ABUSE TRACKER

ROCKVILLE CENTRE (NY)
New York Law Journal

May 13, 2020

By Ryan Tarinelli

The law opened up a legal “look-back” window for survivors of child sex abuse, giving them the opportunity to file lawsuits over older claims typically barred by statutes of limitation.

The Child Victims Act does not violate the Catholic Diocese of Rockville Centre’s due process right under New York’s constitution, a Nassau County Supreme Court justice has ruled.

“Based on this legislative history, the court finds the Child Victims Act is a reasonable response to remedy the injustice of past child sexual abuse,” wrote Justice Steven Jaeger in a ruling filed Wednesday.

The law opened up a legal “look-back” window for survivors of child sex abuse, giving them the opportunity to file lawsuits over older claims typically barred by statutes of limitation.

Sean Dolan, a spokesperson for the diocese, said they disagree with the court’s ruling in regard to the due process challenge to the act.

“We are analyzing our options with respect to appeal of this and other issues,” he said in the statement.

The ruling was lauded by advocates for the survivors of child sex abuse.

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IRELAND
Irish Times

May 13, 2020

By Jack Power

Child protection expert Ian Elliott’s awaited report into past child sex abuse completed

Scouting Ireland is to publish a final report on Thursday into historic child sex abuse that took place in legacy scouting organisations, completed by child protection expert Ian Elliott.

The report is understood to be around 50 pages in length and makes 12 recommendations, as well as detailing several case studies. Scouting Ireland is to make an “organisational apology” to all survivors of past abuse in response to the report’s publication.

Mr Elliott, who also acted as Scouting Ireland’s interim safeguarding manager for several months, has been investigating the historic abuse for over a year.

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NEW ORLEANS (LA)
NOLA.com

May 14, 2020

By Ramon Antonio Vargas

One served as the Archdiocese of New Orleans’ in-house attorney. Another was on the board of the archdiocese’s seminary and earned an award for organizing monthly Masses for special-needs parishioners. A third is married to an attorney who is representing the archdiocese as it seeks bankruptcy protection. Yet another serves on an archdiocesan charity’s board.

Respectively, U.S. District Judges Wendy Vitter, Jay Zainey, Sarah Vance and Ivan Lemelle are four members of the federal bench in New Orleans who have recused themselves from clergy abuse lawsuits that were transferred to their courthouse after the church filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy on May 1.

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SAGINAW (MI)
MLive

May 12, 2020

By Cole Waterman

A man who says his job with the Catholic Diocese of Saginaw was impacted after he reported a sex-abuse complaint against a priest has filed a lawsuit against the diocese.

In the suit, Gabriel Villarreal alleges he was retaliated against by the diocese and its agents for reporting a relative had been assaulted by the Rev. Robert J. DeLand. A jury acquitted DeLand of charges related to the relative, but DeLand was convicted of sexual assaulting a different person in a separate case.

Villarreal is a maintenance worker for the diocese.

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ROCHESTER (NY)
Rochester Democrat and Chronicle

May 12, 2020

By Steve Orr

The one-year window for filing lawsuits over past acts of child sexual abuse has been extended by five months — except for claims against the Rochester diocese for misconduct by its priests.

New York’s Child Victims Act, approved by the state Legislature in early 2019, carved out a one-year period for reviving old child sexual abuse claims that had been barred the statute of limitations. That one-year window was to close Aug. 13.

But in an executive order prompted by the coronavirus pandemic, Gov. Andrew Cuomo on Friday extended the window for five months, to Jan. 13. The pandemic forced closure of the state’s courts in late March and ended filing of new lawsuits. It is not yet known when state courts will reopen.

The extension does not apply, however, to legal claims alleging past child sexual abuse by Catholic priests, brothers, deacons, nuns and other leaders in the Rochester diocese.

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PHILADELPHIA (PA)
Jewish Exponent

May 13, 2020

By Sophie Panzer

Lynne Abraham doesn’t quit.

In the midst of a global pandemic, the 79-year-old former Philadelphia District Attorney has commandeered her dining room table so that she can work from home. Social distancing has limited interviews to phone calls and email, but she paints a picture with her words.

“My dining room table is a dog’s breakfast — the same as any desk I’ve ever sat behind,” she noted.

