ABUSE TRACKER

PITTSBURGH (PA)
WTAE Action 4 News

August 29, 2019

[With diocesan statement]

The Rev. Robert Cedolia formerly served at Our Lady of Joy in Plum; now priest-administrator of parishes in Clairton, West Mifflin, Jefferson Hills, Pleasant Hills

Plum, Pa. – A longtime Catholic priest has been placed on leave due to an allegation that he sexually abused a minor while he was serving at a church in Plum in the 1990s, the Diocese of Pittsburgh said Thursday night.

The Rev. Robert Cedolia is priest-administrator of the parishes of Saint Clare in Clairton, Holy Spirit in West Mifflin, Saint Thomas a Becket in Jefferson Hills and Saint Elizabeth of Hungary in Pleasant Hills.

“The diocese is responding to an accusation made through the Independent Reconciliation and Compensation Program, stating that Father Cedolia allegedly sexually abused a minor in the 1990s while he served as pastor of Our Lady of Joy Parish in Holiday Park,” the diocese said in a written statement.

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PITTSBURGH (PA)
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

August 29, 2019

https://www.post-gazette.com/news/faith-religion/2019/08/29/Priest-administrator-of-several-Allegheny-County-parishes-accused-of-sexual-abuse-Father-Robert-Cedolia-pittsburgh-diocese/stories/201908290242

The priest-administrator of several Allegheny County parishes has been placed on administrative leave after he was accused of sexually abusing a minor in the 1990s, the Catholic Diocese of Pittsburgh announced Thursday.

The Rev. Robert Cedolia, priest-administrator of the parishes of Saint Clare in Clairton, Holy Spirit in West Mifflin, Saint Thomas A’Becket in Jefferson Hills and Saint Elizabeth of Hungary in Pleasant Hills, denies the allegation, the diocese said.

The accusation, which was made to the Independent Reconciliation and Compensation Program, alleged that Father Cedolia sexually abused a minor in the 1990s while he served as pastor of Our Lady of Joy Parish in Plum.

This is the first allegation involving Father Cedolia, who has been a priest in active ministry for 41 years, according to the diocese.

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GREEN BAY (WI)
Green Bay Press Gazette

August 29, 2019

By Haley BeMiller and Duke Behnke

Officials at a Wisconsin Catholic school insist they were unaware of sexual abuse allegations against a former teacher and Franciscan brother who came to the state after serving in Mississippi.

St. John Nepomucene Catholic School in Little Chute, which operates under the purview of the Catholic Diocese of Green Bay, issued a statement saying Paul West passed background checks before and after the school hired him in 1999.

Meanwhile, an Appleton-area police department confirmed it’s investigating West, and a group of clergy abuse survivors has called for a federal probe of allegations that he transported at least one child across state lines to sexually assault him.

The developments came in the wake of an investigation by The Associated Press published this week that revealed West, then a member of the Franklin-based Franciscan Friars of the Assumption, was accused of sexually and physically abusing three boys while they were students at St. Francis of Assisi School in Greenwood, Mississippi — including during summer trips to Wisconsin.

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RUTLAND (VT)
Rutland Herald

Aug 27, 2019

By Gordon Dritschilo

Law in effect since July 1

As the Diocese of Burlington compiled its report on priest sex abuse cases, the state was moving to give more of the victims a path to hold the priests and church accountable.

This year, the Legislature passed and Gov. Phil Scott signed, a bill eliminating the statute of limitations on civil actions dealing with childhood sexual abuse. The new law took effect July 1, and a Burlington attorney who has represented several victims in successful actions against the church says he has filed five new lawsuits that were barred under the previous statute of limitations, possibly with more to come.

“There are a number of people whose claims had been barred by the statute of limitations who now feel they can come forward,” said Jerome O’Neill, who has represented more than 50 survivors of priest sexual abuse, winning them a combined total of more than $30 million. “We look at each case carefully.”

O’Neill said the five were filed on the day the new law took effect. While the alleged incidents took place all over Vermont, the cases were filed in Chittenden County civil court. He said they remain under seal until the diocese files a response or a motion to dismiss is denied.

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MOOSIC (PA)
WNEP 16 ABC

August 28, 2019

By Dave Bohman

SCRANTON, Pa. — A lawsuit was filed Wednesday on behalf of four men who claim abuse at the hands of a former priest in the Diocese of Scranton.

The lawsuit names the Diocese of Scranton, Former Bishop James Timlin, and current Bishop Joseph Bambera.

Three of the men spoke out about the alleged sexual assaults against them. The men claiming to be victims say they are not after money.

At a news conference in downtown Scranton, they said they want to hold the diocese responsible for the suffering they say they endured as teenagers at the hands of Fr. Michael Pulicare.

Pulicare was the priest at what was St. Joseph’s Parish in the Minooka section of Scranton in the 1970s. Pulicare died in 1999.

In a grand jury report released last year, the state attorney general did not list Fr. Pulicare among the hundreds of accused priests.

Earlier this year, the Diocese of Scranton decided that people claiming to be victims of Fr. Pulicare are eligible to receive money from a diocese settlement fund.

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NEW ORLEANS (LA)
NOLA.com

Sept. 4, 2019

By Ramon Antonio Vargas

A man who last year opened up about being sexually molested in the 1970s by a Boy Scout leader, then again by a New Orleans child abuse detective he was relying upon for protection, sued the city for damages on Wednesday, claiming he tried reporting the abusive cop to other police officers years later but was turned away.

Richard Windmann’s suit in Orleans Parish Civil District Court also details how Stanley Burkhardt, the former detective who has since been convicted of child molestation and pornography-related crimes, allegedly used a teenage Windmann as “bait” when building cases against other suspected pedophiles.

The city may argue that Windmann’s suit was filed too late and that a statute of limitations prevents him from being able to seek damages. He testified about some of his claims against Burkhardt in a federal courtroom in North Carolina several years ago, meaning he can’t now claim he only recently remembered the abuse.

However, the 11-page suit argues that the failure of Burkhardt’s fellow officers to report him to federal investigators amounted to a cover-up and prevented the statute of limitations from taking effect. One of those officers had been married to Burkhardt at one point.

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[Ivo Scapolo will leave Chile after being named apostolic nuncio in Portugal]

SANTIAGO (CHILE)
Cooperativa.cl

August 29, 2019

Fue durante su misión en Santiago que surgieron acusaciones sobre encubrimiento de abusos y el nombramiento de algunos obispos chilenos cercanos a Karadima.

[It was during his mission in Santiago that accusations arose about covering up abuses and the appointment of some Chilean bishops close to Karadima.]

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KOZHIKODE (INDIA)
Deccan Chronicle

August 24, 2019

The CLA is conducting a survey across the state to collect the details of the victims.

The Catholic Laymen’s Association has come to the defence of Sr. Lucy who has been accused by the Church of defaming the nuns by allowing two journalists into the convent through the backdoor.

The CLA, a body of believers based here, said that many priests had defamed the Church by secretly entering the convents through the backdoor and sexually exploiting the nuns. Many nuns were murdered or had committed suicide. The CLA is conducting a survey across the state to collect the details of the victims.

According to CLA secretary M.L. George, Sr. Abhaya of Pius Tenth convent in Kottayam was a victim of the priests’ nocturnal visits. Two priests and a nun are still under a cloud, he said.

In another incident, the body of a pregnant nun was found in the well of a convent at Marakavu under the Mananthavadi diocese. Though the guilty priest is known to the Church, he is still active in the Church, Mr George pointed out.

The body of Sr. Jyothis of Kallurutty convent under the Thamarassery diocese was found in the well of the convent on November 20, 1998. “Though there was injury in her vagina as per the postmortem report, the case was hushed up by the local police,” Mr George said. The priest concerned was just transferred, he said.

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BUFFALO (NY)
WIVB TV

August 29, 2019

By Chris Horvatits

A new lawsuit filed against the Diocese of Buffalo is raising questions about the name of a parish hall at a church in Genesee County.

That hall is named after the priest who is accused of sexual abuse in a lawsuit filed by a name named Wayne Bortle.

“I think about what happened every single day,” Bortle told reporters Thursday.

The lawsuit is one of more than 100 that have been filed against the Catholic diocese since August 14th, the day the Child Victims Act went into effect. That state law opened up a one year look-back window for victims of sexual abuse to file lawsuits against their abusers, even if the claim was previously time-barred by statute of limitations.

Bortle claims he was abused by Rev. Robert Conlin in 1980, when Conlin served at St. Mary’s Church in Pavilion. Bortle was 15 years old at the time. The suit claims Conlin gained Bortle’s trust by inviting him to play basketball and play games in the rectory, taking him to high school sporting events, and inviting him to attend mass.

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FREIBURG (GERMANY)
Catholic News Service

August 29, 2019

Responding to criticism of notes he published about the roots of the clerical sexual abuse crisis, retired Pope Benedict XVI said the fact that the critiques barely mentioned God proved his point.

“As far as I can see, in most reactions to my contribution, God does not appear at all,” which is “exactly what I wanted to emphasize” as the central problem, he wrote in a brief note to Herder Korrespondenz, according to KNA, the German Catholic news agency.

In April, the retired pope sent a compilation of what he described as “some notes” on the crisis to Klerusblatt, a German-language Catholic monthly journal for clergy in Bavaria.

Seeing the crisis as rooted in the “egregious event” of the cultural and sexual revolution in the Western world in the 1960s and a collapse of belief in the existence and authority of absolute truth and God, the retired pope said the primary task at hand is to reassert the joyful truth of God’s existence and of the Church as holding the true deposit of faith.

Most of the criticism, though, focused on Pope Benedict seeming to blame the cultural and sexual revolution of the ‘60s, especially when many cases of priests sexually abusing children occurred before that time, even if the public found out only recently.

In the new note, Pope Benedict said the “the general deficit in the reception of my text” was a lack of willingness to engage with his contention that abuse is related to a lack of faith and strong morals.

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JACKSON (MS)
WJTV

August 29, 2019

The Survivors Network of those abused by priests– also known as “Snap”– will hold a protest against clergy abuse today in Jackson.

The group wants Jackson’s catholic bishop to remove a staff member. That person reportedly convinced an abused victim to sign a confidentiality clause, and help authorities pursue a cleric who allegedly abused three children.

The group is calling on the Us Attorney’s Office to look into these cases.

The protest will begin at 2:00 pm in front of the Catholic Diocese of Jackson.

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ROCHESTER (NY)
WHAM TV

August 29, 2019

Three more lawsuits are being filed in Monroe County on Thursday – two of which are against the Roman Catholic Diocese of Rochester – on behalf of child sex abuse victims.

The lawsuits are being filed under the Child Victims Act, which was signed into law earlier this year. The law allows victims to file lawsuits within a one-year window, regardless of when the alleged abuse took place.

Attorney Dan Ellis will discuss the lawsuits and the allegations against the institution at a news conference Thursday afternoon.

Nearly 50 cases have been filed in Monroe County alone since the one-year time period began on August 14.

Many of the victims in Monroe County allege abuse by clergy with the Roman Catholic Diocese of Rochester, spanning nearly four decades from 1959 until 1996. The diocese serves 12 counties in the Rochester area, including Monroe, Wayne, Livingston, Steuben, Ontario, Seneca, Cayuga, Tompkins, Schuyler, Chemung, Tioga, and Yates counties.

“As we have indicated in recent statements, the Diocese is reserving comment on lawsuits out of respect for the legal process and the complainants,” said Doug Mandelaro, Director of the Office of Stewardship & Communications for the Diocese of Rochester.

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BUFFALO (NY)
WKBW TV

August 29, 2019

By Eileen Buckley

Another victim will announce he is filing a claim against the Catholic Diocese of Buffalo and Mary Immaculate Parish in Pavilion, New York, formerly known as St. Mary’s, under the Child Victim’s Act.

Wayne Bortle, former Western New Yorker who now lives in New Hampshire, will appear Thursday afternoon in Buffalo with Boston-area attorney Mitchell Garabedian Thursday to announce his civil lawsuit. Bortle accuses Father Robert Conlin, now deceased, of sexually abusing him nearly 40-years ago.

