)

The guilty verdicts were returned after a nine-day trial in the Superior Court of the District of Columbia. Vazquez will be sentenced on Nov. 22. The Archdiocese of Washington said Vasquez will have no authority to serve as a priest in the archdiocese; what happens to his ministry will be decided by his religious the Order of Friars Minor Capuchin.

Prosecutors said that between April 1, 2015 and May 31, 2015, Vazquez molested a 13-year-old girl while speaking with her in a parish office. In addition, between June 2016 and August 2017, Vazquez kissed and molested a second girl of 9 to 10 years old in various places on church grounds, including near the church confessionals. The jury also heard testimony from another teenage girl who Vazquez kissed in a church conference room.

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.

Priest Guilty Of Sex Abuse; List Of DC, Baltimore Accused Priests

WASHINGTON (DC)
Patch

August 17, 2019

By Deb Belt

A Catholic priest who served in both Maryland and Washington, D.C., was convicted Thursday of four counts of child sexual abuse against two children that happened on the grounds of his parish, Shrine of the Sacred Heart Parish in Northwest Washington. The Rev. Urbano Vazquez, 47, of Washington, D.C., committed the abuse from 2015 to 2017, prosecutors said. He was arrested in November 2018.

Father Vazquez served his diaconate internship at Our Lady of the Mountains Parish (Western Maryland) from 2013-2014 and later celebrated Mass there on a few occasions. He was on a list of Catholic priests credibly accused of sexual abuse against children that was released in late 2018, including the Baltimore archdiocese. (See below for a list of priests in both the Baltimore and Washington archdioceses who have been accused.)

The guilty verdicts were returned after a nine-day trial in the Superior Court of the District of Columbia. Vazquez will be sentenced on Nov. 22. The Archdiocese of Washington said Vasquez will have no authority to serve as a priest in the archdiocese; what happens to his ministry will be decided by his religious the Order of Friars Minor Capuchin.

Prosecutors said that between April 1, 2015 and May 31, 2015, Vazquez molested a 13-year-old girl while speaking with her in a parish office. In addition, between June 2016 and August 2017, Vazquez kissed and molested a second girl of 9 to 10 years old in various places on church grounds, including near the church confessionals. The jury also heard testimony from another teenage girl who Vazquez kissed in a church conference room.

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.

Why victims of clergy sex abuse embrace hope for justice even if lawmakers should fail to enact reforms

HARRISBURG (PA)
Patroit News

August 16, 2019

By Ivey DeJesus

A peculiar setting is shaping up in Pennsylvania that could pave the way for scores of people who were sexually abused as children to face their abuser in court even though their legal right has run out.

This week the state Superior Court denied a Catholic dioceses its petition seeking to have the court reverse a decision that allows a woman who was sexually abused by a priest more than 40 years ago the right to bring the alleged predator to court, even though the statute of limitations has long expired for her.

That decision comes ahead of what is expected to be a rancorous debate in the Legislature over several measures that would overhaul the statute of limitations.

Put in simple terms: Even if lawmakers fail to enact reforms (something it has done several times in recent years) victims locked out of the legal system could still have a pathway to justice under the Superior Court’s ruling.

“For the first time in a long time, we have an overwhelming sense of hope,” said Shaun Dougherty, who was sexually abused as a child by his priest in the Diocese of Altoona-Johnstown.

“We’ve had the door shut in our faces so many times, we’ve had the court door, the Senate door shut in our faces but we’ve been persistent. We never went away. It looks like the court door just opened up for us and it looks like the Senate door could be cracking.”

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.

Why victims of clergy sex abuse embrace hope for justice even if lawmakers should fail to enact reforms

HARRISBURG (PA)
Patroit News

August 16, 2019

By Ivey DeJesus

A peculiar setting is shaping up in Pennsylvania that could pave the way for scores of people who were sexually abused as children to face their abuser in court even though their legal right has run out.

This week the state Superior Court denied a Catholic dioceses its petition seeking to have the court reverse a decision that allows a woman who was sexually abused by a priest more than 40 years ago the right to bring the alleged predator to court, even though the statute of limitations has long expired for her.

That decision comes ahead of what is expected to be a rancorous debate in the Legislature over several measures that would overhaul the statute of limitations.

Put in simple terms: Even if lawmakers fail to enact reforms (something it has done several times in recent years) victims locked out of the legal system could still have a pathway to justice under the Superior Court’s ruling.

“For the first time in a long time, we have an overwhelming sense of hope,” said Shaun Dougherty, who was sexually abused as a child by his priest in the Diocese of Altoona-Johnstown.

“We’ve had the door shut in our faces so many times, we’ve had the court door, the Senate door shut in our faces but we’ve been persistent. We never went away. It looks like the court door just opened up for us and it looks like the Senate door could be cracking.”

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.

Corey Feldman Calls for Hollywood Sexual Abuse Victims to Support Bill to Change CA Statute Laws

LOS ANGELES (CA)
Hollywood Reporter

August 14, 2019

Corey Feldman is hoping to use his voice and celebrity status to help fellow victims of sexual abuse.

The actor, who serves as Child USA’s ambassador and has spoken out extensively about the alleged abuse he suffered as a child actor, is urging abuse victims in Hollywood to sign a letter that he will be sending on Thursday to the California Senate in relation to current laws about the state’s statute of limitations.