Abraham is a partner at the law firm Archer & Greiner, P.C. This might come as a surprise to the firms who refused to hire women in 1965, the year she graduated from Temple Law School as one of two women in her class and had difficulty finding work. Even more surprising might be her four terms as the city’s DA and her 2015 mayoral campaign.

She knew the odds were against her in many of her professional endeavors. It never stopped her from trying.

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CLEVELAND (OH)
Catholic News Service

May 13, 2020

By Dennis Sadowski

Advocates fighting human traffickers are alerting children, parents and vulnerable adults that the coronavirus pandemic has pushed traffickers into new venues, potentially endangering more people to being exploited.

Seemingly innocent online venues are becoming popular places for sex traffickers to groom unwitting children and entice adults facing financial turmoil because of the pandemic. The danger is leading the advocates to call for funding of anti-trafficking programs in any new federal legislation in response to the public health crisis.

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NASSAU COUNTY (NY)
JAA

May 13, 2020

(Nassau County, NY) – A Nassau County Court has denied the Diocese of Rockville Centre’s callous attempt to throw out 44 lawsuits filed by sexual abuse survivors under New York’s Child Victims Act.

Yesterday, Nassau County Supreme Court Judge Steven M. Jaeger issued an order denying the dozens of motions to dismiss filed by the diocese. Judge Jaeger rejected the diocese’s argument that the Child Victims Act was unconstitutional and violated its right to due process. Referencing the intent and actions of the New York legislature, Judge Jaeger concluded that the “Child Victims Act was a reasonable response to remedy the injustice of past sexual abuse.”

“This decision is huge in assuring survivors’ voices can be heard and children can be better protected,” said Attorney Jeff Anderson. “It’s time for reckoning in New York.”

Contact:
Jeff Anderson: 646.499.3364 (c), 646.759.2551 (o)
Mike Finnegan: 612.205.5531 (c), 646.759.2551 (o)
Trusha Goffe: 646.995.0616 (c), 646.759.2551 (o)

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ST. LOUIS
St. Louis Post Dispatch

May 12, 2020

By Steven Spaner

Regarding “Chaminade clergy abuse case challenges First Amendment protection for church officials accused of negligence” (May 6): In the United States, you can believe anything you want, but you can’t do anything you want. Religious freedom protects all belief, not all actions.

That’s why a case before the Missouri Supreme Court involving Chaminade College Preparatory School is so important. If the alleged victim in that case prevails, our state would help prevent and punish child sex crimes and cover-ups without infringing on spiritual beliefs.

A man alleges that Brother John Woulfe molested him at the school and that administrators knew or suspected Woulfe had hurt other youngsters before. In any other private school setting, such a case would move forward. But Catholic officials say no court can touch these allegations without infringing on the church’s First Amendment rights. That’s baloney.

Church figures can believe that child molesters should be forgiven. They can believe that predators can reform. But they can’t negligently put kids in harm’s way by ignoring or concealing known or suspected molesters and stop every judge or jury from even questioning their actions.

For the safety of our children, I hope our state’s highest court soon makes the church’s limitations crystal clear.

Steven Spaner • Marthasville

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JEFFERSON CITY (MO)
St. Louis Post Dispatch

May 6, 2020

By Nassim Benchaabane

The Missouri Supreme Court on Wednesday heard arguments in a sex abuse case that asks the court to break with a previous ruling protecting church officials from negligent supervision claims because courts deciding such claims could violate separation of church and state.

The lawsuit before the state’s top court claims now-deceased Marianist Brother John Woulfe sexually abused a Chaminade College Preparatory School student in 1971 while working as a guidance counselor at the school. The suit, first filed in 2015 in St. Louis County Circuit Court, alleges Marianist and Chaminade officials knew of the abuse and failed to stop it and that Woulfe previously had sexually assaulted at least one other boy at Chaminade.

Information in Woulfe’s file, the suit says, contained coded language indicating the Marianist Province knew Woulfe had abused minors before transferring him to Chaminade and also while he worked there, and that other students in the early 1970s reported Woulfe had sexually abused them.

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BUFFALO (NY)
WKBW-TV

May 12, 2020

7 Eyewitness News has been honored with a 2020 Regional Edward R. Murrow Award for its investigative series that looked into decades of sexual abuse cover-ups within the Diocese of Buffalo.

