ABUSE TRACKER

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

May 25, 2019

A support group for clergy abuse victims are calling on district attorneys in California’s Central Valley to use their offices to reach out to survivors directly and to denounce actions by a Bakersfield attorney that make it less likely for victims of sexual abuse to come forward.

Leaders of SNAP, the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, are writing to the District Attorneys of Madera, Fresno, Kern, Merced, Mariposa, Tulare, and Inyo Counties following an announcement that these seven DAs will be auditing the Diocese of Fresno. They are asking for special attention to be paid to the case of Msgr. Craig Harrison, who has gone on the attack following multiple accusations of sexual abuse.

“We know from our work that substantiating firsthand accounts of child sex abuse is very difficult for law enforcement under the best of circumstances,” wrote SNAP in its letter. “We fear that the tactics being used by Msgr. Harrison and his lawyer are intended to frighten not only his accusers, but also to prevent witnesses from coming forward.”

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ROME (ITALY)
Catholic News Service

May 28, 2019

By Cindy Wooden

Pope Benedict XVI had imposed restrictions on the public ministry of former Cardinal Theodore E. McCarrick in 2008, but they were not formal sanctions and were not followed strictly, even during the papacy of Pope Benedict himself, McCarrick’s former secretary said.

Msgr. Anthony J. Figueiredo, who was the former cardinal’s secretary for nine months in 1994-1995, but continued to assist him from Rome, released extracts from correspondence May 28, saying he wanted the truth out about what was known about McCarrick, when and by whom.

Besides knowing about the restrictions himself, the monsignor also said he had evidence that recently retired Cardinal Donald W. Wuerl of Washington knew about them, as did Cardinal Giovanni Battista Re, then-prefect of the Congregation for Bishops, Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, then-Vatican secretary of state, and Archbishop Pietro Sambi, who was nuncio to the United States at the time.

Msgr. Figueiredo said he decided to publish online excerpts of correspondence in his possession — available at http://thefigueiredoreport.com/ — after attempting “since September 2018 to share and discuss these with the Holy See and other church leaders.” He did not publish the full texts of any of the correspondence or emails he quoted online.

The monsignor, who in October was suspended from driving in England for 18 months after pleading guilty for drunk driving and hitting a car driven by a pregnant woman, said in his online report that “the hierarchy’s abuse of authority and cover-up, in their various and serious manifestations, have inflicted consequences upon me,” including by “seeking consolation in alcohol.”

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

May 28, 2019

We are grateful to Monsignor Anthony Figueiredo for having the courage to release these communications and to show to the public that the “restrictions” placed on former Cardinal Theodore McCarrick were not taken at all seriously by his colleagues.

While Cardinal McCarrick has been defrocked by the Church, this correspondence not only illustrates that many other high-ranking Catholic officials were aware of the restrictions that bound the Cardinal, but also that they did nothing to enforce them. To us, this demonstrates that cases of clergy sex abuse are still not being handled properly.

It is very troubling to learn of the lax attitude with which Cardinal McCarrick’s discipline was treated by his fellow prelates. This fact becomes all the more troubling now that Pope Francis has mandated that all Church staff report cases of clergy abuse internally to those same prelates. It is difficult to imagine that any reports will be treated with the care they deserve when the officials who receive them have shown a willingness to ignore the punishments imposed by the Vatican.

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ST. LOUIS (MO)
Post-Dispatch

May 28, 2019

By Nassim Benchaabane

A letter Chris Boisaubin received in 2012 from his high school was both a blessing and a curse.

Boisaubin, now 65, was one of about 1,600 former students of Chaminade College Preparatory School to receive the letter from the Marianists, the Roman Catholic order that runs the boys boarding and day school in Creve Coeur.

A graduate had accused two Marianists of sexually abusing him while he was enrolled in the 1970s. The victim asked the Rev. Martin Solma to send the letter to students who had graduated while the two men had worked at the school.

Several alumni wrote back with allegations of abuse by the men and other clergy there. They filed lawsuits, saying the letter had triggered repressed memories of abuse.

Boisaubin sued the Marianists in 2014 alleging John Woulfe, a member of the Marianist order who is now dead, had abused him when he was a minor and that officials knew he had abused two other boys previously.

The order is willing to pay $50,000 to settle Bouisaubin’s case, but he would get none of the money and the Marianists wouldn’t have to admit wrongdoing of any form, said Ken Chackes, Boisaubin’s attorney.

That’s because for the last two years, Boisaubin’s case hasn’t legally been his to pursue. It’s been property of the bankruptcy court in St. Louis.

Boisaubin, a longtime IT worker, has filed for bankruptcy twice in his life and was discharged from both cases; the most recent case, in St. Louis, ended in 2009.

When he sued the Marianists in 2014, they argued that the damages he sought were an asset, like his car or home or anything else he owned, and became the property of the bankruptcy court, to be surrendered to a trustee overseeing the sale of his estate to pay his creditors.

In December, the Marianists struck an agreement with the bankruptcy trustee; the order would pay $50,000 to Boisaubin’s creditors in exchange for the trustee dropping the sex abuse case. They’re now trying to override Boisaubin’s appeal and enforce the agreement in court.

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FALL RIVER (MA)
Boston Channel 25

May 28, 2019

A Roman Catholic diocese in Massachusetts says a longtime priest has been suspended amid an allegation of sexual misconduct.

The Herald News reports that Fall River Bishop Edgar Moreira da Cunha said in an email Sunday that Father Bruce Neylon, pastor of Holy Trinity Church, was removed from active ministry.

Da Cunha said an individual claimed Neylon had sexual contact with him on numerous occasions in the early 1980s, when the victim was aged 14 or 15. He said the victim was not a member of the parish to which Neylon was assigned at the time and the alleged abuse did not occur on church property.

Neylon has denied the allegation.

Da Cunha called the allegation “credible” and said the case was referred to the Bristol County District Attorney’s office.

A statement posted on the Fall River Diocese’s website said Neylon was ordained in 1975 and listed his past assignments as parochial vicar (or assistant), Holy Name Parish, Fall River (1975); parochial vicar, St. Patrick Parish, Wareham (1982); pastoral care, Sturdy Memorial Hospital, Attleboro (1985); pastor, St. Mary Parish, Seekonk (1983); pastor, St. Stanislaus Parish, Fall River (2002); pastor, Holy Trinity Parish, Fall River (2012).

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

May 28, 2019

Chris Boisaubin is appealing an agreement the Marianists struck with the trustee in his previously discharged bankruptcy where the religious order would pay $50,000 to Mr. Boisaubin’s creditors in exchange for the trustee dropping the sex abuse case.

We deplore this move by the Marianists to deny a victim his day in court and to ensure the full truth about sex crimes that occurred at Chaminade College Preparatory School in St. Louis is concealed. What other possible motive could they have but to protect themselves, their secrets, their reputations and their incomes?

We stand in support of this survivor as he moves to get the justice and recognition he deserves from the Marianist Order and Church officials in St. Louis.

By playing legal hardball against a victim of a known abusive priest, we can only assume that Catholic officials hope this move will prevent others from coming forward. Instead, we hope that their strategy backfires and that even more people who were hurt at Chaminade will find the courage to speak up.

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SAN JOSE (CA)
Mercury News

May 27, 2019

By John Woolfolk

The law has long treated confession of sin to a priest as sacred. Even clergy who hear a fellow priest’s confession to sexually abusing a child generally can’t be compelled to report it to authorities.

But should they be?

California lawmakers are considering that fundamental question amid heightened scrutiny of the child sex abuse scandal roiling the Catholic Church. The state Senate resoundingly approved a bill last week that would force clergy who hear confessions of child sex abuse from another priest to report it. Church leaders say it is an unconstitutional government intrusion and violation of religious freedom.

“Faith leaders have been the only exception to this rule,” the bill’s author, Sen. Jerry Hill, D-San Mateo, said, adding that even doctors and spouses must report suspected child abuse reported to them in confidence. “Instead of protecting children, some have been shielding abusers. It is time for California to put children first.”

The California Catholic Conference opposes Hill’s bill, SB360, arguing it will not help protect children and dangerously weaken religious freedom by “interjecting the government into the confessional.”

“The ‘seal of confession’ is one of the most sacrosanct of Catholic beliefs and penitents rely on this unbreakable guarantee to freely confess and seek reconciliation with God,” the California Catholic Conference said. A priest who “breaks the seal,” the group added, “is automatically excommunicated.”

“We are dealing here with an egregious violation of the principle of religious liberty,” Robert Barron, auxiliary bishop of the Archdiocese of Los Angeles said in a statement.

However, the bill comes at a time when the Roman Catholic Church is under fire over priests who sexually abused children. Reporting of widespread abuse in the Boston diocese prompted U.S. bishops in 2002 to adopt a Charter for the Protection of Children, known as the Dallas Charter, to prevent child abuse within the church.

But more recent revelations like a bombshell Pennsylvania investigation in August that found widespread child sex abuse and cover-ups over decades in six dioceses has sparked fresh outrage. California Attorney General Xavier Becerra is now investigating the Golden State’s dioceses.

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ST. LOUIS (MO)
Post Dispatch

May 27, 2019

For months now, the St. Louis Archdiocese has been saying it intends to follow the lead of its counterparts around the nation and publicly identify its clergy who have been credibly accused of the sexual abuse of children. Since last year, the Missouri Attorney General’s office, under two consecutive office-holders, has said it will complete and release an independent investigation of the issue statewide. To date, neither promise has been fulfilled.

Officials of both the archdiocese and the attorney general’s office told us last week that they remain committed to completing and releasing their respective investigations. But neither office could even hint at a timeline nor justify why the final reports have to be completed before the release of the information confirmed so far can begin.

Why the hurry? Because, with the continued veil of mystery over this issue, there’s no way for the public to be sure that some of those accused aren’t still in positions to commit further abuse. Assurances that the church has already purged any current threats don’t inspire much confidence when they’re accompanied by the same vague vows of sometime-in-the-future disclosure that we’ve been hearing for months.

After an August 2018 grand jury report alleging more than 300 Catholic clergy in Pennsylvania had sexually abused more than 1,000 children over decades, legal authorities in various states have stepped up to assess the situations in their own jurisdictions. In Illinois alone, then-Attorney General Lisa Madigan last year reported accusations against some 500 priests, far more than church officials had acknowledged.

Many bishops around the country have also provided public disclosure, to varying degrees. Two of Missouri’s four dioceses — Jefferson City and Springfield-Cape Girardeau — have already released lists of priests facing substantiated allegations.

Some activists say that information lacked adequate detail, but at least they released it. Missouri’s remaining two dioceses, in St. Louis and Kansas City, both say they are awaiting results of internal inquiries by hired investigators before releasing anything. With so many other jurisdictions having already done this, why does the St. Louis Archdiocese keep insisting it needs more time?

Given the church’s circle-the-wagons history on this issue, it may not be too cynical to suggest, as has David Clohessy of the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, that they’re running out the clock. “Delays help those who commit abuse, and those who cover it up,” says Clohessy. “With every passing day, one more victim dies or gives up … or one more witness dies or moves away.”

