ABUSE TRACKER

HOUSTON (TX)
Associated Press

June 5, 2019

Representatives of a top leader of the U.S. Catholic Church say he acted “swiftly and justly” to the allegations made by a woman who claims his former deputy lured her into a sexual relationship.

The Archdiocese of Galveston-Houston issued a statement Tuesday in response to an Associated Press investigation of Cardinal Daniel DiNardo, who is leading the U.S. church’s response to its sex abuse scandal.

The Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests is calling on a top U.S. cardinal to resign or step aside from his role leading the U.S. Catholic Church’s response to its sex abuse crisis.

Laura Pontikes accuses DiNardo of not fulfilling the archdiocese’s promises to prevent Monsignor Frank Rossi from being a pastor or counseling women after engaging in a sexual relationship with her. Instead, DiNardo allowed Rossi to go to a parish in rural east Texas under another diocese.

The statement from church officials says DiNardo agreed not to reassign Rossi in his archdiocese.

It accuses the AP of publishing “unprofessional, biased and one-sided reporting,” and says some comments attributed to DiNardo by Pontikes and her husband, George, are “an absolute fabrication.”

It also says Pontikes demanded $10 million from the archdiocese.

Pontikes acknowledges she made a demand for an unspecified amount of money in an off-the-cuff fit of anger, but says she was clear from the start that she wasn’t interested in a financial payoff.

The Pontikeses and her lawyer told AP that details of mediation, including any financial negotiations, were confidential.

SNAP lauded Pontikes for “speaking out against wrongdoing and in standing up for other survivors.” The group accuses DiNardo of having “compounded” the difficulties faced by adults who allege abuse in the church.

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PARKERSBURG (WV)
News & Sentinel

June 6, 2019

By Jess Mancini

An investigation of the former bishop of the Diocese of Wheeling-Charleston has found the allegations of sexual harassment against him are credible, the apostolic administrator of the diocese said in a letter released on Wednesday.

Bishop William E. Lori, apostolic administrator, also said he has given $7,500 to the diocese, the value of gifts he received over the years from former Bishop Michael Bransfield, whose handling of finances for the diocese was also under investigation.

West Virginia Attorney General Patrick Morrisey on Wednesday said the letter from Lori underscores why the diocese must release the investigative report into alleged misconduct by Bransfield.

Bransfield retired last year, and Lori was appointed apostolic administrator with the instructions from Pope Francis that he commence an investigation into Bransfield.

“Regarding allegations of sexual harassment of adults by Bishop Bransfield, the investigative team determined that the accounts of those who accused Bishop Bransfield of sexual harassment are credible,” Lori said in the letter. “The team uncovered a consistent pattern of sexual innuendo and overt suggestive comments and actions toward those over whom the former bishop exercised authority.

“The investigation found no conclusive evidence of sexual misconduct with minors by the former bishop during its investigation,” he said. “It should be noted that due to privacy concerns and at the request of those who alleged harassment by Bishop Bransfield, the alleged victims and their personal accounts, which for them are a source of deeply felt pain and humiliation, will not be disclosed by the diocese.”

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NEW YORK (NY)
Slate

June 6, 2019

By Elliot Hannon

The Catholic Church always provides good fodder for Hollywood-like thrillers, that is the inner workings of the church often include the fundamental elements of a good cinematic tale, namely: sex, drugs, money, and, inevitably, a coverup. A new Washington Post investigation in to the church has everything Hollywood could hope for, implicating a former Catholic bishop in West Virginia who spent millions on a lavish lifestyle in one of the poorest states in the country and gave away as much as $350,000 in gifts to clergy before being ousted from the church in September amidst claims of sexual abuse and financial impropriety. Nine men in the Wheeling-Charleston diocese accused Bishop Michael Bransfield of groping, kissing or exposing himself to them or commenting on their bodies. The hundreds of thousands of dollars in cash gifts from Bransfield were given to young priests he is accused of mistreating, as well as to powerful cardinals in the U.S. and the Vatican itself.

The details of Bransfield’s misconduct were outlined in a confidential internal Vatican investigation following Bransfield’s resignation last fall. The instances of abuse, reported by the Post, are staggering:

There were “troubling hugs” from Bransfield, the seminarians and young priests told investigators. On some of these occasions, they alleged, Bransfield appeared to be intoxicated. Others said he warned them not to “get fat.” One said Bransfield slapped him on the buttocks at Castel Gandolfo in Italy, the summer residence of the pope… One seminarian recalled sitting on Bransfield’s lap, being kissed by the bishop and thinking: “I either do this, or I have to completely reinvent my life.” Bransfield asked him to take his pants off, but he refused, the seminarian told investigators. The seminarian later suffered an emotional breakdown and became deeply depressed, the report says.

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WASHINGTON (DC)
Washington Post

June 5, 2019

By Michelle Boorstein, Shawn Boburg, and Robert O’Harrow Jr.

In the years before he was ousted for alleged sexual harassment and financial abuses, the leader of the Catholic Church in West Virginia gave cash gifts totaling $350,000 to fellow clergymen, including young priests he is accused of mistreating, and more than a dozen cardinals in the United States and at the Vatican, according to church records obtained by The Washington Post.

Bishop Michael Bransfield wrote the checks from his personal account over more than a decade, and the West Virginia diocese reimbursed him by boosting his compensation to cover the value of the gifts, the records show. As a tax-exempt nonprofit, the diocese must use its money only for charitable purposes.

The gifts – one as large as $15,000 – were detailed in a draft of a confidential report to the Vatican about Bransfield’s alleged misconduct. The names of 11 powerful clerics who received checks were edited out of the final report at the request of the archbishop overseeing the investigation, William Lori of Baltimore.

Lori’s name was among those cut. He received a total of $10,500, records show.

Lori wanted the names removed because he feared they would be “a distraction” from the report’s other findings, according to a person familiar with the investigation who was not authorized to discuss the findings. The Post obtained both versions of the report, along with numerous emails and financial records.

The investigation was launched by the Vatican last fall after clerics in West Virginia raised concerns about Bransfield’s behavior. Five lay investigators concluded that the cash gifts were part of a broader pattern of abuse of power by the bishop, including harassing young priests and spending church money on personal indulgences.

“Bishop Bransfield adopted an extravagant and lavish lifestyle that was in stark contrast to the faithful he served and was for his own personal benefit,” they wrote in the final report.

During his 13 years as bishop in West Virginia, one of the poorest states in the nation, Bransfield spent $2.4 million in church money on travel, much of it personal, which included flying in chartered jets and staying in luxury hotels, according to the report. Bransfield and several subordinates spent an average of nearly $1,000 a month on alcohol, it says. The West Virginia diocese paid $4.6 million to renovate Bransfield’s church residence after a fire damaged a single bathroom. When Bransfield was in the chancery, an administrative building, fresh flowers were delivered daily, at a cost of about $100 a day – almost $182,000 in all.

Bransfield, 75, drew on a source of revenue that many parishioners knew little about, oil-rich land in Texas donated to the diocese more than a century ago. He spoke of church money as if it were his to spend without restriction, according to the report.

“I own this,” he is quoted as saying on many occasions.

In statements after receiving questions from The Post, Lori said that “in light of what I have come to learn of Bishop Bransfield’s handling of diocesan finances,” he is returning $7,500 to the diocese and asking that it be donated to Catholic Charities.

He also told members of the diocese in a statement that he received permission “as of today” to sell the bishop’s residence in Wheeling and use the proceeds to support victims and survivors of sexual abuse.

He acknowledged that the names of senior clerics were cut from the final report.

“Including them could inadvertently and/or unfairly suggest that in receiving gifts for anniversaries or holidays there were expectations for reciprocity,” he wrote. “No evidence was found to suggest this.”

In an interview with The Post, Bransfield disputed the allegations, saying “none of it is true,” but he declined to go into detail because attorneys had advised him not to comment. One of his attorneys said Lori has not responded to Bransfield’s request for a copy of the report.

“Everybody’s trying to destroy my reputation,” Bransfield said by phone without elaborating. “These people are terrible to me.”

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PITTSBURGH (PA)
Tribune Review

June 5, 2019

By Deb Erdley

Kathy Coll still has trouble processing how the Catholic Church responded two years ago when she reported she had been raped in 2016 by a Nigerian priest who was studying at Duquesne University and assisting in her North Hills parish.

Coll, a retired high school English teacher and Eucharistic minister who sang in the choir, taught CCD classes and volunteered countless hours for her church, said that day changed her life.

The widowed mother of two adult sons remains active in her church.

But Wednesday, Coll, 68, filed a 13-count lawsuit against the priest, Cyprian Duru , the Catholic Diocese of Pittsburgh, Bishop David Zubik, and St. Teresa of Avila Roman Catholic Parish, her Ross Township church.

Her complaint charges that the diocese failed to properly vet Duru before assigning him to a parish where she and others were asked to give support and assist to a predator priest from a region where clergy were known to prey on older women. She alleges that the assault occurred in December 2016.

“I spent 2 ½ years trying to get someone to listen to me,” Coll said. “No one was listening to me, so I decided it was time to say I want to make something happen here.”

She alleges that the church heard complaints from others about Duru’s inappropriate behavior toward older women, failed to act quickly, and later neglected to explain why Duru was removed from ministry after she reported her assault.

Her complaint bears echoes of hundreds of allegations in last summer’s Pennsylvania grand jury report that detailed decades of church inaction against priests accused of child sexual abuse in Catholic dioceses across the state.

Coll’s suit details her account of how Duru — whom she agreed to tutor in English and occasionally transported to Pittsburgh — began taking frequent walks through her neighborhood that fall. On Dec. 11, 2016, Coll said Duru stopped by her home on the pretense of giving her a Christmas card. She said when she offered him a cold drink, he followed her to her family room, overpowered her and assaulted her as she screamed for him to stop.

Duru, who remains at Duquesne on a student visa, could not be reached for comment.

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ROME (ITALY)
Associated Press

June 5, 2019

By Nicole Winfield

The Texas couple that accused top U.S. Cardinal Daniel DiNardo of mishandling a sexual misconduct case against his former deputy is denying his office’s claims that they fabricated quotes and demanded $10 million, saying they are being dismissed the way the church dismisses other victims.

George Pontikes, president and CEO of the Houston-based construction firm Satterfield & Pontikes, said Wednesday he stood by his comments reported to The Associated Press recounting meetings with DiNardo in 2016 and 2017. The diocese had said it “categorically rejects” the story as biased and one-sided – a response Pontikes called disappointing but not surprising.

“It is another example of a smoke screen designed to cover up wrongdoings,” he said.

His wife, Laura Pontikes, had approached DiNardo’s Galveston-Houston archdiocese in April 2016 to report that the then-vicar general had taken advantage of problems in her marriage and business to manipulate her into a sexual relationship. Emails turned over to the archdiocese and AP show that while the sexual relationship grew, Rossi heard her confessions, counseled her husband on their marriage and solicited hundreds of thousands of dollars in donations for the church.

Houston police are now investigating. Following inquiries by AP, Rossi’s new bishop placed him on leave Tuesday pending the outcome of the police investigation.

The case is significant because DiNardo is heading up the U.S. Catholic Church’s response to the clergy sex abuse scandal, which exploded anew last year worldwide. As president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, DiNardo will lead a meeting next week to approve new measures for accountability over abuse.

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CHARLESTON (WV)
Metro News

June 5, 2019

By Jeff Jenkins

Former Wheeling-Charleston Bishop Michael Bransfield regularly sexually harassed young priests he oversaw and committed financial improprieties during his 13 years of leading the Catholic Church in West Virginia.

The findings come from an investigation commissioned by the apostolic administrator of the Diocese and released in a letter to Catholic Church priests and church members Wednesday afternoon.

The letter written by Rev. William E. Lori, the Archbishop of Baltimore, who has served as Wheeling-Charleston Diocese apostolic administrator since Bransfield’s resignation last September, details the results of a five-month investigation by a five-member lay investigative team made up of both Catholics and non-Catholics.

Lori said after dozens of interviews with those who worked closely with Bransfield it was determined the allegations of sexual harassment of adults were credible.

“The team uncovered a consistent pattern of sexual innuendo, and overt suggestive comments and actions toward those over whom the former bishop exercised authority,” Lori said in Wednesday’s letter.

Lori said there was no conclusive evidence that Bransfield, 75, participated in sexual misconduct with minors.

According to Lori, the investigation also found Bransfield engaged in excessive and inappropriate spending including expensive renovations to residences in Wheeling and Charleston.

“The investigation further found that Bishop Bransfield misused Church funds for personal benefit on such things as personal travel, dining, liquor, gifts and luxury items,” Lori said.

A report published Wednesday afternoon in the Washington Post, 18 minutes after Lori released the letter to the church community, provides additional details about the investigation saying Bransfield gave cash gifts totaling more than $350,000 to fellow clergymen including those he was allegedly mistreating.

According to The Post, which was able to obtain the full investigative report, the cash gifts followed sexual harassment complaints from “younger male clerical assistants.”

File

Archbishop William Lori
Archbishop Lori was one of higher ranking members of the church to receive money from Bransfield. He disclosed that in Wednesday’s letter.

“In the spirit of full disclosure, I feel it necessary to acknowledge that I was periodically a recipient of financial gifts in varying amounts by Bishop Bransfield for various occasions over the years, including my installation as Archbishop of Baltimore in 2012 and annually at Christmas. These gifts totaled $7,500. In light of what I have come to learn of Bishop Bransfield’s handling of diocesan finances, I have returned the full amount to the Diocese and have asked that it be donated to Catholic Charities,” Lori wrote.

The Post, citing the investigative report, says Bransfield spent $2.4 million of the church’s money on travel and many of the trips were personal.

“Bransfield and several subordinates spent an average of nearly $1,000 a month on alcohol, it says. The West Virginia diocese paid $4.6 million to renovate Bransfield’s church residence after a fire damaged a single bathroom. When Bransfield was in the chancery, an administrative building, fresh flowers were delivered daily, at a cost of about $100 a day — almost $182,000 in all,” The Post reported.