“I’m beyond elated that we have moved the needle to the point that this dream can finally become a reality,” Feldman, 48, says in a statement. “I’m so grateful to all the survivors who are working with Child USA and myself to bring closure and justice to so many lives that have been branded and tarnished at the hands of abusers. I know there is great power in numbers and with this bill, our voices can finally be heard as a unified force for justice.”

In January, California Assemblywoman Lorena Gonzalez reintroduced a bill “that would give victims more time to report an assault and create another tool in identifying sexual predators before they harm more children in the future,” according to a press release.

“Assembly Bill 218 would expand both the statute of limitations for the time given to victims of childhood sexual assault, from age 26 to age 40, and the period for delayed reasonable discovery from three to five years,” the press release states. “After enactment, the measure would also allow for a window of three years for the revival of past claims that might have expired due to the statute of limitations.”

Currently, the status of the bill is “In committee: Referred to APPR,” which is the Committee on Appropriations.

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.

Corey Feldman Calls for Hollywood Sexual Abuse Victims to Support Bill to Change CA Statute Laws

LOS ANGELES (CA)
Hollywood Reporter

August 14, 2019

Corey Feldman is hoping to use his voice and celebrity status to help fellow victims of sexual abuse.

The actor, who serves as Child USA’s ambassador and has spoken out extensively about the alleged abuse he suffered as a child actor, is urging abuse victims in Hollywood to sign a letter that he will be sending on Thursday to the California Senate in relation to current laws about the state’s statute of limitations.

“I’m beyond elated that we have moved the needle to the point that this dream can finally become a reality,” Feldman, 48, says in a statement. “I’m so grateful to all the survivors who are working with Child USA and myself to bring closure and justice to so many lives that have been branded and tarnished at the hands of abusers. I know there is great power in numbers and with this bill, our voices can finally be heard as a unified force for justice.”

In January, California Assemblywoman Lorena Gonzalez reintroduced a bill “that would give victims more time to report an assault and create another tool in identifying sexual predators before they harm more children in the future,” according to a press release.

“Assembly Bill 218 would expand both the statute of limitations for the time given to victims of childhood sexual assault, from age 26 to age 40, and the period for delayed reasonable discovery from three to five years,” the press release states. “After enactment, the measure would also allow for a window of three years for the revival of past claims that might have expired due to the statute of limitations.”

Currently, the status of the bill is “In committee: Referred to APPR,” which is the Committee on Appropriations.

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

The Diaconate and the Abuse Crisis

DENVER (CO)
National Catholic Register

August 17, 2019

By Robert Klesko

I have been thumbing through Dr. Adam DeVille’s book Everything Hidden Shall be Revealed about his proposed reforms for the Church in the face of the current abuse crisis. My perusal, and my recent experience at the Byzantine Catholic Seminary of Sts. Cyril and Methodius as a deacon formation student, has led me to see the vital importance for the Latin Church to quickly and thoroughly expand its understanding of the role of the diaconate in the hierarchy.

The recent resurfacing of the problem of clerical sexual abuse has two main elements — predatory abuse committed by priests and bishops and the failure of bishops to expose and eradicate such sinful conduct. In the midst of this disastrous formula, we need to consider the role of the deacon as an important “check and balance” within the Church’s hierarchy.

The West, if I may paint in broad strokes, has lost its bearings as to the role of the deacon in the Church. Many view his ministry as superfluous liturgically, as he has only a few functions at Mass. As such, he is a kind of glorified altar boy. Many parishes see a deacon only when one is assigned there temporarily on his way to the priesthood. Subsequently, the diaconate is seen as a “steppingstone” to the more exalted priesthood. The deacon in the West is assigned tasks that he historically never fulfilled, such as witnessing at weddings outside of the Mass and conducting baptisms. Such a view of the role of the deacon has led to many orthodox-minded priests and bishops to question if we need deacons at all. But the role of the deacon, handed down to us from Scripture and Apostolic tradition, is absolutely vital to the governance of the Church.

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

The Diaconate and the Abuse Crisis

DENVER (CO)
National Catholic Register

August 17, 2019

By Robert Klesko

I have been thumbing through Dr. Adam DeVille’s book Everything Hidden Shall be Revealed about his proposed reforms for the Church in the face of the current abuse crisis. My perusal, and my recent experience at the Byzantine Catholic Seminary of Sts. Cyril and Methodius as a deacon formation student, has led me to see the vital importance for the Latin Church to quickly and thoroughly expand its understanding of the role of the diaconate in the hierarchy.

The recent resurfacing of the problem of clerical sexual abuse has two main elements — predatory abuse committed by priests and bishops and the failure of bishops to expose and eradicate such sinful conduct. In the midst of this disastrous formula, we need to consider the role of the deacon as an important “check and balance” within the Church’s hierarchy.