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BUFFALO (NY)
The Buffalo News

May 28, 2019

By Jay Tokasz

The Catholic Diocese of Buffalo has paid $17.5 million to 106 childhood victims of clergy sexual abuse, while rejecting 135 applicants it deemed ineligible for its voluntary compensation program.

A total of 127 settlements were offered to the accusers, ranging from $2,000 to $650,000, with an average award of $158,622. Seventeen people turned down the offers. Three people have yet to decide on offers totaling $425,000, and one person who accepted a $60,000 offer has yet to be paid, which means the diocese’s total cost could end up at more than $18 million.

Despite its large price tag, the Independent Reconciliation and Compensation Program payments could turn out to be a bargain for the diocese. Dioceses that settled claims brought through litigation ended up paying much more. In 2016, the Buffalo Diocese settled for $1.5 million a single abuse claim brought in a federal court in Hawaii.

By comparison, the largest compensation award offer was $650,000 and went to a man who accused the Rev. Michael R. Freeman of aiming a revolver at his head and repeatedly molesting him when he was a child in the 1980s. The man was one of the 17 people who rejected offers, according to his attorney, Steve Boyd.

Those who took the payments agreed not to sue, so the Buffalo Diocese avoided more than 100 potential lawsuits under a Child Victims Act signed into law in February that will allow previously time-barred abuse cases to be heard in state courts.

It’s unclear how many of the 135 applicants deemed ineligible for the compensation program will now sue, though some of them have told The Buffalo News they plan to file complaints in court when a one-year window to do so opens Aug. 14. It’s also unclear how many people who did not apply to the diocese program will sue.

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VATICAN CITY
Christian Today

May 28, 2019

By Christine P. Bartholomew

Pope Francis recently changed the Catholic Church law, making it mandatory for clergy to report sexual abuse to church superiors. In the past, such reporting was left to the discretion of a priest or nun.

Pope Francis’ proposal is an effort to address gaps in the regulatory process of the church, which has been accused of shielding clergy sexual abuse. It provides a process to report allegations up the pipeline.

As a scholar of law I worry that it fails to address what the church will do with that information.

To date, religious organizations, such as the Catholic Church, have adopted inconsistent positions on whether, and to what degree, they should share information necessary for legal action.

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ARIZONA
Capitol Media Services

May 27, 2019

By Daniel Perle and Howard Fischer

The arrest of a priest in Arizona on sex abuse charges out of Michigan could lend fuel to legislative efforts to expand the time that victims in this state have to sue their assailants.

Timothy Crowley, 69, was one of five former Catholic priests who Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel said are charged with various counts of criminal sexual conduct. She said all five are part of an investigation by her office into reports of clergy abuse which go back decades.

The news comes as Sen. Paul Boyer, R-Phoenix, is trying to convince colleagues to scrap existing Arizona laws which say that victims here have only until they turn 20 to file civil suits.

Boyer told Capitol Media Services he can’t say whether Crowley and other priests accused of incidents of sexual abuse were purposely moved to Arizona because of what he sees as the limited ability of those who are abused and assaulted here to file civil actions.

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NEW JERSEY
NJ Advance Media for NJ.com

May 28, 2019

By Kelly Heyboer

When a law firm released a report earlier this month naming 311 Catholic clergy members from New Jersey accused of sexual misconduct there was something striking about the list– it included women.

Three nuns from New Jersey were among the priests, monks, deacons and other clergy members listed in the report compiled by New Jersey attorney Greg Gianforcaro and Jeff Anderson & Associates, a Minnesota-based law firm that specialized in representing victims of abuse.

The law firm said it used lawsuits, settlements and news accounts to come up with its list of 311 clergy members — far more than the 188 priests and deacons that were on a list from New Jersey’s five dioceses released in February.

None of the lists from New Jersey’s dioceses — Newark, Metuchen, Camden, Trenton and Paterson — have included nuns. Most nuns are overseen by their individual orders, which would probably have handled any accusations of abuse in the past.

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SYDNEY (AUSTRALIA)
Associated Press

May 27, 2019

By Trevor Marshallsea

Disgraced Australian Catholic cardinal George Pell will not fight for a reduced jail sentence if he fails in his appeal of his conviction for molesting two choirboys in the 1990s, a court spokesman said Monday.

The 77-year-old Pell — the most senior Catholic convicted of sex abuse — was sentenced in a Melbourne court in March to six years in prison. He must serve at least three years and eight months of the term.

Pell will appeal his conviction next month. His lawyers have filed an application arguing it should be overturned on three grounds.

But the application does not include an appeal of the length of the sentence, Andre Awadalla, a spokesman for the Court of Appeal in Victoria state, told the Associated Press.

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SIOUX FALLS (SD)
Argus Leader

May 25, 2019

Two months ago, the Catholic Diocese of Sioux Falls released the names of 11 priests who faced substantiated accusations of abusing minors between 1958 and 1992 while serving in eastern South Dakota.

The action came on the crest of a recent wave of such disclosures by Catholic leaders across the country. It began in Pennsylvania last year, when a grand jury in that state accused several dioceses of attempting to cover up abuse by 300 former priests.

As such, the public statement from Sioux Falls Bishop Paul Swain seemed a step in the right direction. Swain apologized to victims “as a sign of my and our faith community’s accepting responsibility for failings over the years.”

He urged those who had suffered abuse at the hands of any of the 11 priests named in the statement to come forward, so that “assistance might be offered and justice accomplished.” He acknowledged that many victims “remain silent for fear they will not be believed.”

But Swain’s statement fell short of the level of disclosure from the Rapid City Diocese several weeks earlier. The Rapid City statement listed the assignments, including dates, of the priests with credible claims of abuse against them.

Matt Althoff, chancellor of the Sioux Falls Diocese, defended the absence of that kind of information. Swain’s letter was addressed to victims who “know where the abuse happened,” Althoff said. “Really it is out of a profound sensitivity for the deserved confidentiality of a victim of clergy sexual abuse that all those details, the bishop chose not to include in his letter.”

Priests who had been permanently assigned to the Rapid City Diocese were not the only names disclosed in the Rapid City statement. Also included on their list were credibly-accused members of the Jesuit religious order who had been assigned to missions and mission schools on the Pine Ridge and Rosebud reservations.

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WARSAW (POLAND)
Catholic News Service via National Catholic Reporter

May 22, 2019

By Jonathan Luxmoore

The Polish bishops’ administrative council met in emergency session May 22 and later admitted the church failed to act against clerical sexual abuse.

The meeting came amid outrage over a two-hour documentary, “Just Don’t Tell Anyone,” that included drastic accounts of cover-up of clerical sex abuse in Poland. The film had more than 19 million views within six days of its May 11 YouTube posting.

“The whole church community in Poland has been shaken by the latest painful information — these crimes have caused deep suffering for harmed people,” the bishops said in a pastoral letter to be read in parishes nationwide May 26.

“There are no words to express our shame at the sexual scandals clergy have participated in. They are a source of great evil and demand total condemnation, as well as severe consequences for the criminals and for those who concealed such acts.”

The bishops said they had been “deeply affected” by “shocking testimonies” in the film, as well as by its portrayal of a “lack of sympathy, sinful neglect and myopia” shown toward abuse victims.

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NEW YORK (NY)
New York Times

May 24, 2019

By Elizabeth Dias

Michigan law enforcement officials made their first arrests in a statewide investigation into Roman Catholic clergy sexual abuse, the state’s attorney general announced on Friday.

Five former Catholic priests have been charged with criminal sexual conduct, Attorney General Dana Nessel said at a news conference. But hundreds, or even thousands, of alleged victims could still remain across the state, she said.

“This is just the tip of the iceberg,” she said. “We anticipate many more charges and arrests.”

The charges were the latest effort by law enforcement nationwide to hold Catholic officials accountable for sexual abuse in the church. Since Thursday, four of the former priests were arrested in Arizona, California, Florida and Michigan. The fifth faces possible extradition from India.

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ROME (ITALY)
Catholic News Service via Crux

May 24, 2019

By Carol Glatz

Pope Francis’s latest effort to help the Catholic Church safeguard its members from abuse and hold its leaders accountable came in the form of a new universal law, Vos estis lux mundi (“You are the light of the world”), which takes effect June 1.

Like all universal legislation, the papal document had to factor in the vast diversity of cultures and traditions of the more than 200 countries where the Church is present, Archbishop Charles Scicluna, the Vatican’s top abuse investigator, told reporters the day the document was released in May.

It had to strike a balance of being clear and precise, but not so narrow that “it would be inoperative. You need something that can be flexible enough to work,” the archbishop said.

But as Jesuit Father Arturo Sosa, the order’s superior, warned during the safeguarding summit at the Vatican in February, the Church also must never use its “multicultural reality” to justify, excuse or ignore abuse. No matter the culture or local attitudes, the fundamental principle guiding everyone must be to follow the Gospel message, always and everywhere, bringing to light the truth that sets everyone free, he said.

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WARSAW (POLAND)
Associated Press

May 26, 2019

By Monika Scislowska

Poland’s ruling Law and Justice party has emerged as the big winner in the country’s European Parliament election, taking over 45% of the votes following an aggressive campaign against a united opposition in a year of key elections.

Preliminary results from more than 99% of voting stations announced Monday by the State Electoral Commission suggest that the right-wing ruling party has a good chance of winning crucial elections to the national parliament in the fall and continuing its policy of social conservatism and euroskepticism.

It was the first ever win for the right-wing, nationalist party in European balloting and its best showing in any election ever.

Analysts said the intensive campaign, with the participation of party leader Jaroslaw Kaczynski and quick containment of crises — from leaders’ business dealings to revelations of child sex abuse by priests — mobilized its voters and defenders of the Catholic Church, and contributed to the party’s showing.

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WARSAW (POLAND)
Associated Press

May 22, 2019

By Vanessa Gera

Poland’s bishops acknowledged on Wednesday that they have not done enough to prevent clerical abuse of minors and said there are “no words” to describe their shame about sex scandals involving priests.

The acknowledgement came as Poland, where Catholic traditions and faith remain strong, is grappling with the problem of abuse in the church. Massive soul searching was triggered by a documentary, “Tell No One,” that includes testimony by victims, priests who admit their wrongdoing and evidence that the church — even recently — moved abusers from parish to parish and let them have contact with children.

“There are no words to express our shame because of sexual scandals involving clerics,” the Polish Bishops’ Conference said in a statement, a message that is to be read out in all churches on Sunday.

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PITTSBURGH (PA)
Pittsburgh Post Gazette

May 20, 2019

By Shelly Bradbury, Peter Smith, and Stephanie Strasburg

Part 1 in a 6-part series

Mennonites, Amish face growing recognition of widespread sexual abuse in their communities

Huntington, Pa. – Martha Peight stood in the first row of the courtroom, shaking yet resolute, as she held the printout of her victim-impact statement.

In the benches behind her sat members of area Mennonite churches, wearing the traditional plain clothing of a separatist culture she had left behind — the bearded men in work clothes or dark suits, the women in long dresses and head coverings.