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FRESNO (CA)
YourCentralValley.com

June 5, 2019

By Pedro Quintana

Assembly Bill 218 is making its way through the state capitol that would extend the statute of limitations for victims of childhood sexual abuse.

The current law, states that victims have until they’re 26 years old to file a lawsuit against the accuser, the assembly bill would extend that until those victims are 40 years old.

Clergy Abuse attorney Jeff Anderson is asking the Catholic Diocese of Fresno to come clean.

“The real reason is so many catholic bishops and top officials have been so complicit in these crimes and apart of covering them up they don’t want to have this information revealed and made public,” Anderson said.

The diocese of Fresno has opened an investigation against Monsignor Craig Harrison from Bakersfield, who was a priest in Firebaugh and Merced.

Father Raul Diaz of Dinuba was put on paid administrative leave after allegations of sexual abuse of a minor.

Last month, six California Diocese including Fresno announced a new program, to compensate alleged victims who were abused by a catholic priest. An attorney who represents victims said the compensation program is not transparent.

“This program does not reach out to all survivors,” Clergy Abuse Attorney Mike Reck said.

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WASHINGTON (DC)
Archdiocese of Baltimore

June 5, 2019

When it comes to holding himself and other bishops accountable, Baltimore Archbishop William E. Lori is the earliest of early adopters.

Before Pope Francis issued his “motu proprio” instructing the world’s dioceses on handling allegations against bishops, before the U.S. bishops themselves vote on such procedures, Archbishop Lori had implemented a comprehensive series of reforms regarding bishop accountability in his archdiocese.

And ahead of a likely vote on a process by which the nation’s archbishops would be charged with investigating allegations made against any bishops in their province, Archbishop Lori has already done it.

When the U.S. bishops meet June 11-14 to discuss a series of proposals outlining a process for holding themselves accountable, Archbishop Lori will have a unique perspective: He’s already put into practice much of what they will be voting on.

It started after last November’s meeting, when the U.S. bishops discussed, but at the request of the Vatican did not vote on, a series of proposals that would legislate how to hold themselves accountable.

Having held listening sessions around his archdiocese in the wake of revelations of abuse by then-Cardinal Theodore E. McCarrick as well as the release of a Pennsylvania grand jury report, Archbishop Lori was aware that people wanted a transparent way to report wrongdoing not just about priests and church workers, but about bishops.

“I asked myself, ‘What can we do? Can’t we do something right now to respond to what I heard in those many evenings I spent with laity around the archdiocese?’” Archbishop Lori recalled in a June 3 interview with Catholic News Service. “And the answer was yes.”

The Baltimore Archdiocese took an independent reporting tool called “EthicsPoint” that it was already using, and promoted it as a way to collect any allegations of inappropriate behavior by Baltimore bishops. To address concerns that a report might be “submerged” by an archdiocesan office, Archbishop Lori said, complaints are reviewed by “two retired judges who were on the independent review board.”

Once they had assessed any complaint for “a minimal threshold for credibility,” they would then report it to law enforcement and the nuncio.

Archbishop Lori said the process has been “pretty well received,” judging from feedback he has gotten from his visits around the archdiocese. The Archdiocese of Boston and the Diocese of Wheeling-Charleston, West Virginia, have subsequently implemented similar reporting programs.

Archbishop Lori also has become an early example of what is being called “the metropolitan option.” In the wake of the McCarrick scandal, the bishops and the Vatican have been grappling with how to address allegations about abuse or the cover-up of abuse when made against bishops.

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WASHINGTON (DC)
Religion News Service

June 5, 2019

By Jack Jenkins

New questions about how Catholic leaders deal with sexual misconduct arose Tuesday (June 4) after a Texas woman claimed in a news report that church officials in Houston allowed a priest with whom she had a sexual relationship to continue in ministry at a parish two hours away.

Yesterday’s story following an Associated Press investigation detailed an unsettling account of Laura Pontikes, who said Cardinal Daniel DiNardo, head of the Archdiocese of Galveston-Houston the current president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, failed to respond adequately to her 2016 claim that Monsignor Frank Rossi, a deputy to DiNardo, had begun a relationship in August 2012 after the cleric spent years as her priest and confessor.

Pontikes claimed that Rossi induced her to perform sexual acts in his office during spiritual direction sessions, absolving her of her sins and eventually consummating their relationship with intercourse — all while the priest argued that such “holy touches” were encouraged by Paul the Apostle. Rossi also allegedly pushed her and her husband to donate millions of dollars to his church, St. Michael the Archangel.

In the era of #MeToo and #ChurchToo, the fact that the accuser is an adult has not spared the church new scrutiny about the church hierarchy’s slowness to respond to sexual misconduct claims or about what experts have been quick to call confusion regarding what constitutes consent.

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WHEELING (WV)
Diocese of Wheeling-Charleston

June 5, 2019

By Archbishop William Lori

As you know, last September, upon the Holy Father’s acceptance of the resignation of
former Wheeling-Charleston Bishop Michael J. Bransfield, I was appointed by the Holy See to
serve as Apostolic Administrator of the Diocese and assigned to commission a preliminary
investigation into allegations of sexual harassment of adults and financial improprieties
committed by the former bishop. In March, at the time of the investigation’s conclusion, I
reported to you that I appointed five lay investigators – both Catholic and non-Catholic alike – of
with professional competency in civil law, finance, human resources, and canon law, to conduct
the investigation. Their work occurred over a five-month period and included interviews with
dozens of individuals who had worked closely with the former bishop and interacted with him
in a variety of ways, and whose knowledge and perspective would inform the findings. As I
shared with you two months ago, I submitted the preliminary investigation to the Holy See for
final judgment and suspended Bishop Bransfield’s priestly and episcopal faculties within the
Diocese of Wheeling-Charleston and the Archdiocese of Baltimore, as was my prerogative to do
so as the Metropolitan Archbishop and as the Apostolic Administrator of the Diocese of
Wheeling-Charleston.

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

June 5, 2019

We at SNAP applaud the brave victims for coming forward and getting Bishop Bransfield’s wrongdoings exposed and stopped.

After reading the letter from Bishop Lori regarding the church’s investigation into Bishop Bransfield’s alleged sexual harassment, we feel that law enforcement should get involved and do an investigation into Bransfield and the Wheeling-Charleston diocese.

We also are still wondering what is the punishment for Bransfield and what will happen to him? We feel he should never work in any diocese again or be near children or vulnerable adults. Let’s not forget his allegations of sexual abuse of minors in Philadelphia.

The church officials of the Wheeling-Charleston diocese should reach out to any others to come forward and report any kind of abuse to law enforcement.

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CHARLESTON (WV)
Associated Press

June 5, 2019

By John Raby

The head of West Virginia’s Roman Catholic diocese says an investigation into a former bishop found a “consistent pattern” of sexual innuendo and suggestive comments and actions toward subordinates.

Archbishop William Lori of the Wheeling-Charleston Diocese on Wednesday released the results of an investigation into claims against ex-Bishop Michael Bransfield, who resigned last year.

Lori says an investigation team determined that the accusations against Bishop Bransfield are credible. It found no conclusive evidence of sexual misconduct by Bransfield involving minors.

Lori says the investigation determined Bransfield also misused church funds for his own benefit, including to pay for expensive renovations to his private residences in Wheeling and Charleston, and his intended retirement residence.

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NEWARK (NEW JERSEY)
Star Ledger

June 5, 2019

By Kelly Heyboer

Then-Rev. John Capparelli allegedly spent decades in New Jersey organizing wrestling matches for young boys and teenagers in church basements and youth clubs where he sometimes donned a Speedo and wrestled the young men in “submission” matches that often turned brutal and sadistic.

Capparelli was suspended in 1992 and eventually defrocked by the Catholic Church after some of the boys alleged he violently groped them during the wrestling matches and sexually assaulted them when they were alone with him in churches, at camps and on vacations.

The ex-priest, who denied the charges and was never prosecuted, eventually left New Jersey and started a new life in a quiet neighborhood in Henderson, Nevada.

But, it appears Capparelli kept looking for young men to wrestle.

The former priest — who was shot in the head in his Nevada house in March — allegedly met his killer through an online Craigslist ad Capparelli placed seeking men to wrestle in his house in “submission matches,” according to a report in the Las Vegas Sun.

Investigators found “hundreds of homemade DVDs that featured nearly-nude men wrestling inside (his) home, presumably while the victim filmed them,” according to an arrest warrant affidavit.

Nevada police issued the warrant earlier this week for Derrick Decoste, 25, on charges of murder and robbery with a deadly weapon in connection with Capparelli’s death. Investigators said Decoste met Capparelli through the Craigslist ad and visited him several times, intending to rob him, the report said.

Capparelli, 70, was found dead in his kitchen March 9 after someone asked police to make a welfare check at his house. Investigators said the former priest’s wallet, car keys and cell phone were missing after his death.

Decoste told police he knew Capparelli, but he denied killing him, the report said.

John Capparelli’s home in Henderson, Nevada, pictured on Wednesday, March 13, 2019. Police responded to a welfare check last Saturday at the residence, 1465 Bonner Springs Drive, and found Capparelli shot dead in an apparent homicide. (Chris Kudialis)
John Capparelli’s home in Henderson, Nevada, pictured on Wednesday, March 13, 2019. Police responded to a welfare check last Saturday at the residence, 1465 Bonner Springs Drive, and found Capparelli shot dead in an apparent homicide. (Chris Kudialis)

Decoste’s girlfriend allegedly assisted police by giving them a bag of her boyfriend’s belongings. Those possessions included a gun and a watch that belonged to Capparrelli, the report said. The watch was inscribed with the words “Newark Teachers Union Local 481,” the union where Capparelli had once been president when he worked as a school teacher after leaving the priesthood.

Nearly two decades after he was removed from ministry for alleged sexual abuse, a 2011 investigation by The Star-Ledger revealed Capparelli was working as a public school math teacher in Newark. After the report detailing past allegations of abuse, the former priest voluntarily surrendered his New Jersey teaching licenses.

The Star-Ledger also reported corporate records showed Capparelli formed a production company in 1999 that produced fetish videos. A website linked to the company, nhb-battle.com, sold erotic videos of adult men in tight bathing suits wrestling.

The goal of “submission” wrestling is not to pin an opponent, but to force him into defeat by causing pain or extreme discomfort.

The videos sold for $6.95 to $14.95. Capparelli later shut down the website after he was sued by one of the boys he allegedly abused while he was a priest.

In Nevada, neighbors on his quiet street in Henderson said Capparelli was quiet and appeared retired. But he would routinely have a couple of visitors a week. There were always high school and college aged men, neighbors said.

Weeks before his death, Capparelli was one of 188 priests and deacons in the state who had been “credibly accused” of child sexual abuse named on a list released by New Jersey’s five Catholic dioceses.

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OAKLAND (CA)
San Francisco Chronicle

June 3, 2019

By Gwendolyn Wu

The Diocese of Oakland has added 18 friars it claimed sexually abused children to a list of accused priests from East Bay parishes, officials said Monday.

The new names come from a list released Friday by the Franciscan Friars of Santa Barbara, whose territory includes California, Arizona, Oregon and Washington. Friars on the list may have served in or lived at the diocese in the past, said Helen Osman, a diocese spokeswoman.

Church officials said they did not know of the accusations until the friars released the new list.

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AUBURN (WA)
USA TODAY High School Sports

June 4, 2019

By Logan Newman

The three gold medals and one silver medal Rosalie Fish won at the Class 1B state meet weren’t just for her.

As she crossed the finish line with a red handprint over her mouth and the letters MMIW – standing for Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women – in red paint on her leg, Fish wanted to represent the Native American women who couldn’t represent themselves.

The Seattle Times called violence against the group an “epidemic” that’s not being properly reported by police agencies, including when the women are murdered or go missing.

The Muckleshoot Tribal School (Auburn, Washington) runner is part of the Cowlitz Tribe, according to the Seattle Times.

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NANTUCKET (MA)
Good Morning America

June 3, 2019

By Chris Francescani

In a surprise appearance, Kevin Spacey returns to court on Nantucket for pre-trial hearing in sex assault case originally appeared on abcnews.go.com

Actor Kevin Spacey made a surprise appearance on Monday in a Nantucket courtroom for another pretrial hearing in his sexual assault case, at which his defense attorney blasted the accuser and his mother for allegedly deleting exculpatory text exchanges from the son’s phone before turning it over to investigators.

Citing a forensic extraction report concerning the alleged victim’s phone recently turned over to the defense, Spacey’s attorney Alan Jackson made the case during an hourlong hearing that the accuser and his mother, former Boston ABC affiliate WCVB anchor Heather Unruh “cleansed” the phone of any information that could help exonerate Spacey before turning it over to police.

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AUSTRALIA
The Courier

May 28, 2019

By Jolyon Attwooll

Trauma and abuse counselling services are preparing for more calls ahead of Cardinal George Pell’s appeal hearing next week.

Organisations such as the Centre Against Sexual Assault (CASA) reported a surge in work when Pell’s conviction for molesting two teenagers in the 1990s became public knowledge.

They believe the same may happen when the appeal is heard on Wednesday and Thursday next week.

Carolyn Worth, a spokesperson for CASA forum, said: “If it’s really causing you tension, just dig deep and walk away from it.

“You get really distressed if it triggers you. Just limit what you’re doing – or don’t do it.

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PHOENIX (AZ)
Diocese of Phoenix

May 31, 2019

Diocese of Phoenix Statement on Arrest of Former Salvatorian Priest Joseph Henn

The Diocese of Phoenix is pleased to learn that authorities have located and apprehended former Salvatorian priest Joseph Henn in Italy. We support the efforts of the Maricopa County Attorney’s Office to extradite Henn and return him to the United States in order to face the criminal charges against him.

Henn was assigned by the Salvatorian order to serve at St. Mark Parish in Phoenix from 1978 to 1982. He was indicted on sexual abuse charges in 2003 and arrested in Italy in 2005, butdisappeared before he could be extradited to the United States to stand trial. Henn is identified on our website as a priest who has been removed from ministry due to sexual misconduct with a minor: https://dphx.org/youth-protection/community-notification-statements

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NANTUCKET (MA)
Deadline

June 3, 2019

By Dominic Patten

Kevin Spacey wants the indecent assault and battery case against him tossed out of court for “misconduct” on the part of the prosecution and accuser’s family, while a fall trial date is likely.