The West, if I may paint in broad strokes, has lost its bearings as to the role of the deacon in the Church. Many view his ministry as superfluous liturgically, as he has only a few functions at Mass. As such, he is a kind of glorified altar boy. Many parishes see a deacon only when one is assigned there temporarily on his way to the priesthood. Subsequently, the diaconate is seen as a “steppingstone” to the more exalted priesthood. The deacon in the West is assigned tasks that he historically never fulfilled, such as witnessing at weddings outside of the Mass and conducting baptisms. Such a view of the role of the deacon has led to many orthodox-minded priests and bishops to question if we need deacons at all. But the role of the deacon, handed down to us from Scripture and Apostolic tradition, is absolutely vital to the governance of the Church.

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

Diocese of Scranton launches investigation into national shrine rector Rossi

DENVER (CO)
Catholic News Agency

August 16, 2019

By Ed Condon

The Diocese of Scranton has begun an investigation into allegations of misconduct on the part of the rector of the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception in Washington, D.C.

“Bishop Joseph Bambera, Bishop of the Diocese of Scranton, has commenced the process of launching a full forensic investigation into the concerns that have been raised,” about Msgr. Walter Rossi, the diocese told CNA Aug. 14.

“Approximately one year ago, concerns were raised in the public sector regarding Monsignor Walter Rossi, a priest who was incardinated in the Diocese of Scranton but who has served more than 20 years at the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception in Washington, D.C.”

“The Diocese of Scranton referred those initial concerns to the Archdiocese of Washington, which investigated certain specific allegations and determined them to be unfounded,” the diocese added.

“Additional concerns have now surfaced, however, requiring a broadened investigation.”

“Bishop Bambera has spoken with Archbishop Wilton Gregory and they have agreed that the Diocese of Scranton and Archdiocese of Washington will work jointly and cooperatively on undertaking a comprehensive investigation,” the statement concluded.

Concerns were raised about Rossi to Archbishop Gregory Tuesday night, during a question-and-answer session at a Theology on Tap, held at the Public Bar Live in the Dupont area of Washington. The event was broadcast live on Facebook.

During that session, Gregory called for an independent, forensic investigation of some allegations against Rossi.

In the first question from the floor at the Aug. 13 event, Gregory was asked about Rossi, who has been the subject of media reports and public speculation in the last year.

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

Diocese of Scranton launches investigation into national shrine rector Rossi

DENVER (CO)
Catholic News Agency

August 16, 2019

By Ed Condon

The Diocese of Scranton has begun an investigation into allegations of misconduct on the part of the rector of the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception in Washington, D.C.

“Bishop Joseph Bambera, Bishop of the Diocese of Scranton, has commenced the process of launching a full forensic investigation into the concerns that have been raised,” about Msgr. Walter Rossi, the diocese told CNA Aug. 14.

“Approximately one year ago, concerns were raised in the public sector regarding Monsignor Walter Rossi, a priest who was incardinated in the Diocese of Scranton but who has served more than 20 years at the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception in Washington, D.C.”

“The Diocese of Scranton referred those initial concerns to the Archdiocese of Washington, which investigated certain specific allegations and determined them to be unfounded,” the diocese added.

“Additional concerns have now surfaced, however, requiring a broadened investigation.”

“Bishop Bambera has spoken with Archbishop Wilton Gregory and they have agreed that the Diocese of Scranton and Archdiocese of Washington will work jointly and cooperatively on undertaking a comprehensive investigation,” the statement concluded.

Concerns were raised about Rossi to Archbishop Gregory Tuesday night, during a question-and-answer session at a Theology on Tap, held at the Public Bar Live in the Dupont area of Washington. The event was broadcast live on Facebook.

During that session, Gregory called for an independent, forensic investigation of some allegations against Rossi.

In the first question from the floor at the Aug. 13 event, Gregory was asked about Rossi, who has been the subject of media reports and public speculation in the last year.

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.

Does Catholic Church have bigger sex abuse problem than other religions?

BUFFALO (NY)
Buffalo News

August 16, 2019

By Dan Herbeck

There were 105 Child Victims Act lawsuits against religious organizations in Western New York in the first two days those cases could be filed.

But only two of them targeted religious organizations that are not Catholic.

One lawsuit was filed against a Lutheran organization and a former Lutheran religion teacher who allegedly raped and molested a 13-year-old girl at First Trinity Lutheran Church in the Town of Tonawanda from 1978 until 1981. The other was filed against Buffalo’s Temple Beth Zion, alleging that a Hebrew tutor there repeatedly molested a 12-year-old female student during a nine-month period in 1970.

Ninety-eight percent of the 105 lawsuits against religious organizations in five Western New York counties named as defendants the Catholic Diocese of Buffalo, priests and other individuals and institutions associated with the diocese.

Despite that, Nora Kovach, 54, who accused her former Lutheran religious education teacher, Bruce Arlen Connolly, in her lawsuit, said her case shows that child sexual abuse is not just a problem in the Catholic Church.

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Let the handlers of predatory priests pay in full

HUDSON (N Y)
Register Star

August 16, 2019

Priests are supposed to offer spiritual comfort to adults and counsel young people on the values they will need later in life. They are not supposed to be sexual predators taking advantage of children.

That’s what makes the release of a list of alleged pedophile priests from this area, including one formerly of the Sacred Heart Church in Cairo, a tragedy and a disgrace. The priests were named in lawsuits filed against the Albany Diocese by alleged sexual abuse victims under the Child Victims Act.