Some had come to lend moral support to her father, Daniel R. Hostetler, who sat with bowed head at the defense table, where he awaited his sentencing for sexually violating Ms. Peight years earlier when she was a young teen.

Others had shown up to support Ms. Peight as she sought justice that had been long delayed, in part due to actions of the former minister of the family’s Mennonite church, who was also there in the courtroom Nov. 29 in this central Pennsylvania county seat.

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PITTSBURGH (PA)
Pittsburgh Post Gazette

May 22, 2019

By Shelly Bradbury, Peter Smith, and Stephanie Strasburg

Part 2 in a 6-part series

Plain community sexual abuse victims sometimes pressured to take offenders back

The Old Order Mennonite bishop leveled a finger at the unwed, pregnant teenager who stood before him and jabbed it toward her.

“You,” she remembered him saying, “can’t be a church member until after the baby is born.”

Diane Snyder stood silently beside her boyfriend as the bishop made his declaration. She did not protest when her boyfriend escaped the punishment she was to suffer for the baby growing inside her.

And she stayed silent during the ensuing months, keeping to herself the gnawing fear that she’d die before the baby was born — die and go to hell because she wasn’t a church member.

She married her boyfriend, Jim Burkholder, and for years she never protested when he demanded sex, even when she was pregnant with one child, nursing another. It was her duty to satisfy him, and she couldn’t say no. This was what married women had to do, she believed.

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PITTSBURGH (PA)
Pittsburgh Post Gazette

May 28, 2019

By Shelly Bradbury, Peter Smith, and Stephanie Strasburg

Part 3 in a 6-part series

Plain community sexual abuse victims sometimes pressured to take offenders back

Church leaders pulled Kay aside one Sunday and told her she was excommunicated for failing to forgive her husband.

Her conservative Mennonite church demanded that she take a registered sex offender back into her home, that she forgive and forget what he had done to their 1-month-old baby and her sibling who followed.

But Kay had tried that blind forgiveness before, and she couldn’t do it again.

She’d gone to counseling with him, brought the kids to him for supervised visits, eaten meals with him. But this time, he needed to prove to her that he was trustworthy, and in the year since he’d been off probation, he’d ignored her rules and pushed the boundaries and pointed fingers at her for breaking up the marriage.

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AUSTIN (TX)
Texas Tribune

May 24, 2019

By Cassandra Pollock

The House initially exempted churches and nonprofits from the extended statute of limitations, but the chamber agreed to include them Friday after sex assault victims pushed back.

A proposal at the Texas Legislature that would give victims of child sexual abuse more time to sue their abusers and the organizations they were affiliated with is headed to the governor’s desk.

House Bill 3809, filed by state Rep. Craig Goldman, R-Fort Worth, would let people file civil lawsuits against alleged abusers 30 years after the victims turn 18. Current law only allows for a 15-year threshold to sue. That lengthened statute of limitations would apply to culpable entities, a provision the Senate added back into the legislation after the House stripped language related to those institutions from the bill.

Goldman moved to concur with the Senate’s version of the bill Friday, with members signing off on it unanimously.

Goldman’s bill first surfaced in April, when Becky Leach, wife of state Rep. Jeff Leach, R-Plano, shared her story of child sexual abuse before the House committee chaired by her husband. At that hearing, Becky Leach, who testified for the bill, said she wanted to use her experience to help others who haven’t yet come forward.

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LANSING (MI)
Associated Press via New York Times

May 24, 2019

A Catholic priest who admitted when he resigned from a Flint-area parish that he had sexually abused a child has been charged with several counts of sexual assault dating back decades.

The Detroit News and The Flint Journal report that prosecutors charged 80-year-old Vincent DeLorenzo on Thursday with six counts of both first- and second-degree criminal sexual conduct.

The Diocese of Lansing says eight people have accused DeLorenzo of sexual abuse and that he’s being defrocked.

Court records list DeLorenzo as a Lantana, Florida, resident, but The Associated Press couldn’t find a listed phone number for him in that area and wasn’t able to reach him for comment.

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VATICAN CITY
Associated Press

May 23, 2019

By Nicole Winfield

The Italian Catholic Church hierarchy said Thursday it had approved guidelines establishing a “moral obligation” to report cases of clergy sex abuse to police, after bishops long downplayed the problem and covered it up.

The Italian bishops’ conference didn’t immediately release the text. But the official in charge of child protection, Monsignor Lorenzo Ghizzoni, said it called for bishops to report credible accusations even though Italian law doesn’t designate clergy as mandated reporters.

The main Italian victims’ group, Rete L’Abuso, called the announcement “dishonest” as the conference in 2014 issued similar guidelines saying bishops had a “moral duty” to report. The group said the 2014 guidelines hadn’t resulted in a single church-initiated criminal complaint.

Italy’s church — of which Pope Francis is the titular head as bishop of Rome — has been well behind the curve on confronting clergy abuse, with multiple cases of abuse and high-ranking cover-ups that only recently have begun making headlines.

Just this week, the mother of a victim wrote an open letter calling for the resignation of the powerful archbishop of Milan, Mario Delpini. He admitted under oath that he transferred her son’s predator to another parish in 2011 rather than turning him in to police or keeping him away from children.

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

AUSTIN (TX)
Associated Press

May 21, 2019

The Texas Senate has passed a bill that would give child sexual abuse victims more time to sue in civil court after restoring a key provision that allows them to take on institutions.

Senate lawmakers approved the legislation unanimously on Tuesday after former Olympic and U.S. national team gymnasts urged legislators last week to include the provision House lawmakers had quietly removed.

The revised Senate version would allow victims of childhood sexual abuse to bring a civil lawsuit against their abuser and institutions up to 30 years after their 18th birthday.

A push to expand statute of limitations laws for child sex abuse victims is underway in statehouses nationwide amid lawsuits against large institutions like the Catholic Church, the Boy Scouts of America and USA Gymnastics.

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

DETROIT (MI)
Associated Press

May 24, 2019

By Jeff Karoub

Michigan prosecutors announced Friday that five former Catholic priests are facing sexual abuse charges as part of the state attorney general’s ongoing investigation into clergy abuse going back decades.

Attorney General Dana Nessel said the priests served in dioceses in Detroit, Lansing and Kalamazoo, and that they’ve been charged with various counts of criminal sexual conduct. Four of them were arrested this week in Arizona, California, Florida and Michigan, and the fifth awaits extradition from India.

A sixth priest faces an administrative complaint and has had his counseling license suspended by the state, officials said.

Nearly all of the charges, which involve victims who were as young as 5 years old when they were abused, came from roughly 450 calls to a tip line and were corroborated by files seized from dioceses last fall and interviews with multiple victims, Nessel said. She added that the cases are just the “tip of the iceberg,” as investigators have only gone through at most 10% of the information they have obtained. They also found many cases in which they could not bring charges because statutes of limitation had expired, priests had died or victims wouldn’t come forward.

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

KANSAS CITY (MO)
Global Sisters Report

May. 23, 2019

By Dan Stockman

If current trends continue, within five years, the number of associates in the United States will be greater than the number of vowed women religious.

A 2016 study found more than 35,000 associates in the United States, a number Jeanne Connolly, board president of the North American Conference of Associates and Religious, or NACAR, said has likely grown since then.

While NACAR doesn’t track numbers, Connolly said communities continue to add associate programs. At the very least, she said, the number has held steady. The number of sisters, meanwhile, continues to fall.

The Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate, or CARA, reported 44,117 sisters in 2018, down from 57,544 in 2010. A 2016 actuarial study done for the National Religious Retirement Office projects there will be fewer than 30,000 sisters in 2024.

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

DENVER (CO)
Crux

May 25, 2019

By Elise Harris

This is the second installment of a two-part interview with Cardinal Ricardo Barreto Jimeno of Huancayo, Peru, who serves as vice president of the Peruvian bishops’ conference and who sits on a committee organizing the upcoming Synod of Bishops for the Amazon. Part one can be found here.

Rome – Peruvian Cardinal Ricardo Barreto Jimeno has said recent scandals upsetting the local church, including revelations of sexual abuse within a prominent lay group and a very public case of an archbishop launching criminal complaints against two journalists, have been harmful to Catholics.

Referring to the case of Archbishop Jose Antonio Eguren Anselmi of Piura, who recently retracted complaints against two journalists after raising criminal charges of defamation against them last year, Barreto said the fiasco has been “a wound for the Church in Peru.”

Eguren Anselmi is one of the early members of the troubled Sodalitium Cristianae Vitae (SCV) lay group, whose founder, Luis Fernando Figari, was sanctioned by the Vatican in 2017 after being accused of sexually abusing minors and manipulating young men in the community.

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

KANSAS CITY (MO)
Catholic News Service via Global Sisters Report

May 24, 2019

Catholic religious orders in Germany have set up an inquiry into sexual abuse in their monasteries and convents, following claims that abuse occurred in more than half of all monastic communities.

“We still don’t know enough about what happened and is happening in each community, since models of action and prevention are all different,” Franciscan Sr. Katharina Kluitmann, chairwoman of the German Orders Conference, said in a May 22 statement to the organization’s general meeting in Vallendar.

“Although our path has taken on a clear momentum, we haven’t reached our destination. But we have found certain landmarks — and the most important is this isn’t about us, but about those affected.”

The 55-year-old nun said the inquiry, to be published in early 2020, had been approved unanimously by 200 order leaders at the meeting. She said the inquiry would collect data on victims, prosecution reports, compensation payments and personal files.

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

LONDON (ENGLAND)
The Guardian

May 23, 2019

By Melissa Davey and Australian Associated Press

Perth’s Timothy Costelloe says forcing revelations will interfere with the ‘free practice of the Catholic faith’

Perth’s Catholic archbishop, Timothy Costelloe, says forcing religious leaders in Western Australia to reveal knowledge of child sex abuse risks “interfering with the free practice of the Catholic faith” and will be ineffective – a stance that advocates say is “ignorant and pig-headed”.

The state government plans to expand mandatory reporting laws to include religious leaders such as priests, ministers, imams, rabbis, pastors and Salvation Army officers.

The laws already apply to doctors, teachers, nurses, midwives, police and school boarding supervisors.

Costelloe said plans to remove legal protections around the confidentiality of religious confessions would cause “great concern and distress” to many people of faith.

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

WHEELING (WV)
The Intelligencer

May 26, 2019

By Joselyn King

The Diocese of Wheeling-Charleston has added nine additional names to the list of priests associated with the diocese accused in sexual abuse incidents since the1950s, bringing the total number to 40.

The diocese released its original list in November, and updated it this week following a visit to Wheeling by West Virginia Attorney General Patrick Morrisey. Morrisey called for more cooperation and transparency from the Diocese as investigations continue into sexual abuse claims made against diocese priests — including former bishop Michael Bransfield.

Phone messages left with the diocese Friday afternoon were not immediately returned.

