ABUSE TRACKER

CHICAGO (IL)
Associated Press

Jan. 4, 2020

By Gary Fields, Juliet Linderman and Wong Maye-E

The Samples were a black Chicago family, with six children and few resources. The priest helped them with tuition, clothes, bills. He offered the promise of opportunities — a better life.

He also abused all the children.

They told no one. They were afraid of not being believed and of losing what little they had, said one son, Terrence Sample. And nobody asked until a lawyer investigating alleged abuses by the same priest prompted him to break his then 33-year silence.

“Somebody had to make the effort,” Sample said. “Why wasn’t it the church?”

Even as it has pledged to go after predators in its ranks and provide support to those harmed by clergy, the church has done little to identify and reach sexual abuse victims. For survivors of color, who often face additional social and cultural barriers to coming forward on their own, the lack of concerted outreach on behalf of the church means less public exposure — and potentially, more opportunities for abuse to go on, undetected.

Of 88 dioceses that responded to an Associated Press inquiry, seven knew the ethnicities of victims. While it was clear at least three had records of some sort, only one stated it purposely collected such data as part of the reporting process. Native Americans, African Americans, Hispanics, Asians, Pacific Islanders and Hawaiians make up nearly 46% of the faithful in the U.S., according to the Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate, an authoritative source of Catholic-related data. But the Catholic Church has made almost no effort to track the victims among them.

“The church has to come into the shadows, into the trenches to find the people who were victimized, especially the people of color,” Sample said. “There are other people like me and my family, who won’t come forward unless someone comes to them.”

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

Jan. 3, 2020

Charges are now pending against a former coach at a Chicagoland Catholic school, and we are calling on church officials from the Archdiocese of Chicago to spread this news among their parishioners and to do outreach to other potential victims, witnesses, and whistle-blowers.

Joe Majkowski was arrested on Dec. 27 regarding allegations made in May that he sexually abused a minor. The coach is also accused of sending inappropriate messages to four 15 year old students.

While we have no firsthand information about this case, studies have shown that false allegations of child sexual abuse are extremely rare. Cardinal Blase Cupich and school officials at St. Viator in Arlington Heights should now make every effort to seek other victims and widely publicize these accusations. Additionally, steps should be taken to fully vet Majkowski’s work history and ensure that parents and alumni at every school where he worked are informed of this charge.

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BUFFALO (NY)
Spectrum News

January 2, 2020

By Mark Goshgarian

Clergy abuse survivor and advocate turned investigator James Faluszczak and Niagara Falls attorney Paul Barr filed two Child Victims Act lawsuits Thursday.

“Two separate clients, two separate instances of abuse,” said Faluszczak.

The first suit against the Diocese of Buffalo alleges the late Father Gerard Smyczynski abused their client in the early ‘80s.

It states now-former auxiliary bishop of Buffalo, Donald Trautman, covered up the abuse, paid off the victim, and expedited an annulment for his parents.

“Bishop Trautman never called the police. He never called the district attorney. As a result, this priest was permitted to go on and abuse at least another child,” said Barr.

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KNOXVILLE (TN)
Associated Press

January 2, 2020

A Catholic Diocese in Tennessee has settled a lawsuit out of court with a man who alleged two priests sexually abused him as a child.

Terms of the settlement were not disclosed by the Knoxville diocese on Tuesday, the Knoxville News Sentinel reported.

While admitting no wrongdoing, “the diocese also recognizes that further pursuing this matter through the legal system would be time-consuming, costly, and detrimental to its mission of service,” diocese spokesman Jim Wogan said in a statement.

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ERIE (PA)
Erie News Now

January 2, 2020

Bishop Trautman allegedly knew about the abuse, and the Buffalo Diocese is accused of paying a small sum of money in a legal settlement and fast-tracking an annulment to keep it under wraps.

A clergy sex abuse survivor who testified before a Pennsylvania grand jury and attorney who is an abuse survivor announced the Diocese of Erie and former Bishop Donald Trautman are being sued in a child sex abuse case in New York.

James Faluszczak, abuse survivor, former priest and whistleblower before the 40th Pennsylvania Grand Jury, and Paul Barr who has represented injured victims on the Niagara Frontier and is an abuse survivor himself, detailed the case Thursday morning in front of St. Joseph Cathedral in Buffalo.

Father Gerard Smyczynski reportedly abused a child in 1980s while Bishop Trautman was Vicar General of the Buffalo Diocese.

Bishop Trautman allegedly knew about the abuse, and the Buffalo Diocese is accused of paying a small sum of money in a legal settlement and fast-tracking an annulment to keep it under wraps.

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.

SAN JOSE (CA)
KRON4

January 1, 2020

By Rob Fladeboe

“It’s time because we’re coming at you. We’re coming at you with the survivors and their truth. We’re armed not just with the law, but with their truth.”

Attorneys for a man who claims he was sexually abused by a member of the clergy at San Jose’s Bellarmine Prep have filed a lawsuit against the school.

The lawsuit is the first of an expected wave of legal action made possible by a new state law.

“We’re talking about three decades of this guy being allowed to be in and around kids and in schools as a teacher, as a coach, under the supervision of the Catholic bishops,” said attorney Jeff Anderson, who represents the plaintiff.

Anderson pointed the finger at a picture of Brother William Farrington at a news conference Wednesday announcing a lawsuit against Farrington’s former employer, Bellarmine Prep School and the Diocese of San Jose.