It’s an offensive litany of accusations, both legally and morally. Father Sean McMahon, a priest from Ireland, was assigned to the Sacred Heart Church in Cairo. In 1984, according to the lawsuit against him, McMahon engaged in unpermitted sexual contact with an alleged victim who was 16 at the time. Details of the alleged sexual contact were not outlined in the court papers.

McMahon is the second priest from the Cairo area to be accused of sexually abusing a minor. Father Jeremiah Nunan was the former pastor of Sacred Heart Church in Cairo and Our Lady of Knock Mission in East Durham. Nunan was permanently barred from ministry June 30, 2018 by Bishop Edward B. Scharfenberger after the Albany Diocese Review Board ruled that he had sexually abused a minor in the early 1990s.

It’s horrifying to note that Nunan, McMahon and nearly two dozen other suspected priests in this region were continually moved from one parish assignment to another, always one step ahead of civil litigation or criminal prosecution or both.

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Sudden resignation of seminarian at Christ the King Seminary blindsides Buffalo Diocese

BUFFALO (NY)
WKBW TV

August 16, 2019

In the wake of more than 100 child sex abuse lawsuits filed under the Child Victims Act, a sudden departure is now blindsiding a Diocese already in crisis.

Stephen Parisi, a seminarian, is announcing his “immediate withdrawal” over what he calls, “alarming and problematic governance” of the Buffalo Diocese and Christ the King Seminary. Parisi served as Dean of Seminarians at Christ the King Seminary, a leadership role among the young men pursuing a vocation in the priesthood.

Parisi wrote a six page letter to Buffalo Bishop Richard Malone explaining why he left the seminary. While speaking to 7Eyewitness News, Parisi described an “unhealthy, hostile environemtn” at Christ the King in East Aurora since he began there in January 2018.

“If you don’t go by what they tell you to do, or suggest that you do, you’re told that you can be dismissed. You’re reminded you can be dismissed for any reason at any time,” Parisi said.

The “difficult year,” as Parisi calls it, started last September when Father Joe Gatto was placed on leave last September from the seminary after three allegations of sexual misconduct.

“People were trying to climb to the top…there was really no clear organization chart for the Seminary. It was very chaotic.”

Not only did he call for Bishop Richard Malone to resign: “We need change. We need somebody to come in and clean house. We need what the church terms as an apostolic investigation of this diocese.”

But he also is asking parishioners to take action. “This culture of blackmail and hypocrisy within the clergy and the hierarchy is so deep, it is so entrenched. The only way for the church to survive is for good and honest lay people to reclaim their church and the first step is to stop putting money in the collection basket.”

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Court allows lawsuit against diocese

ALTOONA (PA)
Altoona Mirror

AUG 16, 2019

By Russ O’Reilly

The Pennsylvania Superior Court has denied the Diocese of Altoona-Johnstown’s application for re-argument in the lawsuit of a woman who claims a pedophile priest consistently molested her in the 1970s and ’80s in Blair County.

Wednesday’s ruling reaffirming that Renee A. Rice can pursue her lawsuit against officials in the Altoona-Johnstown Roman Catholic Diocese reflects an evolving legal landscape, according to Rice’s attorney, Richard Serbin of the Janet, Janet & Suggs law firm.

“This decision confirms my position that the lawsuits I have recently filed in Dauphin and Centre counties will be able to go forward with the litigation process, allowing a jury to decide the factual questions raised,” Serbin stated in an email. “This is good news for many child sex abuse survivors.”

A day before the Superior Court’s decision on Rice’s case, Serbin filed two new lawsuits in Centre County against defendants including the Altoona-Johnstown Diocese stemming from the alleged abuse of two boys by a Jesuit seminarian decades ago.

Those lawsuits are filed on behalf of two accusers who attended the Our Lady of Victory Catholic Church, where the seminarian repeatedly sexually assaulted both boys and raped one of them in the early 1970s. One of the two took his own life when he was 32.

In another lawsuit Serbin filed in Dauphin County against the Catholic Diocese of Harrisburg and some of its officials, a man, 67, claims he was raped by two priests from the Diocese of Harrisburg decades ago beginning when he was 9. The statute of limitations has long expired for him.

Those lawsuits, with Rice’s at the forefront, focus not so much on the sexual abuse but rather the failure on the part of the dioceses to fulfill obligations to active members of parish churches.

Rice’s case was previously dismissed by a Blair County judge on the grounds that the statute of limitations had expired.

But on June 11, a state Superior Court panel reinstated the lawsuit against the diocese.

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The Pa. grand jury report on Catholic abuse inspired new laws nationwide. So why didn’t it happen in Pennsylvania?

PHILADELPHIA (PA)
The Washington Post

August 14, 2019

By Julie Zauzmer

A year ago, Pennsylvania’s grand jury report on sexual abuse committed by Catholic clergy landed with 800 pages of devastating detail and a worldwide impact.

The report led to arrests of priests in Michigan, protests in Maryland, the ouster of a cardinal in Washington, sweeping new legislation in New York, and even new policies at the Vatican.

Yet what did not happen was the one thing that the grand jurors actually called for: legislative action in Pennsylvania.