The award winning entry, “The Malone Recordings: The Tapes That Brought Down a Bishop,” was the result of months of investigative reporting by I-Team Chief Investigator Charlie Specht. The multiple stories were shot and edited by photojournalists Jeff Wick, Rob Neves and Patrick Merritt.

A 22-month investigation of the diocese revealed ongoing cover-ups of sexual abuse that led to state and federal investigations, spurred changes in New York State law, gave voices to survivors of abuse, and ultimately resulted in the resignation of Bishop Richard Malone.

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AUSTRALIA
Church Times (independent lay Anglican newspaper)

May 11, 2020

By Muriel Porter

CARDINAL George Pell had known of clergy paedophile activity at least as early as 1982 and possibly earlier, the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse said in findings released this week. The findings concerning Cardinal Pell, who was last month acquitted of charges of child sexual abuse by the Australian High Court (News, 9 April), had been redacted until Pell’s court processes had run their course.

The findings relate to Cardinal Pell’s conduct as priest in the Victorian diocese of Ballarat, where numerous cases of paedophile activity by Roman Catholic clergy occurred in the 1970s and ’80s. The Commission rejected Cardinal Pell’s evidence that he had not been told that the paedophile priest Gerald Ridsdale was being moved from his parish because of child sexual-abuse complaints. The Commission said that it was “implausible” that the then Bishop of Ballarat did not tell Pell and others in a meeting the real reason for Ridsdale’s move. The failure of Pell and others to advise the Bishop in relation to Ridsdale was unacceptable, the Commission said.

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UNITED STATES
Catholic News Agency

May 6, 2020

By JD Flynn

Well into the pandemic’s grip on American public life, parishes and dioceses are preparing a return to some new kind of normal.

Masses are resuming, albeit for small numbers in limited circumstances. Catholic schools and universities are making plans to reopen in the fall. Regrettably, even the ordinary fault lines and debates among Catholics, somewhat muted in recent months, are beginning to be revived.

But while some acute effects of the pandemic will still shape the Church in the months to come, the collapsing global economy will have a far more enduring and dramatic impact on parishes, chanceries, and other Catholic ministries.

In other words, barring some kind of miraculous economic recovery, the Church, at least in the U.S., ain’t seen nothin’ yet.

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AUSTRALIA
The Australian via CathNews(news outlet of the Australian Catholic Bishops’ Conference)

May 13, 2020

By John Ferguson, The Australian

The operation of the Victorian justice system should face a full review in the wake of the botched proceedings against Cardinal George Pell, according to the state’s Opposition. Source: The Australian.

Coalition legal affairs spokesman Edward O’Donohue said he had been inundated with complaints from Cardinal Pell supporters, opponents, victim groups and people shocked at the “unedifying ordeal”.

He said while the unanimous High Court decision was “clearly an embarrassment” for the majority on the Victorian Court of Appeal, he was not reflecting on it or decisions by the other courts. But he was concerned about key aspects of Cardinal Pell’s case and whether the justice system in Victoria had done its job.

This included the decision by police to advertise for, and encourage, complainants to come forward.

Mr O’Donohue said the decision to proceed with the investigation and lay char

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AUSTRALIA
Newsweekly (blog)

May 13, 2020

by Peter Westmore

Listen here to Peter Westmore in conversation with Australian Family Association national president Terri M. Kelleher on the release of the previously redacted parts of Cardinal George Pell’s answers to the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse.

Findings by the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse that Cardinal George Pell covered up allegations of child abuse in the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s are totally unsupported by the evidence, and constitute an abuse of power by the Commission. They could more accurately be described as accusations.

Nevertheless, the ABC and other sections of the media that for years have been running a vendetta against Cardinal Pell and were clearly unhappy that his conviction for child sex abuse had been overturned in a unanimous judgement of the High Court of Australia, reported the sensational claims at great length.

In doing so, they further trashed the reputation of the first Australian church leader seriously to deal with the problem of child sexual abuse, and the first to set up a redress scheme for victims over 20 years before the Royal Commission recommended such a body.

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NEW YORK
Catholic News Agency

May 13, 2020

In addition to providing a legal window, The Child Victims Act also adjusted the statute of limitations for pursuing criminal charges and civil suits against sexual abusers or institutions.

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo has issued an executive order to extend for five months the legal window for victims of childhood sex abuse to file civil claims, due to court delays caused by the coronavirus epidemic.