But this is not the first time Bortle has appeared in Buffalo to make his claims. He first disclosed his allegations against Father Conlin in March of 2018.

Bortle’s lawsuit claims Father Conlin, then then pastor of St. Mary’s parish, abused him when he was 15 years old.

In 2018, standing outside the Catholic Diocese of Buffalo on Main Street, Bortle outlined his abuse claims telling a story of Father Conlin asking him to come over and watch television. His suit claims Conlin touched him.

“That night, when I came home and I told my mother, and I’m crying in my bed, she asked me what was wrong – what happened, and I said Father Conlin was touching me and she said what do you mean – and I said mom he was touching me everywhere and he wouldn’t stop,” recalled Bortle.

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

August 28, 2019

An Argentinian bishop who is actively being investigated for sexual abuse against at least two seminarians has been allowed to travel back to Rome due to his “daily work,” this despite being supposedly suspended from his job during the abuse investigation.

Once again, the Vatican is saying one thing publicly and doing the opposite behind closed doors. Bishop Gustavo Zanchetta was “suspended” from ministry in February when he was officially charged with sexual abuse. However, despite that suspension Vatican officials appear to be working to ensure that Bishop Zanchetta remains free, telling the court that the demands of his “daily work” require him to be in Rome instead of Argentina while the investigation progresses. This decision is at best questionable and at worst an opportunity for the Argentinian bishop to flee from justice, since there is no extradition treaty between the Vatican and Argentina.

If Pope Francis was serious about his “all-out battle” against cases of clergy abuse, he should order Bishop Zanchetta to remain in Argentina under the supervision of the criminal authorities while awaiting the outcome of the investigation. The Pope should also be personally visiting his home country and urging anyone with information concerning the allegations against Bishop Zanchetta, or any other church official, to come forward and contact law enforcement. He should not be telling the public that the Argentinian bishop is suspended but then submitting documentation to the court that Bishop Zanchetta’s “work” requires his presence in Rome.

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TAUNTON (MA)
Taunton Daily Gazette

August 29, 2019

By Kiernan Dunlop

When the Roman Catholic Diocese of Providence released its list of clergy “credibly accused” of sexually abusing minors in July, it had ripple effects that made their way to the Southcoast.

On Aug. 22, the President of Bristol Community College, Dr. Laura Douglas, sent an email to students alerting them to the existence of the list and stated, “Included in the list was former Bristol Community College faculty member, John Tormey, who is no longer employed by the college.”

Her email went on to say, “Unfortunately, there was no way that the college could have been aware of this allegation, which dates back to 1979, prior to the disclosure being published by the Diocese in the media. When information such as this comes to the college’s attention, it is our duty to address the matter immediately and be as transparent as possible.”

The email never specifies if Tormey resigned, was fired, or retired.

Bristol’s website lists Tormey, 77, as a Program Director of Thanatology, Gerontology, and Funeral Services and Professor of Psychology.

The college recognized Tormey for 40 years of service at a Recognition and Retirees Breakfast on May 11, 2018, according to an event description available on its website, which states that employees with 25 or more years of service are included in the Recognition Garden on the BCC Fall River Campus.

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KENYA
Standard Digital

August 28, 2019

By Weldon Kemboi

Police are holding the pastor of a Pentecostal church in Jomvu after reports he sexually assaulted four girls under his care.

The 43-year-old cleric was arrested on Sunday in Kanaona village where he had gone into hiding following the incidents between August 21 and 23.

A medical report from Port Reitz Hospital confirmed the children, aged between four and eight, had been sexually assaulted.

Police said the pastor was the children’s Sunday school teacher and also instructed them in martial arts.

The assault was discovered after a parent noticed her daughter walking with difficulty. Upon inquiry, the girl said she had been raped inside the church.

After medics confirmed that the girl had been assaulted, an investigation was conducted that revealed there were more victims.

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SCRANTON (PA)
Times Leader

August 28, 2019

By Patrick Kernan

Shortly after making a filing in Lackawanna County Court on Wednesday morning, Attorney Kevin Quinn, of Hourigan, Kluger & Quinn, spoke before reporters in a hotel conference room in downtown Scranton. His tone was a somber one, as he’s representing four men who claim they were repeatedly raped by a Roman Catholic priest decades ago.

What’s more, Quinn said, the Diocese of Scranton is directly responsible for decades of cover-ups, with both Bishops James Timlin and Joseph Bambera named as defendants in the suit.

Three of Quinn’s four clients — John Patchcoski, Jim Pliska and Mike Heil — appeared to speak with reporters Wednesday morning. The fourth man chose to file his suit anonymously for the protection of his family, and his suit is filed under the initials “M.A.” Each of the four men have their own, separate suits now ongoing in Lackawanna County.

The four men, who all grew up in the Minooka section of Scranton, each claim they are victims of the same priest: the late Father Michael Pulicare, who worked as the assistant pastor of St. Joseph’s Parish, which has since been renamed Divine Mercy at St. Joseph’s, on Davis Street, Scranton.

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KANSAS CITY (MO)
National Catholic Reporter

August 29, 2019

The response in certain circles to the Aug. 21 court decision upholding Cardinal George Pell’s conviction for sexually assaulting two choirboys in the 1990s was as swift as it was irrational.

Edward Peters, a canon lawyer who teaches at Detroit’s Sacred Heart Seminary, claimed in a tweet some 40 minutes after the verdict that “the testimony used to convict Thomas More was more plausible.”

Hours later, John Paul II biographer George Weigel questioned at First Things whether people would want to travel to Australia anymore because of “mob hysteria.” First Things editor Matthew Schmitz likened an aggrieved Pell to the suffering Christ.

In following days, Crux’s John Allen said the odds against Pell being guilty are “awfully long.” And the editor of Crisis Magazine, Michael Warren Davis, claimed it is “literally impossible” that Pell is guilty.

Even a cardinal joined in, with South Africa’s Wilfrid Napier taking to Twitter to characterize Weigel’s analysis as “daring,” although the cardinal later said he did not mean to praise the biographer’s point of view. (Nota bene, the Oxford English dictionary defines “daring” as “adventurous or audaciously bold.”)

Forgive the graphic nature of the following, but it serves to indicate the seriousness of what these men dismiss.

According to 12 members of a jury of his peers, and to two appeals judges who just upheld their verdict, Pell, as archbishop of Melbourne in 1996, orally raped one 13-year-old boy and indecently assaulted another. Later, he sought the same boys out again to grab at their genitals at church.

Excuse us — perhaps it comes from 35 years’ experience investigating such monstrous predators as Legionaries of Christ founder Marcial Maciel Degollado, who First Things defended for years, once calling him an “innocent and indeed holy person” — but we have some rather firm ideas about the consideration that should be accorded survivors of such despicable and cruel abuse.

In the interest of helping others care for victims — assuming, of course, that those defending the convicted cardinal have such intention — it seems only reasonable that basic courtesy is a minimum. When a person comes forward alleging that they have been abused by a minister in the Catholic Church — be it a priest, bishop, sister, teacher, parish worker or otherwise — they should be listened to, treated with respect, and presented with avenues for justice.

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LONDON (ENGLAND)
Daily Mail

August 28, 2019

By Keith Griffith

Attorneys for one of the five federal death row inmates newly scheduled for execution have opened up multiple last-ditch legal challenges in a bid to spare his life, including petitioning President Donald Trump for clemency.

Wesley Ira Purkey, 67, is scheduled to be executed on December 13, 2019 for the rape, murder and dismemberment of 16-year-old Jennifer Long in his Kansas home in 1998. He was also convicted of beating 80-year-old Mary Bales to death with a hammer.

Last month, Attorney General Bill Barr announced that the federal government would resume executions for the first time since 2003, setting execution dates for Purkey and four other death row inmates whom he called ‘the worst criminals.’

‘Mr. Purkey is not ‘the worst of the worst,” his attorney Rebecca Woodman said in a statement to DailyMail.com on Tuesday. ‘He is a man who grew up in a house of horrors, beaten and humiliated by both of his parents and subjected to extensive and ongoing sexual abuse by members of his family.’

Woodman went on to say that Purkey had been ‘demeaned and brutalized’ by Catholic nuns, and ‘repeatedly molested’ by a priest.

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LOS ANGELES (CA)
Angelus News

August 29, 2019

By Msgr. Richard Antall

The great author G.K. Chesterton was once challenged about his skepticism of the judicial system in Great Britain. He replied that Christians often have doubts about official justice because they remember “the unfortunate experience” of their founder with the same.

That skepticism is my response to the latest of Cardinal George Pell’s various legal setbacks in Australia. Although a Vatican statement said something about not disrespecting Australia’s system of justice, I feel no such constraint. What I see is a case of scapegoating and persecution that is not ideological — which is what makes it more frightening.

If someone persecutes the Church saying bluntly that it is because religion is nonsense or that Christ really could not have been both God and man, there would, at least, be a clarity of ideas. The Church is accustomed to such persecution. But if, instead, the persecution pretends to be neutral about religious belief and then makes up incredible charges against a cleric whose position makes him a stand-in for the Church and religion, it is more vicious and insidious.

We have seen such things before, especially in the 20th century. The big change is that it was not the secular, Westernized, capitalist state that was doing the punishing, but the Communist regimes of various totalitarian states. The Hungarian Communists went after Cardinal Jozsef Mindszenty not because he was a believer, they said, but because he was a fascist and a monarchist and the biggest landowner in Hungary who had participated in a conspiracy against the People’s Republic. He was physically tortured until he signed a false confession and spent years in prison, sequestered in an embassy and then in exile.

Cardinal Josef Slipyj, a Ukrainian Catholic archbishop, was accused of being a Nazi collaborator, and was imprisoned for 18 years and then sent into exile. Another cardinal, Blessed Aloysius Stepinac of Croatia, was tried, convicted of treason, and sentenced to 16 years in prison. Later he was restricted to house arrest.

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BUFFALO (NY)
Buffalo News

August 28, 2019

By Jay Tokasz

A New Hampshire man who alleges a Buffalo priest sexually abused him when he was a youngster in Springville is suing the Diocese of Buffalo in federal court.

Arthur Porada Jr., 61, said in court papers filed this week that James A. Spielman molested him multiple times from 1971 to 1976 when Porada was a parishioner of St. Aloysius Church in Springville. Spielman was associate pastor of the parish at the time.

It’s the second time in five years the diocese was sued in federal court over a child sex abuse claim against Spielman.

Porada’s lawyer is Michele M. Betti, who sued the Buffalo Diocese in 2014 in federal court in Hawaii on behalf of David Husted of Texas. Husted, 53, also accused Spielman of repeated acts of sexual abuse from 1979 to 1982 when Husted was a student at Archbishop Walsh High School in Olean.

Husted’s lawsuit led to a $1.5 million settlement – the largest single settlement that has come to light so far in the Buffalo Diocese for a clergy sex abuse case.

Porada’s case was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of New York. He is the first plaintiff in Western New York to use the federal court system under the state’s Child Victims Act, which suspended the statute of limitations in previously time-barred child sex abuse civil cases. It has prompted more than 100 lawsuits to be filed in State Supreme Courts in Erie and Niagara counties since a one-year window for filing claims opened on Aug. 14.

Betti said she was able to file the case in federal court on diversity grounds, because Porada lives in New Hampshire and the defendants are in other states.

A federal lawsuit was likely to proceed more quickly than a case filed in the state court system, said Betti.

“We’re not waiting to have these cases consolidated and have them take years to decide. There’s less tactics defendants can play in federal court. You get your trial date right away,” she said. “And we want to expose the Diocese of Buffalo for their transferring of a serial perpetrator from school to school.”

Federal courts apply the laws of the states in which they operate, so the Child Victims Act’s suspension of the statute of limitations extends to federal cases like Porada’s, said Betti.

Betti took a similar approach with Husted’s case in Hawaii, which offered a two-year window for victims to file lawsuits without being time-barred by the statute of limitations.

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GREENWOOD (MS)
Associated Press

August 27, 2019

By Michael Rezendes

A famed Catholic religious order settled sex abuse cases in recent months by secretly paying two black Mississippi men $15,000 each and requiring them to keep silent about their claims, The Associated Press has found.