“It’s just one of the ugliest situations I have ever seen,” said Frances Unglo-Samber, an activist for survivors of clergy abuse. She attended rallies and pleaded with state lawmakers to pass legislation after the grand jury report, which documented abuse of more than 1,000 children by 300 named priests, was released last August.

And then, at the last minute, the reform effort fell apart. The state wouldn’t take the actions recommended by the grand jury. Pennsylvania wouldn’t get rid of the criminal statute of limitations for child sexual abuse or open a window so that victims could bring civil suits against past abusers and the institutions that protected them.

“It’s changed in other states,” said Unglo-Samber, whose brother killed himself after finally disclosing that he had been raped by their childhood priest. “How could it not change in Pennsylvania?”

Marci Hamilton, who tracks legislation at the Philadelphia-based nonprofit Child USA, called the past year “an absolutely banner year for statute-of-limitation reform” nationwide, largely propelled by the Pennsylvania grand jury report. “We had a tipping point. … The way that the world and the other states responded was, finally, almost purely pro-victim,” Hamilton said.

Twenty states and the District of Columbia passed laws extending or eliminating their statutes of limitations for child sexual abuse or allowing prior victims to sue, Hamilton said. In New York, the legislature granted a window for lawsuits that opens Wednesday; the state expects a flood of litigation.

Meanwhile, change in Pennsylvania sputtered — a cautionary tale that what works in some states may fail in others. The difference, advocates maintain, often comes down to which party dominates the state legislature.

“In states that are controlled by Republicans, it’s very hard to get around the bishops and the insurance industry,” Hamilton said. “No one knows more about [child sexual abuse] than law enforcement in the state of Pennsylvania, and quite amazingly, that has not moved the staunch Catholic lawmakers who simply are not going to stop protecting their church against lawsuits.”

That’s not to say that Republican-controlled legislatures won’t take action on child sexual abuse. Of the 21 jurisdictions that passed bills changing their statutes of limitations in 2019, nine have Republican-controlled legislatures, and eight have Democratic-controlled legislatures, according to information from Child USA and the National Conference of State Legislatures. (The rest have split legislatures or, in the case of Nebraska, nonpartisan lawmakers.)

But the Democratic-led legislatures tended to take more sweeping steps. New Jersey opened a two-year window for any victim to sue and extended the civil statute for future cases to age 55 or seven years after the victim comes forward, whichever is later. Rhode Island made its new, lengthy statute of limitations apply retroactively to old claims against abusers. Vermont went even further, reviving all expired claims against abusers and institutions such as churches. Vermont also got rid of its criminal statute of limitations entirely for many child sexual abuse crimes, as did Washington state, the District and Republican-led Montana.

The steps taken in some Republican-controlled states were more modest: Alabama gave victims up to age 25 to sue, and Montana up to 27; Arizona gave them up to 30 as well as a 19-month window for old cases; Tennessee gave them up to 33.

Republican-led Florida and Mississippi legislatures also considered bills and did not pass them, like Pennsylvania — and like Democratic-led Oregon.

In Pennsylvania, the lobbying effort against the bill was intense. While lobbying spending on specific issues is hard to track in the state, two law firms released a report showing the Catholic Church spent more than $700,000 in Pennsylvania in 2018, more in just one year than it spent in a seven-year period in New Jersey, Massachusetts and several other states.

“The church, every step of the way, has refused to reform and has taken the most cynical path each time,” said Josh Shapiro, the Democratic state attorney general whose office released the grand jury report.

Leaders of Pennsylvania dioceses have expressed their desire to cooperate with law enforcement but have also fought in court, including battling to keep some of the priests’ names in the grand jury report sealed.

Republican state senators said they worried lawsuits would bankrupt churches and raised questions about whether cases could be tried fairly after such a long time. With the clock ticking down to the end of the 2018 legislative session, Senate President Pro Tempore Joe Scarnati proposed allowing suits against individuals but not against institutions. Democrats cried foul. The night ended, in the wee hours, with no bill at all.

Scarnati did not agree to an interview but said in a statement that he was “committed to working with my colleagues to address” this year’s new bills on child sexual abuse. He pointed out that Pennsylvania dioceses have been hearing victims’ cases and doling out payments through their own victim compensation funds, outside of the court system. “Financial assistance cannot change the past, but will aid victims as they attempt to move forward,” Scarnati wrote.

The New York Times reported that several of Scarnati’s former staff members and his chief of staff’s wife work for the lobbying firm representing the Catholic Church in Pennsylvania.

The grand jury report, which examined six of the eight dioceses in the state, wasn’t the first time that Pennsylvania scrutinized the Catholic Church. Both the Archdiocese of Philadelphia and the Diocese of Altoona-Johnstown were studied in earlier, similar grand jury reports. Philadelphia was the site of the first criminal trial in the nation holding a priest responsible for his oversight of other priests who abused children.

The nation had also known for at least 16 years, since the Boston Globe’s 2002 expose revealed the scandal to the country, that Catholic clergy had committed crimes against children.

But this time was different, sparking comprehensive investigations across the country. Attorneys general in 20 states and the District of Columbia started their own probes, by Hamilton’s count. They set about obtaining secret archives in dioceses’ offices that they had never pursued before. They set up hotlines for victims to call and assigned staff to focus on cases.