Victims of sex abuse may now file by Jan. 14, 2021 instead of August 13 of this year. Cuomo said May 8 the extension is needed “because people need access to the courts to make their claim, because justice too long delayed is justice denied,” the New York Daily News reports.

On March 22 non-essential court filings were frozen as part of New York’s efforts to limit the spread of the coronavirus. The court system is preparing to allow new filings under the state’s Child Victims Act.

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YORK (PA)
York Daily Record

May 13, 2020

By Candy Woodall

— Pediatricians and child protection advocates say lawmakers need to take immediate action to stop the abuse and save lives.

— Anyone who suspects a child is being abused or neglected should contact ChildLine at 1-800-932-0313

Pennsylvania hospitals are treating more children with severe child abuse injuries, indicating the state’s most vulnerable kids are not safe at home during the coronavirus outbreak.

Several advocates and pediatricians who specialize in child abuse say they are seeing an increase in the number of abused children who need to be hospitalized.

And in perhaps the most grim outlook, a Penn State pediatrician says “the worst is yet to come.”

“We’re worried we’re at the beginning of an onslaught of cases,” said Dr. Lori Frasier, chief of the child abuse pediatrics division at Penn State Children’s Hospital.

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SAGINAW (MI)
Catholic News Agency via Catholic World Report

May 12, 2020

An employee of the Diocese of Saginaw, Michigan is suing the diocese, alleging that his fellow employees retaliated against him after he reported that a Saginaw priest sexually abused his son.

Gabriel Villarreal, who had worked as a maintenance man for the diocese for over two decades, in March filed a lawsuit against the diocese alleging that Father Robert DeLand had molested his son during February 2018, which Villarreal reported.

The lawsuit alleges that after Villarreal reported the abuse, diocesan employees began to harass him, referring to him as “the mole [spy,]” cutting his hours and benefits, and taking away his master key.

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SAGINAW (MI)
Church Militant

May 12, 2020

by Christine Niles

An employee of the diocese of Saginaw, Michigan is suing after suffering retaliation for blowing the whistle on sex abuse.

Gabriel Villarreal has worked maintenance for the diocese for 26 years. In February 2018, his teenaged son informed him that Fr. Robert DeLand tried to sexually assault him at St. Agnes parish, where DeLand was pastor at the time.

DeLand is currently serving prison time for sexually abusing another young male victim. He was convicted in Sept. 2018 and is serving up to 15 years for his crimes.

Villarreal immediately reported DeLand’s attempted sexual assault to the diocese, but suffered retaliation from his superiors, according to a lawsuit filed March 16 this year.

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SAGINAW (MI)
MLive.com

May 12, 2020

By Cole Waterman

A man who says his job with the Catholic Diocese of Saginaw was impacted after he reported a sex-abuse complaint against a priest has filed a lawsuit against the diocese.

In the suit, Gabriel Villarreal alleges he was retaliated against by the diocese and its agents for reporting a relative had been assaulted by the Rev. Robert J. DeLand. A jury acquitted DeLand of charges related to the relative, but DeLand was convicted of sexual assaulting a different person in a separate case.

Villarreal is a maintenance worker for the diocese.

Detroit attorney Jonathan R. Marko in March filed the suit in Saginaw County Circuit Court on behalf of Villarreal. The suit is seeking at least $25,000, plus interest, attorney fees, and exemplary damages.

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NEW YORK (NY)
The New York Times

May 12, 2020

By Andrea Elliott

Sister Glose, who died from complications of the novel coronavirus, ran a nonprofit in Brooklyn and was a whistle-blower in a sex abuse scandal.

This obituary is part of a series about people who have died in the coronavirus pandemic. Read about others here.

If you passed Georgianna Glose on the streets of Fort Greene, Brooklyn, you might have known her as that renegade nun, the one who left her convent to live among the poor and then blew a whistle on sexual abuse in the Catholic Church.

She was a sister with movie-star looks who roller-skated to work, having shed the nun’s habit in 1972 for the curler-coiffed hairdo then in vogue (a look she stubbornly kept).

But if you were homeless, you probably knew her as Dr. Glose, the nun with a doctorate who, until last month, ran a nonprofit on Myrtle Avenue. It was there, for 24 years, that the downtrodden found an anchor in a gentrifying neighborhood.

Mothers on welfare, fathers on parole, grandparents struggling to raise their children’s children — they all had a haven with Sister Glose, taking her computer literacy classes, joining her support groups, feasting on her Thanksgiving turkey.