The cash payments are far less than what other Catholic sex abuse survivors have typically received since the church’s abuse scandal erupted in the United States in 2002.

An official with the Franciscan Friars order denies the two men’s race or poverty had anything to do with the size of the settlements.

In one case, the Rev. James G. Gannon, leader of a group of Wisconsin-based Franciscan Friars, settled an abuse claim made by La Jarvis D. Love against another friar for $15,000, during a meeting at an IHOP restaurant where Gannon met with La Jarvis, his wife and their three small children.

“He said if I wanted more, I would have to get a lawyer and have my lawyer call his lawyer,” La Jarvis Love, 36, told the Associated Press. “Well, we don’t have lawyers. We felt like we had to take what we could.”

La Jarvis’s cousin, Joshua K. Love, 36, also settled his abuse claim for $15,000 — something he now regrets.

“They felt they could treat us that way because we’re poor and we’re black,” Joshua Love said of the settlements he and La Jarvis received.

Across the United States, settlements have ranged much higher. In 2006, the Catholic Diocese of Jackson, which includes Greenwood, settled lawsuits involving 19 victims— 17 of whom were white— for $5 million, with an average payment of more than $250,000 per victim.

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CHEYENNE (WY)
Crux

August 29, 2019

By Christopher White

Nearly three decades had passed since Martin last stepped foot inside a Catholic church.

Yet as he sat in the pews of the Cathedral of Saint Mary in Cheyenne for Good Friday service last April, he knew Bishop Steven Biegler was speaking directly to him.

“Over the last year, we have seen that the Church’s leaders have been weak and sinful,” said the bishop. “Yet, Christ still goes to the cross for us. His death is still stronger than all of our horrible sins. The blood and water flowing from Christ is the greatest force in the universe. So we can be reborn.”

“What does that reborn church look like?” he asked. “In a church reborn, those who have been harmed are restored. They experience their own re-birth. They are restored as we listen to their stories and tell them, ‘I believe you.’”

One year prior to that homily, Biegler had flown to New York to say those very words in person to Martin, a pseudonym, who after nearly two decades of unsuccessfully trying to convince both law enforcement and church officials that he was an abuse victim of Bishop Joseph Hart, finally felt some form of vindication by a bishop who believed him.

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GREEN BAY (WI)
WLUK FOX 11 News

August 28th 2019

A Little Chute school is responding to recent reports of a former teacher accused of sexually abusing children.

According to the Associated Press, former Franciscan brother and St John Nepomucene Catholic School teacher, Paul West, is being investigated for sexually abusing children in Mississippi in the late 90’s.

West’s alleged victims say he would sexually abuse them in Mississippi and on summer trips to Appleton.

On Wednesday the St. Francis grade school in Mississippi they are dedicated to the well-being of their students and are requiring priests and faculty to participate in the VIRTUS program, which aims to prevent abuse and improves the lives of those who interact with the Church.

After leaving his position as a principal at a Catholic school in Mississippi in 1998, West began teaching fifth grade at St. John’s School in 2000 and remained on the job until at least 2010.

St. John school officials say a background check was completed at the time of West’s hiring and it came back clear. References were also checked and no substantiated allegations were revealed.

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.

CASPER (WY)
Casper Star-Tribune

August 28, 2019

By Seth Klamann and Shane Sanderson

A national group of victims of priest abuse on Monday called on the Catholic Church to send former Wyoming Bishop Joseph Hart to a friary in rural Kansas, which would mean expelling Hart from his diocese-owned home in Cheyenne.

“When an abuser is suspended or gets older, he’s not magically cured, so even after ousting or even defrocking sex offending clerics, the Catholic hierarchy has a duty to safeguard others from them,” the group, the Survivors Network for those Abused by Priests, said in a statement Monday.

Hart has been accused since at least the early 1990s of sexually abusing boys, with some victims saying he abused them as far back as 1963. He has consistently denied those allegations. His former diocese, in his hometown of Kansas City, Missouri, has settled with 10 men who say they were abused by Hart. An additional four men have come forward in Missouri in just the past year, the diocese there told the Star-Tribune.

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.

NASHVILLE (TN)
Baptist News Global

August 28, 2019

By Bob Allen

Matt Chandler’s Village Church denied any wrongdoing in its response to a $1 million lawsuit stemming from the alleged sexual assault of an 11-year-old girl at a church camp in 2012.

An attorney representing the Southern Baptist Convention megachurch in Flower Mound, Texas, said Aug. 23 his client “generally denies each and every allegation” in the lawsuit filed July 26 in Dallas County and “demands strict proof by a preponderance of the credible evidence.”

The lawsuit, filed using a pseudonym, seeks to hold the multi-site congregation with an average weekly attendance of 10,000 and annual budget of $20 million liable for alleged acts by Matt Tonne, a former children’s minister at Village Church who was arrested in January and charged with felony indecency with a child.

The suit claims that Chandler, the lead pastor at Village Church, downplayed the situation by not telling the congregation the allegations involved a former staffer. It also alleges that Chandler misled church members to believe that Tonne had resigned for alcohol-related reasons, rather than because the 11-year employee was being investigated by the police.

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.

BUFFALO (NY)
WKBW

August 25, 2019

By Jeff Rusack

Richard Brownell has been keeping a secret for over 50 years, Saturday he finally told his story.

Brownell says he was abused by Father John Aurelio in 1968 at St. Gerard’s in Buffalo. He stood by his wife and lawyer in front of the Buffalo Catholic Diocese Saturday to announce he’s suing the church.

This was not Brownell’s first time speaking about Father Aurelio. In 1993, he was interviewed by 7 Eyewitness News and stated “he came in and exposed himself to me was trying to get my pants down wanted me to touch him and I was successful in fighting him off. For some reason he gave up on me.”

Brownell says he couldn’t tell the truth in 1993 because he was too embarrassed and ashamed. He wants other victims of abuse come forward to share their stories.

He was front and center in Albany when the Child Victims act was passed by the legislature, emotional for what it meant for him and other victims of abuse.

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ALBANY (NY)
The Daily Gazette

August 26, 2019

By Stephen Williams

Pastor allegedly lived with woman, fathered child

A one-time Schenectady priest is accused of secretly living with a woman and sexually abusing her children, in one of the two dozen Child Victims’ Act cases filed in recent days against the Roman Catholic Diocese of Albany.

The five grown children of Edith Steve filed the lawsuit Aug. 15 against the diocese, Bishop-Emeritis Howard J. Hubbard, and Francis P. Melfe, who was a priest in the Albany diocese from his ordination in 1954 until he resigned in 1979. His final assignment was a decade at the Church of the Immaculate Conception in Schenectady.

Melfe, who was removed from the priesthood in 2012, has been on a diocese list of priests credibly accused of child abuse since 2015.

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.

ALBANY (NY)
TimesUnion

August 26, 2019

By Steve Hughes

A former Hoosick Falls police officer, Boy Scout leader and mayor who later became a priest is accused of molesting a boy for a period of about three years in the 1980s, according to a civil complaint.

The lawsuit, part of over 500 filed in New York since Aug. 14 under the Child Victims Act, alleges that the Rev. Richard A. Severson abused the boy at St. Mary’s Church in Hudson Falls from about 1982 until 1985, when the boy was between the ages of 10 and 13.

The suit names the Albany Roman Catholic Diocese and St. Mary’s Church as defendants.

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BUFFALO (NY)
WBEN

August 25, 2019

By Allan Harris

New Lawsuit Filed Against Diocese

Saturday sexual abuse victim Ricahrd Brownell and his wife held a news conference in front of the Diocese of Buffalo offices to talk about his being abused years ago by Father John Aurielio.

A law suit has been filed according to attorney Mitchell Garabedian:

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ALBANY (NY)
Times Union

August 24, 2019

By Steve Hughes

Victims and advocates fought for years to get the Child Victims Act passed and waited for the date that would allow them to file lawsuits, seeking a measure of justice for abuse that in some cases goes back decades.

If other states are any indication, that fight for justice is just beginning.

This month, over 500 suits were filed in the window afforded by New York’s new law. An examination of similar lawsuits in other states shows such cases can take years to resolve. How much the public will eventually learn about the extent of abuse and how it was covered up depends on many factors.

It also shows that settlements from the lawsuits can be a huge financial blow to institutions implicated in the abuse and also drive meaningful changes in their policies toward children.

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BUFFALO (NY)
WIVB

August 24, 2019

Another Buffalo priest is being sued under the Child Victims Act. Father John Aurelio and the Buffalo Diocese have been named in a civil lawsuit.

Richard Brownell claims Father Aurelio sexually abused him several times in 1968 and 69 when he was 11 years old serving as an altar boy at Saint Gerard’s in buffalo.

In the lawsuit ,which was filed Friday, Brownell claims Aurelio took him to a hockey game and sexually abused him in the parking lot afterwards.
It also claims father Aurelio gave Brownell alcohol and marijuana and sexually abused him at Aurelio’s home

Mitchell Garabedian, who is representing several victims of abuse, says the number of lawsuits against Buffalo priests will only continue to grow.

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AUSTRALIA
La Croix International

August 23, 2019

By Michael Kelly SJ

In the eye of the storm, where the tragic drama of Cardinal Pell is more symptom than cause, something very good may grow

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AUSTRALIA
The Age

August 21, 2019

By Adam Cooper

Paedophile George Pell will consider taking his case to the High Court, after Victoria’s Court of Appeal upheld his child-sex convictions in a majority ruling on Wednesday, meaning he will serve out his six-year prison term.

In a 2-1 ruling, the Court of Appeal upheld the verdicts of the County Court jury that found Pell guilty on five child sex abuse charges last December, over his attacks on two choirboys at St Patrick’s Cathedral in East Melbourne in the 1990s, when he was archbishop of Melbourne.

Pell’s lawyers are now considering whether to continue his legal fight. He has 28 days to seek special leave to appeal in the High Court.

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CINCINNATI (OH)
The Catholic Telegraph

August 19, 2019

Today, the Archdiocese of Cincinnati learned that a Hamilton County Grand Jury returned a nine-count indictment against Fr. Geoff Drew stemming from alleged crimes during his time at St. Jude Parish, where he served as music director 1984-1999. The Archdiocese of Cincinnati was made aware of these allegations after Archbishop Schnurr removed Fr. Drew as pastor of St. Ignatius of Loyola Parish on July 23. We have fully cooperated with this investigation and will continue to do so.

The protection of young people is of paramount importance and can never be compromised. We urge anyone who has any information regarding the accusations against Fr. Geoff Drew to please report it to Cincinnati Police Detective Dana Jones in the Personal Crimes Unit at 513-352-6947 or dana.jones@cincinnati-oh.gov.

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BUFFALO (NY)
WKBW

August 20, 2019

By Charlie Specht

Says Bishop Malone took no action on priest

Another seminarian in the Diocese of Buffalo has given up his dream of becoming a Catholic priest, blaming alleged sexual harassment by diocesan priest Rev. Jeffrey Nowak and Bishop Richard J. Malone’s lack of action when he reported it.

Matthew Bojanowski, whose mother first revealed the allegations of sexual harassment in an interview with the 7 Eyewitness News I-Team, announced Tuesday he is resigning from Christ the King Seminary and is calling on the seminary to be shut down and for Bishop Malone to resign.

“The Diocese of Buffalo suppresses the truth in relation to sexual abuse,” Bojanowski said at a news conference across from the Diocese of Buffalo chancery. “There is no transparency in the Buffalo Diocese and there is no justice for victims of abuse, whether the victims are children or adults.”

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CINCINNATI (OH)
WCPO.com/9 On Your Side

August 20, 2019

Years after his death, new allegations of sexual abuse have surfaced against a Franciscan priest.

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IRELAND
BBC

August 21, 2019

A woman denied an education and left malnourished after being forced to work at the age of 11 when her father died has won a battle for compensation.

Mary Cavner, 80, who lives in Hampshire but grew up in County Cork, was sent to work in one of Ireland’s notorious Catholic-run Magdalene Laundries.

She said her six years at the workhouse affected her “throughout her life”.

She was initially told she was ineligible for compensation but will now receive €76,000 (£69,500).