Shapiro says he and his staff became consultants to prosecutors nationwide on how to investigate the Catholic Church — they talked to prosecutors from almost every state.

Catholic lay people, too, reacted differently. They threw together protests in at least half a dozen cities, calling for bishops to submit to similar civil investigations or resign. Washington’s Cardinal Donald Wuerl came under scrutiny for his prior actions in Pittsburgh described in the document and eventually stepped down.

The moment was right, for any number of reasons. The influence of the Catholic Church itself has declined precipitously since the 2002 scandal, as have the church’s membership numbers. And months after the Me Too movement began, the nation was ready to listen to victims.

Along with the revelation of sexual abuse committed by the now-defrocked cardinal Theodore McCarrick, the Pennsylvania report was a major factor pushing the Vatican to address the issue of sexual abuse in this past year. More than 15 years after the Boston Globe exposé, Pope Francis convened the first worldwide summit to address abuse. In the United States, bishops voted on a new plan to police themselves — which, like the Vatican’s actions, has been received by advocates with some skepticism. Many within the church continue to clamor for more-vigorous reforms.

But in Pennsylvania, lawmakers haven’t budged.

Shapiro said he still hopes that a bill can pass when lawmakers return to Harrisburg this fall. A similar version has been reintroduced to eliminate the criminal statute of limitations, which currently blocks cases in the state after the victim turns 50, younger than many victims who have come forward. Some lawmakers are also pursuing a constitutional amendment to allow for a window for victims to sue, which Shapiro said is unnecessary because he thinks it is already constitutional. Some Republicans said the window for old suits might violate the state’s constitution.

Between his meetings with state legislators, Shapiro has even more difficult conversations.

Last week, a man came in, scheduled for 15 minutes with the state’s attorney general. He sat at the wide wood conference table, gazing out at the children playing in the fountain by Philadelphia’s famous LOVE sculpture.

Sitting by the memorabilia in Shapiro’s office commemorating the state’s greatest joys and sorrows — a towel from the Eagles Super Bowl win right beside a memorial bracelet for the Pittsburgh synagogue shooting — the man spoke of his abuse. He talked of his drug use and his newfound sobriety, his criminal past and his determination to be a good husband and father.

He stayed more than an hour, just wanting to be heard.

In Harrisburg, state Rep. Mark Rozzi (D) knows something about how that man feels. His own abuse by a priest, when he was a child, has driven him to get statute-of-limitation reform passed. When Francis gathered bishops from across the globe to talk about abuse this year, Rozzi went, too, to speak to the Italian Parliament and U.S. Ambassador Callista Gingrich and the protesters in St. Peter’s Square.

“When we look back at Pennsylvania, is this going to be the grand jury report that finally gets victims on the path to justice?” he asks.

He lists the perpetrators who have victimized people in Pennsylvania: not just those 300 priests in the report and untold numbers more, but Amish and Mennonite abusers, schoolteachers, pediatricians, Boy Scout leaders, Penn State’s Jerry Sandusky, Bill Cosby. “We’ve been through so many of these infamous cases right here,” he says. “When is enough going to be enough?”

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August 16, 2019

Natrona County DA would handle clergy abuse prosecutions, sources say

CASPER (WY)
Star-Tribune

August 16, 2019

By Shane Sanderson and Seth Klamann

Any criminal prosecution resulting from a Cheyenne police investigation of decades-old clergy sex abuse would be handled by Natrona County District Attorney Dan Itzen, two people close to the case told the Star-Tribune.

The Cheyenne Police Department earlier this week announced it has recommended the Laramie County District Attorney’s Office charge two men, one of whom was a clergy member in the 1970s and ‘80s, when police say they sexually abused boys. Instead of making prosecuting decisions on the case, Laramie County District Attorney Leigh Anne Manlove has recused herself and asked Itzen to handle it, the Star-Tribune’s sources said.

The prosecutor has already started working the case, they said.

Itzen on Thursday said he had not been appointed special prosecutor in any jurisdiction outside Natrona County but declined to say if Manlove had asked him to take the case. Appointment of special prosecutor is done by a judge upon a district or county attorney’s request, and state statute allows for such appointment when a district attorney is “interested or refuses to act in a prosecution.”

Itzen on Friday morning declined to comment further. He noted that prosecutors in Wyoming are prohibited from releasing in advance of district court arraignments information that would identify victims or alleged perpetrators of sexual assault or abuse.

Manlove did not respond to messages left Thursday on voicemail accounts associated with her desk and cell phones requesting comment regarding the decision. She did not respond to a Friday morning voicemail left on her desk and cell phone stating the contents of this story and its anticipated publication time.

A Cheyenne police spokesman said Thursday prosecution of the case was outside his purview. Kevin Malatesta, the spokesman, declined to comment further.

The potential prosecution of the two men — one a clergyman, the other identified as an “altar server” at the time of the alleged abuse — comes after a 16-month investigation by Cheyenne police. While authorities have declined to name the two suspects, citing state statute, the lengthy inquiry that precipitated the affidavits being filed was an investigation into former Bishop Joseph Hart, who oversaw the Catholic church in Wyoming for 25 years.