“We are glad that the Diocese of Wheeling-Charleston has updated their list of priests publicly accused of abuse,” said Judy Jones, midwest regional leader for SNAP — The Survivor’s Network of those Abused by Priests. “We are disappointed, however, that they did so without notifying the public.

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

DETROIT (MI)
Detroit News

May 22, 2019

By Beth LeBlanc

Law enforcement knew about an allegation of misconduct with a minor against a Diocese of Saginaw priest as early as March 2018 and the victim allegedly reported the incident to the diocese years earlier, but the priest wasn’t removed from his position until Sunday.

The Diocese of Saginaw announced Tuesday that the Rev. Dennis Kucharczyk had been placed on administrative leave after law enforcement informed diocesan officials of “an allegation of misconduct involving a minor that allegedly occurred many years ago.”

“Father Kucharczyk is to have no contact with individuals under 21, which prohibits him from going on school properties or participating in school and parish activities and functions,” the diocese’s statement said. “He also was informed that he must refrain from wearing clerical garb, refrain from the exercise of public ministry, and may not present himself publicly as a priest while the allegation is investigated by the Diocese.”

A March 2018 search warrant indicates a Midland woman informed police last year of “inappropriate touching” by Kucharczyk, behavior that started in the late 1980s when she was in first or second grade until she “ended the relationship” more than 15 years later. The woman told police she alerted the coordinate for the diocese’s Office of Child and Youth Protection about the incident “around 2010,” according to the warrant.

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

LANSING (MI)
M Live

May 23, 2019

By Cole Waterman

Saginaw – A priest recently suspended by the Catholic Diocese of Saginaw due to an allegation of sexual misconduct was named more than a year ago in sealed police affidavits as a suspect in a misconduct case involving a minor, documents show.

The documents, unsealed this month, name the Rev. Dennis Kucharczyk, who the Saginaw Diocese said in press release on Tuesday, May 21, was placed administrative leave from priestly ministry on Sunday, May 19.

The diocese took the action after it said it received information from law enforcement regarding an allegation of misconduct involving a minor that occurred “many years ago.”

A 19-page affidavit authored by Saginaw Township Police Detective Scott Jackson and dated March 22, 2018, states police sought personnel records of Kucharczyk, three other priests, and one deacon as part of their investigation.

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DENVER (CO)
Catholic News Service via Crux

May 25, 2019

By Pablo Kay

[Note: The bill discussed in this article is available here.]

Los Angeles – Los Angeles Archbishop Jose H. Gomez said he was “deeply disappointed” by the California Senate’s passage of a bill that would force priests to disclose information about child sexual abuse that they hear in the sacrament of confession.

After legislators voted 30-2 in favor of the measure May 23, the archbishop urged the state’s Catholics “to continue to pray and make your voices heard on this issue, which is so vital to our faith and religious freedom.”

“I continue to believe we can strengthen mandated reporting laws to protect children’s safety while at the same time preserving the sanctity of penitential communications,” he stated. “My brother bishops and I will continue to work with our lawmakers in the Assembly.”

As the bill, S.B. 360, made its way through the Legislature, the California bishops urged lawmakers to strengthen and clarify mandated reporting requirements while maintaining the traditional protections for “penitential communications.”

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

DES MOINES (IA)
Des Moines Register

May 25, 2019

By Shelby Fleig

Two years after The Boston Globe’s Pulitzer Prize-winningseries in 2002 that uncovered decades of abuse and cover-ups in New England parishes, Iowan John Chambers, 66, regained long-repressed memories of being sexually abused as a sophomore at Dowling High School.

Chambers, a lifelong Des Moines resident, had been in and out of therapy for decades by that point battling crippling depression. His deteriorating mental health led to substance abuse and withered his relationships, he said.

He was 52 when he remembered instances of fondling and indecent exposure by the Rev. Leonard Kenkel, in 1966 and 1967. According to Child USA, a nonprofit think-tank that studies child abuse, 52 is the average age that adults who were victims of child sex abuse first disclose their experiences.

Chambers sued the Diocese of Des Moines and Kenkel in 2004.

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

WASHINGTON (DC)
The Atlantic

May 26, 2019

By Kerry Weber

Calls for the abolition of the Church’s clerical establishment ignore something important: the wishes of the faithful.

A few years ago, I was invited to my friend’s ordination to the priesthood. I was thrilled for him—a kind, holy man who’s passionate about justice—and honored to be included. But if I’m honest, I also expected to be a bit bored. Ordination liturgies can run several hours, and the rite requires some parts to be repeated for each candidate. With eight men up for ordination, I knew we’d be in it for the long haul. I imagined the experience as something akin to a graduation ceremony, where you root for the person you know and then tune out.

On the day of the liturgy, however, that repetition of the rite moved me deeply. As I watched this line of men I’d never met become priests in the Church I loved, I was struck by the beauty of this brief overlap in our lives, and by the way in which these men represented only a fraction of those ordained that year. We would all go our separate ways, changed by this experience and renewed in our desire to serve. I needed to root not just for my friend but for all of them.

With every new wave of stories of sexual abuse by priests, it can be much harder not to create a spiritual bunker containing the people I like and leaving out the rest. I have felt despair and frustration at the crisis of abuse and the failure of leadership that got us here. The Church needs healing. It needs a new way forward.

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

MECHANICSBURG (PA)
Penn Live

May 23, 2019

By Christine P. Bartholomew

https://www.pennlive.com/opinion/2019/05/the-catholic-church-is-tightening-rules-on-reporting-sexual-abuse-but-not-swearing-off-its-legal-privilege-to-keep-secrets-opinion.html

[Note: The document discussed in this commentary is available here.]

Pope Francis recently changed the Catholic Church law, making it mandatory for clergy to report sexual abuse to church superiors. In the past, such reporting was left to the discretion of a priest or nun.

Pope Francis’ proposal is an effort to address gaps in the regulatory process of the church, which has been accused of shielding clergy sexual abuse. It provides a process to report allegations up the pipeline.

As a scholar of law I worry that it fails to address what the church will do with that information.

To date, religious organizations, such as the Catholic Church, have adopted inconsistent positions on whether, and to what degree, they should share information necessary for legal action.

Clergy across various religions, ranging from Christians to Catholics to Muslims to Jews, are willing to share evidence in cases of violent crimes, such as murders. But when the evidence pertains to clergy misconduct, namely sexual abuse, the tide changes.

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

BOSTON (MA)
Boston Globe

May 25, 2019

By Patrick Whittle

A Massachusetts priest who was defrocked for child sexual abuse and was portrayed in the movie ‘‘Spotlight” is going to prison for a second time — this time in Maine.

A judge on Friday ordered Ronald Paquin to serve 16 years in state prison for sexually abusing an altar boy during trips to Maine in the 1980s. Paquin, 76, already served more than 10 years in prison in Massachusetts for sexually abusing another altar boy in that state.

Justice Wayne Douglas said he didn’t detect expressions of remorse or responsibility from Paquin, who he said betrayed the ‘‘sacred trust’’ of his victims. He imposed the maximum sentence of 20 years but suspended a portion of the sentence.

One of Paquin’s victims, 45-year-old Keith Townsend, testified before the sentencing that Paquin’s abuse sent him into a spiral of depression and drug abuse, and caused him to question his faith in God. The Associated Press does not normally identify victims of sexual abuse, but Townsend identified himself as the victim and gave permission for his name to be used.

Later, Townsend said he was satisfied with the sentence, and he hopes it motivates more victims to name their abusers.

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ATLANTA (GA)
CNN

May 26, 2019

By Antonia Mortensen

[Note: The documentary described in this article may be viewed here (with subtitles).]

“Father, I wanted to look you in the eye … I wanted to ask you why?” demands Anna Misiewicz as she confronts the parish priest she says abused her when she was just seven and eight years old.

“You touched me where you were not supposed to, my private parts,” Misiewicz says, matter-of-factly, telling him that his actions “really scarred my adult life deeply.”

“I still have nightmares … I am unable to sleep at night,” she tells her alleged abuser. “I still carry it inside me.”

The elderly man she is addressing exhales and shifts in his orange and brown striped chair, as a religious service plays out on a TV nearby, in a home for retired priests in Kielce, central Poland.

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LANSING (MI)
M Live

May 24, 2019

By Malachi Barrett

[Note: The affidavits summarized in this article are available here.]

Court documents shared by the Michigan Attorney General’s office reveal shocking details of sexual misconduct allegedly committed by priests for years across the state before their arrest this week.

Five men who were priests in Michigan have been charged with 21 counts of criminal sexual conduct, Attorney General Dana Nessel announced Friday. Nessel said the priests are suspected of abusing five individuals, four who were underage at the time of the sexual assault and one adult who was taken advantage of during a confession.

Nessel shared affidavits and charging documents with reporters after a Friday press conference. The arrests are “the tip of the iceberg,” Nessel said, more will be found as state investigators review hundreds of tips and hundreds of thousands of documents uncovered from a probe into Michigan’s seven Catholic dioceses.

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

SHARON (PA)
Associated Press

May 26, 2019

By Melissa Klaric

A faith that is shaken, but not lost. Deep disappointment, but hope for the future. An overwhelming feeling that there is a lesson to be learned and a stronger church if it is taken to heart.

In the wake of the October grand jury report chronicling hundreds of cases of sexual abuse by priests around Pennsylvania, as well as testimonies of victims who say their lives have been turned upside down because of the church’s inaction, Catholics are struggling to deal with the news and the future.

Jill Stanek’s parents taught her to respect and to revere the clergy and the church. Now, the Sharon mother of five is teaching her children differently.

Stanek and others associated with the Catholic Church in the Shenango Valley and Lawrence County came together to talk about those questions – what to think about the scandals, what to believe about their faith and church and what to do next.

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

PHILADELPHIA (PA)
Philadelphia Inquirer

May 25, 2019

By Bethany Ao

Retired Catholic Bishop Joseph Galante, 80, of Philadelphia, who led the Diocese of Camden from 2004 to 2013, died Saturday, May 25, at Shore Medical Center in Somers Point after a long illness that led to his earlier-than-anticipated retirement.

The Diocese of Camden announced his death via Facebook. A representative could not be reached for comment.

* * *

The bishop was also known for his zero-tolerance stance on sexual abuse within the church. It earned him a spot on the ad hoc committee on sex abuse of the Conference of Catholic Bishops. In 2002, when sex abuse in Boston provoked an international crisis, Bishop Galante helped draft the Charter for Protection of Children and Young People, which was overwhelmingly approved by his fellow bishops when they met that summer.

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LANSING (MI)
Office of the Attorney General

May 24, 2019

By Attorney General Dana Nessel

[Note: This announcement includes links to the criminal complaints and affidavits.]

Five men who were priests have been charged with a total of 21 counts of criminal sexual conduct, Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel announced at a news conference this morning in Lansing. Four of the men have been arrested; one awaits extradition in India. A sixth Michigan priest is facing an administrative complaint and his license as a professional educationally limited counselor has been summarily suspended by the Michigan Department of Licensing and Regulatory Affairs (LARA).

“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,” said Nessel. “Almost all of these charges came as a direct result of calls to our tip line but were then corroborated by files seized from the dioceses last fall, followed by multiple interviews with victims.