With the former House of Cards star making a surprise appearance in a Nantucket courtroom Monday, the actor’s attorney hit the state hard with accusations of “misrepresentation.” Alan Jackson declared that the underage accuser’s old phone had his “frat boy activities” and other potential evidence erased by his mother, former Boston TV anchor Heather Unruh, before being handed over to the police.

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LOS ANGELES (CA)
Anderson Advocates

June 4, 2019

Prominent Catholic Whistleblower, Survivors and Law Firm to Expose California Diocesan Compensation Programs Tuesday in Los Angeles

Survivors and Catholic Whistleblower to Highlight Issues With Prior New York Diocesan Compensation Programs

Tuesday in Los Angeles, two clergy abuse survivors, a prominent Catholic whistleblower and the law firm of Jeff Anderson & Associates will:

• Siobahn O’Connor, former personal assistant to Diocese of Buffalo (New York) Bishop Richard Malone, will expose the truth and discuss the cover-up of clergy sexual abuse by Malone that caused her to reluctantly release secret Diocese documents to the public to disclose the truth. O’Connor will discuss how the Diocese of Buffalo and Bishop Malone handled its compensation program;
• Release a summary of the diocesan compensation programs for clergy sexual abuse survivors announced by the Archdiocese of Los Angeles and the Dioceses of Sacramento, San Bernardino, San Diego, Orange and Fresno. Similar survivor compensation programs in New York will be compared and contrasted;
• Survivor Christopher Szuflita will discuss his abuse by a Diocese of Buffalo priest, the Diocese’s handling of his reports and his decision to reject a settlement offer under the Diocese’s compensation program;
• Survivor Thomas Davis will discuss his abuse by a Diocese of Brooklyn priest and determination by the compensation program that his claim was unsubstantiated;
• Compare the California diocesan compensation programs’ features with those that may be offered to survivors in statute of limitations legislation being considered by California lawmakers and discuss how the California bishops are doing the same thing that the New York bishops are doing.

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AUSTRALIA
The Tablet

June 3, 2019

By Mark Bowling

The appeal will be broadcast live from the Victoria Supreme Court in Melbourne, and will be accessible on the court’s website around the world

Jailed Cardinal George Pell, Australia’s highest-ranking Catholic, will return to court on 5 and 6 June for an appeal against his conviction for sexually abusing two Melbourne choirboys in the 1990s.

In recognition of the high public interest in the case, the appeal will be broadcast live from the Victoria Supreme Court in Melbourne, and will be accessible on the court’s website around the world.

Lawyers for Cardinal Pell, 77, who is three months into his six-year gaol term, will argue his guilty verdict was “unreasonable”.

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AUSTRALIA
Australian Broadcasting Corporation

June 5, 2019

By Emma Younger and staff

George Pell’s lawyer has told an appeals court the child sex abuse offences the Cardinal is now in jail for are “impossible” and a jury should have found him not guilty even if they believed his victim.

Speaking at Wednesday’s appeal hearing at Victoria’s Supreme Court, Bret Walker SC told the court that evidence given at trial supplied Pell with an alibi.

In written submissions, Pell’s lawyers listed 12 other reasons why the offending could not have occurred, including issues with Pell’s location in the church at the time of the offending and with the dates of the offences in the 1990s.

Mr Walker argued Pell’s clerical robe could not have been pulled aside to commit the “atrocious acts” he has been convicted of.

Pell, 77, is serving a six-year jail term for sexually abusing two choirboys when he was archbishop of Melbourne.

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CHARLESTON (WV)
Associated Press

June 5, 2019

By John Raby

The head of West Virginia’s Roman Catholic diocese says an investigation into a former bishop found a “consistent pattern” of sexual innuendo and suggestive comments and actions toward subordinates.

Archbishop William Lori of the Wheeling-Charleston Diocese on Wednesday released the results of an investigation into claims against ex-Bishop Michael Bransfield , who resigned last year.

Lori says an investigation team determined that the accusations against Bishop Bransfield are credible. It found no conclusive evidence of sexual misconduct by Bransfield involving minors.

Lori says the investigation determined Bransfield also misused church funds for his own benefit, including to pay for expensive renovations to his private residences in Wheeling and Charleston, and his intended retirement residence.

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NEW YORK (NY)
ABC News

June 5, 2019

By Pete Madden

A pair of bills that would have opened an avenue to investigate alleged clergy abuse in Kentucky languished in this year’s legislative session, and some supporters of the proposals say partisan politics is to blame.

Amid a national reckoning over allegations of sexual abuse in the Catholic Church, Kentucky lawmakers failed to advance or even consider legislation to expand the Attorney General’s powers to investigate crimes, like clergy abuse, that often occur across multiple jurisdictions. Now, the attorney general and his allies are crying foul.

Attorney General Andy Beshear, the highest-ranking Democrat in a state government otherwise controlled by Republicans, is running for governor in what is expected to be a hotly contested campaign. According to Gretchen Hunt, who leads the Attorney General’s Office of Victims Advocacy, Republican lawmakers were reluctant to empower a political rival to conduct a headline-making probe with an election approaching.

“Putting politics above victims and survivors is a bad way to do public policy,” Hunt told ABC News. “The injustice of that is very profound.”

Because Kentucky seats only a part-time legislature, the bills will not return to the floor until 2020, frustrating those eager for Kentucky to join more than a dozen other states where statewide investigations of alleged clergy abuse are already underway.

“It’s a problem,” Rep. Jeff Donohue, a Democrat, who worked with the Attorney General’s Office to introduce one of the stymied pieces of legislation, told ABC News. “I got to have partners to work with towards this, but I’m having trouble finding them. The only explanation is political.”

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ALLENTOWN (PA)
The Morning Call

June 5, 2019

By Paul Muschick

You may not be surprised to learn that another review has found shortcomings with the Catholic church’s efforts to prevent clergy sexual abuse of children.

What’s interesting is this review came from within the church.

The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops recently released its annual audit about whether dioceses are complying with conference rules enacted in 2002 to stop abuse, and to deal with the aftermath of it.

The study found a “heightened sense of urgency and focus” in many dioceses in 2018. It also uncovered recurring problems, including failure to train or check the backgrounds of clergy, employees and volunteers who have contact with children.

Incredibly, three eparchies — they’re similar to a diocese but don’t have geographic boundaries — refused to participate in the review.

That’s like slamming the door in Jesus’ face when he comes knocking with a question.

Auditors visited 72 of the nation’s 197 dioceses and eparchies, including Philadelphia and Greensburg. The others, including Allentown, were audited through a 12-page questionnaire.

Allentown passed. It told auditors that students, clergy, teachers, employees and volunteers had received safe environment training and the adults underwent background checks, according to a diocese news release.

Allentown is scheduled for an on-site review in the 2020 audit, diocese spokesman Matt Kerr said.

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WOODVILLE (TX)
News West 9

June 5, 2019

By Raegan Gibson & Tyler Seggerman

A Woodville priest has been removed from his duties at Our Lady of the Pines Catholic Church after allegations of sexual misconduct at his former diocese surfaced.

Monsignor Frank Rossi, who retired from the Archdiocese of Galveston-Houston, was accepted into the Beaumont Diocese in May 2017 to work at the parish according to a letter sent to parishioners Saturday by the Bishop of the Beaumont Diocese the Most Rev. Curtis J. Guillory.

The Diocese of Beaumont has placed Rossi, who was acting as pastor of the Woodville parish, on temporary administrative leave while a criminal investigation takes place according to the letter.

At the time of the alleged misconduct Rossi was working in the Archdiocese of Galveston-Houston the letter said.

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SHELBY TOWNSHIP (MI)
Shelby – Utica News

June 3, 2019

By Kara Szymanski

A priest is charged with engaging in criminal sexual conduct in the 1980s in the rectory of a Shelby Township church with a boy who was between the ages of 12 and 14 at the time.

Neil Kalina, 63, a California resident, faces four felony counts of second-degree criminal sexual conduct, which carries a maximum sentence of 15 years in prison and a lifetime of electronic monitoring, in Macomb County at the 41-A District Court.

“In the last 30 hours, more than a dozen members of our investigative team have been in courtrooms in Washtenaw, Wayne, Genesee, Macomb and Berrien counties while other members of our team have been working with local law enforcement in Arizona, California, Florida and Michigan — all in a carefully executed plan to take these charged defendants off the streets,” Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel said in a press release.

Kalina, who the Attorney General’s Office said had been a priest at St. Kieran Catholic Church in Shelby Township, was arrested May 23 in Littlerock, California.

According to a press release from the Archdiocese of Detroit, Kalina was ordained in 1981 for the Pontifical Institute for Foreign Missions, which is a religious order that operates separately from the Archdiocese of Detroit, and granted faculties in 1984. He was a resident at St. Kieran Parish in Utica from 1984 to 1986 and a weekend assistant at St. Ephrem Parish in Sterling Heights from 1984 to 1986, according to the press release. He left active ministry in 1993, according to the Archdiocese of Detroit.

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INTERNATIONAL FALLS (MN)
International Falls Journal

June 5, 2019

By Father Ben Hadrich

The past few decades have been an extraordinarily difficult time for the Catholic Church – for its leadership, for its members, for the clergy, and particularly for the victims of clergy sexual abuse. As a Catholic priest, I can tell you that the subject of sexual abuse, especially at the hands of clergy, is truly gut-wrenching.

It is heart-breaking to think that I am a brother of deacons, priests, bishops and cardinals who have used their power and leadership to abuse adults and children, boys and girls. As tough as it is, it cannot be swept under the rug or hidden in the crevices. In addition, I feel that I must apologize for this abuse, as weak and insignificant as that apology (mea culpa) may sound, to these victims whose lives have been so much changed by these brutal acts.

I hope that we, the clergy, may open our doors to listen, to support, and to pray for our brothers and sisters who have experienced inhumane abuse. Our deacons, priests, bishops and cardinals must continue to seek justice and penance for all who have acted against God’s children.

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JERUSALEM (ISRAEL)
Jerusalem Post

June 3, 2019

Amudim, a crisis center focusing on combating sexual abuse and addictions in the Orthodox community, released a video to break the silence and stigma of sexual abuse. The video has been making its rounds on social media in late-May and early June.

“Not in our community,” is the resounding statement, various Jewish authority figures tell victims of sexual abuse in the video.

The clip depicts two parents and their daughter in the same scenario over and over again. Belonging to different Orthodox denominations in several scenes, they are not believed when they tell a school or a synagogue that their daughter is being abused.

“I watched the clip once, twice, and three times, and then I just broke down and cried and cried,” Esti, who later called the Amudim hotline, recalled after she watched the video. Esti, an Orthodox 20-year-old who grew up in Brooklyn had been molested by her older brother. When she told someone she respected at her seminary, she was told “You’ll be dating soon, my dear! Why risk destroying your reputation and everything you’ve worked to achieve?”

Esti’s call was just one of the 200 calls Amudim fields daily.

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BERKSHIRE (MA)
Berkshire Eagle

June 4, 2019

By Larry Parnass

A former member of the board that reviews sexual abuse allegations for the Springfield Diocese says the church is attempting to quash an altar boy’s report of molestation to preserve the reputation of a longtime local bishop.

In a statement in response to an article in The Eagle, the diocese says that when its review board met last year with a Chicopee man who served as an altar boy in the 1960s, that man did not allege sexual abuse by the late Bishop Christopher J. Weldon.

But Patricia Martin and two others who attended that June 13, 2018, session confirmed this week that the victim specifically named Weldon as an abuser.

“We were in the room where it happened and [the man] did say that Weldon abused him,” said Martin, a practicing Catholic who has worked as a doctoral-level clinical psychologist for 35 years. “I heard [the man] say that Weldon brought him in a room and abused him.”

The Eagle is not naming the man, because he is a survivor of sexual assault.

“They are trying to cover [Weldon’s] reputation rather than support a victim,” Martin said. “It’s beyond awful. It makes me so angry that they would deny it now. They’re lying.”

Weldon, who led the Western Massachusetts diocese for 27 years, died in 1982.

In September, three months after meeting with the victim, the review board produced a letter saying it found his allegations “compelling and credible.”

“We want to express our sincere sorrow for the pain and suffering you have endured,” the board wrote to the man.

The letter named Weldon, along with two other priests — the Rev. Edward Authier and the Rev. Clarence Forand. Weldon was bishop at the time the Chicopee man says the cleric abused him sexually.

The Eagle reported the contents of that letter in a May 29 story. The article noted that of the three clerics, only Forand was listed as “credibly accused” by the diocese. The church provides the names of “credibly accused” clergy on its website. The diocese’s policy holds that priests accused after their deaths are not listed because they did not have a chance to defend themselves.

Late Friday, the chairman of the review board released a statement through the diocese challenging the accuracy of The Eagle’s report. It says the victim who came before the board did not accuse Weldon of abuse. The board’s job is to judge whether a complaint of abuse is credible.

“There was no finding against Bishop Weldon as the individual also indicated that the former Bishop never abused them,” said John M. Hale, the review board chairman who presided over the session.

“Let me be clear, the Review Board has never found that the late Bishop Christopher Weldon, deceased since 1982, engaged in improper contact with anyone,” Hale said.

The statement does not question the credibility of the victim’s account that he was sexually abused by priests in the diocese. It focuses, instead, on a claim that Weldon was not accused of molestation.

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LONG ISLAND (NY)
Long Island Press

June 4, 2019

By Julia Moro

Victims advocates are urging The Diocese of Rockville Centre to release the names of clergy members that allegedly committed sexual abuse against children.

The Manhattan-based law firm of Jeff Anderson & Associates compiled the names of 65 publicly accused perpetrators, their histories, and photographs, but implored the diocese to release the other data they have on priests accused of sexual abuse.

“I’ll say it right now,” Anderson told reporters Monday during a news conference. “This is a dirty diocese.”