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CVA lawsuits bring spotlight back to St. Colman’s Home

ALBANY (NY)
Albany Times Union

August 15, 2019

By Steve Hughes

Susanne Robertson was one of seven children. When their mother had a nervous breakdown in 1957, the children were sent to St. Colman’s Home, under the eyes of the Sisters of the Presentation of the Blessed Virgin Mary.

There, Robertson and two of her sisters say, one nun sexually abused them, and the order’s leaders permitted other adults to sexually abuse them and failed to notify authorities of the crimes.

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Child Victims Act suit names priest previously convicted of child sex abuse

BUFFALO (NY)
Buffalo News

August 14, 2019

By Aaron Besecker, Mary B. Pasciak, Matthew Spina, Dan Herbeck and Maki Becker

The only Buffalo Diocese priest in the past 50 years convicted of molesting a child in Western New York is named in a Child Victims Act lawsuit that accuses him of abusing a different child a decade before his arrest.

The Rev. Gerald Jasinski engaged in “unpermitted sexual contact” with an altar boy in the 1970s while he was a priest at St. John Gualbert Church in Cheektowaga, according to the lawsuit.

Jasinski was a priest at St. Mary of the Assumption Church in Lancaster when Wyoming County sheriff’s deputies arrested him June 7, 1986, on felony charges of first-degree sodomy and first-degree sexual abuse and a charge of unlawfully dealing with a child. He was accused of having sexual contact with two boys, ages 15 and 18, at a cabin in the Town of Sheldon.

Jasinski pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor charge of attempted sexual abuse and was sentenced to five years’ probation.

About 114 Child Victims Act lawsuits were filed Wednesday in five Western New York counties over old allegations of sexual abuse.

Nearly all of the people accused of molesting children were Catholic priests.

But the Boy Scouts of America, the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod, the East Aurora School District, the Jesuits and other organizations are also named as defendants. At least 105 of the lawsuits are against the Diocese of Buffalo.

A one-year “look-back” window opened at 12:01 a.m. Wednesday under a new state law that gives abuse victims a year to file claims that previously were prohibited from moving forward in court. Below is a look at some of the lawsuits filed.

The News does not identify sexual abuse victims without their consent.

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Four more allegations against former Cheyenne bishop made in past year

CASPER (WY)
Casper Star-Tribune

August 16, 2019

By Seth Klamann

Four more allegations of sexual abuse have been made against former Bishop Joseph Hart in the past year, including accusations that span his time in Wyoming, an official with the Diocese of Kansas City-St. Joseph said Thursday.

“The (Kansas City) diocese has turned over all information we have about allegations pertaining to Bishop Hart to the Diocese of Cheyenne, which I understand they have shared with local law enforcement in Cheyenne,” said Jack Smith, a spokesman for the Missouri diocese.

The allegations are the latest against Hart, who has been dogged by claims that he serially sexually abused boys for decades. At least three Wyoming men have accused Hart, while the Kansas City diocese has settled lawsuits with 10 other alleged victims over the years, Smith told the Star-Tribune.

The true number of Hart’s alleged victims is likely unknown. In addition to the 10 men in Kansas City who have settled, the four who have accused Hart in the past year, and the three identified in Wyoming, there are others who attorneys say have not come forward publicly.

Hart has consistently denied any allegations of sexual abuse or misconduct at any point. An attorney for Hart has not responded to repeated phone and email messages seeking comment.

Smith said the four new allegations came from either the alleged victims themselves or from their relatives. He said the abuse detailed in those allegations span Hart’s entire career, including his 25 years as the leader of the Catholic flock in Wyoming, but Smith said none of the alleged abuse occurred in Cheyenne and that the victims were Missouri residents.

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Conviction of DC predator priest leaves victim advocate hopeful

WASHINGTON (DC)
WTOP

August 16, 2019

By Nick Iannelli

The conviction of a D.C. priest on charges of child sex abuse left a local advocate impressed by the victims and hopeful for the future.

Becky Ianni, who leads a local chapter of the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, said that she was particularly struck by the fact that young children had the courage to face a courtroom full of people and talk about what happened to them.

One of those children is a 12-year-old girl, who said Urbano Vazquez abused her when she was 9.

“I was also abused at the age of 9, and I didn’t tell anyone until the age of 48,” Ianni said. “The fact that she told someone and was willing to testify kind of blew me away.”

A jury convicted Vazquez on Thursday of inappropriately touching two children — the 9-year-old girl and a 13-year-old girl — at the Shrine of the Sacred Heart in Northwest D.C. between 2015 and 2017, when he was an assistant pastor at the parish.

Both victims took the stand and answered questions during the trial.

“The average victim doesn’t come forward for decades,” Ianni said. “That gave me a lot of encouragement and a lot of hope that maybe things are changing, and maybe victims are knowing that if they come forward, they will be believed.”

Vazquez is scheduled to be sentenced in late November.

“I hope it’s a very harsh sentence,” said Ianni. “Not only is that what he deserves for what he’s done, but that’s going to be a deterrent to anybody else out there who is going to be thinking about harming a child.”