“Although we have charged these men with very serious crimes, I want to remind everyone that they are innocent until proven guilty by a court of law,” cautioned Nessel.

Charges were filed as follows:

• Timothy Michael Crowley, 69, Lansing Diocese, was charged in Washtenaw County with four felony counts of Criminal Sexual Conduct (CSC) 1, a maximum sentence of life in prison and a lifetime of electronic monitoring, and four felony counts of CSC 2 – a maximum sentence of 15 years in prison. Crowley, who was a priest in various parishes, including St. Thomas Rectory in Ann Arbor, was arrested Thursday in Tempe, Arizona.

• Neil Kalina, 63, 63, Archdiocese of Detroit, was charged in Macomb County with four felony counts of CSC 2, a maximum sentence of 15 years in prison and a lifetime of electronic monitoring. Kalina, who was a priest at St. Kiernan Catholic Church in Shelby Township, was arrested Thursday in Littlerock, California.

• Vincent DeLorenzo, 80, Lansing Diocese, was charged in Genesee County with three felony counts of CSC 1, a maximum sentence of life in prison and a lifetime of electronic monitoring, and three felony counts of CSC 2, a maximum sentence of 15 years in prison. DeLorenzo, who was a priest at Holy Redeemer Church in Burton, was arrested Thursday in Marion County, Florida.

• Patrick Casey, 55, Archdiocese of Detroit, was charged in Wayne County with one felony count of CSC 3, a maximum sentence of 15 years in prison. Casey, who was a priest at St. Theodore of Canterbury Parish in Westland, was arrested Thursday in Oak Park, Michigan.

• Jacob Vellian, 84, Kalamazoo Diocese, was charged with two counts of Rape, a maximum sentence of life in prison. Vellian was a priest at St. John the Evangelist Parish, Benton Harbor, and now lives in Kerala, India.

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

DETROIT (MI)
Detroit Free Press

May 24, 2019

By Niraj Warikoo

As part of the state’s investigation into sexual abuse by Catholic clergy, Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel announced Friday criminal sexual conduct charges against five priests in Michigan.

“Some of these clergy … preyed on young children,” Nessel said at a news conference about the men who were priests at the time of the alleged abuse. She said the five cases were the “tip of the iceberg” as investigators continue to track down hundreds of tips on abuse by Catholic priests.

In some of the incidents, the priests mixed their sexual activity with references to Catholic beliefs or committed the acts during Catholic rituals such as confession, according to allegations in affidavits.

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ANN ARBOR (MI)
Michigan Radio NPR

May 24, 2019

By Steve Carmody

Saginaw’s new Catholic bishop says he’s committed to “transparency and accountability” on matters concerning sexual abuse by priests.

Pope Francis appointed Bishop Robert Gruss to take over the Diocese of Saginaw earlier this month. Gruss held his introductory news conference Friday, shortly before Attorney General Dana Nessel announced charges against five Catholic priests in different parts of Michigan. The Attorney General’s office is investigating allegations of sexual abuse in all of Michigan’s Catholic dioceses.

Gruss has dealt with similar allegations in his current posting in Rapid City, South Dakota. In March, the Diocese of Rapid City released a list of 21 priests accused of sexual misconduct dating back to 1951. Twenty on the list are dead. The sole living priest on the list pleaded guilty in February to sexually touching a 13-year-old girl.

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

SAGINAW (MI)
Diocese of Saginaw

May 21, 2019

A priest of the Diocese of Saginaw, Father Dennis Kucharczyk, has been placed on administrative leave from priestly ministry by Bishop Walter A. Hurley, Apostolic Administrator, while an allegation of misconduct involving a minor is investigated. Father Kucharczyk is pastor at St. John XXIII Parish, which includes St. Mary Church in Hemlock, Sacred Heart Church in Merrill and St. Patrick Church in Ryan. This leave took effect on Sunday, May 19.

The Diocese of Saginaw has received information from law enforcement regarding an allegation of misconduct involving a minor that allegedly occurred many years ago. Based on this information, the Diocese immediately removed Father Kucharczyk from active ministry.

According to the terms of the leave of absence, Father Kucharczyk is to have no contact with individuals under 21, which prohibits him from going on school properties or participating in school and parish activities and functions. He also was informed that he must refrain from wearing clerical garb, refrain from the exercise of public ministry, and may not present himself publicly as a priest while the allegation is investigated by the Diocese.

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

ATLANTA (GA)
CNN

May 24, 2019

By Jason Hanna and Elizabeth Joseph

Five former Catholic priests have been charged in Michigan with criminal sexual conduct or rape, the state attorney general said Friday, amid a months-long investigation of alleged clergy sexual abuse in the state.

Four were arrested Thursday in various locations across the country, and Michigan will seek the extradition of a fifth man from India, Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel said.

“In this case, some of those clergy who preyed on young children and on vulnerable adults, unfortunately those clergy were hiding in plain sight, purporting to comfort their parishioners, hearing their confessions and taking advantage of their position of faith and authority,” Nessel said in a news conference Friday in Lansing.

“And today, we begin holding those clergy accountable.”

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WASHINGTON (DC)
Washington Post

May 24, 2019

By Julie Zauzmer

Five men who have worked as Catholic priests in Michigan now face charges for sex crimes, state Attorney General Dana Nessel announced Friday.

Nessel has conducted one of the most aggressive probes of the Catholic Church as attorneys general in numerous states across the country investigate alleged sexual abuse by priests. She said that the charges announced Friday resulted from tips called in to the state’s hotline for abuse victims, as well as documents that state investigators seized from the state’s seven Catholic dioceses.

Four of the men, ranging in age from 55 to 80, were charged with criminal sexual conduct and arrested on Thursday in their current locations — Arizona, California, Florida and Michigan. A suspect who faces the most serious charges, two counts of rape, has not yet been arrested, according to the attorney general’s office. That suspect, Jacob Vellian, lives in Kerala, India, according to the attorney general’s office, which said it will seek his extradition.

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WARSAW (POLAND)
Associated Press

May 25, 2019

By Vanessa Gera

One victim spoke out, and then another, and another. A statue of a pedophile priest was toppled in Gdansk, put back by his supporters, and finally dismantled for good. A feature film about clerical abuse was a box office hit.

Poland thought it had started confronting the problem of clerical abuse and its cover-up by church authorities. Then a bombshell came: A documentary with victim testimony so harrowing it has forced an unprecedented reckoning with pedophile priests in one of Europe’s most deeply Catholic societies.

Poland’s bishops acknowledged this week they face a crisis and made a rare admission that they have failed to protect the young. It’s also a crisis for the country’s conservative government, which is closely aligned with the Catholic Church, putting the ruling Law and Justice party on the defensive before Sunday’s European Parliament vote in Poland.

The documentary ”Tell No One ” was directed by journalist Tomasz Sekielski. Before its release on May 11, ruling party leader Jaroslaw Kaczynski had described discussion about clerical abuse as a “brutal attack” on the church and portrayed the LGBT rights movement as the key threat to children in the country. But the revelations in the documentary have pushed the party to face up to the cleric abuse crisis. It has vowed stiffer penalties for pedophilia, although its leaders have avoided pointing a finger at the church specifically.

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PORTLAND (ME)
Press-Herald

May 24, 2019

By Megan Gray

A jury convicted Ronald Paquin last year on 11 of 24 counts of gross sexual misconduct stemming from incidents in the 1980s.

A former Catholic priest will spend 16 years in prison for abusing a young boy on trips to Maine in the 1980s.

Ronald Paquin, 76, was found guilty in November on 11 of 24 counts of gross sexual misconduct. A York County jury acquitted him of similar charges related to a second boy.

Paquin was one of the priests exposed in the early 2000s by a sweeping Boston Globe investigation into clergy sex abuse. He pleaded guilty in 2002 in Massachusetts to repeatedly raping an altar boy between 1989 and 1992, beginning when the victim was 12. He spent more than decade in prison there and was defrocked in 2004.

York County Superior Court Justice Wayne Douglas sentenced Paquin on Friday to 20 years in prison with all but 16 years suspended. Upon release, Paquin will be subject to three years of probation and required to register as a sex offender.

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SAN DIEGO (CA)
TV 7 NBC

May 24, 2019

By Anlleyn Venegas, Fabiola Berriozábal and Brenda Gregorio-Nieto

Two more women have come forward and claimed to be victims of child sexual abuse by a priest at the St. Jude’s Shrine of the West church in Southcrest.

They claimed it occurred more than 30 years ago in the well-known and beloved parish. The priest involved is named, Monsignor Gregory Sheridan, who has already died and the victims are asking that the church to recognize the alleged crimes.

For decades, families have nurtured their faith in the parish whose masses were also visited by St. Teresa of Calcutta and Luis Donaldo Colosio.

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BOSTON (MA)
Boston Magazine

May 23, 2019

By Jacqueline Cain

The celebrity chef has been disgraced by a slew of sexual assault allegations, but he wasn’t facing any charges—until now.

NOTE: This post was updated Friday, May 24, after Mario Batali was arraigned in Boston.

After floodgates opened in December 2017 that shed light on a pattern of alleged sexual misconduct by Mario Batali, the celebrity chef is no longer profiting from the restaurant empire that launched him to fame. But he wasn’t facing any criminal charges—until now. The Boston Globe reports that Batali has been charged with indecent assault and battery, and plead not guilty to the charges on Friday morning in Boston Municipal Court.

Boston Police launched an investigation into an incident with Batali in Boston in August 2018, after a local woman told Eater New York that the chef assaulted her at a former Back Bay restaurant in 2017. The woman also filed a lawsuit against Batali.

The victim’s name is redacted in the new criminal charges, but according to the Globe, the account aligns with that plaintiff’s story. Police say the woman told them she was eating dinner with a friend at Towne Stove and Spirits when she spotted the recognizable Batali at the bar. She asked the chef for a photo, and Batali invited her to pose for a selfie with him. The woman told police that an apparently intoxicated Batali took the opportunity to grope her chest and groin without her consent, kiss her, and aggressively pull her face. The woman left the restaurant shortly after the incident, she told police. In the civil complaint she filed last summer, the woman’s lawyers said the uncomfortable ordeal left her badly shaken.

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

HOUSTON (TX)
Houston Chronicle

May 23, 2019

By Sarah Smith

The Southern Baptist Convention’s missionary arm knew of sexual abuse allegations against one of its former top missionaries for over 10 years before his arrest — accusations that exploded last year and forced the organization to bring in a third party to investigate its handling of abuse.

Anne Marie Miller told the International Mission Board in 2007 that Mark Aderholt, then a missionary to Central Europe, had initiated sexual contact with her as a teenager. He resigned quietly from the IMB and went on to rise in the Southern Baptist ranks until Miller reported him to police and went public with her story in 2018. No one from the IMB contacted law enforcement during the course of its 2007 investigation.

The law firm retained by the IMB in the wake of the Aderholt scandal put out a release on Wednesday recommending sweeping changes to the organization’s policies for reporting abuse to law enforcement.