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SAN JOSE (CA)
NBC

January 1, 2020

By Marianne Favro

A San Jose man claims he was sexually assaulted as a teenager by Jesuit Brother William Farrington while attending Bellarmine College Preparatory in the 1960s.

The alleged victim is now pursuing a civil lawsuit against the Archdiocese of San Jose and Bellarmine. He is able to pursue legal action decades later because of a new California law.

“The law says no matter how long ago the abuse happened you can come forward today with civil action and expose the offender, expose the institution that concealed the abuse and hold them accountable,” Attorney Jeff Anderson said.

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NEW YORK (NY)
Reuters

January 2, 2020

By Gabriella Borter

As former movie mogul Harvey Weinstein goes to trial on rape charges next week in Manhattan, lawyers will need to keep an eye out for jurors who want to use the case to make a statement about sexual abuse following the rise of the #MeToo movement, legal experts said.

Once one of Hollywood’s most powerful producers, Weinstein, 67, has pleaded not guilty to charges of assaulting two women in New York, one in 2006 and the other in 2013.

In all, more than 80 women have accused Weinstein of sexual misconduct dating back decades.

Those accusations helped fuel the #MeToo movement, in which hundreds of women have publicly accused powerful men in business, politics, the news media and entertainment of sexual harassment or assault. Weinstein has denied the allegations and said any sexual encounters were consensual.

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UNITED STATES
Yahoo News

December 31, 2019

Award-winning photojournalist Mary F. Calvert has spent six years documenting the prevalence of rape in the military and the effects on victims. She began with a focus on female victims but more recently has examined the underreported incidence of sexual assaults on men and the lifelong trauma it can inflict.

_____

Last March, Sen. Martha McSally, R-Ariz., a retired Air Force combat pilot, disclosed that she had been the victim of multiple sexual assaults by fellow officers, putting the issue of sexual assault in the military on the national agenda. Two months later, a required biannual Department of Defense report found that sexual assault within the ranks had increased by 38 percent over two years. Much less attention has been given to the problem of sexual assault against men in uniform. The report estimated that “20,500 Service members, representing about 13,000 women and 7,500 men, experienced some kind of contact or penetrative sexual assault in 2018, up from approximately 14,900 in 2016.”

Although the military has made efforts to encourage victims to come forward, most assaults are still not reported, and victims who do make reports sometimes still face retaliation. Although men are less likely to be victimized than women, the stigma and psychological trauma can be equally devastating. A DOD report released on Nov. 5 determined that military sexual assault might be more likely to cause PTSD than combat.

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VATICAN CITY
NBC News

December 31, 2019

By Melanie Ehrenkranz

Members of the Catholic Church who spoke to NBC News acknowledged that while not the most traditional offering, it did provide a new way for people to connect with God.

At the Dominican Monastery of Our Lady of the Rosary in New Jersey, there’s a continuing conversation around technology, life and religion. Sister Mary Catharine hears a lot about it, particularly from younger women who join the fold.

“I think the biggest change was smartphones, because most of us don’t need to have one, and we don’t live off of it,” she said. “Meanwhile, the rest of the world does.”

But even those younger, more smartphone-friendly sisters were puzzled by the Vatican’s newest effort to engage people: a rosary that can be paired with a smartphone to track everything from prayers offered to steps taken.

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SAN BERNARDINO (CA)
Orange County Register

December 30, 2019

By Sean Emery

A former altar server and youth group member has filed a lawsuit alleging he was abused while underage at a Catholic church in Hemet, marking the latest civil case to be filed on the eve of a new state law that gives alleged victims of childhood sexual assault more time to come forward.

In a lawsuit filed last week in San Bernardino Superior Court, attorneys with the Jeff Anderson & Associates law firm allege that their client, during his early teens, was sexually abused over a period of several years in the early 1990s by former Fr. Louis G. Perreault.

The law firm, which specializes in representing childhood abuse survivors, late last week announced similar lawsuits alleging abuse and systematic cover-ups at Mater Dei High School in Santa Ana and St. Francis High School in La Canada Flintridge.

The lawsuits were made possible by Assembly Bill 218, which extends the time that victims of childhood sexual abuse can sue, and provides those for whom the previous statute of limitations had run out a three year window to bring claims.

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.

CHICAGO (IL)
Associated Press

December 30, 2019

By Michael Rezendes

A globe-trotting Jesuit priest with ties to Mother Teresa sexually abused an American boy “more than 1,000 times, in multiple states and countries,” a lawsuit filed Monday in California state court in San Francisco alleges.

In the lawsuit and in interviews with The Associated Press, Robert J. Goldberg, now 61, describes years of psychological control and sexual abuse he suffered from age 11 into adulthood while working as a valet for the late Rev. Donald J. McGuire.

McGuire died in federal prison in 2017 while serving a 25-year sentence for molesting other boys who came under his sway.

Goldberg says he remained in the Jesuit’s thrall for nearly 40 years, even volunteering to testify in McGuire’s defense during criminal trials in Wisconsin and Illinois.

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SAN DIEGO (CA)
Los Angeles Times

January 2, 2020

By Greg Moran

Half a dozen lawsuits against the Roman Catholic Diocese of San Diego accusing now-deceased clergy of sexually abusing 20 men and women decades ago were filed in Superior Court on Thursday, one day after a new state law lifting the legal time limit on when such lawsuits can be filed went into effect.