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Hundreds of New Child Sex Abuse Cases Are Flooding New York’s Courts

SAN FRANCISCO (CA)
Mother Jones

August 16, 2019

By Madison Pauley

When 52-year-old Michael Whalen stood up in front of the St. Louis Roman Catholic Church in downtown Buffalo, New York, in February 2018, to tell his story of being sexually abused by a priest as a teenager, it set off a Spotlight-style chain reaction. The accused priest, the Rev. Norbert F. Orsolits, told a news reporter who knocked on the door of his cottage that he had abused “probably dozens” of boys. Within weeks, the local Catholic bishop released a list of 42 clergy members from the Diocese of Buffalo who had been accused of abuse. Local journalists later identified 85. A federal grand jury reportedly started investigating a potential cover-up in the churches of western upstate New York.

But Whalen, who has spoken publicly about how the abuse had caused him to have problems with drugs, alcohol, and family relationships, could not sue the church for damages. New York state’s statute of limitations for a civil lawsuit had already expired. The church offered him less than $50,000 in a private settlement.

That changed yesterday, as New York’s Child Victims Act (CVA) went into effect, opening a one-year “lookback window” for survivors of child abuse across the state to file lawsuits against individuals and institutions, even if the statute of limitations had previously expired.

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U.S. should probe clergy abusers

NEW YORK (NY)
Newsday

August 15, 2019

By John Salveson

I grew up attending St. Dominic Church in Oyster Bay, and beginning in 1969, at age 13, I was sexually abused by the Rev. Robert Huneke. He had befriended me and my family soon after arriving at the parish. My parents had no idea I was being abused. I was terrified, confused and paralyzed. I never told them of the abuse while it happened. He counted on my silence, as he did on the silence of the other children he abused.

I have been a survivor of clergy child sex abuse for nearly four decades, and an advocate for victims for 30 years. This summer marks an important anniversary for me: the first public disclosure of my abuse. Thirty years ago, I stood outside St. Patrick’s Church in Huntington after the 9 a.m. Mass. My father, brothers and I handed out copies of a letter to parishioners telling them I was abused by their parish priest, Huneke, and that I had told Bishop John McGann of the abuse nine years earlier. During those nine years, McGann moved the priest from parish to parish and school to school, giving him unfettered access to additional targets.

Our actions embarrassed the Diocese of Rockville Centre into removing my predator from active service as a priest. After he left the diocese, he had access to children as a school guidance counselor for more than 10 years.

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Fr. Urbano Vazquez Found Guilty, SNAP Responds

ST. LOUIS (MO)
Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests

August 16, 2019

A priest who had been accused of abusing at least two young girls in Washington D.C. has been found guilty. We are grateful for this verdict and again applaud the two young victims who testified in open court last week.

The bravery and courage of these young survivors should not have been needed in the first place, but we are glad that their testimony helped secure a guilty verdict against Fr. Urbano Vazquez. We hope that this verdict will encourage anyone who may have seen or suspected crimes by Fr. Vazquez or any other priest, nun, deacon or bishop to stand up and speak out. As these two young survivors have shown, speaking out is hard but it can lead to justice and prevention.

We hope that when he is sentenced that Fr. Vazquez will be giving the maximum possible sentence. Being abused carries a life sentence of pain and trauma and so we hope that a harsh punishment given to Fr. Vazquez can deter other potential abusers from preying on children in the future.

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Danny Masterson, Church of Scientology sued for alleged rape cover-up, stalking

NEW YORK (NY)
Fox News

August 15, 2019

By Tyler McCarthy

Four women who previously accused actor Danny Masterson of rape have reportedly filed a lawsuit against him and also the Church of Scientology alleging that they were stalked and harassed by church members.

The women reported their cases to the LAPD in late 2016 and early 2017 regarding attacks that allegedly took place in the early 2000s. Masterson, who has denied the allegations several times and is a well-known Scientologist, is the subject of an ongoing investigation into the matter by police. However, his accusers are now taking legal action of their own.

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RICO suit against Buffalo diocese alleges conspiracy in sexual abuse cases

DENVER (CO)
Catholic News Agency

August 15, 2019

Twenty-two plaintiffs filed a lawsuit Aug. 14 against the Diocese of Buffalo, a province of the Society of Jesus, multiple priests, eight parishes, three high schools, a seminary, among others, alleging “a pattern of racketeering activity” that enabled and covered up clerical sexual abuse.

The lawsuit was filed on the first day of a legal “window” allowing for sexual abuse lawsuits to be filed in New York even after their civil statute of limitations had expired.

Among the plaintiffs, who are not named, are several alleged victims of clerical sexual abuse. The lawsuit alleges specific instances of sexual abuse by priests, and claims that the diocese failed in its duty of care towards children by allowing abusive priests to have contact with minors through parishes and schools.

The suit says that priests named in the lawsuit, “used their positions of authority and trust over Plaintiff(s) to sexually abuse and injure them.”

“All the Defendant(s) knew and/or reasonably should have known, and/or knowingly condoned, and/or covered up, the inappropriate and unlawful criminal conduct activities” of sexually abusing priests, the lawsuit says.

Calling the diocese and affiliated organizations an “association in fact” for the purposes of federal racketeering laws, the suit alleged “common purpose” in “harassing, threatening, extorting, and misleading victims of sexual abuse committed by priests” and of “misleading priests’ victims and the media” to prevent reporting or disclosure of sexual misconduct.

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