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

NEW ZEALAND
Stuff.co.nz

May 23, 2019

A Catholic priest has been defrocked of his title over historical sexual offending against boys.

The Bishop of Hamilton Steve Lowe said in a statement Magnus Murray has been removed from the priesthood after the conclusion of a formal church judicial process.

Murray, known as Max, was convicted in 2003 on four historic charges of sexual offending against four boys.

He previously served as a Catholic priest of the Dioceses of Dunedin and Hamilton, and was withdrawn from ministry when he retired in 1990.

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

CHARLESTON (WV)
WV News

May 24, 2019

By Jake Jarvis

Attorney General Patrick Morrisey said his office has made three criminal referrals to local prosecutors stemming from an investigation into the Roman Catholic Diocese of West Virginia.

Morrisey, who identified himself as a practicing member of the Catholic church, addressed the lawsuit during a press conference at his office Thursday afternoon. He said he is deeply disappointed that the church diocese continues to conceal documents and is not cooperating with full disclosure.

“Obviously they cooperated a little bit up front,” Morrisey said. “After we filed the original submission, they spent a lot of time talking about how old the allegations were. We thought about that a little bit. Some of them obviously go back in time, but it’s critical to note that the reason why they’re coming to light now is because of our office.”

Morrisey’s office first filed a lawsuit against the Wheeling-Charleston Diocese and Bishop Michael Bransfield earlier this year, alleging they violated the state’s consumer protection laws by not alerting parents the accused priests were staffing its schools and camps.

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UNITED STATES
World Religion News

May 23, 2019

By Alison Lesley

YOUNG ADULTS ARE MORE AT RISK

The Lifeway Research conducted a 2019 Sexual Misconduct and Churchgoers Study found that about 10 percent of all Protestant churchgoers below 35 years of age have abandoned their church as they harbored the perception of sexual misconduct not being taken seriously. This is twice as many as five percent of all the churchgoers who have previously done the same. When it comes to the younger demographic, about nine percent said that they have stopped attending their congregation due to feeling unsafe from misconduct.

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

ROME
Crux

May 24, 2019

By Claire Giangravè

Italian bishops are running late on several items on Pope Francis’s to-do list, from reducing the disproportionate number of dioceses on the peninsula to streamlining marriage annulments, but when it comes to the protection of minors they say they’re now getting up to speed.

During their general assembly May 20-23, the Italian Episcopal Conference (CEI) approved “Guidelines for the Protection of Minors and Vulnerable Persons,” which will focus on the prevention of abuse and will be added to their previously published 2014 guidelines.

The guidelines will be published in the coming days, but bishops already shared their main novelty, which is a “moral obligation” for clergy to report verified cases of sexual abuse to civil authorities.

“This was, I believe, the real step forward of these guidelines compared to the ones we had before,” said Archbishop Lorenzo Ghizzoni of Ravenna, who heads the commission for the protection of minors at CEI, during a news conference May 23.

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

CINCINNATI (OH)
Cincinnati Enquirer

May 23, 2019

By James Pilcher

Two Big Ten schools have paid more than $700 million to victims of sex abuse scandals linked to their athletic programs.

Ohio State appears likely to join the group, with mediation sessions scheduled next month for athletes who have sued the university, with more lawsuits likely on the way.

So, how large could a settlement for the victims of Dr. Richard Strauss be? Who will ultimately foot the bill? Since the abuse occurred at the main campus, could there be a financial penalty for the Ohio State regional campuses in Mansfield, Marion, Newark, Lima and Wooster?

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AUSTRALIA
Australian Associated Press

May 23, 2019

Archbishop urged minister not to broaden law that would oblige priests to report information heard in confession

Religious ministers in Western Australia will be compelled to reveal knowledge of child sexual abuse – even if it is gained through the confessional – but the Catholic church is resisting.

The WA Labor government plans to expand mandatory reporting laws to include all recognised religious leaders who are authorised to conduct worship, services and ceremonies.

This includes priests, ministers, imams, rabbis, pastors and Salvation Army officers.

The laws already apply in WA to doctors, teachers, nurses, midwives, police and school boarding supervisors.

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VATICAN CITY
Reuters

May 23, 2019

By Philip Pullella

Italy’s Roman Catholic bishops on Thursday enacted a new policy on reporting suspected cases of sexual abuse by priests, but they stopped short of making it mandatory to inform police at first instance.

Under the policy, church authorities would carry out a preliminary investigation then decide whether to refer it to police.

The measure drew a skeptical response from victims’ groups mindful of past Church cover-ups of abuses by clergymen.

The policy does however go further than that laid out by Pope Francis earlier this month which mandated the world’s one million priests and nuns to report all suspicion of sexual abuse by clerics of any level to their superiors.

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SACRAMENTO (CA)
The Sacramento Bee

May 24, 2019

By Marcos Breton

The state Senate passed a bill on Thursday that would require Catholic priests to rat out other Catholic priests for admitting that they molested a child – even if it were made during the sacrament of confession.

Authored by Democrat Jerry Hill of the Bay Area, Senate Bill 360 is like a TV drama “ripped from the headlines.” Catholic priests have been the molesting kids for decades and getting away with it some cases. The church has been all-too-slow in responding appropriately, or in fully atoning for unspeakable complicity in the abuse of children by members of clergy. The headlines have endless.

Hill’s bill is a direct response to the outrage over the abuse of children. The fact that Hill’s bill crosses the line supposedly separating church and state seemed of little concern to the 30 state senators – including Sacramento’s Democrat Richard Pan, and Republican Jim Nielsen, whose district includes Roseville and Yuba City.

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ROME
The Guardian

May 23, 2019

By Angela Giuffrida

Book says officials manipulated children into making abuse claims, leading to convictions, family separations and deaths

In the early hours of 7 July 1997, Federico Scotta and his wife were woken by an incessant ringing of their doorbell. Police had arrived at their home in Mirandola, a town in Italy’s Emilia-Romagna region, with a search warrant.

Officers found nothing incriminating, but the couple and their three-year-old daughter and baby son were escorted to the police station. The children were taken away by social workers that day and a few months later a third child was taken from the delivery room. The couple never saw the children again.

The so-called “Satanic panic” phenomenon that had swept through the US and parts of the UK earlier that decade had reached Italy. Scotta and his wife were accused of belonging to a sprawling paedophile network that worshipped the devil and sacrificed children and animals in cemeteries at night.

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SIOUX CITY (IA)
KSCJ

May 22, 2019

By Woody Gottburg

A Sioux City man who says he was abused by priests joined the Iowa Senate’s Democratic leader today (Wednesday) in calling on Iowa lawmakers to do more for victims of child sex abuse.

Tim Lennon, who grew up in Sioux City, says he was 43 years old when he first remembered being molested by the priest in his childhood church.

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KOCHI (INDIA)
Express News Service

May 22, 2019

Fr Tony Kallookaran, the vicar of Muringoor Sanjoe Nagar Church, was arraigned as fourth accused in the case.

The police investigation team on Monday arraigned a priest of the Ernakulam-Angamaly Archdiocese of the Syro-Malabar Church in the case related to defaming Cardinal George Alenchery using forged documents. Fr Tony Kallookaran, the vicar of Muringoor Sanjoe Nagar Church, was arraigned as fourth accused in the case.

The police had arrested a 24-year-old researcher with IIT Madras for forging the documents. According to the police, Adithya Valvi, a native of Konthuruthi, forged the document claiming that bishops, including Alenchery, have investments with a multinational company.

The police on Monday filed a petition at the Kakkanad Judicial First Class Magistrate court stating Fr Kallookaran has been arraigned as the fourth accused. According to the police, it was based on the directions of Fr Kallookaran, Adithya created fake documents. Later, following his directions, Adithya transferred documents to Fr Paul Thelakkat, the first accused in the case.

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KANSAS CITY (MO)
National Catholic Reporter

May 23, 2019

By Jason Steidl

Pundits criticized James Carroll’s Atlantic article, but did they try to understand him?

On May 17, The Atlantic published James Carroll’s “Abolish the Priesthood,” an overtly personal and lengthy critique of clericalism in the Roman Catholic Church. The author, a former priest, wrote of his anguished decision to take time away from the institutional Catholic Church after decades of disappointment with the hierarchy, including the last few years, which have leveled wave after wave of the sex abuse crisis.

Toward the end of the piece, which treats much more than its clickbait title suggests, Carroll proposes several ways that Catholics can reimagine their tradition to better meet their and the world’s spiritual needs. For Catholics exhausted by scandal after scandal in the church, Carroll offers hope that all is not lost. He argues that Catholic community, spirituality and service rooted in ancient tradition have much to offer the world today.

Sadly, this is not how most male Catholic pundits received Carroll’s thought. In fact, at a time when the internet-church is easily polarized through social media, the piece brought together condemnations from both the Catholic right and left. EWTN’s Raymond Arroyo immediately dismissed Carroll’s work as “unserious,” an “ahistorical, anti-biblical suggestion with zero constituency in Catholicism.” Carl Olson mocked the author as one especially unsuited to speak about the priesthood. Fordham University theologian Charles Camosy rhetorically asked, “What could be less provocative than this centuries’ old argument?”

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BAKERSFIELD (CA)
Bakersfield.com

May 23, 2019

By John Cox

Newly disclosed letters and emails from the early 2000s detail allegations that Bakersfield priest Craig Harrison had sex with two high school students while serving as pastor of a church in Firebaugh.

In addition, an email from August 2004 alleged he would examine boys’ private parts every morning as a way of checking whether they had been using drugs.

The accusations surfaced as part of an unrelated investigation conducted in 2004 by a retired FBI agent in Merced. Summaries of his findings were contained in material provided to The Californian Thursday by Stephen Brady, a representative of Roman Catholic Faithful, an organization of church members including investigators and lawyers, whose self-professed goal is to rid the church of clerical corruption.

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

RAPID CITY (SD)
KOTA TV

May 23, 2019

By Jack Caudill

A former Rapid City Catholic priest is hit with a federal indictment.

The federal grand jury charged Marcin Garbacz with wire fraud, money laundering and transportation of stolen money.

The indictment lays out what federal prosecutors say happened; starting with his time at St. Joseph Catholic Church in Faith where he was removed in July of 2012 in part because of his financial mismanagement of the parish. Garbacz was then assigned to parishes in Rapid City.

Beginning in July of 2012, and continuing until about April of 2018, Garbacz allegedly devised a scheme to steal from the parishes and deposit the money in his own account.

Garbacz is accused — starting in July of 2012 — of stealing cash donations before they were counted. He reportedly did this by entering the parish at night or in the morning when no one else where there or awake.

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

SAGINAW (MI)
9&10 News

May 22, 2019

By Ryan Cole

A priest in the Diocese of Saginaw has been put on administrative leave as the church looks into allegations of misconduct with a minor.

Father Dennis Kucharczyk was the pastor of St. John XXIII Parish and served churches in Hemlock, Merrill and Ryan.