The lawsuits are the first of what will likely become a swarm of legal action in the coming months against churches and other institutions such as the Boy Scouts of America over long-ago sexual abuse of minors. Irwin Zalkin, the San Diego lawyer who filed the six lawsuits Thursday, said at a news conference that he plans to file another 60 cases over the next several months against the diocese.

“This is only the beginning,” said Zalkin, the lawyer who spearheaded a $198-million settlement of sexual abuse claims against the diocese in 2007. Those lawsuits, filed under a previous state law that opened a one-year window for claims against institutions for abuse that had occurred years earlier, drove the diocese to declare bankruptcy.

The new wave of litigation is made possible by AB 218, sponsored by San Diego Democratic Assemblywoman Lorena Gonzalez. The law expands the maximum age at which someone can bring a claim for sexual abuse from 26 years old to 40. It also opened a three-year window for those of any age to revive past claims that may have been prohibited from being filed as lawsuits because the legal time limit to bring such claims, known as the statute of limitations, had run out.

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ROME (ITALY)
Wall Street Journal

January 3, 2020

By Francis X. Rocca

Pope Francis ended 2019 in embarrassment when he angrily slapped the hand of a woman who had pulled on his own while he was greeting pilgrims on New Year’s Eve. He began 2020 with a public apology for losing his patience and setting a “bad example.”

It was a fitting coda to a year in which the pope addressed one scandal—the Catholic Church’s sex-abuse crisis—only to become embroiled in another, over the Vatican’s murky finances.

Pope Francis entered last year near the low point of his pontificate. In 2018, Cardinal Sean O’Malley of Boston chided him for insensitivity to sex-abuse victims, the pope admitted to “grave errors” in handling clerical sex abuse in Chile, and his former envoy to the U.S. accused him of ignoring sexual misconduct by then-Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, a former archbishop of Washington. The year 2018 ended with an Australian court convicting the pope’s finance chief, Cardinal George Pell, of sexual abuse of children.

During 2019, Pope Francis responded by rolling out high-profile initiatives on combating sexual abuse, beginning with the defrocking of Cardinal McCarrick, the first cardinal to receive such a punishment in modern times.

Over succeeding months, the pope convened a global summit on sex abuse, tightened the laws against abuse within Vatican City State and unveiled new legislation making it easier to discipline bishops who abuse or cover up abuse. In December, he relaxed the secrecy rules for church documents relating to abuse, which advocates for victims said could make it easier for church officials to cooperate with police and prosecutors.

The new rules for bishops and the lifting of the so-called pontifical secret were “very good moves toward greater accountability and transparency, but it’s the application that matters,” said the Rev. Thomas Reese, senior analyst for Religion News Service and author of “Inside the Vatican.”

“The church has thousands of bishops all over the world,” who will require vigilance “to make sure they’re doing what they’re supposed to do,” he said.

Some important issues regarding sex abuse remain unresolved.

The Vatican still hasn’t released a long-promised report explaining how Mr. McCarrick rose to power despite widespread rumors of his misconduct going back years. Bishop Gustavo Zanchetta, a longtime protégé of Pope Francis, is facing charges of sexual harassment in their native Argentina. He denies the charges. And if Australia’s high court declines to overturn Cardinal Pell’s conviction on his final appeal—after he has already begun serving a six-year sentence—the pope will have to decide whether to discipline a prelate who was one of his most important aides.

Meanwhile, a new shadow has fallen over the pope, who was elected in 2013 with a mandate to overhaul the Vatican’s finances and administration.

“We are seeing the practically complete failure of the attempts at cleansing, reform and transparency with regard to Vatican finances,” said Sandro Magister, a Vatican expert who writes for Italy’s L’Espresso magazine. Last year “brought the fall of the myth of Francis as the purifying pope.”

The Wall Street Journal revealed in September a gaping budget deficit at the Holy See. The pope had instructed Vatican officials to address the deficit as an urgent problem that imperiled the future of the Holy See, which consists of the Catholic Church’s central administration and the papal diplomatic network abroad.

The Journal also revealed in December that the bulk of the pope’s world-wide annual charity collection wasn’t going to the poor but being used to plug the Vatican’s budget deficit.

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.

UNITED STATES
National Catholic Reporter

January 3, 2020

By Michael Sean Winters

What should we be looking for in the life of the church in 2020? What issues and personalities will likely change the trajectory of ecclesial history?

In December, Pope Francis named Filipino Cardinal Luis Antonio Tagle to become prefect of the Congregation for the Evangelization of Peoples, historically known as the “red pope.” He will be responsible for creating the ternas from which the pope will select bishops for missionary dioceses.

I am told that this appointment was the first of several and we can expect a new prefect at the Congregation for Bishops sooner rather than later as the incumbent, Canadian Cardinal Marc Ouellet, has asked to be replaced. Ouellet’s congregation has often dragged its heels, frustrating the appointment of more pastoral prelates, and a new, dynamic leader might shake things up.

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

BUFFALO (NY)
GoErie.com

January 2, 2020

By Ed Palattella

Suit cites Trautman’s tenure as official in Catholic Diocese of Buffalo but also names Erie diocese, which he later led.

Retired Erie Catholic Bishop Donald W. Trautman has been named as a defendant in a lawsuit that claims he covered up clergy sexual abuse when he was auxiliary bishop of the Catholic Diocese of Buffalo, a post he held before he was named head of the Erie diocese in 1990.

The suit, filed Tuesday in Erie County Supreme Court in Buffalo, New York, claims the abuse occurred in the Diocese of Buffalo in the mid-1980s and not in the Catholic Diocese of Erie.