The call comes after church officials nationwide have released similar data following a bombshell Pennsylvania grand jury report last year detailed sexual abuse allegations against more than 300 priests. The Diocese of Rockville Centre, which has more than 1 million baptized Catholics on Long Island, is the only diocese in New York State to not release such a list.

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BUENOS AIRES (ARGENTINA)
Catholic News Agency

June 5, 2019

The bishops’ conference of Argentina has said it is examining and will respond to a new report of more than 60 allegations of sexual abuse by priests and religious in the country.

Officials with the conference said they are working on new protocols and actions to protect minors, following the Vatican summit on the topic earlier this year.

A recent report in La Nación detailed 63 cases of alleged sexual abuse by priests and religious of the Church in Argentina in the last two decades. Of these cases, 17 resulted in convictions, 22 are in judicial process, 24 were not prosecuted and 12 led to dismissal from the clerical state.

Among the cases mentioned are those of Juan Escobar Gaviria, who is now serving a 25-year prison sentence; Nicola Corradi, accused of abusing hearing impaired minors at the Próvolo Institute; and Gustavo Zanchetta, the bishop emeritus of Orán and adviser to the Administration of the Patrimony of the Holy Apostolic See since December 2017, who is under investigation at the Vatican for alleged sexual abuse and the abuse of power.

In their report, La Nación says that the Church in Argentina “for years covered up its priests and religious accused of sexual abuse” through a system of transferring them to new assignments rather than removing them from ministry.

Bishop Sergio Buenanueva of San Francisco warned in a statement that transferring priests accused of sexual abuse was a “habitual” and “totally fatal” practice.

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TAMPA (FL)
Tampa Bay Times

June 3, 2019

By Kathryn Varn

A 71-year-old retired priest accused this week of sexual battery had been arrested 20 years ago in a prostitution sting, according to police.

In July 1999, Clearwater police arrested Koumianos Hatzileris on a charge of soliciting a prostitute on Gulf-to-Bay Boulevard. He was 52 then, wearing his black priest robes and collar, when he approached a woman who turned out to be an undercover detective and offered to pay her $20 for sex, according to a police report.

Hatzileris founded the Dormition of Theotokos at 1910 Douglas Ave. in Clearwater, a parish affiliated with the Church of Genuine Orthodox Christians of America. The church formed in the 1950s after a contentious break from the Eastern Orthodox Church by a group unhappy with the main church’s direction. The parish is not affiliated with St. Nicholas Greek Orthodox Church in Tarpon Springs, a member parish of the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America.

After his 1999 arrest, the church suspended Hatzileris for three or four years, said Bishop Christodoulos Michaels of Theoupolis. Hatzileris eventually returned to the Clearwater parish and worked as a priest until he retired two weeks ago due to age.

Church officials took the same action Monday, after Tarpon Springs police announced they had arrested Hatzileris on two sexual battery charges.

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GREEN BAY (WI)
Press-Gazette

June 5, 2019

By Haley BeMiller

The Catholic Diocese of Green Bay last month identified another priest who molested a child, amending its list of known abusers with little public notice.

The diocese on May 23 added Steven Scherer to the list of priests who sexually abused minors over the past century. Scherer, who died in 1999, was determined by the diocese to have committed a single instance of abuse around 1980 or 1981. The allegation surfaced after his death.

Scherer served at St. Jude Catholic Church in Green Bay at the time of the abuse, according to the diocese. He also worked at Appleton’s St. Elizabeth Hospital, now known as Ascension St. Elizabeth Hospital, from 1984 to 1993.

After years of public pressure, the Green Bay diocese in January released the names of 46 priests with “substantiated” allegations of sexual abuse of minors, 15 of whom are still alive. Officials quietly modified the initial disclosure list in April with the name of a 47th priest, along with additional incidents of abuse by previously named clergy.

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AUKLAND (NEW ZEALAND)
Stuff

June 5, 2019

By Amanda Saxton

Isileli Halalupe’s trial at Auckland District Court was put on hold, after the jury was dismissed on day two.

A jury in the trial of a church leader accused of sexual abuse has been dismissed.

Isileli Halalupe had pleaded not guilty to five charges of indecent assault against an underage girl, and was on trial at Auckland District Court.

He was accused of groping the complainant’s breasts, thighs and bottom between 2015 and 2017 – and of kissing her ears against her will. She was 13 years old when the alleged offending was said to have started.

On the second day of the trial on Wednesday, Judge Poole discharged the jury.

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HOUSTON (TX)
Click 2 Houston

June 4, 2019

By Jacob Rascon

Father John Keller repeatedly sexually abused a teenage boy at St. Justin Martyr for more than a year, an accuser said Tuesday.

Justin Davis is now the third person to publicly accuse Keller of abuse. He was a 15-year-old altar boy at the time, and Keller was supposed to be his mentor.

“The church was my family, it was the only place where I felt safe. It was the only place where I wasn’t emotionally or physically abused in my life,” Davis said. “I ran into the arms of my pastor, and he took advantage of that.

“There was a lot of time when the only people in that building were me and the pastor, and that’s when it happened. He fed me alcohol, and then he would, you know, grab me, and place my hand on him, and accuse me of being sexually turned on. Lean on me, rub himself on me. It happened weekly, if not daily, I mean, we were there a lot together, alone.”

Davis stopped going to church a little over a year later and tried to block out the abuse for 35 years until the Archdiocese of Galveston-Houston published a list of accused priests.

When he saw Keller’s name on the list, with a single accuser, he wanted to help.

“All I wanted to do was to lend credibility, credence or support to the other victim who had come forward,” Davis said. “I figured another voice saying, ‘no, this also happened to me,’” would be helpful.

Davis spent hours detailing the abuse to a representative at the archdiocese. Months later, he said, he hasn’t heard back from them.

On Sunday, Keller’s replacement at Prince of Peace Catholic Church was announced and, according to people in the congregation, Keller was repeatedly praised.

“This guy was just allowed to retire, and praised from the pulpit after being removed,” Davis said.

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NEW YORK (NY)
Crux

June 5, 2019

By Christopher White

France’s first ever independent commission set up by the Catholic Church to examine claims of clergy sex abuse has now launched its appeal for witnesses to offer testimony.

The Catholic French bishops’ Independent Commission of Inquiry into Sexual Abuse within the Church (CAISE), which was formally established in November 2018, opened itself up for testimonials this week and will seek to chronicle clergy abuse dating back to the 1950s.

At the time of the announcement, Archbishop Georges Pontier of Marseille, who serves as president of the Conference of Bishops of France said that their November meeting “between the victims and the bishops has confirmed for us all, victims and bishops, the need to work together better in this fight.”

“The bishops wish to work with the victims to see how to make sure that our history doesn’t forget those acts that have left too many people to die,” he added.

Former deputy president of the French Council of State, Jean-Marc Sauvé, has been named the chairman of the commission, which includes 22 lawyers, theologians, and medical professionals, 12 of whom are men and 10 women. The body has pledged to deliver its full report by the end of 2020.

According to the official agreement signed between the French bishops and the head of the commission, the bishops’ conference will pay for all costs related to the review of cases, but the commission has been guaranteed full independence to review cases related to both the abuse of minors and vulnerable adults.

A letter dated Feb. 19, outlining the mandate of the commission, states that the first task will be to identify the number of both victims and perpetrators throughout the country.

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HOUSTON (TX)
Associated Press

June 5, 2019

Representatives of a top leader of the U.S. Catholic Church say he acted “swiftly and justly” to the allegations made by a woman who claims his former deputy lured her into a sexual relationship.

The Archdiocese of Galveston-Houston issued a statement Tuesday in response to an Associated Press investigation of Cardinal Daniel DiNardo, who is leading the U.S. church’s response to its sex abuse scandal.

Laura Pontikes accuses DiNardo of not fulfilling the archdiocese’s promises to prevent Monsignor Frank Rossi from being a pastor or counseling women after engaging in a sexual relationship with her. Instead, DiNardo allowed Rossi to go to a parish in rural east Texas in another diocese.

The statement from church officials says DiNardo agreed not to reassign Rossi in his archdiocese. It accuses the AP of publishing “unprofessional, biased and one-sided reporting,” and says some comments attributed to DiNardo by Pontikes and her husband, George, are “an absolute fabrication.”

It also says Pontikes demanded $10 million from the archdiocese. Pontikes acknowledges she made a demand for an unspecified amount of money in an off-the-cuff fit of anger, but says she was clear from the start that she wasn’t interested in a financial payoff. The Pontikeses and her lawyer told AP that details of mediation, including any financial negotiations, were confidential.

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Patheos blog

June 5, 2019

By Hemant Mehta

So that’s where the congregation’s money is going.

According to a new study titled “Church Influencing State: How the Catholic Church Spent Millions Against Survivors of Clergy Abuse,” between 2011 and 2018, the U.S. Catholic Church spent more than $10 million on lobbyists to fight against legislation that would have allowed victims of pedophile priests to sue the Church for damages even if prior statutes of limitations had passed. And that was just in northeastern states.

It may not have helped given how many states introduced or passed bills that allow victims to sue the Church even if the abuse occurred decades earlier.

NBC News reports:

“This report lays out what we have known all along — that the Catholic Church refuses to take responsibility for the decades of abuse that took place knowingly under its watch,” said attorney Stephen Weiss, who works for one of the law firms that commissioned the study.

“Statute of limitations reforms give survivors more time to obtain some measure of closure on the atrocities committed against them,” attorney Gerald Williams added. “The church has yet to implement meaningful reforms, and by working to prevent these laws from passing, the church is clearly demonstrating that it does not stand with survivors.”

More than half the lobbying money was spent in Pennsylvania alone. That’s the state where a grand jury report rocked the nation last August and opened the door to even more intensive investigations by other attorneys general.

Even if the lobbying wasn’t meant to stifle the bills entirely, but intended to modify them within reason, the Church ought to be at the forefront of advocating for these bills. Hell, they should be writing them and urging legislatures to pass them immediately in order to atone for their own sins.

If there’s any good news, it’s that some of the states passed victim-friendly bills anyway, while others have at least introduced those bills. It’s not clear if the lobbying killed any potential bill.

It’s truly disturbing that Catholics who give money to their Church are effectively subsidizing lobbyists whose job it is to make sure victims of child sexual abuse can’t get justice. You might be able to dismiss pedophile priests as bad apples. You might be able to ignore those involved in the cover-up. But when the entire Church is working against victims like this, it’s absolutely fair to blame everyday Catholics for continuing to support the Church with their money.

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NASHVILLE (TN)
Nashville Tennessean

June 4, 2019

By Holly Meyer

Key leaders in the largest Protestant denomination in the U.S. have spent the last year owning up to that while trying to figure out how their network of evangelical churches can do a better job of addressing and preventing sexual abuse in the future.

In the wake of recent revelations illustrating how widespread the problem is, Southern Baptists will soon have a chance to enact changes that would make it easier to hold churches accountable and keep people in their pews safe.

Sexual abuse in the church is expected to be front and center when thousands of representatives from the more than 50,000 Southern Baptist congregations gather June 11-12 in Birmingham, Alabama, for their big annual meeting.

That focus is intentional, Southern Baptist Convention President J.D. Greear said. Victim revelations have made it clear that Southern Baptists need to create systems that protect the vulnerable, he said.

“God gave his life for them,” Greear said in an interview. “How dare we not provide protection for them so when they’re in the house of God they know that they’re safe and that they’re cared for.”

Up for consideration are two changes to core Southern Baptist Convention governing documents:

The first is an amendment to the Southern Baptist Convention’s constitution that would explicitly state that addressing sexual abuse and racism is a part of what it means to be a Southern Baptist church.

The second is a proposed bylaw change that would create a committee to assess misconduct claims, including sexual abuse, against churches.

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NEW YORK (NY)
Daily Beast

June 5, 2019

By Jamie Ross

The leader of La Luz del Mundo—a Mexican church that claims to have more than one million followers around the world—has been charged with a string of child sex crimes in Los Angeles.

According to The New York Times, the allegations against Naasón Joaquín García include that he forced children to have sex and made them pose naked for photos. He was reportedly arrested Monday at Los Angeles International Airport—two others affiliated with the church were also arrested, and authorities are looking for a fourth person.

Prosecutors allege García has four victims, including three children. The charges include rape and human trafficking.

“Crimes like those alleged in this complaint have no place in our society. Period,” said Attorney General Xavier Becerra of California. “We must not turn a blind eye to sexual violence and trafficking in our state.” García, 50, is considered by La Luz del Mundo to be an apostle of Jesus Christ.

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HOUSTON (TX)
Associated Press

June 5, 2019

When Cardinal Daniel DiNardo first met Laura Pontikes in his wood-paneled conference room in December 2016, the leader of the U.S. Catholic Church’s response to its sex abuse scandal said all the right things.

He praised her for coming forward to report that his deputy in the Galveston-Houston archdiocese had manipulated her into a sexual relationship and declared her a “victim” of the priest, Pontikes said. Emails and other documents obtained by The Associated Press show that the relationship had gone on for years — even as the priest heard her confessions, counseled her husband on their marriage and pressed the couple for hundreds of thousands of dollars in donations.

She says the archdiocese assured her that the priest, Monsignor Frank Rossi, would never be a pastor or counsel women again.

Months after that meeting, though, she found out DiNardo had allowed Rossi to take a new job as pastor of a parish two hours away in east Texas. When her husband confronted DiNardo, he said, the cardinal warned that the archdiocese would respond aggressively to any legal challenge — and that the fallout would hurt their family and business.

On Tuesday, three years after the meeting with DiNardo and after written inquiries by the AP last week, the church temporarily removed Rossi, announcing in a statement from his new bishop that he was being placed on administrative leave.

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MELBOURNE (AUSTRALIA)
The Age

June 5, 2019

By Debbie Cuthbertson

If clothes maketh the man, or at least provide an insight into his state of mind, then George Pell’s decision to wear his clerical collar on the first day of his appeal seemed an emphatic statement.

He was last seen in civvies, sans collar, in a fawn jacket and open-necked shirt, as he was sentenced to six years in prison in March, an event that dramatically impugned the already sullied reputation of the Catholic Church.