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

August 28, 2019

Victims write alleged predators names on sidewalk
They blast MO attorney general for a “half-hearted effort”
Meanwhile, KC KS suspended cleric’s criminal trial is 9/9
Group wants archbishop to “rein in overzealous Catholics”
SNAP: “Once hard-liners, GOP leaders now ‘soft on crime’
It urges Republicans to ‘lean on’ three statewide officeholders
And it gives AG ‘abuse experts list’ that his staff should interview
And victims praise law enforcement officials in KS & neighboring states

WHAT
Using chalk, clergy sex abuse victims will write two-three dozen names of credibly accused predator KC MO priests on the sidewalk outside the Missouri attorney general’s office and
—blast him for what they call a “half-hearted and slow-paced” look into Catholic sex crimes and cover ups (which was launched one year ago),
—hand-deliver a list of ‘abuse experts’ in Missouri and elsewhere who could help the probe and should be questioned by law enforcement, and
—urge the AG to push KC MO’s bishop to post child molesting clerics on his website (as every other Missouri bishop has done already).

And holding signs and childhood photos, they will
— discuss the impending criminal trial of a local priest set for next month, and
— urge KC Catholic officials to insist that parishioners not rally around the accused cleric in public and the courtroom

WHERE
On the sidewalk outside the AG’s office, 615 E. 13th Street, (corner of Holmes) in Kansas City, MO (816-889-5000)

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SCRANTON (PA)
WBRE/WYOU TV

August 28, 2019

Four men are filing separate lawsuits against the Diocese of Scranton, Bishop James Timlin, and Bishop Joseph Bambera over allegations of sexual abuse.

Michael C. Heil, James J. Pliska, John Patchcoski and “M.A.” (whose identity is being withheld) all claim they were sexually abused by Father Michael Pulicare for a period of seven years between the ages of 7 and 14. Pulicare, who died in 1999, formerly served as Assistant Pastor at St. Joseph’s Parish in Minooka.

According to a press release from the lawyers, the men seek “to hold the Diocese and the bishops accountable for their role in creating and fostering an environment that allowed and encouraged sexually deviant and predatory priests to prey upon and forcibly rape, sodomize and sexually molest innocent young boys; and then conspiring to withhold and safeguard known information of such heinous acts perpetrated by Diocesan priests.”

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

August 28, 2019

No one really knows where three credibly abusive Catholic bishops are now. For the safety of innocent children and vulnerable adults, we call on church officials to insist the clerics live in the same remote Kansas friary where disgraced ex-Cardinal Theodore McCarrick is now.

Those three clerics WV Bishop Michael Bransfield, WY Bishop Joseph A. Hart and MN Archbishop John Neinstedt, none of whom are still on the job and all of whom face multiple accusers. Church officials essentially forced Bransfield and Neinstedt out. And police have recommended that Hart be prosecuted.

When a abuser is suspended or gets older, he’s not magically cured, so even after ousting or even defrocking sex offending clerics, the Catholic hierarchy has a duty to safeguard others from them.

And church officials can’t recruit, educate, ordain, hire, supervise, transfer and shield these men only to suddenly cut them loose, providing no oversight or supervision, and let them quietly live among unsuspecting families. When this happens, abusers can pass themselves off as ‘retired’ clerics and befriend vulnerable adults and kids.

At least some in Victoria, Kansas know, because of good journalism, that an abuser lives in their midst. And at least McCarrick is far away from the families in Washington D.C. and New Jersey, some of whom likely consider him cured or falsely accused and would trust him around their kid, teens and young adults.

So for those reasons, we believe Bransfield Hart and Neinstedt should live there too.

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

ROME (ITALY)
Crux

August 28, 2019

By Ines San Martin

Despite being investigated for allegations of having sexually abused two seminarians, an Argentinian bishop close to the pope has once again been allowed by a judge to travel to Rome.

The judge said that Bishop Gustavo Zanchetta has “collaborated” with the investigation and has a document from the Vatican saying he must return to Rome “to continue with his daily work” – even though he has been suspended from his job.

Crux can confirm that the document being used as justification for allowing Zanchetta to travel back to Rome is a certificate signed by Venezuelan Archbishop Edgar Peña Parra, the Substitute for the Vatican’s Secretariat of State, arguably the third highest position in this office.

Peña Parra was appointed to that key role by Pope Francis last year. The Substitute is responsible for the Vatican’s daily workflow, and is usually the only person, including the Cardinal Secretary of State, who can simply walk in on the pope unannounced.

The Venezuelan prelate has been under fire recently, after Archbishop Carlo Maria Vigano, the controversial former papal representative to the United States, accused him of of perpetrating sexual abuse; the Venezuelan bishops’ conference released a statement last week strongly defending Peña Parra, calling Vigano’s claims “a series of calumnious accusations.”

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NEW YORK (NY)
Black Entertainment Tonight

August 28, 2019

By Angela Wilson

Two Black male victims who received settlements over sexual abuse allegations against Catholic priests are coming forward to revealing that they were paid far less than white victims.

The Associated Press reports the Diocese secretly paid two Black men from Mississippi $15,000 each, requiring them both to sign NDAs (Non-Disclosure Agreements), also known as confidentiality agreements.

In 2006, the Catholic Diocese of Jackson settled lawsuits brought on by 19 different victims. Of those survivors, 17 are white and were paid at least $250,000 each — some up to $1.3 million — in similar settlements.

A Franciscan Friars official claims the settlement amounts had nothing to due with the two Black men’s race.

One victim, La Jarvis D. Love, who accused two Catholic priests of sexual abuse when he was 9-years-old, received a $15,000 payout during a meeting at an IHOP restaurant.

“He said if I wanted more, I would have to get a lawyer and have my lawyer call his lawyer,” Love said Rev. James G. Gannon, leader of a group of Wisconsin-based Franciscan Friars replied. “Well, we don’t have lawyers. We felt like we had to take what we could.”

At the time, Love was unaware other accusers who were white were paid significantly more in similar settlements when he was confronted by Rev. Gannon with legal paperwork.

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DENVER (CO)
Catholic News Agency

August 28, 2019

By JD Flynn

Bishop Andrew Cozzens became a bishop in the middle of a crisis.

“There was this kind of fire that was burning on the front page of the paper everyday,” Cozzens told CNA, “and then I got this call.”

The call was his appointment as an auxiliary bishop in the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis.

Cozzens was appointed to that role just days after a whistleblower leveled charges of misconduct and cover-up against Archbishop John Nienstedt, who eventually resigned from his post amid scandal.

The archdiocese was in a state of chaos, and, Cozzens said, Catholics were in a great deal of pain.

“I was named a bishop at a very unique time, and it was so unique that it was clear to me God had planned it,” Cozzens told CNA.

He told CNA that he knew, from the time he was appointed, “that the Lord was calling me to be a part of healing. I didn’t have any idea what that meant when I heard that word in prayer.”

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MILWAUKEE (WI)
WHBY Radio

August 27, 2019

A former brother for the Franciscan Friars accused of sexually abusing boys in Mississippi has ties to the Fox Cities.

59-year-old Paul West taught at a school in Greenwood in the 1990s. The Franciscan Friars reached $15,000 settlements with some victims. West moved to the Appleton area and he taught at St. John Catholic School in Little Chute from around 2000 to at least 2010.

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COLUMBUS (OH)
WOSU Radio

August 27, 2019

By Adora Namigadde

Advocates from SNAP gathered in front of St. Joseph Cathedral to demand the Catholic Diocese of Columbus add the names of three more ministers to its official list of clerics “credibly accused” of sexual abuse.

The Columbus Diocese in March published a list of 36 clergy, both alive and deceased, alleged to have sexually abused minors.

The Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests or Clergy says that Bishop Robert Brennan should add to the list Sister Lisa Zuccarelli, Father Stuart Campbell and Father Carleton Parker Jones – all of whom worked at one time in Central Ohio, but were accused of sexual abuse outside of Columbus.

SNAP’s Central Ohio coordinator Carol Zamonski says it is unknown whether these people abused anyone locally.

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DALLAS (TX)
NBC 5 News

August 27, 2019

Three months after members of the Dallas Jesuit community were named on a list of clergy “credibly accused” of sexual abuse of a minor, a lawsuit has been filed by a former student at Jesuit College Preparatory School of Dallas, Tuesday, March 19, 2019.

A graduate of Jesuit College Preparatory School of Dallas says the school’s former president, who was on a list of credibly accused priests, sexually assaulted him, according to a lawsuit filed Monday.

The lawsuit says Patrick J. Koch, who died in 2006, was the lone abuser, but that he couldn’t have acted alone.

Koch’s name was included on a list released by the Catholic Diocese of Dallas in late January of “priests with credible allegations of sexual of abuse of minors since 1950.”

Koch served as principal of Jesuit Dallas from 1972-79, president from 1979-80 and director of alumni from 1980-86, according to the school’s website.

The lawsuit says the school “created and fostered a community where abuse would occur and the School (sic) did nothing to prevent the problem despite its obviousness.”

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

August 27, 2019

A lengthy Associated Press investigation published today about a former member of a Wisconsin based Catholic religious under who is under current criminal investigation for multiple acts of felony child sexual assault in Mississippi, Wisconsin and New York State is raising troubling questions as to the treatment of racial or economically disadvantaged survivors of clerical child sex offenders by Catholic church officials.

Over the past nine months, church officials of the Franciscan Friars of the Assumption Province, headquartered in St. Francis, Wisconsin, have been actively soliciting secrecy agreements from African American victims of Paul West, 59, a former Franciscan, in exchange for financial settlements which are among the lowest in the United States. The settlements were brokered by church officials of the Jackson, Mississippi diocese. The secrecy agreements are not only in direct violation of the US Bishops policy on abuse but appear to have been engineered to mislead these victims into believing that West could no longer be prosecuted. The criminal statute on West’s alleged offenses, however, are currently active in both Mississippi and Wisconsin.

Fortunately, because these courageous victims have come forward, West is finally being investigated in both states, including in Milwaukee and Outagamie Counties, where West allegedly transported children across state lines for the purposes of committing criminal sex acts, a federal crime that should also trigger and investigation by the US Department of Justice.

There are likely many more victims of West, who was the principal of a traditional black Catholic “mission” school in Mississippi. The allegations against him, which the order has confirmed as credible, include “beatings, rape, and other sexual violations” beginning when the victims were as young as 10.

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SAN ANTONIO (TX)
Express-News

August 27, 2019

By Marina Starleaf Riker

John Delaney, a survivor of child sex abuse, wants other victims to know this: Starting Sept. 1, they could have another chance to hold their abusers accountable in court.

Delaney and the San Antonio chapter leader of the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests gathered outside the Bexar County Courthouse Tuesday morning to raise awareness about a new Texas law going into effect next month that allows victims of child sex abuse to file civil lawsuits against abusers up to 30 years after they turn 18.

Right now, the window when they can file a lawsuit, called the statute of limitations, lasts just 15 years after their 18th birthday.

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SOUTHFIELD (MI)
WWJ News

August 27, 2019

A former Macomb County priest will undergo testing to determine if he’s competent to stand trial on sexual assault charges.

A judge ordered the exam requested by an attorney for 63-year-old Neil Kalina during a brief hearing in 41-A District Court in Shelby Township.

“What they call a competency and culpability exam will be done at a center in Ypsilanti that is known to be backed up with orders,” reported WWJ Newsradio 950’s Mike Campbell, “so it’s probably going to be awhile before there are results.”

Kalina faces four counts of criminal sexual conduct for allegedly sexually abusing young boys when he was a priest at St. Kieran Catholic Church in Shelby Township in the mid-1980s. He also worked in Sterling Heights and Utica.

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

August 27, 2019

Six months after a massive exposé into cases of sexual violence and cover-up within the Southern Baptist Convention was published, church leaders have finally responded. Unfortunately, we feel that this response amounts to little more than a public relations effort.

SBC leaders unveiled their new “Caring Well” campaign today, a prevention effort focused on creating new teams and processes for churches in order to create safer environments within SBC churches. According to the Caring Well website, this campaign involves educating pastors about the importance of using secular law enforcement professionals to investigate crimes and how to respond “ethically, legally, and with good shepherding” when abuse is discovered.