But an amended version of the suit, filed on Thursday, adds the Catholic Diocese of Erie as a defendant, claiming that Trautman continued to cover up abuse allegations while he was bishop of the Erie diocese through his retirement in 2012.

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.

FARGO (ND)
Associated Press

January 2, 2020

By Dave Kolpack

North Dakota’s Roman Catholic dioceses on Thursday released a list of 53 clergy members who have had substantiated allegations of sexual abuse of a minor.

Bishop John Folda of the Fargo Diocese said in a statement that the list is the result of a “thorough review” of files dating back to 1950. Bishop David Kagan of Bismarck said there have been no substantiated allegations of sexual abuse of a minor that have occurred after 1989.

The list includes 31 people in the Fargo Diocese and 22 in Bismarck. Some of them were not ordained in North Dakota but served in the state at some point.

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BUFFALO (NY)
Buffalo News

January 2, 2020

By Barbara O’Brien and Lou Michel

A new lawsuit alleges that a retired Buffalo priest and pastor at two parishes abused a 15-year-old parishioner at Holy Cross Catholic Church on the Lower West Side in the early 1970s.

The Rev. Richard Reina and the Buffalo Catholic Diocese are named as defendants in the suit, which was filed Thursday under the Child Victims Act.

“When I was approximately 15 years old, approximately 1972, Richard Reina (Fr. Reina) abused me on the premises of Holy Cross Church. The sexual abuse included inappropriate touching,” the unnamed plaintiff said in court papers.

Reina denied the allegations in a telephone interview with The Buffalo News on Thursday morning and said he has contacted an attorney to defend him.

“The first I’ve heard of it was this morning. I positively, absolutely deny any and all charges,” Reina said. “This person maybe was molested by someone and I feel sorry for the person, but it wasn’t me.”

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FRESNO (CA)
Fox26 TV

January 2, 2020

[VIDEO]

The first lawsuit has been filed against the Diocese of Fresno under the new Child Victims Act (AB 218).

A lawsuit has been filed against Fr. Anthony Moreno alleging child sexual abuse.

The Diocese of Fresno and St. Philip the Apostle in Bakersfield are both named in the lawsuit.

The lawsuit says the diocese refuses to release a promised list of accused clergy while attempting to settle cases without notifying the public.

Jeff Anderson & Associates is representing Toni Moreland, the plaintiff, who says she was sexually abused by Moreno in approximately 1979-1980 at St. Philip the Apostle in Bakersfield.

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SAN DIEGO (CA)
Channel 8, CBS-TV affiliate

January 2, 2020

The lawsuits allege that six priests sexually abused the victims while they were serving as altar boys or during other church activities.

A local law firm is expected to announce the filing of over 100 new sexual abuse lawsuits against the San Diego Catholic Diocese and other California Dioceses on Thursday.

One of the lawsuits will be filed on behalf of four men who claim they were sexually abused by Father Anthony Rodrigue. Rodrigue was assigned to 10 parishes across San Diego, Imperial, San Bernadino and Riverside Counties over his 29-year career. During that time, attorney Irwin Zalkin said Rodrigue molested more than 150 boys and was routinely moved from one parish to another without punishment from church officials.

Following his removal from the priesthood, Rodrigue pleaded guilty in 1998 to molesting an 11-year-old developmentally disabled boy and was sentenced to 10 years in prison. Rodrigue died in 2009.

The lawsuit alleges that despite numerous complaints against him, Father Rodrigue was shuffled around parishes instead of being turned in to authorities.

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PROVIDENCE (RI)
Providence Journal

Jan. 2, 2020

By Brian Amaral

The lawmakers and advocates behind a new state law giving people more time to sue over child sexual abuse, even though time had run out under the old law, are defending their efforts after the Roman Catholic Diocese of Providence described the effort in legal papers as unconstitutional.

“Why would a court essentially want to give defendants a get out of jail free card when thousands of helpless victims would lose?” said state Sen. Donna Nesselbush, a Pawtucket Democrat who pushed for the legislation.

The diocese’s legal position came in response to a lawsuit filed by a Florida man who said he was abused while a child in Rhode Island. Philip Edwardo, 53, sued Bishop Thomas Tobin, former Bishop Louis Gelineau, the diocese and a North Providence parish over his abuse at the hands of the Rev. Philip Magaldi. Magaldi is now dead, but the diocese itself is to blame for enabling and abetting his abuser, Edwardo argued.

Edwardo sued after the General Assembly passed a law this summer extending the statute of limitations for child sexual abuse lawsuits to 35 years after a victim’s 18th birthday.

For lawsuits against “perpetrators,” the law said victims still had until 35 years after their 18th birthday, even if the statute had already run out under the older versions of the law. But the new, longer statute of limitations doesn’t apply for suits based on conduct that “caused or contributed to” child sexual abuse if the statute had already expired under the old law. Those would stay expired.

Much of the legal wrangling that will follow in the next few months, and perhaps years, is about whether the church can be held liable as a “perpetrator.” The diocese, in a widely anticipated move, argued that it could not. The perpetrator was the person who actually engaged in the abuse, not an institution accused of concealing it, the diocese said.

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ROCHESTER (NY)
Rochester Beacon

Jan. 2, 2020

By Will Astor

The Roman Catholic Diocese of Rochester’s bankruptcy—the 20th diocesan Chapter 11 to be filed in the United States—is unlike its predecessors, parties in the case say.