His donning this time of his clerical uniform of a priest’s collar with black shirt and black jacket was a declaration in itself, a protestation of his innocence and his intention to reinstate his reputation, so mired in scandal after his conviction of sexually abusing two choirboys in 1996.

It also shows what’s at stake. Pell, who turns 78 on Saturday, faces a potential Vatican trial and defrocking after more than half a century as a priest, during which he rose to the posts of priest in Ballarat, Archbishop of Melbourne and Sydney, and latterly a cardinal, one of the global church’s most senior figures.

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LOS ANGELES (CA)
WIVB TV

June 4, 2019

By Chris Horvatits

The former executive assistant to Bishop Richard Malone says the compensation program set up by the diocese for victims of clergy sex abuse “didn’t have survivors best interest at heart or in mind”.

Siobhan O’Connor, who leaked several documents that detailed clergy sex abuse from the diocese’s archives, spoke at a press conference in Los Angeles Tuesday afternoon. The announcement was made as six dioceses in California are launching a victims compensation program similar to the Independent Reconciliation and Compensation Program that the Diocese of Buffalo set up.

O’Connor was still Malone’s executive assistant when the program launched on March 1, 2018.

“As I learned more about it and experienced the fallout from it, I learned that really what they had been preparing for was the legal and the financial ramifications. They had not planned for the practicalities and the logistics,” O’Connor said.

Last week, the diocese announced that the program was complete, and that $17.6 million had been paid out to 107 victims of clergy abuse.

O’Connor also alleged that diocesan officials didn’t adequately respond to victims who called about the program.

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MANDALUYONG (PHILIPPINES)
CNN

June 5, 2019

By Hilary Whiteman

Cardinal George Pell, who was once one of the most powerful men in the Roman Catholic Church, could be released from prison this week, if an Australian appeals court overturns his conviction for historical sexual abuse.

Pell, 77, was sentenced to six years in prison in March for what Judge Peter Kidd described as a “callous” attack on two choirboys at Melbourne’s historic St. Patrick’s Cathedral in the mid-1990s, when he was archbishop of that city.

The former Vatican treasurer was found guilty of one charge of sexual penetration of a child and four charges of an indecent act with or in the presence of a child in the late 1990s during a secret trial late last year. The verdict was suppressed until February to avoid prejudicing a possible second trial, which did not go ahead.

Pell is expected to be in court on Wednesday when his barrister, Bret Walker SC, tries to persuade a panel of appeal judges to overturn his conviction on three grounds, including that the guilty verdict was “unsafe,” because the evidence could not have convinced a jury beyond reasonable doubt.

The proceedings will be livestreamed.

The other grounds are that Judge Kidd did not allow Pell’s lawyers to show a “moving” video during summing-up, which they say would have detailed their version of events, and that Pell was not given the chance to enter a not guilty plea in front of the jury, as legally required.

The two latter grounds are unlikely to prompt a retrial, said Jeremy Gans, a professor from Melbourne Law School, because even if errors were made during the trial, the judges would also have to find that they caused a “substantial miscarriage of justice.”

But Gans said the “unsafe” claim had a “good chance” of succeeding.

“The test in Australia for whether a verdict is unsafe is the judges have to decide for themselves whether they are left in doubt by the evidence,” said Gans, who has studied details of the case, except for video of the victim’s testimony, which was played to a closed court.

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ATLANTA (GA)
CNN

June 4, 2019

Between June 2017 and June 2018 the Catholic Church in the United States spent a whopping $301.6 million on costs related to clergy sexual abuse, including nearly $200 million in legal settlements, according to a report commissioned by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops.

The new report also revealed that, during the same 12-month period, the church fielded 1,051 new “credible allegations” of sexual abuse of a minor by priests and other clergy.

The number of allegations and the costs related to abuse were significantly higher than reported in previous years, which the report attributes to a victim-compensation program adopted in New York state last year. That program fielded 785 new allegations of abuse against Catholic clergy, many from past decades.

What’s remarkable is that these numbers may rise against next year.

The information in the new report, released last Friday, predates the escalation of the church’s sexual abuse scandal last summer. That’s when abuse allegations surfaced against former cardinal Theodore McCarrick and a damning report by a Pennsylvania grand jury accused some 301 “predator priests” of abusing more than 1,000 victims.

Most of those accusations dated from before 2002, when the bishops instituted new sex-abuse polices.

But those policies do not apply to bishops, a loophole the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops have pledged to fix next week at their annual meeting in Baltimore.

How the money was spent
Called the “Report on the Implementation of the Charter for the Protection of Children and Young People,” the 74-page document is based on statistics provided by religious orders, the country’s 197 Catholic dioceses and information obtained by an outside auditor, StoneBridge BusinessPartners.

Here’s how the $301 million was spent:
— Settlements: $194,346,291.
— Other payments to victims: $7,317,904.
— Support for offenders: $23,366,845.
— Attorney fees: $30,517,658.
— Other costs: $7,070,839.
— Child-protection efforts, including background checks and training: $39,290,069.

According to the report, between June 2017 and June 2018 there was an 132% increase in allegations, a 133% increase in victims, and a 51% increase in offenders reported over the previous 12 months.

The $301 million spent by dioceses and religious institutes on child protection efforts and costs related to abuse allegations represents a 14% increase from the previous year, according to the report.

The vast majority of the accused abuse occurred before 1999, according to the report. Nearly half (48%) is alleged to have occurred before 1975 and an additional 40% between 1975-1999, the report says.

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NEW YORK (NY)
NBC News

June 4, 2019

By Corky Siemaszko

The U.S. Catholic Church spent $10.6 million on lobbyists to prevent victims of clerical sex abuse from suing for damages. According to a new report, the money was doled out from 2011 through 2018 in eight northeastern states where bills to reform statute of limitations laws were either in the works or being considered. “This report lays out what we have known all along — that the Catholic Church refuses to take responsibility for the decades of abuse that took place knowingly under its watch,” said attorney Stephen Weiss, who works for one of the law firms that commissioned the study.

“Statute of limitations reforms give survivors more time to obtain some measure of closure on the atrocities committed against them,” added attorney Gerald Williams. “The Church has yet to implement meaningful reforms, and by working to prevent these laws from passing, the Church is clearly demonstrating that it does not stand with survivors.”

In Pennsylvania, where currently victims of child sex abuse can come forward with criminal allegations until the age of 50 and can file civil claims until age 30, the Church spent $5,322,979 to keep those limitations in place, according to the report “Church Influencing State: How the Catholic Church Spent Millions Against Survivors of Clergy Abuse.”

The report was commissioned by Seeger Weiss LLP, Williams Cedar LLC, Abraham Watkins and the Simpson Tuegel Law Firm, which collectively represent 300 clergy sex abuse survivors nationwide. The data in the report was obtained from public filings in the individual states.

Attorney General Josh Shapiro, whose blockbuster grand jury report last year identified 301 “predator priests” in six dioceses who were alleged to have abused more than 1,000 children, has been leading the charge to lift those statutes of limitations.

“The extensive lobbying by the Catholic Church in Pennsylvania against the reforms recommended by the Grand Jury proves what I have said all along: the Church cannot be trusted to police itself,” Shapiro said. “It’s reprehensible that the Church continues to spend significant sums of money fighting these reforms, instead of protecting and supporting the victims of clergy sexual abuse.”

The Pennsylvania Catholic Conference and the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops did not return an NBC News request for comment.

In New York, the church spent $2,912,772 in what ultimately was a failed bid to prevent the passage of the Child Victims Act, which Gov. Andrew Cuomo signed into law on Feb. 14. It allows child sexual abuse victims to sue their abuser or institutions until age 55. Previously the cut off was age 23.

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

June 4, 2019

The head of the US bishops is once again under fire for inaction in a case of clergy sex abuse. We call on him to resign his post or at least recuse himself from leading the bishops’ meeting in Baltimore next week.

This time, Cardinal Daniel DiNardo reportedly deceived an abuse victim and quietly moved her perpetrator – Monsignor Frank Rossi, one of his highest-ranking deputies – to another parish, even after telling the victim that Msgr. Rossi would never be a pastor again.

According to the AP, in 2016, Cardinal DiNardo told Laura Pontikes that he believed she was a victim because Msgr. Frank Rossi had sexually exploited her. Still, according to records obtained by reporters, the Cardinal instead made Msgr. Rossi the head of an eastern Texas parish without telling Laura and apparently without disclosing the allegations to the public or parishioners. When Laura’s husband confronted Cardinal DiNardo, “the cardinal warned that the archdiocese would respond aggressively to any legal challenge — and that the fallout would hurt their family and business.”

We applaud Laura for coming forward about her experience. It is incredibly challenging for any victim to come forward and especially for those who were abused as adults. Fortunately for folks in Texas, Laura was willing to put her reputation on the line in speaking out against wrongdoing and in standing up for other survivors. We are very grateful for her courage and stand in solidarity with Laura and other victims who were abused as adults.

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WASHINGTON (DC)
Catholic News Service

June 4, 2019

By Chaz Muth

For centuries, the Catholic Church has maintained that what a penitent says to a priest in the confessional is strictly confidential, but in 2019 that rite continues to be challenged by governments.

Church scholars assert the concept of the seal of confession was given to the apostles by Jesus, eventually morphing into the sacrament of penance, providing the faithful with an opportunity to confess their sins and to be reconciled with God.

The soul-cleansing, sacred practice is private, confidential and repeatable.

Governmental leaders have challenged the priest-penitent privilege of the seal of confession since at least the 14th century, prompting priests to sacrifice their freedom and sometimes their lives protecting that confidentiality.

In the wake of renewed attention on the clergy child sexual abuse scandals, 21st-century lawmakers in Australia, the United Kingdom, Ireland, Chile and the U.S. have introduced measures that would compel priests to report to civil authorities information related to child abuse and neglect learned in the confessional.

“There are many reasons why we are seeing challenges to the seal of confession today,” said Father Ronald T. Kunkel, theology professor at Mundelein Seminary at the University of St. Mary of the Lake in Illinois, near Chicago.

The Church has suffered “self-inflicted wounds” to its reputation and credibility from the clergy sex abuse crisis, making the seal of confession vulnerable to governmental intrusion, Kunkel told Catholic News Service in an April interview.

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WASHINGTON (DC)
Catholic News Service

June 4, 2019

By Dennis Sadowski

The path to rebuilding the U.S. Church’s credibility as it emerges from the lingering clergy sexual abuse scandal rests in embracing the role of laypeople as important collaborators, said the chairman of the National Review Board.

Francesco Cesareo told Catholic News Service June 3 that laypeople want transparency and openness from the bishops and the sooner the prelates put aside their guardedness about welcoming laity as partners, the sooner the U.S. Church will heal.

“I think the problem is that they perceive that it’s this ‘gotcha’ mentality that (the laity) are after. What we’re really trying to do is find what’s wrong,” Cesareo said.

Leaders of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops continued to develop a series of policies in early June as they hone their response to clergy abuse. They will consider and vote on several proposals at their spring general assembly June 11-14 in Baltimore.

The new policies are expected to be refinements of proposals they originally had hoped to adopt at their fall general assembly in November. They put them aside at the request of the Vatican hours before they convened.

Vatican officials sought the delay, citing Pope Francis’ desire first to meet with the heads of bishops’ conferences from around the world in February to discuss the Church’s response to the crisis.

The proposals then included the establishment of a third-party confidential reporting system for claims of any abuse by bishops; instruction to the U.S. bishops’ canonical affairs committee to develop proposals for policies addressing restrictions on bishops who were moved or resigned because of allegations of abuse of minors or adults; and initiating the development of a code of conduct for bishops regarding sexual misconduct with a minor or adult or “negligence in the exercise of his office related to such cases.”

Cesareo said he hoped that during the intervening months, the U.S. bishops have developed “concrete action items” that will signal how serious they are in addressing clergy abuse and ensuring accountability and transparency.

“I’m hoping that they will be bold enough to include in a very meaningful way laypeople in whatever they will be deciding,” he said. “My biggest concern is that it’s going to end up being bishops overseeing bishops and if that’s the case it’s going to be very difficult for the laity to feel any sense of confidence that anything has truly changed.”

The proposals being developed recently circulated among members of the all-lay National Review Board and, Cesareo said, each member individually offered comments and observations. While declining to discuss the specifics of the proposals because they were confidential, Cesareo said he offered wide-ranging and “hopefully constructive” responses.

Cesareo has long pushed the bishops to welcome lay involvement in the process of rebuilding Church credibility. As review board chairman, he has been frank with the bishops in conversations about the steps he sees as necessary for the Church to right itself.

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ROME (ITALY)
Associated Press

June 4, 2019

By Nicole Winfield

When Cardinal Daniel DiNardo first met Laura Pontikes in his wood-paneled conference room in December 2016, the leader of the U.S. Catholic Church’s response to its sex abuse scandal said all the right things.

He praised her for coming forward to report that his deputy in the Galveston-Houston archdiocese had manipulated her into a sexual relationship and declared her a “victim” of the priest, Pontikes said. Emails and other documents obtained by The Associated Press show that the relationship had gone on for years — even as the priest heard her confessions, counseled her husband on their marriage and pressed the couple for hundreds of thousands of dollars in donations.

She says she was assured that the priest, Monsignor Frank Rossi, would never be a pastor or counsel women again.

Months after that meeting, though, she found out DiNardo had allowed Rossi to take a new job as pastor of a parish two hours away in east Texas. When her husband confronted DiNardo, he said, the cardinal warned that the archdiocese would respond aggressively to any legal challenge — and that the fallout would hurt their family and business.

On Tuesday, three years after the meeting with DiNardo and after written inquiries by the AP last week, the church temporarily removed Rossi, announcing in a statement from his new bishop that he was being placed on administrative leave.

Laura Pontikes, a 55-year-old construction executive in Texas, had been at a low point in her life when she sought spiritual counseling from Rossi, the longtime No. 2 official in the Galveston-Houston archdiocese DiNardo heads. Instead, she said, Rossi preyed on her emotional vulnerability to draw her into a physical relationship that he called blessed by God.