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ST. CLOUD (MN)
St. Cloud Times

August 27, 2019

By Clairissa Baker and Jenny Berg

An Avon man pleaded guilty Tuesday as part of a plea agreement to engaging in a sexual relationship with a parishioner he counseled while he was a pastor at an Avon church.

Charles Normal Pelkey, 50, was charged in Stearns County District Court with one count of third-degree criminal sexual conduct in July 2018.

A jury trial was scheduled to start Tuesday; it was canceled in light of the plea agreement.

As part of the agreement, the judge will likely stay adjudication of the sentence, presuming Pelkey cooperates with his pre-sentence investigation, signs releases for a psychosexual evaluation and follows all recommendations, according to Ole Tvedten, chief of the criminal division in the Stearns County Attorney’s Office.

The remaining terms of Pelkey’s probation will be imposed at his sentencing, which is scheduled for Oct. 31. Probation violations would result in conviction, predatory offender registration and potential prison time, according to Tvedten.

Minnesota law bars sexual relationships between clergy and those to whom they give counsel; consent is not a defense.

Clergy members are treated similarly to counselors, physicians, psychologists, social workers and therapists who work with people seeking support, Tvedten said.

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PARIS (FRANCE)
LaCroix International

August 27, 2019

By Massimo Faggioli

If Vatican officials thought that they could regain control of the narrative concerning the Catholic Church’s clergy sex abuse crisis by defrocking Theodore McCarrick just days before the recent abuse summit in Rome, they failed to take into account the cases of Cardinals George Pell and Philippe Barbarin.

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DENVER (CO)
National Catholic Register

August 27, 2019

By Joseph O’Brien

The lawsuits are flooding into New York state, after it opened a one-year window in the statute of limitations for abuse survivors to file suit against individuals and institutions accused of abuse crimes — and the new lawsuits filed in the Empire State include one utilizing the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) Act.

On Aug. 14, 22 plaintiffs filed a federal RICO suit against the Diocese of Buffalo, the Society of Jesus, parishes, high schools and others for an alleged “pattern of racketeering activity” that allowed for and hid clerical sexual abuse. Both current Bishop Richard Malone and his predecessor, Bishop Edward Kmiec, are named personally in the lawsuit.

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 toward children by allowing abusive priests to have contact with minors through parishes and schools.

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.

The suit claims that the various diocesan persons and agencies are legal “alter egos” for the diocese, completely under diocesan control, and were used to “transfer, assign, commingle and conceal assets” totally $90 million, and that the diocese violated federal racketeering laws by using the internet and mail to “deceive the public about the illicit sexual conduct rampant within the Diocese of Buffalo.”

As the RICO lawsuit is being brought by federal law, it does not directly stem from the New York law opening the one-year window. But it was filed at almost the same time as the window went into effect, on Aug. 15.

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NASHVILLE (TN)
WMOT Radio

August 27, 2019

By Mike Osborne

The Nashville based Southern Baptist Ethics Commission has launched a denomination-wide response to sexual abuse.

The campaign is a reaction to the #metoo movement and recent sex scandals within the SBC.

Current Convention President J.D. Greear is out with a video introducing what’s being called “The Caring Well Challenge.” In the video, Greear explains what the denomination hopes the campaign will accomplish.

“It’s a free initiative designed to walk with church leaders step by step towards becoming a church that is safe for survivors and safe from abuse.”

SBC Ethics Commission leader Russell Moore launched The Caring Well Challenge at a Franklin church on Sunday.

The Tennessean quotes Moore saying congregations need to report abuse to authorities immediately, inform the entire congregation, and minister to survivors.

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

August 27, 2019

We are here today because Texans need to know that the doors to justice just opened a little wider for survivors of child sexual abuse in our state.

House Bill # 3809, passed by the Texas Senate on May 2019, was the result of the emotional testimony of Becky Leach, State Rep. Jeff Leach’s wife, regarding her own abuse as a child. Even though this new law is limited in terms of applying to older cases of childhood sexual abuse, it is still a step in the right direction.

The new law, which becomes effective on September 1, 2019, gives more time for child sex abuse survivors to bring a civil lawsuit against their abuser and/or the institution that harbored him or her. It replaces the older law that only gave survivors 15 years past their 18th birthday to file a complaint. Going forward, victims now have 30 years.

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

August 27, 2019

“It sends a discouraging message to survivors,” They Say

They Call on the Attorney General to Renew his Outreach to Witnesses, Whistleblowers and Survivors

WHAT
At a news conference, leaders of two clergy abuse prevention and advocacy organizations will address recent news regarding a private meeting between Chicago’s top Catholic official and Illinois’ Attorney General and will call for a public clarification regarding the current status of the investigation into clergy abuse in Illinois.

WHEN
Friday, August 23 at 10:30 AM

WHERE
On the sidewalk outside the Chicago Archdiocesan Headquarters at 835 N. Rush Street (corner of Rush and Pearson)

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

August 27, 2019

And they ‘out’ another Columbus predator priest
Days ago, a 3rd abusive local cleric was exposed
But none of them are on bishop’s ‘credibly accused’ list
Group wants all 3 added, plus their photos & assignments
Pope recently promised protection for church whistleblowers
So victims urge current & former Catholic staff to “call law enforcement now”

WHAT
Holding signs and childhood photos at a sidewalk news conference, clergy sex abuse victims and their supporters will disclose the names of – and information about – two more credibly accused child molesting clerics who are or have been in Columbus but are NOT on the diocesan list of alleged clergy offenders.

One is a nun who was suspended and spent a decade in central Ohio.

And the victims will call on Columbus Bishop Robert Brennan to
–post names of ALL publicly accused clerics on their diocesan website,
–include details like their work histories, whereabouts and photos.

Finally, they will urge current and former Catholic church staffers to call law enforcement with “any knowledge or suspicions they may have about clergy sex crimes and cover ups” because the Pope recently adopted a policy guaranteeing them ‘whistleblower protection.”

WHERE
On the sidewalk in front of St Joseph Cathedral, 212 E Broad St, (corner of N. 5th St.) in Columbus, OH

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EASTON (PA)
Easton Express-Times

August 27, 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.

One rationale is that exemptions to create limited windows of liability are unconstitutional – and will require a multi-year effort to amend the state constitution.

The state House didn’t seem to have the same problem when it passed a reform package and sent it to the Senate, where it has lingered. Under the existing law, victims must file criminal cases by age 50 and civil cases by age 30.

Another rationale cited by GOP leaders, including Senate President Pro Tempore Joe Scarnati, is that Catholic dioceses in Pennsylvania are reviewing claims by abuse victims and making payouts, a process that is private and unpublicized. While that avenue may be working for some victims, including those who’d rather not go to court, it doesn’t allow for the disinfecting effect and documentation of open court action. More critically, it denies due process – or what should be a latent due process, in a civilized world – to people whose innocence was stolen at a tender age and have endured decades of suffering and wondering.

Some of them are in their 70s and 80s.

We were reminded last week that it is not just the Catholic Church and other religious institutions that have overlooked sexual crimes against children, putting up walls of denial or silence.

In a lawsuit filed in Philadelphia against the Boys Scouts of America, a 57-year-old former Scout claims he was sexually assaulted many times by an assistant scoutmaster in the 1970s. That suit might be the beginning of a wave of litigation, based on allegations raised by about

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EVANSVILLE (IN)
Courier & Press

August 27, 2019

By Jon Webb

Yet another child molestation complaint surfaced in the Evansville Diocese last week.

According to a scant police report, an unnamed accuser told the church they were abused more than 45 years ago in the 1700 block of Lodge Avenue: an address associated with the Holy Spirit Catholic Church and elementary school.

The accuser was reportedly younger than 14 when the alleged abuse occurred.

The report didn’t name the accused and didn’t give the incident an exact timeline. The incident summary on the police report contained all of 25 words.

Since the accused is apparently dead and the accuser now lives outside the area, Evansville police will not pursue an investigation – nor will they name the alleged perpetrator.

As far as the diocese, spokesman Tim Lilley declined to comment last week and reiterated that stance Monday morning.

We aren’t even sure if the latest accused person was a priest or a person affiliated with the church in a different way.

So, what do we know about this latest allegation?

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GREENWOOD (MS)
Associated Press

August 27, 2019

By Michael Rezendes

The IHOP in Southhaven, Mississippi, was an unlikely place to settle a sex abuse claim against the Catholic Church. But in January a white official from the Franciscan religious order slid into a booth across from a 35-year-old black man and offered to pay him $15,000 to keep years of alleged abuse by another Franciscan secret.

The Rev. James G. Gannon, the leader of a Wisconsin-based group of Franciscan Friars, arrived at the crowded pancake house with copies of a legal settlement for La Jarvis D. Love, who had arrived with his wife and three young children.

As La Jarvis skimmed the four-page agreement, his thoughts flickered back more than two decades to the physical and sexual abuse he says he suffered at the hands of a Franciscan Friar at a Catholic grade school in Greenwood. He told Gannon he wasn’t sure $15,000 was enough.

“He said if I wanted more, I would have to get a lawyer and have my lawyer call his lawyer,” La Jarvis recently told The Associated Press. “Well, we don’t have lawyers. We felt like we had to take what we could.”

La Jarvis considered his mounting bills, his young family and, with his wife’s consent, signed the agreement, dating it Jan. 11, 2019.

Then Gannon announced it was time to eat.

“He was all smiles then,” La Jarvis said.

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AUSTRALIA
The Age

August 26, 2019

By Benjamin Preiss

New legislation forcing priests to report child abuse to authorities even if disclosed in confession now has enough support to pass through both houses of Victorian Parliament.

The Andrews government introduced the legislation earlier this month compelling priests to break the seal of confession to report disclosures of child abuse, but the Coalition stopped short of supporting it at the time.

However, on Monday Opposition Leader Michael O’Brien revealed he would back the bill.

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AUSTRALIA
National Catholic Register

August 23, 2019

By Gerard V. Bradley

COMMENTARY: Justice Mark Weinberg’s dissenting opinion should provide the basis for Australia’s High Court to finally correct this awful miscarriage of justice.

The Court of Appeal of the state of Victoria late Tuesday (Wednesday morning in Australia) dismissed Cardinal George Pell’s appeal from his sexual-abuse conviction. That conviction came at the end of a second trial on five counts of indecency with a minor, after a first jury could not agree on a verdict. (Reliable reports indicated that a majority of those jurors favored acquittal.) He was sentenced to six years, without the possibility of parole until November 2022. Cardinal Pell’s lawyers plan a further appeal to the Australian High Court. That process is likely to take up to a year. During the interim, the cardinal will remain in a Melbourne prison.

Because the trials were conducted in closed sessions and under a press “gag” order, accounts of the evidence against the cardinal have been incomplete and even sketchy. Until now. It was long widely known that the case involved allegations of assaults on two choirboys, both aged 13 when the crimes supposedly occurred in late 1996. The setting was said to be just after then-Archbishop Pell celebrated Mass at St. Patrick’s Cathedral in Melbourne.

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PINEVILLE (WV)
WVVA TV

August 26, 2019

Father Paul Wharton of St. Francis de Sales Parish in Beckley released the following statement Monday in response to revelations of possible abuse inside his Church in May of 2019:

“The Diocese of Wheeling-Charleston was deeply saddened to learn today of the alleged abuse of a minor by Francis Keiling. Although one of the the instances of alleged abuse purportedly occurred on church property, at no time was Francis Keiling an employee or volunteer at either St. Francis de Sales Parish or School in Beckley.”
—————————————————————————————–

A Wyoming County man was arrested on sexual abuse charges Friday.

Francis Stephen Keiling II is charged with 52 counts of Sexual Abuse by a Parent on Guardian.

According to the complaint, the abuse went on from late 2007 to September of 2017, with two teenage females.

Court records indicate one of the victims made the decision to come forward after she was abused three times in just one 24 hour period in the downstairs area of St. Frances de Sales Church in May of 2019.