Where the previous U.S. church settlements came only after protracted battles, the Rochester case could shape up differently, Ilan Scharf, attorney for the Creditors Committee, said during a November court hearing.

A bankruptcy lawyer with Pachulski, Stang, Ziehl & Jones LLP in New York City, Scharf has represented abuse survivors as a creditors committee attorney in Chapter 11s filed by the North American branch of the Ireland-based Christian Brothers Catholic teaching order and the Roman Catholic Diocese of Great Falls-Billings in Montana.

“This case is unique,” Scharf said to the court in November. “It was not filed after years of litigation. The difference is the (Child Victims Act).”

Opening a floodgate

Signed into law by Gov. Andrew Cuomo in February, the CVA has unleashed a torrent of sex-abuse claims, many aimed at the Catholic church.

The act temporarily lifts a statute of limitations that would have barred most of the roughly 1,000 sex-abuse claims the Rochester Diocese believes it will see this year. The statute of limitations previously required individuals claiming to have been sexually abused as children to file claims by their 23rd birthday. When the CVA kicked in last August, it raised the upper age limit to 55. The new limit remains in effect for one year.

Speaking at an October meeting with the diocese’s creditors, a group overwhelmingly made up of abuse survivors, Bishop Salvatore Matano explained the Rochester diocese’s decision to ask for court protection as driven by “the number of claims that have come forward and our resources to satisfy those claims.” The costs of adjudicating those claims in state court would exhaust the diocese’s resources, leaving virtually no funds to compensate the survivors, he said.

In an earlier court filing that month, made some three weeks into the case, the diocese tallied its CVA-claim debt at $22 million and estimated that additional claims totaling $90 million would be submitted. The filing states the diocese’s assets including real estate and legally restricted donations at $67.95 million.

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LONDON (ENGLAND)
Catholic Herald

Jan. 2, 2020

By Christopher Altieri

As the year 2020 opens, the Church appears to have entered into the slogging phase of its leadership crisis. Part of that is due to what one might call “scandal fatigue” – the sense that no wickedness, incompetence or rot has the power to surprise once discovered. It is also partly due to the nature of protracted crises, which periodically flare up or explode in scandal and then fall into a gruesome routine.

Here are three things likely to happen in 2020, followed by three that could happen – by “could” I mean something in between “possible” and “likely as not”.

Things that are likely to happen in 2020:

1) The Vatican will release its report on former cardinal Theodore McCarrick. It will be brief. Rumours put it at about 250 pages, which is light for a dossier supposed to be an exhaustive treatment of the Vatican’s engagement with a churchman who had a 60-year career, especially when the report is produced by an organisation that writes everything down and never throws anything away.

The report is likely to make things worse for the Vatican, at least in the short term.

It will answer some questions, keep the commentariat talking and give reporters solid leads. But it will not add to the picture of the last six decades as much as (or in the ways) people expect.

2) There will be more bad news on both the financial and abuse cover-up fronts.

This one is pretty much a no-brainer. There is little hope that the higher-ups in the Vatican will either experience a change of heart or learn good crisis communications practice, so expect news of this sort to come piecemeal. Some things that are very big deals will make very little noise (given our crisis fatigue), and others of relatively minor scale will generate a good deal of noise, especially if they contain all three elements of the scandal trifecta: sex, money and power.

3) Francis will promulgate the new apostolic constitution reforming the Roman Curia.

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BUFFALO {NY)
Buffalo News

January 2, 2020

By Jay Tokasz and Barbara O’Brien

An unnamed plaintiff alleged in a lawsuit that a former Buffalo Diocese administrator, who later became bishop of the Erie Diocese, fast-tracked an annulment in the 1980s to make sure that a family kept quiet about a priest’s abuse.

The lawsuit filed Tuesday claimed that the Rev. Donald W. Trautman, during his time as chancellor and vicar general of the Buffalo Diocese, expedited an annulment for a member of the plaintiff’s family “with the hope of ensuring their silence about the abuses perpetrated by Fr. Smyczynski and covering up those abuses.”

Catholic Church doctrine stipulates that divorced Catholics must receive an annulment, or “declaration of nullity,” if they want to remarry and continue to receive Communion, a central practice of the faith. But applying for an annulment was an often intimidating, mysterious and slow church court process.

The plaintiff said the Rev. Gerard A. Smyczynski abused him multiple times when he was a 10-year-old student and altar boy at Infant of Prague Church and school in Cheektowaga in the mid-1980s. The alleged abuse lasted about a year, according to the lawsuit, which was filed by Danielle George of Phillips & Paolicelli law firm in New York City and Paul K. Barr of Fanizzi & Barr in Niagara Falls.

Trautman, 83, was second-in-command of the Buffalo Diocese for several years under Bishop Edward D. Head, until he was installed as bishop of the Erie Diocese in 1990. He retired in 2012.

He did not respond to an email seeking his response to the allegations in the lawsuit.

Trautman told The News last June that he didn’t cover up any sexual abuse when he was chancellor in the Buffalo Diocese.

Trautman also has disputed a 2018 Pennsylvania grand jury report that criticized him for allowing Erie priests who had been accused of abuse to continue in the priesthood.

The plaintiff still lives in Erie County and is now 45. Smyczynski died in 1999.

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.

ERIE (PA)
Erie News Now

Jan. 2, 2020

James Faluszczak, abuse survivor, former priest and whistleblower before the 40th Pennsylvania Grand Jury, and Paul Barr who has represented injured victims on the Niagara Frontier and is an abuse survivor himself, will address the two new court filings at 11:30 a.m. in front of St. Joseph Cathedral in Buffalo.