“She was able to live in both worlds: the world of making a difference for individual families and the world of making policy changes,” said Steven Banks, the city’s commissioner of social services.

Sister Glose died on April 28 at Brooklyn Hospital Center from complications of the new coronavirus, said her sister, Kathrine Dawson. She was 73.

Authority neither impressed nor deterred her. “If someone was misbehaving, especially a man in a position of power, she would say calmly and completely accurately, ‘That man is a horse’s ass,’” said Teresa Theophano, a social worker who interned with Sister Glose at her nonprofit, Fort Greene Strategic Neighborhood Action Partnership.

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NASHVILLE (TN)
Fox17

May 11, 2020

By Rachel Tiede

For the first time, minors are making up half of the victims receiving help from the National Sexual Assault Hotline.

According to RAINN (Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network), this is directly related to COVID-19.

The Sexual Assault Center in Nashville said it expects Middle Tennessee to see a similar trend. Right now, SAC said kids make up 35 percent of the population it serves.

Lorraine McGuire, the vice president of development and marketing at SAC, said there’s been fewer reports of sexual abuse. But she said that’s bad news.

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AUSTRALIA
Counterpunch

May 12, 2020

By Kenneth Good

In the long and still unfinished search for justice, two agencies have been outstanding. The Victorian Police performed dogged investigatory work, and the Royal Commission over five years compiled damning evidence. On 12 November 2012, Detective Chief Inspector Peter Fox called for the establishment of a Royal Commission. He was a 30-year veteran in Newcastle, and wrote an open letter to the NSW Premier: “I can testify from my own experience that the church covers-up, silencing victims, hinders police investigations, alerts offenders, destroys evidence and moves priests.” None of that stops at the Victorian border. “The whole system needs to be exposed; the clergy covering up these crimes must be brought to justice and the network protecting paedophile priests dismantled” (quoted in David Marr, The Prince). Backed by many Labour party backbenchers, and federal centrist politicians, PM Julia Gillard, the country’s first woman leader, moved to establish a Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse. Gillard faced constant misogynist attack from conservative figures, but did not flinch (Tony Abbott was ready to be photographed beside a huge poster, ‘Ditch the Bitch’). It was perhaps her ‘most lasting legacy’ (Louise Milligan, Cardinal). “It will change the nation”, Gillard claimed, as she left office.

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SILVER SPRING (MD)
Adventist Review

May 12, 2020

By Marcos Paseggi

Church region leaders work on developing protocols for supporting victims, dealing with perpetrators

Time and again, experts in sexual abuse remind us that one of the worst fears of victims is being ignored when seeking help. It is something, experts say, that can lead to extremely harmful and long-term health consequences.

In the context of church life and faith-based organizations, that breach of trust can be outright devastating.

Against this backdrop, leaders of the Seventh-day Adventist Church recently provided evidence that church regions (or divisions) are taking concrete steps to make sure church organizations and institutions will work unapologetically to prevent sexual abuse. At the same time, regional leaders pledged to keep working to craft detailed protocols to prevent or respond to any complaint of sexual abuse in the church.

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ROME (ITALY)
Catholic Herald

May 10, 2020

By Christopher Altieri

Conflicting claims have emerged over the way an investigation into a former auxiliary bishop in the US Archdiocese of Cincinnati was handled, casting further doubt over Church leaders’ commitment to the “responsibility, accountability, and transparency” supposed to be the watchwords of ecclesiastical efforts to combat abuse and coverup in the Francis era.

Pope Francis accepted Bishop Joseph Binzer’s resignation on Thursday, more than nine months after an investigation was opened into claims Binzer negligently handled allegations against a Cincinnati priest, of inappropriate behaviour with teenaged boys.

There are, in short, at least two different versions of how Church authorities handled the investigation. One version is from the Archbishop of Cincinnati, the other is from Rome. The two stories do not match.

The question the apparent discrepancy raises, is whether the Vatican used Pope Francis’s signature reform law, Vos estis lux mundi, designed to combat clerical abuse and especially abuse coverup, in order to investigate Bishop Binzer, on whose case the law seems tailor-made for use. For that reason, alone, question speaks directly to responsibility and accountability in hierarchical leadership culture.