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NEWARK (NJ)
Star Ledger

August 26, 2019

By Sophie Nieto-Munoz

Disgraced Roman Catholic priest Thomas Ganley was sentenced to four years in prison Monday afternoon after pleading guilty to raping and sexually assaulting a minor under the age of 16 in the 1990s.

Ganley, 64, will also register as a sex offender under Megan’s Law, is forbidden to contact the victim or her family and cannot be with anyone under the age of 18 unsupervised. He reached a plea agreement with the Middlesex County Prosecutor’s Office after he was arrested in January.

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[Próvolo Case: they analyze more than 30 hours of video of Gesell Camera made to the victims]

MENDOZA (ARGENTINA)
MDZ

August 21, 2019

Según uno de los abogados de los denunciantes, habrá “unos diez días hábiles mínimo de Cámaras Gesell”. La decisión del tribunal apunta a que los chicos abusados no vuelvan a declarar y se escuchen en la sala sus testimonios ya grabados.

[GOOGLE TRANSLATION:According to one of the complainants’ lawyers, there will be “a minimum of ten working days of Gesell Chambers”. The decision of the court indicates that the abused children do not have to testify again and their recorded testimonies are heard in the courtroom. ]

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AUSTRALIA
ABC Religion and Ethics

August 21, 2019

By Patrick Parkinson

The decision of a majority of the Victorian Court of Appeal will no doubt be shattering for very many people – not least Cardinal George Pell himself. There are those who believe, quite passionately, that Cardinal Pell should not only have been given the benefit of a reasonable doubt, but that he is entirely innocent of the charges against him. People are likely to experience grief, anger and a sense of helplessness.

Many have become emotionally invested in the outcome of the case – not merely out of respect for a towering figure in the recent history of the Catholic Church in Australia, but because of a fear that in some way the prosecution, conviction and dismissal of the appeal represent an attack on their faith and the Church they love.

Those feelings are understandable. We live in an age when there is a great deal of hostility in some quarters towards the Catholic Church. Former High Court judge Dyson Heydon quoted a German politician in a speech a couple of years ago to the effect that “anti-Catholicism is the anti-semitism of the intellectuals.” We also live in a country with an unprecedented level of scepticism about institutions, and that distrust may extend to the verdicts of judges and juries.

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

August 26, 2019

Extension of Civil Statute of Limitations for Child Sexual Abuse Becomes Effective September 1
SNAP Applauds any Improvement that Offers More Victims Their Day in Court
But the State Still Needs a “Look-Back Window” so All Can Seek Justice

What:
Holding signs at a sidewalk news conference, survivors of clergy sexual abuse and their supporters will educate the public concerning a new Texas law extending the civil statute of limitations for child sexual abuse, and urge legislators and their constituents to work toward broader reform.

Where:
Outside the Bexar County Court House, 100 Dolorosa, San Antonio, Texas

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AUSTRALIA
National Review

August 22, 2019

By Madeleine Kearns

Where is the evidence?

Lady Justice wears a blindfold. She holds a sword in one hand and scales in the other. She is a product of ancient Rome but stands as a potent symbol in our modern age of “your truth,” “my truth” — and nothing but those truths, so help us all.

This week, Cardinal George Pell’s appeal against his conviction of “historic sexual abuse” was rejected by a vote of 2–1 at Victoria’s supreme court. Still blindfolded, Lady Justice might very well be shaking her head. The dissenting justice, Mark Weinberg, had reservations. He warned of a “significant possibility” that Pell is innocent, explaining that he found it “impossible to accept” the sole accuser’s testimony, which, uncorroborated, may have been “concocted.” From Justice Weinberg’s judgment:

[From] the complainant’s evidence, it can be seen that there was ample material upon which his account could be legitimately subject to criticism. There were inconsistencies, and discrepancies, and a number of his answers simply made no sense. . . .

An unusual feature of this case was that it depended entirely upon the complainant being accepted, beyond reasonable doubt, as a credible and reliable witness. Yet the jury were invited to accept his evidence without there being any independent support for it.

Weinberg explained that, on these grounds, after assessing the prosecution’s case at the previous trial, he would have acquitted the cardinal of all charges. Pell is expected to appeal next to the High Court of Australia, which could overturn earlier verdicts. Otherwise, he will serve six years behind bars.

So, what is the case against him?

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AUSTRALIA
The Age

August 21, 2009

By Adam Cooper

One of the three Court of Appeal judges who heard George Pell’s appeal believes there is a “significant possibility” the cardinal did not commit the child sex crimes he’s in jail for and would have acquitted him.

Justice Mark Weinberg said he was not convinced by the victim’s evidence and could not exclude the possibility that some parts of the former choirboy’s testimony were “concocted”.

Justice Weinberg, a former Federal Court judge who presided over the trial of Melbourne’s Bourke Street killer James Gargasoulas last year, said there was a body of evidence that made it “impossible to accept” the victim’s account.

“From … the complainant’s evidence, it can be seen that there was ample material upon which his account could be legitimately subject to criticism. There were inconsistencies, and discrepancies, and a number of his answers simply made no sense,” Justice Weinberg wrote in his judgment released on Wednesday.

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AUSTRALIA
Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC)

By Louise Milligan

Two 13-year-old choristers from humble backgrounds, who received scholarships to an expensive Catholic school because they could sing their little hearts out.

Two boys whose childhoods, a court has again found, were stolen from them in 1996 by a man who was supposed to represent all that was good in the world: the then Archbishop of Melbourne.

Neither chorister was in court this brisk Melbourne morning.

What happens now after Pell’s appeal loss?

Victoria’s Court of Appeal delivered one of the most significant judgments in Australian legal history. So what’s the next step?
One succumbed in 2014 to the heroin addiction that overwhelmed him from the age of 14 — the year after the event that changed their lives.

He was only 31 when he died.

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AUSTRALIA
The Saturday Paper

August 24, 2019

By Richard Cooke

As the Victorian Court of Appeal affirms the cardinal’s guilt, he retains dogged support from many in the conservative establishment.

In an age when even amateur broadcasters can attain professional production values, few telecasts still look as spartan as a real-life court proceeding. In prelude, the live feed from the Victorian Supreme Court presented only three empty seats, a state seal and a test soundtrack of tinkling piano music. As the judges filled those seats, the court website became inundated with viewers and crashed. Once restored, the video sometimes chopped or slowed under the weight of this absent audience. Chief Justice Anne Ferguson’s delivery of the summary was halting as well – The Saturday Paper’s legal correspondent, Richard Ackland, tweeted that she brought “all the drama of a dead wombat to reading a summary of one of the most important criminal judgments of the year” – but this dour diction was, in its way, more compelling than a mannered performance might have been. The ruling Ferguson delivered was brief, clear and surprising – George Pell’s appeal on child sexual assault charges had failed.

“It is fair to say that his case has divided the community,” said Ferguson, and so it divided the court. There were three grounds of appeal. One was that the defence had been unable to submit an animation, since nicknamed “the Pac-Man video”, purporting to show that the offending inside St Patrick’s Cathedral, Melbourne, was impossible. This was dismissed unanimously. So, too, was concern that Pell’s not guilty plea had been entered via video link only, and not in the presence of the jury. But on the most important question, of whether an “unsafe verdict” had been delivered, there was dissent. Justice Weinberg felt the evidence of the complainant, upon which the case hinged, was not satisfactory enough to preclude reasonable doubt. His colleagues disagreed. They found “A”, as he was called in the summary, was “not a liar, was not a fantasist and was a witness of the truth”. It was reasonable for the jury to believe him.

The microphones recorded only silence from the gallery, and it was possible to forget the rest of those present: the press and lawyers, the survivors and supporters, and Cardinal Pell himself – he is not yet Mr Pell – who had arrived to court in a prison van, and would leave by the same means. Depending on their vantage point, court reporters said Pell “barely reacted” to the ruling, was “gripping the dock with his left hand and looking down at the floor”, looked “destroyed” or merely pursed his lips. Abuse survivors thanked the Lord for a decision many thought even more consequential than the cardinal’s earlier guilty verdict.

Media and legal circles had tipped a different result, partly because of matters of law, and partly because of a cruder calculus – that elite power is so seldom brought to lasting accountability. There might yet be another appeal to the High Court by special leave, but “A”, or Witness J as he is better known, has already run an unusually long and vigorous gauntlet. He waited many years to speak to police, only doing so when the other choirboy abused by Pell died of a heroin overdose. It was at his former schoolfriend’s funeral that he decided to seek justice. As other cases prepared against Pell fell away, it was his that proceeded to trial. The first jury was unable to deliver a verdict. The second believed his version of events over the cardinal’s. Now two Supreme Court justices have made the same determination.

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AUSTRALIA
The Age

August 25, 2019

By Chip Le Grand

George Pell will take his case to the High Court, setting the scene for a final legal battle over the senior Catholic cleric’s child sex abuse convictions.

Sources have told The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald that Pell is determined to pursue his last avenue of appeal after receiving unanimous advice from his legal team that the dissenting opinion of Victorian Supreme Court Justice Mark Weinberg provided reasonable grounds to have his convictions overturned.

Pell has 21 days from last Wednesday’s Court of Appeal judgment to formally lodge an application for special leave to appeal to the High Court. It is likely that a short hearing to determine his application will be listed for this year.

If Pell is granted leave, it is likely to be a further four to six months before his appeal is heard.

It is understood that Pell’s special leave application will be made by Bret Walker, SC, who argued the cardinal’s case before the Court of Appeal and who has extensive experience in High Court cases.

The Court of Appeal dismissed Pell’s appeal against his convictions for the oral rape of a choirboy and the sexual assault of another at St Patrick’s Cathedral when he was Archbishop of Melbourne in the 1990s.

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UNITED KINGDOM
Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse

August 25, 2019

VSCP (Victims and Survivors’ Consultative Panel) update

Following recent press coverage around events from 2008, Peter Saunders has resigned from the Victims and Survivors’ Consultative Panel with immediate effect.

The Inquiry will not be making any further comment on this matter.

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UNITED KINGDOM
The Telegraph (UK)

August 25, 2019

A child abuse victim who founded Britian’s leading charity for survivors has resigned from a government inquriy after it emerged that he had a sexual encounter with a victim in a restaurant toilet.

Peter Saunders, 61, who founded the National Association for People Abused in Childhood (NAPAC), was arrested following the encounter which took place in February 2008.

He was not charged with any offence but said that he was “deeply sorry” about the incident and that he would carry the shame for the rest of his life.

As a result, he was forced to resign from his post on the Victims and Survivors Panel of the Independent Inquiry into Childhood Sexual Abuse (IICSA), the public investigation into sys­temic sexual abuse in schools, churches and other institutions.

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UNITED KINGDOM
The Mail on Sunday

August 24, 2019

By David Rose

– Peter Saunders had a sexual encounter in a Bella Italia toilet with the woman

– Mr Saunders, 61, was not charged with any crime but last night said he was ‘deeply sorry’

The head of Britain’s leading charity for survivors of child sexual abuse had a sordid sexual encounter in a restaurant toilet with a woman he knew had been molested as a youngster, The Mail on Sunday can reveal.

Peter Saunders, who founded the National Association for People Abused in Childhood, was arrested after the encounter, which happened during an alcohol-fuelled lunch paid for on the charity’s credit card.

Mr Saunders, 61, was not charged with any crime but last night said he was ‘deeply sorry’ and would carry the shame of the incident for the rest of his life.

The married father was also forced to resign from his post on the Victims and Survivors Panel of the Independent Inquiry into Childhood Sexual Abuse, the public investigation into systemic sexual abuse in schools, churches and other institutions.

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

August 26, 2019

A priest in Kentucky who was convicted of sexual abuse had his hopes for an appeal shot down yesterday as the Kentucky Supreme Court declined to hear his case. We are grateful for this outcome and hope it brings closure and healing to his victims.

Fr. Joseph Hemmerle was convicted in 2016 for sexually abusing a child in Meade County. He appealed his conviction by arguing that the court had not proven his intent. Fortunately, the jurors on the Kentucky Supreme Court did not buy his argument and Fr. Hemmerle will remain in jail until at least February, 2020 when he is eligible for parole.