They will detail allegations of coverup by defendant Bishop Donald Trautman, former Auxiliary Bishop of Buffalo and now retired Erie Bishop, who they said maintained the coverup from the Erie Diocese. Faluszczak and Barr will also identify active Buffalo priest Fr. Richard Reina as an alleged abuser for the first time.

When the Diocese of Buffalo and Bishop Richard Malone published an incomplete list of abuser priests in March 2018, they left out the timing and nature of alleged abuse, preventing the community from knowing about Fr. Gerard Smyczynski’s propensity to abuse children, according to Faluszczak and Barr.

Bishop Donald Trautman is alleged for have concealed this information by two specific actions in his capacity as Vicar General of the Buffalo Diocese, causing harm to an innocent child. They say it established a pattern of coverup that Trautman carried across state lines when he later became Bishop of Erie.

Reina is alleged to have sexually abused a minor child while he was a priest at Holy Cross Church in Buffalo. Reina then spend multiple years forming future priests in seminary work and is presently serving Christ the King Church in Snyder, NY.

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UNITED STATES
The Washington Post

January 2, 2020

By William Schultz

The conflict between obedience and hierarchy and social justice.

James Fulton Engstrom was delivered stillborn on Sept. 16, 2010. Sixty-one minutes later, his heartbeat resumed. His mother credited his recovery to prayers she said to Fulton Sheen, the Roman Catholic bishop who today is best remembered as the host of the 1950s television program “Life Is Worth Living.” Investigators from the Vatican concluded that the recovery was a miracle, placing Sheen one step closer to sainthood.

Media coverage of Sheen’s beatification has focused on his television career — not surprising, given “Life Is Worth Living” attracted tens of millions of viewers and made Sheen as recognizable a television personality as Ed Sullivan. The show symbolized the hopes of the American Catholic Church in the 1950s: It seemed proof one could engage in the modern world while remaining authentically Catholic.

Recently, however, the Vatican took the unusual step of delaying Sheen’s beatification (originally scheduled for Dec. 21) as officials investigate a once-forgotten chapter of Sheen’s life: his three years as bishop of Rochester, N.Y. Officials are focused on the assignment of priests in Rochester during Sheen’s tenure, an investigation tied to the ongoing issue of priestly sexual abuse.

What role, if any, Sheen played in the assignment of sexually abusive priests remains unclear. But Sheen’s time in Rochester is worth examining for reasons that go beyond the crisis of sexual abuse. His tumultuous career as Rochester’s bishop reveals how the Catholic Church’s attempt to reconcile social justice with a commitment to authority and hierarchy has at times led to disaster.

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DUBLIN (IRELAND)
The Irish Catholic

January 2, 2020

State Papers: Echoes of the past from the archives

The annual release of files often reveal historical ironies in the private papers of the state that how perspectives on events and individuals in public life change constantly.

In the summer of 1989 Cardinal Bernard Law made a pilgrimage to Ireland to visit the shrines at Knock with a party of 100 from Boston. Though that was their main objective, the Cardinal also took the opportunity to visit the North with Dr Cathal Daly, then still Bishop of Down and Connor to guide him and to gain his own impressions of what was happening there from a nationalist point of view.

Bishop Daly had famously declared in the context of Irish affairs that “evil must be rejected totally and unequivocally. There must be no ambivalence, no double standards, no selective indignation.”

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DETROIT (MI)
Detroit Free Press

January 2, 2020

By Tresa Baldas

When word got out that a football player at De La Salle High School was sexually hazed in the locker room, about a dozen athletes clammed up, including the victim, who police said doesn’t want charges.

The same thing happened after a brawl broke out in December between students from Birmingham Brother Rice and Catholic Central: The case has gone nowhere because one victim doesn’t want charges, police said, and no one else is talking.

Students at U-D Jesuit in Detroit were equally quiet in 2014 after a former teacher was charged with videotaping hockey players changing in a locker room. Students vented privately but refused to speak publicly.

This is the culture of silence that for years has reigned at metro Detroit’s all-boys Catholic schools, where scandals involving misbehavior of all sorts put students, alumni and families on high alert as many are all too aware that reputation rules the day — and sports is king.

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WASHINGTON (DC)
Religion News Service

Jan. 1, 2020

The past year on the religion beat began with a prayer meeting and weeklong retreat by U.S. Catholic bishops, hoping that by fasting and prayer they might find a way forward in response to the ongoing abuse scandal in the church. It ended with a pair of attacks on faith groups: five people stabbed while attending a Hanukkah party and three people killed during a church service in Texas.

In between were moments of grief and scandal, hope and resilience.

As we enter the new year, we asked Religion News Service’s reporters to give us a glimpse into the stories they’ll be following in 2020.

Adelle M. Banks
Southern Baptists have started the journey of addressing sexual abuse within their ranks but they have a long way to go. They focused on the issue and held a time of prayer and lament at their 2019 annual meeting and have offered new resources. It will be worth watching to see what happens next, including how a new committee handles accusations of abuse against local churches and what role a new president, who will be elected in June, will play in the denomination’s next steps.

African American voters of faith are bound to have an influence on the coming election year. Many may be in Joe Biden’s corner and few seem to support Pete Buttegieg. How will this group, which has organized “Souls to the Polls” events in past elections, work toward Election Day 2020? Will they be successful in achieving voter turnout?