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SAGINAW (MI)
The Associated Press

May 22, 2019

A priest with the Roman Catholic Diocese of Saginaw is on administrative leave while church officials investigate an allegation of misconduct with a minor.

The decision regarding the Rev. Dennis Kucharczyk was announced Tuesday. The diocese says the alleged misconduct “occurred many years ago,” and he was placed on leave Sunday after church officials received information from law enforcement.

The Associated Press sent an email to Kucharczyk Wednesday seeking comment.
A release says Kucharczyk cannot have contact with anyone under 21 or serve in priestly capacities during the investigation.

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EVANSVILLE (IN)
Evansville Courier & Press

May 23, 2019

By Jon Webb

In September, the Evansville Catholic diocese put the Rev. David Fleck on administrative leave.

He’d been accused of sexual misconduct. That’s about all we knew. And eight months later, not much has changed.

Diocese spokesman Tim Lilley confirmed this week that Fleck is still barred from public ministry.

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FRESNO (CA)
KFSN

May 22, 2019

By Jason Oliveira

A small, tight-knit community is reeling after news in Dinuba broke of a police investigation centered around Roman Catholic priest Father Raul Diaz.

The longtime pastor at Saint Catherine’s Catholic Church is on leave after being accused of inappropriate behavior.

The Diocese of Fresno released a statement from Bishop Joseph Brennan regarding Father Raul:

“It is my responsibility as your Bishop to inform you that I have placed Father Raul Diaz, Pastor of St. Catherine Siena, on “Paid Administrative Leave” effective as of May 17, 2019. This action follows notification that law enforcement has received a report alleging Father Diaz has engaged in inappropriate behavior that may include inappropriate contact with minors.

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RAPID CITY (SD)
NewsCenter1

May 23, 2019

A federal indictment was filed this week against a former Rapid City priest accused of stealing over $150,000 from the Diocese of Rapid City.

Marcin Garbacz is accused of wire fraud, money laundering and transportation of stolen money.

Court documents indicate that from around July 2012 and April 2018, Garbacz allegedly began stealing cash donations from the plate collections passed around during worship services.

At the time, the cash donated during plate collections wasn’t immediately counted after services. Garbacz had access to where the donations were stored and prosecutors say he would enter the parish at night or in the early morning hours to steal some of the cash.

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SAGINAW (MI)
25 News

May 23, 2019

By Bria Brown

There are new details about an allegation of sexual abuse against Father Dennis Kucharczyk in the Saginaw Diocese.

Kucharczyk was removed from ministry this past weekend after the diocese learned of the allegations.

NBC25/FOX66 talked to Bishop Walter Hurley who told us the diocese first learned about the allegations against father Dennis Kucharczyk this past Saturday from law enforcement.

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WASHINGTON (DC)
LifeSiteNews

May 22, 2019

By Lisa Bourne

The installation Tuesday of Archbishop Wilton Gregory as the seventh archbishop of Washington, D.C. Tuesday conveyed the status quo in clergy sex abuse mishandling by Church hierarchy in having a cardinal who personifies that mishandling on the altar with Gregory.

Cardinal Roger Mahony, the retired archbishop of Los Angeles, took part in the installation Mass despite his controversial history of cover-up in abuse cases and his having been pulled from public duties in his archdiocese several years ago by his successor.

Catholics remain angry over Church leaders’ handling of the abuse scandal, and family advocate groups and victim advocates consider public appearances by the cardinal a slap in the face for victims of clergy sex abuse.

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SANTA BARBARA (CA)
Newsmakers

May 23, 2019

By Jerry Roberts

A nationally prominent law firm that represents victims of sexual abuse confirmed on Wednesday they have been contracted in connection with allegations of improper conduct by leaders of Santa Barbara High School’s Multimedia Arts & Design Academy.

“We have been retained,” attorney Stu Mollrich told Newsmakers, speaking for the Irvine-based firm of Manly, Stewart and Finaldi. “We have not yet filed an action.”

Their entry into the local controversy now swirling around the acclaimed MAD Academy raises the stakes in the affair, which escalated last week,when parents of a former student publicly accused Pablo Sweeney, the program’s ousted operations director, of sexual “predation” towards their son, as another parent released a social media video showing Dan Williams, the soon-to-be-retired longtime director, partying with students.

In public comments to the school board, the parents charged that Santa Barbara Unified School District officials turned a blind eye to improprieties and failed to report them as required to law enforcement or child welfare agencies.

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LEWISTON (NY)
WIVB

May 22, 2019

By Daniel Telvock and Chris Horvatits

The priest who Bishop Richard Malone appointed to President-Rector of Christ the King Seminary on Tuesday is accused of leaving a woman “surprised and disillusioned” by his lack of support over a sexual assault complaint in June 2016.

Malone spoke highly of The Rev. Kevin G. Creagh in a press release to announce the appointment.

“I have come to know Father Creagh as a faithful, gifted and committed priest and educator,” Malone said when he appointed Creagh to the post.

“He will provide inspiring leadership as president-rector of Christ the King Seminary. Most importantly, he understands the heart and mind of Christ. We’re excited to have him guide us in forming missionary disciples with that same heart and mind, ready to proclaim the Good News.”

But News 4 Investigates has learned that Creagh is described much differently in a lawsuit filed [date redacted] by [name, profession, and affiliation redacted].

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SIOUX CITY (IA)
Sioux Land News

May 23, 2019

By Cynthia Monroy

More than 100 dioceses across the country have released lists of clergy members accused of sexual abuse including here in Sioux City.

“What happened to me is horrific and damaging,” said Tim Lennon, President of SNAP.

At 12-years-old, Tim Lennon was sexually abused by a priest in Sioux City.

He was one of more than 100 victims that Diocese of Sioux City determined to have a credible allegation.

“I was raped and abused when I was 12 now I’m 72 and every day that I wake up, it’s there,” said Lennon.

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UNITED STATES
ENews

May. 24, 2019

By McKenna Aiello

Harvey Weinstein has tentatively reached a $44 million civil agreement with his sexual misconduct accusers, former business partners and other entities, according to a new report from The Wall Street Journal.

Attorney Adam Harris, who is representing his former film studio’s board members, was in bankruptcy court Thursday to discuss the matter with a judge presiding over the case. “For the first time, as of yesterday,” the WSJ reports he said, “we now have an economic agreement in principle that is supported by the plaintiffs, the [New York attorney general’s] office, the defendants and all of the insurers.”

The settlement, which is not yet finalized, would reportedly provide approximately $30 million to plaintiffs in the wide-ranging civil suit, which include Weinstein’s alleged victims, Weinstein Co. employees and creditors who loaned the film studio money before filing for bankruptcy. The remaining $14 million would cover the legal fees of Weinstein’s former business associates, according to the WSJ.

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TAOS (NM)
The Taos News

May 23, 2019

By Cody Hooks

Two men who were parishioners of Questa’s St. Anthony Church in the late 1960s have named a former priest as a sexual abuser in a lawsuit filed last week, marking another instance of alleged abuse by clergy associated with the beleaguered Catholic Church in New Mexico.

The lawsuit alleges Leo Courcy sexually abused the two boys on an overnight stay at the church rectory in the summer of 1969. One boy was raped and the other molested, according to the lawsuit filed Thursday (May 16) in the 2nd Judicial District Court in Albuquerque.

The lawsuit was filed against the Servants of the Paraclete, a largely inactive religious order that was founded in New Mexico in the 1940s, and its private foundation.

Aside from the sexual abuse allegations, the lawsuit also lays blame on the higher-ups of the Servants of the Paraclete for negligently putting known abusers into positions of power in underserved parishes across rural New Mexico.

The Servants ran a facility in Jemez Springs that became known as a dumping ground for sexually abusive priests from other dioceses. The religious order would assign priests to ministerial work as part of a “graduated program of rehabilitation,” according to the lawsuit.

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MONTEREY (CA)
90.3 KAZU

May 24, 2019

By Erika Mahoney

Advocates of those sexually abused by priests spoke out in Monterey this week. They want the Catholic Diocese of Monterey to expand its list of accused clerics.

Standing on Church Street in front of the Diocese of Monterey, advocate David Clohessy called for more transparency.

“If you’re going to claim to come clean, then for heaven’s sake, come fully clean and tell the flock. Tell the parents, the parishioners, the public, the police,” Clohessy said.

Clohessy is with the support group SNAP, the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests. He says as dioceses across the country have released lists of clerics accused of sexual abuse, many are incomplete.

“Tell them about each and every proven, admitted and credibly accused child molesting cleric. And that’s how kids will be safe,” said Clohessy.

Clohessy says at least three clerics have been left off the local list, but he says they found them on other lists of accused clerics.

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MONTEREY (CA)
Monterey Herald

May 23, 2019

By James Herrera

Duo decry alleged incomplete accused clerics list, victim pay-out programs

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SIOUX FALLS (SD)
Survivor’s Network for those Abused by Priests

May 23, 2019

Victims’ group finds the Diocese of Sioux Falls list of abusers short

SNAP says that victims in SD need a “Window to Justice”

WHAT

At a sidewalk news conference child sex abuse survivors will urge the Diocese of Sioux Falls to add 25 additional names to its list of clergy with “substantiated allegations” of abuse. The group will also call attention to the sexual abuse of Native Americans in Catholic boarding schools, as well as the need for statute of limitations reform in South Dakota.

WHEN

Friday, May 24th, 11 am

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GENESEE COUNTY (MI)
MLive

May 24, 2019

By Roberto Acosta

A former Flint-area Catholic priest is facing six felony charges dating back to his time in Genesee County.

Criminal charges were filed against Vincent DeLorenzo on Thursday, May 23, including three counts of first-degree criminal sexual conduct and three counts of second-degree criminal sexual conduct, according to 67th District Court records.

The Diocese of Lansing issued a statement Thursday evening in response to an inquiry about DeLorenzo. The statement says, in part, that DeLorenzo is in the process of being defrocked for sexual misconduct.

The 80-year-old is listed as a Lantana, Florida resident in the court records. He has not yet been arraigned, but the diocese spelled out the former priest’s past troubles in its statement.

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WASHINGTON (DC)
Crux

May 21, 2019

By Christopher White

In his opening words as the new leader of Catholics in the nation’s capital, Archbishop Wilton Gregory acknowledged the tempests facing the Church, telling the 3,000 people on hand for his installation that faith in Christ, “not any single minister,” will calm the Church’s storms.

Although he never uttered the phrase “sexual abuse,” Gregory referenced the “waves of unsettling revelations” which he said has “caused even the hardiest among us to grow fearful and perhaps even, at times, to want to panic.”

“We have been tossed about by an unusually turbulent moment in our own faith journeys recently and for far too long,” he said during his homily on Tuesday, before noting that, “Our recent sorrow and shame do not define us; rather, they serve to chasten and strengthen us to face tomorrow with spirits undeterred.”

Gregory succeeds Cardinal Donald Wuerl as the seventh archbishop of Washington. Wuerl’s resignation was accepted by Pope Francis in October following scrutiny of his handling of sex abuse cases earlier in his career.