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Safe Horizon blog

August 22, 2019

By Brian Toale

In 1970, a predator working at my high school sensed a vulnerability in me and began “grooming” me. He showed me more attention than I was used to, which made me feel special. When he first touched me inappropriately, I froze. He said I let him do it and used the fear and shame I felt to silence me and escalated the abuse throughout my senior year. My graduation ended the ordeal, and I vowed to myself I would carry my secret with me to the grave.

I moved on, or so I thought. But the shame that was used to shut me up didn’t disappear. I pushed it out of my mind, but it ate away at me from the inside like rust corroding an iron structure in a place no one can see. Over the next twenty years, that structure slowly corroded until I crashed and burned. It took forty-five years before I found the inner strength to report the abuse to my former school. Today, I am grateful for years of therapy and 12 Step recovery and count myself among the lucky survivors who can tell their story.

Valentine’s Day, 2019, marked the signing of the Child Victims Act and the culmination of a 15-year David vs. Goliath battle to change New York State’s archaic, predator-friendly statute of limitations law for child sexual abuse. With his signature, the Governor gave survivors an opportunity to right a terrible wrong done to them as children.

Before the Child Victims Act, sexual abuse survivors had to seek justice by their 23rd birthday. Otherwise, their abuser was free to abuse still more children with impunity. The average age for an adult to disclose being sexually abused as a child is fifty-two, thirty years too late. Predators and their enablers had only to run out the clock, which they did over and over again.

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ALBANY (NY)
Times Union

August 26, 2019

In a letter issued over the weekend, Bishop Edward B. Scharfenberger said he shared the public’s “sorrow and anger” in the wake of the new wave of sexual abuse claims filed against priests and others earlier this month.

“Our beautiful Catholic faith, which gives comfort through hardships and adds joy during life’s great moments, can feel shaken,” wrote Scharfenberger, who took over leadership of the Albany diocese in 2014. “And, sadly, among you there are many who have suffered other types of abuse or trauma privately but now feel acutely painful memories reawakening when reading the news. My heart goes out to you.”

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Get Religion blog

August 21, 2019

By Terry Mattingly

One of the hardest things to explain to newsroom managers, when you’re making a case for them to hire a religion-beat pro, is the astonishing level of complexity that exists in religion news — in terms of the doctrines, rites, structures, history and language of the religious groups that simply must be covered.

Take, for example, the word “bishop.” What does this term mean in (a) the Church of Rome, (b) the United Methodist Church, (c) the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, (d) various Pentecostal denominations and (e) the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (formerly known to newsroom pros as the “Mormons.”)

While we’re at it, what does “evangelical” mean in the title of the ELCA, one of America’s most doctrinally progressive-liberal flocks?

Words matter. So you just knew we were in for a rough ride, journalistically speaking, when headlines like this one began to sprout online: “Peeping Tom in Nashville Store Turns Out to Be High-Ranking Mormon Leader.” Things got really rough when local-TV news kicked in.

Now, I realize that this particular headline ran at a Patheos advocacy site called — Friendly Atheist. But this online post did combine lots of the issues and stumbles one could find elsewhere.

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Get Religion blog

August 26, 2019

By Terry Mattingly

So, is Cardinal George Pell of Australia guilty or innocent?

If you say “yes,” is that answer a form of virtue signaling during the ongoing hell of the multi-decade Catholic clergy sexual abuse crisis?

If you answer “no,” does that mean that you aren’t taking the crisis seriously and that you want bishops and priests to be able to escape justice?

If you answer “yes,” are you a loving pro-Pope Francis progressive?

If you answer “no,” does that mean that you are a hateful traditionalist who is on the wrong side of history on this issue and many others?

What if you say that you are worried about the quality of the evidence and that you are worried that public officials in Austrailia have listened to an anti-clerical mob and rushed to judgement? If you are hard questions about the evidence — like a good skeptic or journalist would — does that mean you are a hater and don’t care about the victims?

It’s somewhat unusual to run a think piece on Monday, but I really think that readers — especially journalists — will want to read the short Crux essay that ran the other day with this headline: “Ruling cements Pell’s profile as the Dreyfus or Hiss of the Catholic abuse crisis.” The author, of course, is John L. Allen, Jr.

Allen uses a genuinely scary metaphor — if you know your European history — to describe this case. Here is the key, thesis passage, after Pell’s recent appeal was rejected.

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

August 26, 2019

A new bishop has been installed in West Virginia’s Catholic diocese. We call on him to make the protection of children and prevention of abuse his number one priority now that he is officially at the helm.

Bishop Mark Brennan was installed as the head of the Diocese of Wheeling-Charleston last week. Now that he is formally on the job, we believe his first priority should be clear and simple: to protect the vulnerable. In order to demonstrate his commitment to this priority, we call on him to take two immediate steps.

First, to use his power and influence to do everything he can to insure that his predecessor, who has been accused of sexual abuse and harassment, lives in an independent, professionally-run, remote and secure treatment center. This will help ensure that former Bishop Michael Bransfield is monitored and kept away from vulnerable members of the community. For the past year, to our knowledge, Bishop Bransfield has been free of any supervision.

If an even higher-ranking abuser, Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, can be sent far away from his former diocese to a remote friary in rural Kansas, then so too can Bishop Bransfield.

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DENVER (CO)
Catholic News Agency

August 26, 2019

By Ed Condon

Cardinal George Pell will appeal his conviction to the Australian High Court, following the decision last week by the Court of Appeal in Victoria to uphold his conviction for child sexual abuse.

Sources close to the cardinal told CNA Aug. 26 that Pell would be exercising his final appeal and that, while the majority of “special leave to appeal” cases were not granted by the High Court, his case would likely be accepted given the controversy triggered by the split decision of the Appeal Court judgement.

In seeking to take his case to the High Court in Canberra, Australia’s supreme court, Pell will be exercising his last legal avenue to overturn a conviction which has divided opinion in the country and internationally.

Several Australian media outlets have reported that Pell will retain the same legal team which presented his case in Victoria, led by Brett Walker SC.

The cardinal was convicted Dec. 11, 2018, on five charges that he sexually abused two choristers after Sunday Mass while he was Archbishop of Melbourne in 1996 and 1997.

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

August 20, 2019

He admits four abuse ‘mistakes’
But no wrongdoer is identified or apparently punished
“Disciplining the deceitful will stop cover ups,” group says
SNAP ‘outs’ 2 ‘credibly accused’ clerics who were left off list
And it worries that high ranking predator is in Salina diocese
They want KS bishop to disclose “others who are or were here too”

WHAT
Holding signs and childhood photos at a sidewalk news conference, clergy sex abuse victims and their supporters will
–blast Salina’s bishop for refusing to release a FULL list of child molesting clerics,
–reveal the names of two credibly accused priests who are/were in his diocese but have received virtually no attention here,
–criticize him for hiding the names of church officials who made ‘mistakes’ in four clergy sex cases,
–urge him to ‘come clean’ about any other predators (besides a prominent cardinal) who have been sent into his diocese, and
–beg those with information or suspicions about abuse to contact the Kansas Bureau of investigation.

WHERE
Outside Seven Dolors of the Blessed Virgin Mary Catholic church, 731 Pierre St. (corner of S. 8th St.) in Manhattan KS (where at least 2 credibly accused abusive priests worked)

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

August 20, 2019

They name 5 accused priests who were in Eastern KS
SNAP blast KS Catholic archbishop for “still hiding them”
Prelate belatedly posted a list of 22 alleged abusive priests
But his list is “incomplete” and “leaves kids at risk” group says
SNAP: “Church staff should tell KBI what they know about crimes”

WHAT:
As part of a new ‘outreach’ campaign, abuse victims and their supporters will
–disclose a list of five credibly accused child molesting clerics who worked in/near Topeka but have virtually gotten no public or press attention here, and
–hand out fliers door-to-door seeking “anyone who may have seen, suspected or suffered crimes” by any of these clerics or others who worked in the Topeka area.

And they’ll urge Kansas City’s archbishop to
—explain why these names were left off his “accused” list,
—add the clerics’ names (along with photos, whereabouts and work histories of all publicly accused clerics) to his website, and
—include the identities of ALL who have sexually abused (including nuns, bishops, brothers, seminarians and priests).

They will also urge
—all Kansas bishops to post similar lists of accused clerics, and
—all current and former church-goers and staff to report known/suspected abuses and cover ups to the Kansas Bureau of Investigation.

WHERE
Outside Mater Dei Catholic Church, 911 S.W. Clay Street (corner of S. W. 10th Ave.) in Topeka (785 232 7744, materdeiparish.org)

WHO

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Patheos blog

August 26, 2019

By David Gee

A now-deceased priest from the Diocese of Buffalo (New York) sexually abused multiple young kids and forced them into group sex with each other while he watched and participated, according to a lawsuit.

The plaintiff, whose name is redacted in a version of the complaint that’s online, said he was sexually abused by Rev. Richard P. Judd along with several other children in 1975. In 2018, Judd was included on a list of priests who had been accused of child sex abuse, but further information wasn’t disclosed.

The plaintiff said Judd groomed several young boys and then sexually assaulted them, including by forcing them to have sex with a young girl in front of each other in the church rectory. The complaint says he talked to the boys about inappropriate topics, checked them out of school, and encouraged them to drink and smoke with him.

The specific incident that’s leading to all kinds of headlines occurred on Feb. 23, 1975. and it involved two other young boys, Jerry T. and Matthew W., and a young girl by the name of Grace Anne.

For several hours PLAINTIFF and the other boys and FR. JUDD drank beer, watched sports, and smoked cigarettes, until PLAINTIFF started to become intoxicated. After hours had passed, FR. JUDD asked Jerry T. if he should invite someone named Grace Anne to the apartment…

Shortly thereafter FR. JUDD called to PLAINTIFF and Matthew W. and they entered the bedroom. PLAINTIFF observed Jerry T. engaging in sexual intercourse with Grace Anne, with FR. JUDD assisting by manipulating Jerry T.’s penis and instructing Jerry T. from behind. All three were in a state of complete undress. PLAINTIFF quickly felt uncomfortable as he stood observing Jerry T., FR. JUDD, and Grace Anne naked in bed, the latter of which appeared to be under the influence of some type of drug. PLAINTIFF had never engaged in sexual intercourse before.

After this incredibly disturbing experience, Judd allegedly coerced Matthew onto the bed and repeated the actions he did with the first child. The complaint goes on to say Judd noticed the plaintiff didn’t have an erection and sexually assaulted the child to try to change that. The plaintiff was then allegedly pressured to have sex with the girl — at which point he left the building without even talking to his friends.

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RUTLAND (VT)
Rutland Herald

August 23, 2019

The report released this week by the Roman Catholic Diocese of Burlington names 40 priests accused of sexually abusing children in Vermont since 1950. Many of them were long-serving and notable within their communities.

The findings are painful for what is likely to be hundreds — if not thousands — of Vermonters who were abused and mistreated. It also tears at communities.

Bishop Christopher J. Coyne in his statement, aptly titled “Sins of the Past,” once again attempts to apologize, but it can never truly be that. This report, even without specific claims and numbers of victims, suggests an institutional failure to protect the most vulnerable.

The report, which was compiled from records at the Diocese of Burlington over a 40-week period, is the most comprehensive, independent examination of “credible and substantiated allegation of sexual abuse of a minor made against” Vermont clergy.

“Until now, the scope of all of this has been our ‘family secret,’” Coyne said in his lengthy statement.

Family secrets can be toxic. Harmful past experiences — unspoken, unaddressed, and known only by a few — fester like neglected wounds. The innocent victims of the family secret are often made to feel ashamed about what happened, as no one seems to listen to them or even, sadly at times, believe them. While these secrets remain hidden, those who have been hurt are often unable to find the healing they need, especially if those who harmed them are still ‘part’ of the family, even if only in memory.”

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CORPUS CHRISTI (TX)
KIII TV

August 25, 2019

By Brandon Scott and Marcelino Benito

A Catholic priest in northwest Harris County is stepping down from his position while the archdiocese investigates allegations of “inappropriate behavior with an adult.”

The Archdiocese of Galveston-Houston confirmed the move Sunday.

“I started shaking,” said Eduardo Lopez de Casas. “I wasn’t sure if I could continue singing.”