Religious freedom issues will remain a focus of the Trump administration. What shape its actions take in the next year and how much difference the administration makes in reducing religious oppression across the globe remains to be seen.

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DENVER (CO)
National Catholic Register

Jan. 1, 2020

By Father Raymond J. de Souza

At year-end, two cardinals were confined to quarters, unable to celebrate Holy Mass. The stories of Cardinal George Pell and now Mr. Theodore McCarrick are the dominant Catholic news stories of 2019, at least in the English-speaking world, but with universal implications.

Cardinal Pell is incarcerated in a Melbourne jail, having been sentenced in March to a six-year term after being convicted of sexual assaults in the Melbourne cathedral in 1996. His appeal at Australia’s highest court will be heard in March 2020.

Cardinal McCarrick was laicized in February after being found guilty in a Church trial of sexual abuse of minors, abuse of power and solicitation in the sacrament of confession. He lives in seclusion in a Kansas friary with no public contact. No longer a cleric, McCarrick cannot celebrate Mass or exercise any priestly ministry.

Both situations are astonishing, both in their own ways unprecedented. And both raise questions about the course of justice, both civil and canonical, and how the two coincide, or come into conflict.

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NEW ORLEANS (LA)
Times Picayune

Jan. 1, 2020

By Jerry DiColo

The Archdiocese of New Orleans has plugged a multimillion-dollar hole in its budget through land sales, a jump in fee revenue for church services and higher payments from parishes, even as sexual abuse claims and other costs continue to weigh on its financial outlook.

The local Catholic church, which had an operating deficit of more than $14 million for 2018, shrank the deficit to under $1 million in its 2019 fiscal year, which ended in June, according to financial documents filed last week. It was the smallest operating deficit since 2011.

Investment income from its endowment fund provided a boost that helped the archdiocese finish the year with $78.8 million in net assets, up $3.4 million from 2018.

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UNITED STATES
National Catholic Reporter

December 31, 2019

By Tom Roberts

Jesuit Fr. James Keenan really wants to turn the whole deal on its head. The highly regarded theologian, taking in the endless discussion of the priest sex abuse crisis, had one of those moments of recognition — of seeing the thing right in front of us that everyone else has been looking past in search of answers.

And here’s what I perceive to be the bottom line, the ultimate question he raises out of that awareness: “Is the God we worship vulnerable?”

If that is the case, and he believes so, then he asks: “Why couldn’t we develop an ecclesiology based on the risk-taking vulnerability of God?”

If that were to happen, we’d have a church that would look and act quite differently from the one we know today. Imagine the seminary recruitment brochure that highlighted vulnerability as a quality the institution treasured and hoped to develop in the men who applied.

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McDOWELL (NC)
McDowell News

December 30, 2019

A former Catholic priest with ties to Marion and Morganton in the 1980s was credibly accused of abuse in Ohio, according to a review by the Diocese of Charlotte, which looked at decades of records.

In October of 2018, Richard C. Evrit was named on the Diocese of Youngstown (Ohio) list of clergy for credible allegations of sexual abuse from the early 1970s in that state.

Evrit served in the Diocese of Charlotte in the late 1980s until his home diocese placed him on indefinite medical leave in 1989. No local allegations of abuse were documented here, the diocese said.

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CLEVELAND (OH)
Cleveland.com

December 31, 2019

By Cory Shaffer

An appeals court on Tuesday reduced the bond for a Strongsville Catholic priest accused of sending and receiving child pornography.

A three-judge panel at the 8th District Court of Appeals unanimously agreed to grant the Rev. Robert McWilliams’ writ of habeas corpus and lowered his bond to 10 percent of $50,000.

The decision by Judges Sean C. Gallagher, Mary Eileen Kilbane and Kathleen Ann Keough means McWilliams will have to pay $5,000 plus fees to secure release from the Cuyahoga County Jail. He will have to wear a GPS ankle monitor if he leaves jail.

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CHARLOTTE (NC)
WSOC-TV

December 30, 2019 – 6:56 PM

Donald Philip Baker
Baker was ordained in 1980 and left the ministry in 1994. In 2017, a man reported that Baker had sexually abused him when he was a teenager in his Lenoir parish from 1986 to 1989. The diocese said it contacted Caldwell County DSS and Lenoir police but no charges were filed. Baker was living in Arizona at the time of the allegation and worked in the Diocese of Phoenix. In 2019, the Charlotte Diocese’s Lay Review Board deemed the allegation was credible.

Charles Jeffries “Jeff” Burton
Burton was ordained in 1967, removed in 2007 and died in 2011. In 1994, a man reported that Burton made advances and inappropriately touched him when he was a teenager in 1982 at a youth ministry center in Flat Rock. Burton had been assigned by the Maryland Province of Jesuits to work in the Charlotte Diocese. The diocese said it reported the allegation to his supervising religious order, which sent Burton for treatment and returned him to ministry in New Jersey. The Jesuits said Burton was removed from ministry in 2007 after the Flat Rock allegation resurfaced and he acknowledged the incident.

Eugene D. Corbesero
Corbesero was ordained in 1962, dismissed in 1983 and died in 2016. In 1995, a man reported that he had been abused by Corbesero when he was a teenager at Our Lady of Consolation Church in Charlotte sometime between 1973 and 1975. The diocese said it alerted his Corbesero’s order at the time of the allegation to verify he was no longer in ministry. In 2007, the former priest pleaded guilty and served five years in prison for sexually assaulting a child in New Jersey in 2006, according to reports.