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KANSAS CITY (MO)
National Catholic Reporter

May 22, 2019

By Tom Roberts

Hierarchy and vulnerability are seemingly incompatible ideas. Hierarchy (in the Catholic imagination) signals status, power, privilege and the ability to control. Vulnerability, on the other hand, signals weakness, a flaw of some sort. It is to be avoided.

But vulnerability, properly understood, is precisely what members of the Roman Catholic hierarchy need to embrace as a strength, argues Fr. James Keenan, a Jesuit theologian. If it is ever to understand an essential interior element at the core of our humanity, the absence of which lies at the core of the sex abuse crisis, the hierarchy must develop a culture of vulnerability.

Keenan, Canisius Professor and director of the Jesuit Institute at Boston College, is developing an important and fascinating insight into the abuse crisis, elevating the discussion about clerical and hierarchical culture well beyond the changes in law and protocols and institutional structure that the scandal has forced upon the church. So I’m going to stick to one subject this week, with connections to past columns on the same and a hope that the discussion continues in the future.

Two months ago, in a segment of this column, I made extended reference to an insightful piece by Fr. Mark Slatter, associate professor of theological ethics at St. Paul University, Ottawa, Ontario, on clerical culture. He generally described culture as “a network of personal meaning and valuing.” In the clerical world, that means a psychology that “engenders webs of kinship among priests, bishops and similarly disposed lay groups, bishops and cardinals, wealthy lay Catholics and think tanks.”

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UNITED STATES
Relevant Magazine

May 22, 2019

A new study finds that ten percent of young Christians say they’ve left a church because they felt it didn’t take sex abuse seriously enough, former megachurch pastor James MacDonald is being investigated for murder-for-hire allegations and a new movie that premiered at Cannes is being hailed as a “Christian movie classic.”

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SAGINAW (MI)
MLive

May 23, 209

By Cole Waterman

Another priest in the Catholic Diocese of Saginaw is accused of sexual misconduct, adding to those previously named by the diocese.

The Rev. Dennis Kucharczyk is the 22nd clergyman the diocese has named as having had credible allegations of misconduct made against them. Many of those previously named are deceased.

Kucharczyk does not face any criminal charges and law enforcement officials have not said if they are specifically investigating him.

Representatives from both the Michigan State Police and Saginaw County Sheriff’s Office told MLive their agencies were not involved in the Kucharczyk matter. The Saginaw County Prosecutor’s Office referred all inquiries to the Michigan Attorney General’s Office, which is conducting a review of sex-abuse allegations dating back decades in all Michigan Catholic dioceses.

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LOS ANGELES (CA)
Get Religion

May 22, 2019

By Terry Mattingly

Journalists who have covered decades worth of stories linked to the sexual abuse of children and teens by Catholic clergy know that there are church leaders and laity who believe all or most discussions of this topic are fueled by some form of anti-Catholicism.

Yes, these in-denial Catholics are out there. Editors will hear from them.

But, in my experience, most Catholics who complain about news coverage of this hellish subject do not attempt to deny the size or the severe nature of this crisis and, especially, they want more digging into topics linked to the sinful and illegal cover-ups of these crimes.

So what angers these Catholics?

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DOTHAN (AL)
WDHN

May 22, 2019

By Sarah Drake

A former youth pastor for Mt. Gilead Baptist Church accused of sexually abusing children has been acquitted after a jury deliberation Wednesday.

William Wesley Williamson disputed the four counts of sexual abuse of a child less than 12 charges against him Wednesday afternoon in a Houston County courtroom.

The allegations said the abuse took place in the summer of 2017, during a church function known as Wired and also during a summer church event known as Royal Ambassadors

When asked by the defense attorney, if he intentionally or specifically touched any child inappropriately, Williamson responded by saying “I did not intentionally or specifically touch any child inappropriately.”

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NASHVILLE (TN)
WTVF

May 23, 2019

By Hannah McDonald

The actual heart of Catholic Saint John Vianney stopped in Nashville Wednesday.

In Catholic tradition, a relic, such as a heart, can be saved after a saint or holy person passes away for Catholics to view and pray with. The object is meant to draw a person closer to God and not for worshiping.

Saint Vianney lived in the 19th Century in France. He is the patron saint of priests. Many members of the clergy consider him to be a model for holiness.

“He was such a hero,” said Father Ed Steiner, pastor of the Cathedral of the Incarnation.

Fr. Steiner is hopeful that St. Vianney’s story can bring people back to the church.

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HOLLAND (MI)
Holland Sentinel

May 23, 2019

By Mary Johnson

Steve Lenzo (“Letter: Unbelievably light sentence for sexual criminal assault,” Sentinel, May 21) was outraged that the sentence a child predator who served on the West Ottawa School Board was so light and for good reason. But it is more than just a breach of public trust. There is a victim involved. Any sexual crime against a child is abominable, and judges should mete out a sentence that will keep such a person out of society for a long time. It is a well known fact that child sexual predators are rarely rehabilitated and will abuse again.

What about the life sentence the victims suffer? It happened to me when I was a little girl, but nothing was done to the perpetrator because he was a member of my parents’ church and the council did not want to deal with the “embarrassment” since the man had apologized to the council and to my parents. (I learned that much later.)

I remember hating to go to church because I had to see him sitting there in the back seat. I was told to “just try to forget it,” that I should forgive him and never talk about it. Years later, I found out he had molested other girls as well and they were basically told the same thing. Forget it? Not possible. It ruins something deep inside a child, rewires the sexual part of the brain, and the consequences affect forever — even 50 years later.

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VATICAN CITY
Vatican News

May 23, 2019

By Christopher Wells

The Permanent Council of the Polish Bishops’ Conference is meeting this week to confront the problem of the clerical abuse of minors.

In a letter to be read in churches throughout the country this coming weekend, Poland’s Bishops admit that “as shepherds of the Church, we did not do everything to prevent harm.”

“There are no words to express our shame at the sexual scandals involving priests”, the Bishops say. “They are a cause of great scandal and demand total condemnation, as well as severe consequences for the perpetrators, and for those who conceal such acts.”

The Permanent Council for the Polish Bishops’ Conference was convened this week by the President of the Conference, Archbishop Stanisław Gądecki in response to recent public revelations of the extent of abuse and cover-up in the Polish Church.

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KANSAS CITY (MO)
National Catholic Reporter

May 23, 2019

By Thomas Reese

In an article in The Atlantic’s June issue titled “Abolish the Priesthood,” James Carroll provides thought-provoking analysis of the state of the Catholic Church, recounting the history of the sex abuse crisis in the church with special focus on Boston, Ireland, the Pennsylvania grand jury report and Theodore McCarrick.

None of this is new, of course, but seeing it all together depresses and angers the reader that such things were possible in the church.

Also not new is the culprit, in Carroll’s eyes. He points to clericalism as “both the underlying cause and the ongoing enabler of the present Catholic catastrophe.”

“Clericalism, with its cult of secrecy, its theological misogyny, its sexual repressiveness, and its hierarchical power based on threats of a doom-laden afterlife, is at the root of Roman Catholic dysfunction,” according to Carroll. “The clerical system’s obsession with status thwarts even the merits of otherwise good priests and distorts the Gospels’ message of selfless love, which the Church was established to proclaim.”

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ROME
CRUX

May 23, 2019

By Inés San Martín

A doctor has been condemned in Argentina for refusing to perform an abortion in the fifth month of a pregnancy causing uproar among Catholics, Evangelicals and pro-life groups; Pope Francis has appointed two new auxiliary bishops to the troubled Archdiocese of Santiago, Chile; and an apology from a Chilean Jesuit who “saw nothing and knew nothing,” but says he is now convinced his late friend Father Renato Poblete is guilty of abusing many women.

Here’s the rundown of Catholic news from Latin America this week.

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NEW YORK (NY)
The New York Times

May 23, 2019

By Valeriya Safronova and Rebecca Halleck

As more women come forward to report sexual assault, some say law enforcement has failed them. ‘There was no collection of evidence,’ one victim said. ‘Except off my body.’

Evidence so neglected it grew mold. Calls to the authorities for help that went unanswered. Witnesses and victims who were never interviewed. These are just a handful of the claims that sexual assault survivors are making against law enforcement in courts around the country.

In at least seven places in recent years — Austin; San Francisco; Memphis; Houston; Baltimore; Greenwich, Conn.; and the Village of Robbins, Ill. — women have filed lawsuits in an attempt to force the police and prosecutors to improve their practices.

The unconnected lawsuits are adding a set of novel legal arguments to the search for solutions in the wake of the #MeToo movement, which exposed failures to recognize and pursue sex offenders. The lawsuits argue that sexual assault victims do not receive equal treatment compared with victims of other violent crimes, and that failure to test physical evidence collected from their bodies amounts to unreasonable search and seizure.

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AUSTRALIA
Australian Broadcasting Corporation

May 23, 2019

Ministers of religion in Western Australia will soon have to report child sexual abuse — even if the information is gained under confession — under planned changes to the state’s laws.

Key points:
– Mandatory child sexual abuse reporting laws already apply to WA doctors, teachers and police
– The legislation will require religious leaders to report child sex abuse or face a $6,000 fine
-Child Protection Minister Simone McGurk said it’s reasonable to expect ministers of religion to report abuse

The WA Government said it expected to introduce the necessary amendments in the second half of this year.

Mandatory reporting laws in WA already apply to doctors, teachers, nurses, midwives, police and school boarding supervisors.

Anyone convicted of failing to report child sexual abuse faces a $6,000 fine.

The new requirements would apply to “recognised leaders within faith communities who are authorised to conduct, religious worship”, the WA Government said.

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IOWA
Radio Iowa

May 22, 2019

By O. Kay Henderson

Two men who say they were abused by priests joined the Iowa Senate’s Democratic leader today in calling on Iowa lawmakers to do more for victims of child sex abuse.

Senator Janet Petersen, a Democrat from Des Moines, said the state’s attorney general should investigate the Catholic Church. Petersen also said Iowa’s criminal and civil laws for child sex abuse cases are the most restrictive in the nation.

“Our laws do not protect our communities from sexual predators and I think we cannot continue to ignore this,” Petersen said during a news conference at the Iowa capitol. “There is case after case across this country.”

The time frame for filing criminal charges for child sex abuse is too short, according to Petersen. Child sex abuse victims have until they’re 33 years old to file a civil lawsuit. Sixty-seven-year-old John Chambers of Des Moines said studies show 52 is the average age when a victim reveals they were abused as a child.

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NEW YORK (NY)
The New York Times

May 23, 2019

By Jacey Fortin

The celebrity chef Mario Batali, who built a formidable restaurant empire before retreating amid accusations of sexual harassment by several women, is now facing a criminal assault charge that he groped and kissed a woman at a Boston restaurant in 2017.

Mr. Batali, 58, has been charged with indecent assault and battery and is to be arraigned in Boston on Friday, The Associated Press reported.

The criminal complaint was filed last month, The Boston Globe reported, and it said that a woman had told the police that Mr. Batali kissed her and groped her chest and groin at a Boston restaurant two years ago.

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