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LONON (ENGLAND)
BBC Radio

May 31, 2019

A 91-year-old former monk, jailed for sexually abusing three boys, is to have his sentence increased by 18 months, the Court of Appeal has ruled.

Judges backed claims that the 10-and-a-half years term, originally imposed on Vincent Lewis for subjecting his young victims to a “shocking” series of attacks, was unduly lenient.

Lord Chief Justice Sir Declan Morgan ordered him to serve 12 years instead.

He highlighted the damage caused by the decade-long campaign of molestation

Lewis, formerly Brother Ambrose of Our Lady of Bethlehem Monastery in Portglenone, County Antrim, admitted more than 50 offences committed between 1973 and 1983.

Lewis was a former monk at Our Lady of Bethlehem Abbey in Portglenone.

He abused one boy while still a monk, and targeted the others after marrying and moving to Annagher Road in Coalisland, County Tyrone.

Some of the attacks were carried out at Portglenone Abbey, where his main responsibility involved operating the printing press.

He also took one victim to isolated woods along the river where he had prepared a private place to carry out further assaults.

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LONDON (ENGLAND)
BBC Radio

May 30, 2019

Some children at the Nazareth House orphanages in Scotland were subjected to sexual abuse of the “utmost depravity”, the Scottish Child Abuse Inquiry has found.

Chairwoman Lady Smith said the children’s homes were places of fear, hostility and confusion.

Youngsters were physically abused and emotionally degraded “with impunity”.

The Sisters of Nazareth charity said it had apologised for any abuse that took place in its institutions.

Over 27 days last year, the inquiry heard evidence from former residents of four institutions in Aberdeen, Glasgow, Midlothian and Ayrshire.

‘What happened was wrong’
Helen Holland told the inquiry she suffered years of physical and emotional cruelty as a child at Nazareth House in Kilmarnock, where she was raped by a priest.

She welcomed the fact that Lady Smith had believed her evidence to the inquiry.

“It is almost as if she reached beyond me as an adult and spoke to the child inside, and said to that child: ‘This wasn’t your fault. This shouldn’t have happened. What happened was wrong.’

“That in itself is massive.”

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Patheos blog

June 4, 2019

By Sarahbeth Caplin

For years now, as the sex abuse scandal shifted to various Protestant denominations, we knew that many of the victims hoping for justice told their stories to other church leaders… only to see their abusers face few, if any, consequences. In some cases, the pastors were allowed to resign without further comment. Sometimes, they went right back to the pulpit.

But there was a place where the victims’ stories were taken seriously, and investigated, and shared with a wider audience.

The Washington Post‘s Sarah Stankorb reports on the bloggers who took it upon themselves to exact justice through their blogs called Watch Keep, the Wartburg Watch, and Spiritual Sounding Board.

They stepped in when church leaders would not, and their articles forced some of those churches to take real action.

While clergy sex abuse within the Catholic Church has been in the headlines for years, it’s only more recently that abuses within Protestant churches have started to draw mainstream media attention. Much of the credit for this quickening churn goes to a circle of bloggers — dozens of armchair investigative journalists who have been outing abuse, one case and one congregation at a time, for over a decade now, bolstering their posts with court records, police reports, video clips of pastors’ sermons, and emails, often provided to them by survivors.

Most of these bloggers are women; many come from churches that teach women’s submission and deny women’s spiritual authority. “Investigative blogger women started a revolution at their kitchen tables,” says pastor Ashley Easter, who hosts the Courage Conference, a Christian, survivor-focused gathering. They have advocated “for victims of abuse from where they were, where they could find a platform — blogs and social media.”

In addition to women bloggers are the former evangelicals who left their churches after being exposed to one too many toxic leaders and theological teachings. While many of them are still Christian, others have left the faith entirely, in part because of the abuse they endured.
Recently, a younger cohort of “ex-vangelicals” and online activists have joined the fold, and in late 2017 #ChurchToo started to trend on Twitter. In turn, a wave of secret-smashing tweets blossomed into reported pieces at publications like Mother Jones and the New Yorker. Yet the bloggers who built the foundation for this activist network are known mainly to church abuse survivors and reporters covering these stories. To the rest of the world, their efforts have mostly blended into the joint backgrounds of the clergy sex abuse scandal and #MeToo.

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KANSAS CITY (MO)
National Catholic Reporter

June 3, 2019

By Heidi Schlumpf

There are 441 active and retired Catholic bishops who oversee 196 Latin- and Eastern-rite dioceses and archdioceses and one “personal ordinariate” (for former Anglican groups and clergy in the United States who became Catholic) in the United States and U.S. Virgin Islands. This includes 15 cardinals: six who lead archdioceses, five who are retired and four in other positions.

More than a third (168) of U.S. bishops are retired; the remaining 273 active ones include six cardinals, 29 archbishops, 162 diocesan bishops and 76 auxiliary bishops. Bishops submit their retirement to the pope at the age of 75; about six to eight bishops retire each year and are replaced, so the total number of active bishops remains roughly the same.

The bishops themselves make up the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops and are served by a staff of approximately 315 laypeople, priests, deacons and religious located at the Conference headquarters in Washington, D.C., according to the U.S. bishops’ conference website. The staff work is overseen by the General Secretariat, an office currently headed by Msgr. Brian Bransfield.

The average bishop in the U.S., according to survey data from 2016, is a non-Hispanic white 65-year-old. (In fact, about 88% of bishops are white.) He has served for 12 years in a diocese of about 250,000 Catholics in 92 parishes, with 87 active diocesan priests (another 51 retired, infirm or serving elsewhere), 98 permanent deacons about 200 mostly-retired sisters.

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VIENNA (VA)
ABC 7 News

June 3, 2019

By Anna-Lysa Gayle

Local advocates are calling for more transparency in Catholic churches.

They held a town hall discussion on the issue on Monday night, in Vienna.

Among the demands discussed were calls for a third-party national hotline, to hear out tips involving clerical sex abuse and full transparency throughout an investigation, when it comes to clerical sex abuse victims and their families.

Our Lady of Good Counsel’s Advocates for Church and Transparency hopes leaders will take action on the issue at the upcoming Conference of Catholic Bishops next Tuesday in Baltimore.

“We just want to make sure that that is a set procedure, for us to always be informed – in terms of what’s going on in this parish and within this diocese and make sure we are armed with the information we need to know as parishioners who are making decisions about ourselves, our faith, our kids, etc,” said Kevin Bae.

In his letter last month, Pope Francis called for clear standards for supporting victims and their families and protections for whistleblowers.

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

June 3, 2019

The Diocese of Oakland has updated their list of “credibly accused” clergy. However, we are very disappointed that they apparently did so without notifying anyone.

The entire point of these lists is to keep parishioners and the public informed. When people are aware that those listed have been accused, they know to look within their communities for survivors who might be struggling in silence. When victims see the name of the person that abused them acknowledged, it often helps them realize that they are not alone and encourages them to come forward and get help.

We urge Church officials in Oakland to publicly announce the changes they have made to their list, explain why these eighteen names have been added, and renew their calls for survivors, witnesses, and whistle blowers to come forward and make a report to police and prosecutors.

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DUNDEE (SCOTLAND)
The Courier

June 4, 2019

By Michael Alexander

The ongoing Scottish Child Abuse Inquiry (SCAI) that was set up to “investigate the nature and extent of abuse of children in care in Scotland” has turned its attention to allegations of abuse at a former residential home in Fife.

Witness statements began to be heard on Tuesday relating to claims that boys were abused at the former St Ninian’s School which was run by the Christian Brothers, in Falkland, before it closed in 1983.

And it was revealed that the headmaster and teacher of the school for troubled boys – who were convicted of physical and sexual abuse against six pupils more than 30 years ago – are to give evidence from behind bars.

John Farrell and Paul Kelly – who were sentenced to five and 10 years respectively in 2016 for assaulting pupils at the former St Ninian’s School in Falkland in the late 1970s and 80s – will give evidence by video screen in mid-June and early-July, the inquiry’s senior counsel Colin MacAulay QC revealed during opening statements in Edinburgh.

The men were members of the Catholic religious order the Congregation of Christian Brothers, which ran the school.

Phase four of the ongoing Scottish Child Abuse Inquiry is expected to last for more than a month. It turned its attention to allegations of abuse at St Ninian’s when it got under way in Edinburgh on Tuesday morning.

Chaired by Lady Smith, opening statements were made on behalf of the Lord Advocate, Chief Constable of Scotland, Scottish ministers, the Bishops Conference and Christian Brothers. Witness statements from two survivors were due in the afternoon.

The inquiry heard how St Ninian’s had a “relatively short existence” from 1951 to 1983.

John Scott of INCAS (In Care Abuse Survivors) began by noting the recent publication of the SCAI report into allegations of abuse at the Sisters of Nazareth home in Kilmarnock which found that children there were subjected to sexual abuse of the “utmost depravity”.

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

June 3, 2019

A handful of brave female bloggers who expose child sex crimes in churches have just been profiled by the Washington Post. We are humbled by and grateful for the extraordinary compassion and courage of these women and hope their work to protect the vulnerable encourages others to follow in their footsteps. We also hope that other mainstream journalists will see how impressive and credible these prophets are.

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

June 3, 2019

The Iowa attorney general’s office has announced that it will be gathering information on sexual abuse by spiritual leaders and clergy in that state. This is a good first step for Iowa.

We are glad that Attorney General Tom Miller has taken this step towards getting to the bottom of clergy abuse in Iowa. At the same time, we believe that for any review or investigation to have a real “sunlight” effect that it must involve subpoena power, the ability to compel testimony under oath, and perhaps even search warrants. We are hopeful that AG Miller will find ways to utilize these tools as he seeks to get to the bottom of clergy abuse cases in Iowa.

We encourage all survivors within Iowa – as well as any survivor that now lives elsewhere but may have been abused in Iowa – to come forward today and make a report to AG Miller’s hotline by calling 855-620-7000 or by filling in this questionnaire on his website.

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WASHINGTON (DC)
Catholic News Service

June 4, 2019

The Australian Catholic Church has released its National Catholic Safeguarding Standards, more than 18 months after they were recommended by the country’s landmark Royal Commission into Institutional Child Sexual Abuse, in the latest chapter in the overhaul of how the church responds to clergy sexual abuse.

The standards closely parallel the commission’s recommendations as well as norms enshrined by the government in the National Principles for Child Safe Organisations, although some provisions have been watered down, observers noted.

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BRIDGEWATER (NJ)
Bridgewater Courier News

June 4, 2019

By Nick Muscavage

Editor’s note: This article contains graphic descriptions that are sexual in nature. The three individuals making the allegations have agreed to allow their names and details of the allegations from the testimonies to be published. Reader discretion is advised.

A Presbyterian minister, who said he was following the Bible, used Native American exorcism rituals, gemstones and even oral sex to extract “evil spirits” from men undergoing crises in their lives, the church and men claim.

The so-called healing acts, which date to 1999, were allegedly performed by the Rev. Dr. William Weaver, a prominent Presbyterian minister who served as pastor at Linden Presbyterian Church for 39 years, one of two Presbyterian churches in Linden, a city with a population of over 40,000. He also held several public roles, including chaplain for a county police department.

Weaver, 69, was scheduled to face his three accusers during an internal church trial, but on Jan. 25, 2019, one day before the trial was to begin, he renounced the jurisdiction of the Elizabeth Presbytery. He was accused by the church of “multiple acts of idolatry and sexual misconduct.”

The church charges have no bearing on the secular government’s civil and criminal courts. No public charges have been filed against Weaver. The men said they did report the sexual encounters to authorities, but the Union County Prosecutor’s Office hasn’t responded for comment on this story.

With his renouncement, Weaver gave up his ordination and membership in the Presbyterian Church but also avoided a religious trial. He then moved to a gated retirement community in Lakewood.

The trial was scheduled after the men alerted the Elizabeth Presbytery, which oversees 41 Presbyterian churches in Somerset, Hunterdon, Middlesex and Union counties.

The Presbytery determined, through an investigating committee, “that there are probable grounds or cause to believe that an offense was committed by the accused,” according to the official church charges. If Weaver was found at the religious trial to have violated church rules, the most punishment he would have faced would have been expulsion from the Presbyterian ministry.

“In April 2018, the Presbytery of Elizabeth received allegations of multiple instances of sexual misconduct perpetrated by William Weaver, who was a minister member of the Presbytery. The Presbytery of Elizabeth, a regional body of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), takes seriously any allegation of misconduct,” the Rev. Leslie Dobbs-Allsopp, interim leader of the Elizabeth Presbytery, said in a statement.

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LA CROSSE (WI)
La Crosse Tribune

June 4, 2019

By Emily Pyrek

A retired priest of the Diocese of La Crosse was charged Monday with fourth-degree sexual assault, three weeks after being accused of assaulting and propositioning a woman outside the La Crosse Public Library.

A library security worker reported Msgr. Bernard McGarty, 94, to police May 15 after a victim came forward regarding an incident that occurred after library closing hours on May 11. The victim stated a man, who identified himself as Bill, took her arm and placed it on his genitals, according to the criminal complaint.

Upon pulling up library video surveillance footage, staff members were able to identify the perpetrator as McGarty, who was previously charged with disorderly conduct in 2014 after exposing himself to a masseuse in Wausau and asking the masseuse to rub his genitals.

Footage from May 11 showed McGarty handing the victim $20 and pulling her hand onto his lap, according to the report. The victim stated McGarty said “he would like a little kiss” and before departing asked “how he could get a hold of her,” according to the complaint.

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ROME (ITALY)
Crux

June 4, 2019

By Inés San Martín

As the home country of Pope Francis, Argentina is of obvious relevance to the global Church, especially the ins and outs of its local Catholic scene. Three things developing right now worth keeping an eye on: The clerical sexual abuse crisis; a fight between church and state over the remains of a Gaucho saint; and buzz over a papal visit.

On Sunday, La Nación, Argentina’s biggest daily newspaper, ran a series of articles revealing the closest thing to a comprehensive investigation into the extent of the clerical sexual abuse crisis locally.