[cont’d]

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OAKLAND (CA)
Bay Area News Group via the Mercury News

December 31, 2019

By Thomas Peele

One of the priests named in the suits was not on a list of abusive priests the diocese released in February

OAKLAND — Two people who say they were sexually abused as children by a pair of Catholic priests at a Union City church in the 1970s sued the Diocese of Oakland on Tuesday alleging it helped cover up their exploitation.

“This has wrecked my entire life, every aspect of my life” one of the victims, James Brogen, said at a press conference announcing the suits. “It’s hard to feel like a survivor when you’re still suffering.”

The suits allege that diocese officials worked to hide abuse at Our Lady of the Rosary church in Union City in the 1970s involving two priests, Stephen Kiesle and George E. Crespin.

Brogen, who grew up in what his suit described as a devout Catholic family in Hayward, called Our Lady of the Rosary a “house of evil.”

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PROVIDENCE (RI)
Catholic News Agency

December 31, 2019

In July, a bill was signed into law by Gov. Gina Raimondo (D) extending the statute of limitations for childhood sexual abuse cases from seven to 35 years in Rhode Island. The 35-year window would commence from the victim’s 18th birthday. The law also includes a “seven year discovery” provision allowing victims to file lawsuits up to seven years after they have re-discovered childhood abuse as an adult, such as through therapy sessions.

Several months later, in September, a lawsuit was filed by Philip Edwardo against the Diocese of Providence alleging that he was abused by a diocesan priest, Phillip Magaldi, hundreds of times in the 1970s and 1980s.

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KNOXVILLE (TN)
Knoxville Sentinel

January 2, 2020

By Terry Mattingly

Protest rallies have been common during the #MeToo era, but many of the demonstrators outside the 2019 Southern Baptist Convention were quoting scripture.

As a teaching tool, they offered a large model of a millstone. That was a reference to the Gospel of Matthew, in which Jesus warns that for anyone who leads “little ones” astray, “it would be better for him to have a great millstone fastened round his neck and to be drowned in the depth of the sea.”

Protesters come and go. Inside the convention center in Birmingham, Alabama, Rachael Denhollander warned SBC leaders that it was past time for them to focus on the faces and stories of sexual-abuse survivors in their own pews. Abuse survivors are trying to get church leaders to stop hiding abusers and the institutions that shelter them, she said.

Far too often, “we do this in the name of unity: ‘Don’t say anything negative. We need to be unified.’ But brothers and sisters … we are to be unified around the holiness of God. We are to be unified around our confrontation of sin and our confrontation of the darkness. We are to seek light.”

Headlines about sexual abuse among Southern Baptists are “not a surprise” to survivors, she added. “What you need to understand is these men and women have been pleading with the church to hear their voices for decades, and they have been shut out over and over and over again in the name of Christ. That’s what the SBC has done to these survivors. You need to understand the perspective that they have come from. You need to feel the grief and the betrayal and the harm and the hurt they have felt.”

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ORANGE COUNTY (CA)
Orange County Register

January 1, 2020

By Timothy Freyer, Ron Lowenberg and Darlyne Pettinicchio

January 1 represents a new beginning, marked by hope and promise for the year ahead. The new year is a time for goal-setting and resolutions. It is a time for us to reflect upon our past with the spirit of heart and mind to make positive change in our own lives and for the benefit of others. We seek strength and wisdom to fortify us to be better and truer to the best versions of ourselves, and we seek courage to help us overcome our challenges.

The Roman Catholic Diocese of Orange is in the midst of its own resolutions for the year that lies ahead, as it charts its continuous journey in care of the faithful.

As it does so, it gives special attention to those most vulnerable and precious among us – our children. And so, the Diocese of Orange reaffirms its long-standing commitment to promote a safe environment and eradicate sexual abuse of children; to ensure that the dark chapter of the Diocese’s past never recurs; and, to provide a voice to those who previously suffered in silence.

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VATICAN CITY
America Magazine

January 1, 2020

By Colleen Dulle

Happy New Year from Inside the Vatican!

For our New Year’s Day episode, Gerry and I are taking a look back at some of the biggest Vatican stories of 2019.

We start with February’s Vatican summit on the protection of minors, which Gerry and I covered together in Rome. We talk about the steps Pope Francis has taken to follow up on that meeting, including the elimination of the “pontifical secret” in December which paved the way for the long-awaited Vatican handbook that will establish universal norms for handling cases of clerical sexual abuse. Gerry also gives us a timeline on when to expect that document.

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KNOXVILLE (TN)
News Sentinel

Dec. 31, 2019

By Amy McRary

The Catholic Diocese of Knoxville has reached an out-of-court settlement with a Blount County man whose lawsuit alleged he was sexually abused as a child by two priests.

The settlement means the July suit bought by attorneys for Michael Boyd of Blount County will not proceed in Knox County Circuit Court.

The terms and amount of the financial settlement were not disclosed in a seven-paragraph announcement issued today by the diocese. The diocese and church officials also admit no wrongdoing in the settlement.

The money paid to Boyd will be covered by the diocese’s insurance and won’t impact its budget or charity work.

“The diocese has throughout denied the validity of the claim. However, the diocese also recognizes that further pursuing this matter through the legal system would be time-consuming, costly, and detrimental to its mission of service,” the statement issued by diocese’s spokesman Jim Wogan read in part.

Boyd’s attorney could not be immediately reached by USA Today Network-Tennessee. In the suit, attorneys asked for both compensatory and punitive damages but did not list a dollar amount.

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