Father Alfonso Delgado agreed to withdraw from all ministry until the investigation is complete, the diocese said.

Lopez de Casas was leading music during this morning’s mass. He’s also a member of Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests.

“I was in shock,” said Lopez de Casas. “As a victim when you hear this, it’s almost like you’re reliving your own experience.”

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HOUSTON (TX)
Houston Chronicle

August 25, 2019

By Nicole Hensley

Another priest accused of sexual misconduct has been removed from a north Harris County parish where a cleric was also suspended earlier this year.

hurch leaders at Prince of Peace Catholic Community announced during services Sunday that parochial vicar Alfonso Delgado was under investigation following an allegation involving another adult.

Pastor Gerald Goodrum divulged the removal after reciting a homily and at least four hail mary’s, said Eduardo Lopez de Casas, a leader of Houston’s Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests who was working a Mass service as a cantor. The nature of the allegation and when it was said to have happened was not revealed.

Goodrum asked that parishioners with any information about the allegation to contact law enforcement.

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WASHINGTON (DC)
Christian Post

August 26, 2019

By Michael Brown

The internet is burning up with news of yet another scandal in the church, this time with serious accusations against Charismatic evangelist Todd Bentley. What is God saying to His people through this current crisis?

Regarding Todd’s situation, I have no specific comment, since: 1) I have not supported him being in ministry since his divorce and remarriage in 2008, and I am on public record to that effect. 2) I have no connection of any kind to Todd and his ministry. (I also disagreed publicly with the way other leaders handled things in Lakeland, where Todd became prominent.)

But, after prayer and reflection, I do believe there are important things to share that are applicable beyond this current, alleged scandal.

First, this is not the time to throw stones at Charismatics, as some non-charismatic critics have been quick to do. To be sure, we Charismatics have done a very poor job of self-policing, which is a major reason I wrote the book Playing with Holy Fire. And, to be sure, we have had more than our share of sexual scandals. (Note that I write “we” and “our” as a Charismatic myself. I will gladly point the finger within my own circles.)

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NEWARK (NJ)
Star Ledger

August 26, 2019

By Sophie Nieto-Munoz

A disgraced Roman Catholic priest who admitted to sexually assaulting a teenage girl three decades ago will be sentenced Monday in Superior Court in Middlesex County.

Thomas P. Ganley, 63, pleaded guilty to sexually assaulting a girl who was a member of the youth group he led in the 1990s. The priest’s case was the first criminal case prosecuted after the start of the Attorney General’s Clergy Abuse Task Force, which was formed last year to investigate allegations of clergy abuse.

Ganley, who will be sentenced by Judge Diane Pincus, faces four years in prison. He will also be required to register as a sex offender under Megan’s Law and will be forbidden to have unsupervised contact with any child under 18.

When he was arrested in January, Ganley was a parochial vicar at St. Philip and St. James Catholic Church in Phillipsburg and a chaplain at St. Luke’s Warren Campus Hospital.

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PITTSBURGH (PA)
Post-Gazette

August 26, 2019

By Peter Smith

The new spiritual leader of West Virginia’s Roman Catholics is big on “hope.” He mentioned it several times during his homily last week when he was installed as bishop of the Diocese of Wheeling-Charleston.

So, given the cleanup task ahead of him, Bishop Mark Brennan can only hope for more moments like what he experienced after that service.

He had just emerged from the Cathedral of St. Joseph in Wheeling behind a train of dozens of priests and bishops in their festive clerical garb, the sounds of organ and brass still reverberating within. He went up to an elevated pulpit in an exterior turret to bless the crowds clustered below, dressed in their Sunday best even though it was a Thursday afternoon.

“Bishop, we’re over here!” shouted Yvette Smith, one of a cluster of women across the street. They were dressed in T-shirts and jeans or shorts in the humid afternoon. They live in apartments across the street or around the corner, and they often enjoy watching people coming and going from the beautiful weddings and other ceremonies that contrast with the otherwise bleak neighborhood.

This time, they weren’t just spectators.

Bishop Brennan accepted their invitation, walking over, talking with the women and offering blessings.

“Nobody’s ever taken the time to come over here,” Ms. Smith said, adding that the visit lifted her spirits on a discouraging day. She plans to attend Mass at the cathedral in the future.

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Good Men’s Project blog

August 24, 2019

By Brian Clites

It has been one year since the Pennsylvania grand jury report named 300 sexually abusive Roman Catholic priests in the state. After an 18-month investigation, the grand jury concluded that “over one thousand child victims were identifiable, from the church’s own records.”

At the same time, the jury also noted that the real numbers could be much higher. It said,

“We believe that the real number – of children whose records were lost or who were afraid ever to come forward – is in the thousands.”

As a scholar who has spent the last eight years interviewing Catholic survivors of clergy sex abuse, I know that even though there were only a few convictions in Pennsylvania, the release of the grand jury report was a watershed moment for survivors.

The report opened up space for new conversations and helped communities come to terms with the horror of their past.

Grand juries comprise up to 23 citizens. They investigate potential crimes under the leadership and jurisdiction of a prosecutor.

Each state governs the amount of time that victims have to prosecute a given crime, which is called the statute of limitations. Although the Pennsylvania grand jury report spurred other states to extend their statute of limitations, Pennsylvania has not.

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NEW YORK (NY)
New York Post

August 22, 2019

By Priscilla DeGregory

After years of failed attempts to sue Yeshiva University, 38 former students who say they were sexually abused by three rabbis and other school staff decades ago can now seek justice under the Child Victims Act.

The victims say while they attended all-boys Yeshiva University High School, the principal, Rabbi George Finkelstein, and four other staffers variously sexually abused them, beginning in 1955 and continuing through 1986, according to the Manhattan Supreme Court lawsuit.

The school received more than 20 complaints from parents and students about the alleged abuse but did nothing, the court papers allege.

One victim, Mordechai Twersky, claims he was twice sexually abused by Finkelstein in 1980 — and despite letting school officials know, they kept the rabbi at the school and even gave him the “Educator of the Year” award in 1985.

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GREENSBURG (PA)
Tribune-Review

August 25, 2019

By Deb Erdley

“It’s not about the money.”

In another time and place, Jack (not his real name) said he’d take the $41,990 offered through the Greensburg Catholic Diocese’s compensation fund for clergy sex abuse survivors and toss it back.

Nothing will ever erase what he says the Rev. John J. Nyeste, a trusted priest, did to him 53 years ago in a secluded farmhouse.

These have not been the best of times for Jack.

At 64, struggling to make ends meet and dealing with health problems, the one-time Connellsville altar boy and former seminarian says he’ll likely take what the church is offering. He was given until Monday to make his decision.

He is among hundreds of survivors of clergy child sexual abuse weighing monetary offers that seven Pennsylvania dioceses have extended.

The local dioceses will underwrite such settlements, but they otherwise washed their hands of the process. Church leaders have outsourced the duty of weighing claims to third-party mediators such as Kenneth Feinberg and Camille Biros or, in the case of the Greensburg Diocese, a Harrisburg-based service known as Commonwealth Mediation and Conciliation.

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DENVER (CO)
Crux

August 24, 2019

By John L. Allen Jr.

[With photo]

Rome – This Wednesday happened to be the feast of St. Pius X, who served as pope from 1903 to 1914 and whose primary claim to fame was unleashing an “anti-modernist” purge in the Catholic Church, the targets of which were a loosely defined network of Biblical scholars, theologians and others trying, in various ways, to reconcile the faith with science and modern thought.

Pius X issued an encyclical in 1907, Pascendi Dominici Gregis, which was more or less the charter document of the campaign, describing “modernism” as “the synthesis of all heresies.” He also imposed an “anti-modernist oath” on all clergy that lasted until 1967.

Here’s what makes this interesting: If you run a Google search using the keywords “Pope Francis” and “modernism,” you’ll get more than a half-million results, most of them accusing Francis of being a modernist himself.

Yet there he was on Aug. 21, attending a Mass for the feast in a side chapel in St. Peter’s Basilica like an ordinary member of the faithful, sitting unobtrusively in the sixth row. While we have no idea what was in Francis’s mind at that moment, it’s hard not to think he wanted to honor the memory of his predecessor – suggesting, among other things, that perhaps Francis’s view of “modernism” and the Church’s efforts to resist it are a bit more nuanced than is often appreciated.

Francis’s surprise drop-in didn’t make headlines – in part, of course, because it came on the same day an Australian court announced its ruling on Cardinal George Pell’s appeal of his conviction on child sex abuse charges, rejecting that appeal in a 2-1 split decision.

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DENVER (CO)
Crux

August 17, 2019

By Inés San Martín

San Francisco, Argentina – Although by now Catholics in some parts of the world have lived with the ferment caused by revelations of clerical sexual abuse for decades, a bishop who heads a commission for preventing abuse in Argentina says that in Pope Francis’s native country, the crisis is “just beginning.”

“It’s not that the abuses are beginning, but society’s awareness, with cases becoming public,” said Bishop Sergio Buenanueva, of San Francisco, in the region of Cordoba. “The cases that expose this problem to the public produce a domino effect which, I believe, is positive.”

Buenanueva also told Crux that while he believes Pope Francis is having a deep impact on the local church, no pope, even history’s first from Argentina, has the capacity to reverse a centuries-long trend of secularization.

On the abuse crisis, the bishop insisted that transparency is healthy.

“In the first place, it’s positive for the victims, who’re now being heard by the Catholic Church and society at large,” he said. “The media has been part of this, and the justice system is doing its job too, with priests being condemned with adequately harsh punishments.”

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DAYTON (OH)
Journal-News

August 24, 2019

By Michael D. Pitman

https://www.journal-news.com/news/liberty-twp-church-offers-discussion-series-wake-sex-abuse-allegations-its-former-priest/SMLmZoLYtPKm49hEkdXGNK/

St. Maximilian Kolbe is offering this weekend to parishioners a “short, yet powerful book” after each mass in the wake of a sex abuse scandal involving a former pastor of the Liberty Twp. parish.

Father Jim Riehle is establishing a series of Discussion and Holy Hour for Healing sessions.In a message to parishioners, Riehle wrote the book “addresses so much of the struggle, the pain, and the anger surrounding the evil of sexual abuse and the stain this has left on our church.”

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Former Pastor Geoff Drew was indicted on Aug. 19 in Hamilton County on nine counts of raping a boy who recently came forward in the wake of other allegations.

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The book, “Letter to a Suffering Church” by Bishop Robert Barron, directly addresses the issues currently facing the church, wrote Riehle.

Riehle said said he’s “encouraging” parishioners read the book “because I believe it addresses important and difficult topics” and hopes it will spark a conversation. He also hopes the book at the ensuing discussions will be “a small, first step towards the peace and healing and change that we all desire.”

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DENVER (CO)
Crux

August 25, 2019

By John L. Allen Jr.

Rome – Back in long-ago 1998, I spoke to a member of a small conservative Catholic watchdog group in the U.S. that had just publicly accused a prominent local priest of sexual abuse. I asked why all the churchmen this group targeted seemed to be liberals, and the answer was unhesitating: “Where there’s smoke, there’s fire.”

What he meant is that if a cleric is doctrinally and politically suspect, at least in this group’s eyes, then there’s likely moral corruption too.

In other words, what one might call the “weaponization” of clerical sexual abuse charges as part of the wars of culture in Catholicism is nothing new. Decisions to lodge such charges or to make them public, as well as whether people are inclined to believe or reject them, often are tied up with politics, try as reasonable souls might to remain objective.

This comes to mind in light of a recent controversy surrounding Venezuelan Archbishop Edgar Peña Parra, the “substitute,” or number three official, in the Vatican’s Secretariat of State. He was appointed to that role by Pope Francis last year, and it’s a key one – the substitute, who’s responsible for the Vatican’s daily workflow, is the only person, including the Cardinal Secretary of State, who can simply walk in on the pope unannounced.

When Peña Parra was appointed a year ago, the Italian newsmagazine L’Espresso published a letter suggesting negative reports about him as a seminarian in Venezuela, but they mostly concerned his sexual orientation and didn’t clearly suggest abuse.

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