There are some 5,600 priests in Argentina, and according to the newspaper, in the past 20 years there have been 63 credible allegations of sexual abuse. In 17 of those cases there’s a criminal conviction, and in 22 there’s an ongoing trial. The rest of the cases never made it to court.

Bishop Sergio Buenanueva, of San Francisco, Cordoba, serves as coordinator of the Pastoral Council for the Protection of Minors and Vulnerable Adults of Argentina’s bishops’ conference. Speaking with La Nación, he said that they don’t have a registry of cases yet, but that he could confirm that “there are certainly no fewer” than those compiled by the paper.

He also said that the clerical sexual abuse crisis is one of the “gravest” the institution has faced in modern times.

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MELBOURNE (AUSTRALIA)
The New Daily

June 3, 2019

By Lucie Morris-Marr

Cardinal George Pell begins his next major legal fight on Wednesday with the start of an appeal against his conviction over shocking sex attacks on Catholic Church choirboys.

The former treasurer for the Vatican has spent the past 97 days in solitary confinement after being sentenced to six years in prison for violent assaults on two teenage boys at Melbourne’s St Patrick’s Cathedral in the 1990s.

Pell is expected to appear in court for at least the first day of the two-day hearing, giving victims and their supporters their first glimpse at the convicted sex offender since he was taken to a segregation unit of the Melbourne Assessment Prison.

Fighting for him will be one of the country’s leading barristers, whom the Cardinal hired to aid in his bid to have the conviction quashed.

Sydney-based Bret Walker SC will argue Pell’s case in front of three senior judges: Supreme Court Chief Justice Anne Ferguson, Justice Chris Maxwell – the president of the Court of Appeal – and Justice Mark Weinberg.

Bret Walker SC has represented a number of high-profile clients.

There are three main grounds for the appeal.

Firstly, his team will argue the guilty verdicts on the five charges were “unreasonable” and unsafe as it was not open to the jury to be satisfied beyond reasonable doubt on the word on the complainant alone.

During the mistrial and re-trial of the case last year only one of the accusers gave evidence, as the other choirboy passed away of a drug overdose aged 30 in 2014. Neither can be named for legal reasons.

The second ground is the argument that the trial judge, Chief Justice Peter Kidd, made an error by preventing the defence from using a video of the “moving visual representation” of its impossibility argument during the closing address by Pell’s lead barrister Robert Richter QC.

The “pac man” animation, as it was dubbed by court reporters covering the case, represented Pell, the choir, altar servers, assistant priests and staff, as moving dots on the background of a map of the Cathedral.

Finally, the third ground for the appeal is the argument that there was a “fundamental irregularity” in the trial process because the accused was not arraigned in the presence of the jury panel, as required by the Criminal Procedure Act.

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ROME (ITALY)
Crux

June 4, 2019

By Elise Harris

Last week representatives of the Liberian bishops’ conference traveled to the Vatican to address accusations from a local priest that two of the country’s bishops were guilty of soliciting him for sex.

Bishop Anthony Borwah, President of the Liberia Bishops’ Conference, traveled to Rome to meet with Vatican officials after Father Gabriel Sawyer, a parish priest from Monrovia, raised accusations against the current Archbishop Lewis Zeigler, who heads the archdiocese, and against Bishop Andrew Karnley of Cape Palmas – located on Liberia’s southern coast – of sexual advances and abuses of power.

Reportedly accompanying Borwah to the Vatican were Father Dennis Cephus Nimene, secretary of the bishops’ conference and Archbishop Dagoberto Campos Salas, Vatican envoy to Liberia.

In a lengthy 17-page August 2018 letter to Campos Salas, Sawyer said that when he was in seminary in Monrovia in 1997, Karnley, who was vocations director at the time, had made inappropriate advances and attempted to have sex with him while on trips to say Mass outside of the seminary.

Sawyer alleges that after refusing, Karnley threatened to block his ordination to the priesthood and made his life both pre- and post-ordination difficult. When Zeigler was named archbishop of Monrovia in 2011, Sawyer said he also made sexual advances, and harassed him after he resisted.

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BURLINGTON (VT)
VTDigger

June 3, 2019

By Xander Landen

Gov. Phil Scott last week signed a new law that removes the time limit for victims of child sexual abuse to bring civil claims against their abusers.

Scott also signed a bill that will extend the statute of limitations for criminal offenses including manslaughter and sexual exploitation of a vulnerable adult.

The bill eliminating the six-year statute of limitations for civil child sexual abuse cases, H.330, was a priority for the House Judiciary Committee this year.

It was largely inspired by a December conference in which Rachael Denhollander, a former gymnast and the first woman to publicly accuse former USA Gymnastics team doctor Larry Nassar of sexual assault, addressed Vermont officials at the Statehouse.

Denhollander pointed to the statute of limitations as a key problem for adjudicating child sexual abuse: often, survivors can’t process what’s happened to them – let alone decide to come forward – until it’s too late.

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DANVILLE (CA)
KRON TV

June 3, 2019

By Dan Thorn

A Catholic order in Oakland releases its first list of clergy accused of child sex abuse. The list of 50 names includes three men who were last recorded living at a retreat in the East Bay.

Abuse by one of those men has never been reported until now.

Most of this abuse happened between the 1960s and 1980s and most of the men have died.

Survivors say the number of clergy involved was a lot more than they expected.

They’re just hoping the release of these names will allow people to come forward.

Of the four friars still alive, three are living in California — Stephen Kain, Josef Prochnow and Dennis Duffy were all most recently staying at this retreat in Danville.

Kain and Prochnow were both previously accused of sexual misconduct but Duffy’s abuse hasn’t been reported until now.

Dan McNevin is an area leader for survivors network of those abused by priests.

He says the list helps to validate victims, but he doesn’t understand why the three friars living at the San Damiano retreat were not known about sooner.

“The list came out then magically all the men have left. So it came out after they left. So there was obviously a decision that was made to withhold the list until these guys were put someplace else. We don’t know where they are now,” McNevin said.

The list only says the men are now living at an elderly care facility somewhere in California.

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LA CROSSE (WI)
WKBT News 8

June 3, 2019

By Martha Koloski

Monsignor Bernard McGarty with the Diocese of La Crosse was officially charged with 4th degree sexual assault in La Crosse County court today…. even though McGarty failed to show up for his court hearing.

According to the criminal complaint, a woman accused McGarty of offering her money for sex, trying to kiss her and taking her hand and putting it on his genitals.

McGarty’s attorney, Cheryl Gill had this to say about why the 94-year-old wasn’t in court today, “Monsignor McGarty is 94-years-old and he has some difficulty getting out and about, notwithstanding this particular charge, so I will try to get him in here.

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CLEVELAND (OH)
Fox 8 News

June 3, 2019

By Kevin Freeman

It’s a crime that’s violent, traumatizing and often goes unreported. On Monday, Ohio’s highest law enforcement official announced a proposal to eliminate the statute of limitations for rape. Under current Ohio law, a person who commits rape, cannot be prosecuted for the crime after 20 years have passed.

“I don’t think that a rapist ought to be able to run out the clock on justice,” said Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost.

Yost was flanked by two former Attorneys General, Nancy Rogers and Betty Montgomery, to publicly announce a plea to state lawmakers. They are urging the state legislature to toss out the current 20-year statute of limitations for rape offenses. Yost and five of Ohio’s former Attorneys General sent a letter to state lawmakers, requesting that there be no time limit on prosecuting rape cases, just like it is for murder.

“We believe that murder and rape have a lot in common in the sense that they are grievous offenses,” Yost said.

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LAS VEGAS (NV)
Review-Journal

June 3, 2019

By Mike Shoro

Henderson police have identified a murder suspect in the deadly shooting of a disgraced former New Jersey priest.

An arrest warrant has been issued for Derrick Decoste, 25, after John Capparelli, 70, was found dead of a gunshot wound in Henderson in March, Police Department spokeswoman Katrina Rothmeyer said. Decoste is wanted on charges of murder and robbery, each with a deadly weapon.

Decoste is currently jailed in Oakland County, Michigan, on unrelated charges, Rothmeyer said. He is pending extradition to Henderson.

What led police to pinpoint Decoste as a murder suspect wasn’t immediately clear. Capparelli was discovered March 9 inside his Henderson home on the 1400 block of Bonner Springs Drive, near Eastern Avenue and Reunion Drive, police said.

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DES MOINES (IA)
KTIV TV

June 3, 2019

Iowa Attorney General Tom Miller has asked for information on records of clergy sexual abuse from all four Catholic dioceses in Iowa.

In the letters sent to the bishops, Miller says his office met with survivors of abuse by clergy, and the survivors urged them to investigate and, quote “bring attention to the injustice they and others have suffered.” Miller’s office wants lists of all priests, deacons, or other clergy who have been deemed as “credibly accused” of sexual abuse by the dioceses. Miller’s office also wants the definition of “credibly accused,” “sexual misconduct” and “sexual abuse.” The attorney general has also requested lists of accused clergy in which the dioceses deemed the accusation “not credible.”

In addition, Miller wants notes from meetings of diocesan boards of review that were convened to consider accusations, the documentation of reports of abuse received by diocesan officials and actions taken, and copies of all settlement agreements that diocesan officials entered into with abuse survivors.

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MCALLEN (TX)
KVEO TV

June 3, 2019

By Joanna Guzman

Dallas Police recently executing a search warrant at the Offices of the Catholic Diocese of Dallas, after accusations of sex abuse by priests involving minors spark cover-ups by church officials of the alleged abuse.

Local 23 News spoke to Bishop Daniel Flores about the church’s effort to remain transparent with the local community, after the diocese released the names of accused clergy members earlier this year.

“Well we constantly have a board that reviews any complaint received. We have a call-in number that is 24 hours, and we have a special victim’s assistant who talks to people. It’s a constant sort of review of any complaint whether it’s credible or not credible that come in and then following up with them. Then we have an independent review board that goes over any of those complaints. They’re the ones who look at that, they’re experts in the field.”

According to Bishop Flores, none of the clergymen revealed earlier this year is in active ministry in the Diocese of Brownsville.

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DES MOINES (IA)
Iowa Catholic Conference

June 3, 2019

By Tom Chapman

The Catholic bishops of Iowa are pledging cooperation with the Iowa Attorney General’s request for information to be voluntarily provided regarding clergy sexual abuse. Please see below for the full text of the statement:

“Last week the Iowa Attorney General asked the state’s four Catholic dioceses to submit, by Aug. 1, 2019, documents related to clergy sexual abuse so that his office can provide a credible third-party review of the response made to reports.

Each diocese, in the interest of transparency and accountability, plans to comply with the Attorney General’s request. In fact, most of the information requested is already a matter of public record. Also, the efforts of each diocese to protect minors from clergy sexual abuse have for many years now been subject to an annual credible third-party review.

Our compliance is inspired by the teachings of Jesus and his Catholic Church: that it is right and good to respond to the sin and crime of clergy sexual abuse with sorrow, repentance, amendment of life, and efforts to repair the harm done.

In this regard, if there have been failures in the past, it is not for lack of trying. And after discovering when and where our efforts have fallen short, we will try again; there is no perfection this side of heaven.

It is our hope that the Attorney General will use the resources of his office to protect minors from the scourge of sexual abuse wherever it occurs, and not limit his focus just on the Catholic Church.”

The Catholic bishops of Iowa are Archbishop Michael Jackels of Dubuque; Bishop R. Walker Nickless of Sioux City; Bishop Richard Pates of Des Moines, and Bishop Thomas Zinkula of Davenport.

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ROCHESTER (NY)
Catholic Courier

June 3, 2019

By Mike Latona

For more than a quarter-century, an advisory group in the Diocese of Rochester has played a crucial role in addressing cases of alleged child sexual abuse by clergy.

The Diocesan Review Board, a confidential consultative panel, provides guidance and advice to Bishop Salvatore R. Matano in assessing sexual-abuse allegations and determining whether accused people are suitable to continue in ministry. The board also assists in updating diocesan polices related to handling and preventing sexual abuse.

The board was established by Bishop Emeritus Matthew H. Clark in 1993, nine years before the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ Charter for the Protection of Children and Young People made such boards mandatory for all dioceses and eparchies nationwide.

In keeping with provisions of the bishops’ 2002 charter, the current review board primarily comprises laypeople who are not employed by the diocese. These volunteer members have experience and expertise in such areas as law enforcement, child-protective services and the practices of law, psychiatry and psychology. Two priests also sit on the board.

Members of the current Diocesan Review Board are Douglas Nordquist, retired Town of Ogden police chief; James VanBrederode, current Town of Gates police chief; John McIntyre, psychiatry professor at the University of Rochester Medical Center; Robert Napier, a criminal defense lawyer; Teresa Pare, an attorney specializing in family law; Margaret Joynt, a retired child-advocacy lawyer; Jeff Munson, a clinical social worker who works with men who were sexually abused as youths; Father Daniel Condon, diocesan chancellor; and Father Kevin McKenna, rector of Sacred Heart Cathedral and diocesan chancellor from 1991-2001. Assisting the board are attorney Philip Spellane along with Deborah Housel, diocesan victim assistance coordinator.

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ROCHESTER (NY)
Democrat and Chronicle

June 3, 2019

By Maureen Maas-Feary

I didn’t go to Catholic school, though I grew up Catholic and wished I could have attended a special school and worn plaid jumpers.

Our church was the center of our small town. Attending Mass every Sunday provided a secure sense of belonging. Later, I experienced predictable teenage rebellions, complaining about going to church and rejecting religion totally.

In my mid-20s, I started needing the church. I had a joyful wedding at the same church where my parents and older sister were married. That day marked our family’s last huge family occasion. We lost my great aunts first, and then my mom, whose time came way too early. I promised her as she died that I’d have kids and bring them up Catholic. I did my best, prodding my daughters through the same rituals I’d grown up with. They even enrolled in a Catholic high school, my dream realized vicariously.

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WASHINGTON (DC)
National Catholic Register

June 3, 2019

Joan Frawley Desmond

Celebrating his 60th anniversary as a priest with fellow jubilarians in the Archdiocese of Washington, D.C., then-Cardinal Theodore McCarrick received a standing ovation after he affirmed the need for priestly holiness during a May 2018 banquet address, with his successor, Cardinal Donald Wuerl, in attendance.

Yet, by then, both U.S. prelates knew McCarrick was under investigation, following an allegation that he had sexually abused a minor more than 45 years earlier, when he was a priest in New York.

Within five weeks of the jubilee celebrations, Cardinal Timothy Dolan of New York announced that the allegation against McCarrick was “credible and substantiated,” and he was suspended from public ministry.

A second disclosure, issued on the same day by Cardinal Joseph Tobin of Newark, New Jersey, divulged secrets that had long been rumored but never publicly confirmed by Church authorities: “This Archdiocese and the Diocese of Metuchen received three allegations of sexual misconduct with adults decades ago; two of these allegations resulted in settlements.”

A year after the revelations left Catholics stunned and angry, Archbishop Wilton Gregory has succeeded Cardinal Wuerl as the archbishop of Washington, multiple seminaries are under investigation, and the Vatican has issued norms that punish bishops who engaged in sexual misconduct or abuse of power. The U.S. bishops are also poised to approve reforms that will make bishops more accountable.

But Catholics still have not received a formal accounting that explains how McCarrick was able to rise to the highest levels of the Church and communicates which Church officials knew about his harassment of seminarians but said nothing.

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SAGINAW (MI)
Saginaw News

June 3, 2019

By Cole Waterman

When police executed search warrants at three Catholic Diocese of Saginaw properties last year during an investigation into claims of sexual abuse of minors, documents show they seized nearly 60 items of evidence.

Among them, located in the bottom drawer of a filing cabinet at diocese headquarters, was a file labeled “victim list.”

That information is contained in search warrant paperwork detailing what police seized during the March 2018 raid. The paperwork was recently unsealed and copies were obtained by MLive and The Saginaw News.

The list of confiscated property shows investigators took 57 items during the search of three locations – former Bishop Joseph R. Cistone’s home at 32 E. Corral Drive in Saginaw Township, the Saginaw Diocese offices at 5800 Weiss St. in Saginaw Township and the rectory at Cathedral of Mary of the Assumption at 615 Hoyt St. in Saginaw.

The items included computers, flash drives, expense accounts, internal memos and boxes containing the personnel files of now-convicted Rev. Robert J. DeLand Jr., three other priests and one deacon. The police paperwork does not explain the contents of the “victim list” file seized by investigators.

The majority of evidence police seized has been turned over to the Michigan Attorney General’s Office, which is currently investigating all seven Catholic dioceses in the state on sex-abuse claims dating to the 1950s.

As part of that investigation, law enforcement in October executed search warrants on each diocese in Saginaw, Detroit, Marquette, Lansing, Kalamazoo, Gaylord, and Grand Rapids.

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WASHINGTON (DC)
Washington Post

June 3, 2019

By Sarah Stankorb

During the fall of 2017, along with the rest of the country, Jules Woodson watched the Me Too movement play out in the media. As women came forward to expose the predatory behavior they’d survived, the Colorado Springs-based flight attendant reflected on a night in 1998, when Andy Savage, the youth pastor at her local church in her hometown of The Woodlands, Tex., offered her a ride home. At some point, Woodson says, Savage passed the turn to her home and drove down a dirt road, where he reached a dead end and switched off the headlights. He unzipped his jeans and asked Woodson, then 17, to perform oral sex. A few minutes later, she says, Savage jumped from the truck, fell to his knees and told Woodson she must take what happened to the grave.

The next day, terrified and traumatized, Woodson told the church’s assistant pastor what happened; she says he asked if she’d “participated.” While Savage continued as youth pastor — even leading a True Love Waits event encouraging youth to abstain from all physical contact, not just from sex — Woodson sank into shame and a deep depression. Although she retained her faith, she eventually left the church.

Twenty years later, Woodson found Savage’s email and sent him a note with the subject line: “Do you remember?” She asked if he recalled the night he was supposed to drive her home — “and instead drove me to a deserted back road and sexually assaulted me?” She signed off with “#metoo.”

When Woodson Googled his name, along with “sex abuse in church” and “youth pastor sex abuse,” she found a blog dedicated to Christian survivor stories called the Wartburg Watch; there, she read a post about an alleged abuse coverup at a church affiliated with Savage’s current church. About a month later, Woodson submitted her own first-person account about her abuse to the Wartburg Watch and a similar Christian survivor blog called Watch Keep. When the blogs simultaneously published her story, Woodson figured that maybe a hundred people would read it — but by that afternoon, the posts had spread enough that Savage responded with a statement. On the website of the Highpoint Church in Memphis — where he worked at the time — Savage described a regretful “sexual incident with a female high school senior” 20 years prior. For his mea culpa at church that Sunday, Savage’s congregation gave him a standing ovation. Within days, Savage responded to Woodson’s email, saying, in part: “I am genuinely sorry for the pain this has caused you and I ask for your forgiveness.”

Woodson soon found herself at the center of a media storm. The hashtag #JusticeForJules bubbled up on Twitter. On a CNN commentator’s radio show, Savage described the incident as an “organic sexual moment.” The New York Times ran a news story the next week and, two months later, a video piece in which Woodson detailed her story. Eleven days after the video came out, Savage resigned from Highpoint Church, acknowledging that his “relationship” with Woodson was “not only immoral, but meets the definition of abuse of power.” The same day, Savage emailed Woodson to again apologize and to say his initial in-church statement and the church’s response were “defensive and self-serving.” (Savage did not respond to my requests for comment.)

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NEW YORK (NY)
Daily Beast

June 3, 2019

By Kelly Weill

Grand Marais is a quiet Minnesota town on the Lake Superior coast. Seth Jeffs is the brother of notorious cult leader Warren Jeffs, and the leader of his own secretive sect. The only thing separating them is a dispute over local wetlands.

Seth Jeffs was a prominent figure in the Fundamentalist Church of the Latter Day Saints, a polygamist sex cult that married off underage girls to adult men. After leader Warren Jeffs was sentenced to life in prison for crimes including raping his 12-year-old “wife,” Seth Jeffs and other FLDS members flitted from state to state establishing new religious compounds and dodging legal action. Now Seth Jeffs is build a new compound in Grand Marais, all while facing a lawsuit from a woman who says he and the FLDS subjected her to ritual sex abuse at 8 years old.

Right now, Grand Marais’ best hope to stop Jeffs is a regulation about construction in the area’s wetlands.

On May 18, approximately 100 Grand Marais residents, nearly a tenth of the town, gathered for a community meeting about their new neighbors. In December, Jeffs secured a permit to build a 5,760-square-foot structure on 40 acres of local land. (Jeffs was unreachable for comment.)

“We wouldn’t be able to tell if anything is going on there,” one local worried during the meeting, according to KARE 11.

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CINCINNATI (OH)
WCPO TV

June 3, 2019

By Paula Christian

A Franklin man accused of driving a church bus into poor neighborhoods in order to meet and sexually victimize young boys faces a jury in U.S. District Court in Cincinnati on Monday.

Jory Leedy, 49, faces three charges of taking boys as young as 9 years old on overnight trips as far away as Florida and Canada, and as close as Kings Island and Crossroads Church, in order to engage in sexual abuse. He faces a possible life sentence if convicted.

The trial before U.S. District Court Judge Timothy Black will last a week. Prosecutors will likely call witnesses from Leedy’s past to allege a pattern of abuse that goes back 20 years, according to court documents.

Leedy became a registered sex offender after a 2002 conviction for gross sexual imposition in Montgomery County involving an 11-year-old boy who he had met through Big Brothers. He served two years in prison, according to court documents.

A decade later Leedy was a volunteer bus driver for Target Dayton Ministries in 2012, transporting residents of poor neighborhoods to church, when he met two brothers, ages 7 and 8, and their mother, according to court documents.

“A few weeks after meeting the family Leedy, got permission from the mother to start taking the victims to his church, Crossroads, located in Cincinnati,” according to a search warrant affidavit from Hamilton County Sheriff’s Department Detective Donald Minnich. “The boys would be picked up every Sunday morning and then dropped off later Sunday evening. Leedy also began taking the victims on trips to the zoo, Kings Island, Reds games and other places for the day.”

Leedy bought the family a car, paid part of the family’s rent, helped the boys enroll in East Dayton Christian School and took the boys on frequent trips to Florida, North Carolina, Georgia and New Jersey, according to Minnich’s affidavit.

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PRESTONSBURG (KY)
Associated Press

June 3, 2019

A Kentucky pastor is accused of trying to set up a threesome with two underage girls.

The Courier Journal reports that 26-year-old Bobby J. Blackburn, pastor of the Elevate Church in Prestonsburg, was arrested last week and charged with using an electronic communication system to get a minor to commit a sex act. WYMT said Blackburn also owns a local Giovanni’s pizza place, which plays Christian music and puts Bible verses on receipts.

An arrest citation says Blackburn’s business employs the girls, one of whom showed officers the sexual messages from Blackburn.

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DUBLIN (IRELAND)
RTE

June 3, 2019

An independent commission set up by the French Catholic Church to look at allegations of sexual abuse by clerics began its work by launching an appeal for witness statements.

France’s Catholic bishops set up the commission last year in response to a number of scandals that shook the church in the country and also worldwide.

It now has the task to shed light on sexual abuse committed by French clerics on minors or vulnerable individuals going right back to the 1950s.

“For the first time in France, an independent institution is going to launch, over the course of a year, an appeal for witness statements about sexual abuse,” said commission president Jean-Marc Sauve.

He has promised that the commission, which is made up of 22 legal professionals, doctors, historians, sociologists and theologians, would deliver its conclusions by the end of 2020.

“It is an important action to be able to give victims psychological or legal help,” he said.

The commission opens after Pope Francis in May passed a landmark new measure to oblige those who know about sex abuse in the Catholic Church to report it to their superiors, a move that could bring countless new cases to light.

Mr Sauve expects thousands of telephone calls to a special hotline, as well as messages to an email address, with victims then offered face-to-face interviews in a later stage.

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NEW YORK (NY)
Daily News

June 2, 2019

By Ella Torres

A Roman Catholic bishop who admitted to knowing about incidents of child sexual abuse but did nothing deemed LGBTQ Pride Month “harmful for children.”

Bishop Thomas Tobin of the Roman Catholic Diocese in Providence, R.I., tweeted Saturday that Catholics should not support or attend events held for Pride Month.

“They promote a culture and encourage activities that are contrary to Catholic faith and morals,” he wrote. “They are especially harmful for children.”

In 2018, Tobin acknowledged that he “became aware of incidents of sexual abuse when they were reported to the diocese” between 1992 and 1996 in Pittsburgh when he was the auxiliary bishop of that city, according to The Providence Journal.

He said, however, that reporting the allegations was not his responsibility.

“My responsibilities as Vicar General and General Secretary of the diocese did not include clergy assignments or clergy misconduct, but rather other administrative duties such as budgets, property, diocesan staff, working with consultative groups, etc. Even as an auxiliary bishop, I was not primarily responsible for clergy issues,” he said in an email statement to the Journal.

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SAULT STE. MARIE (MI)
Associated Press

June 3, 2019

By David Eggert

Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel said Republican-backed cuts to her budget would have a “devastating” impact, limiting the office’s ability to protect consumers, prosecute sexually abusive clergy and look into wrongful convictions.

The general fund reductions proposed by the Senate and House range between 10% and 15%, or $4.2 million to $5.3 million, not including sizable cuts to what are known as restricted funds. They are seen as payback for some of the Democrat’s moves since taking office in January, like reaching a legal settlement to prohibit faith-based adoption agencies that contract with the state from discriminating against LGBT couples.

“The proposed cuts would be devastating to the residents of our state,” Nessel told The Associated Press in an interview this past week at the Detroit Regional Chamber’s Mackinac Policy Conference. “It’s very short-sighted of the Legislature to think that cutting the budget of my office is in some way going to punish me personally for any of my views that I disagree with them on. The fact is it’s going to punish their constituents, and it’s going to be harmful to all our state residents.”

She listed a number of a ways that the funding reductions would hurt, and she said lawmakers may not know that for every $1 allocated to the department, it can generate $10 or more.

The consumer protection division this year has received more than $15 million in settlements that went to the state or to defrauded victims, Nessel said. Her office has intervened to scale back utility rate increases, saving customers.

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NEW YORK (NY)
The Smart Set

June 3, 2019

By James McWilliams

The reasons to be enamored of the late poet Frank Stanford are endless. Stanford, who was born in Mississippi, lived in Memphis, and settled in western Arkansas (as much as he could ever “settle”), became a poet’s poet, a writer whose prolific output never penetrated beyond the small stable of writers and critics who wildly admired him. John Berryman, Alan Dugan, Allen Ginsberg, and Gordon Lish were fans.

Given up by his biological mother at birth (in 1948), adopted by the first single woman authorized to adopt a child in Mississippi (Dorothy Gildart), and a frequent denizen of the levee camps where his later adoptive father (Albert Franklin Stanford in 1952) worked as an engineer, Stanford merged memory and fantasy to develop an iconic style that, as he published routinely throughout the 1970s, is best grasped in his defining The Battlefield Where the Moon Says I Love You. When his editor, Michael Cuddihy, first read this manuscript, he recalled, “It was endless, shot through with brilliant passages echoing Beowulf, Dante, the Troubadours, and others.” Stanford said he started writing it when he was 13.

Perhaps inevitably, though, admiration for Stanford often began with the body. His wife said his eyes were “soft to the point of bovine;” a lover called him “handsome as the sun” (before calling him the biggest liar she’d ever met); a male acquaintance noted “his boundless physical strength.” His friend and publisher Irv Broughton called him “dark and intense.” In photos, “Frankie,” as his niece, Carrie Prycock calls him, kind of smolders. People were naturally drawn to the handsome poet from Arkansas, eager to consume a man whose “hormonal literary excesses” — that’s from the editor of his works Michael Wiegers — always seemed on the verge of flash flooding the reality he transformed.

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