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ABILENE (TX)
KTXS-TV

May 12, 2020

By Daniela Ibarra

Hours after former Abilene youth pastor Jeffrey Forrest was booked into the Taylor County Jail on Saturday, a mother who claims her son was assaulted by Forrest in the 90’s made the decision to come to Abilene.

“I don’t feel like the bars are big enough and the walls are tight enough for him,” said Patrice, who asked KTXS not to use her last name to protect her son.

Patrice said she felt compelled to make the four hour trip from Amarillo after learning the man she believes stole her son’s innocence was caught after a four year long manhunt.

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MARTINSVILE (VA)
WFXRtv.com

May 11, 2020

Father Mark White — a local priest who has been openly critical of the sex abuse scandal in the Catholic Church and was recently suspended — announced on his blog on Sunday that the locks were changed on two parishes and one residence to which he was assigned.

Back in February, Father White told reporters that he was ordered into silence by the Richmond Diocese Bishop Barry Knestout after he expressed criticism online of the church’s handling of sexual abuse cases.

However, by April, Father White announced the Richmond Diocese removed him as pastor from St. Francis of Assisi Parish in Rocky Mount and St. Joseph Parish in Martinsville. Father White’s parishioners stepped up to show their support for the priest amid his ongoing legal battle with the Richmond Diocese.

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UNITED KINGDOM
Newschain

May 11, 2020

Child sexual abuse is going widely unreported among the UK’s Heredi Jewish community because victims need the permission of a rabbi before they can go to the police, an inquiry has heard.

The Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse (IICSA) heard that the insular nature of strict orthodox Jews mean that children do not have “the language or the resources” to access help.

Yehudis Goldsobel, founder of charity Migdal Emunah – which provides sexual abuse advice and education to all Jews, told Haredi rabbis tend to learn about child safeguarding “on the job”.

Ms Goldsobel told the inquiry victims are shunned for speaking out, while perpetrators can usually return to the heart of their communities even after serving a prison sentence.

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YOUNGSTOWN (OH)
The Vindicator

May 12, 2020

By Bob Coupland and Guy Vogrin

A former Youngstown priest who had served at St. Edward Parish has been removed from a list of clergy members accused of sexual abuse.

The Catholic Diocese of Youngstown on Monday announced former Rev. William Smaltz was being removed from the list after further investigation and new information that allegations made earlier against him “are no longer deemed to be credible and substantiated.”

The former priest’s adult son, reached Monday night, said the alleged incident never happened, and the allegations have left his father distraught and under severe mental stress.

The diocese previously had compiled a list of names of clergy who were subject to credible allegations of sexual abuse against a minor. Smaltz’s name was first released as part of that list in October 2018.

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May 9, 2020

By Anne Barrett Doyle, Co-Director, BishopAccountability.org

A year ago, Pope Francis enacted new procedures for investigating bishops accused of abuse or of covering up clergy sex crimes.

Last Thursday, on May 7, one year to the day since Vos Estis Lux Mundi was promulgated, we learned of what appears to be its first removal of a complicit bishop.

A two-line announcement in the Vatican’s daily bulletin noted that the Pope had accepted the resignation of Bishop Joseph R. Binzer from the office of the auxiliary of the Cincinnati archdiocese. Lay Catholic media are reporting that Bishop Binzer was found guilty under Vos Estis, meaning that he was found guilty of intentionally interfering with or avoiding an investigation of an abusive cleric. We don’t know this for sure, however; neither the Pope nor his proxies have made any comment.

Some might point to Binzer’s resignation as a sign that Vos Estis is working. Seen differently, it reveals serious flaws in the Pope’s plan.

Despite repeatedly concealing allegations against a priest now slated to be tried for child rape, Binzer remains not only an archdiocesan priest, but a bishop, with the prestige and financial benefits that status entails.

Is this what passes for ‘accountability’ under the Pope’s new law? An opaque process, Vatican control, papal silence, and the softest of landings for an official who twice ignored allegations against a priest?

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NEW ORLEANS (LA)
NOLA.com

May 11, 2020

By Ramon Antonio Vargas

In a clear sign that he’s concerned about the potential of being criminally prosecuted, a retired New Orleans priest who is accused in a lawsuit of sexually molesting “countless” children invoked his constitutional rights against self-incrimination shortly before his deposition.

Lawrence Hecker, through his attorney, served notice March 13 — during the early days of New Orleans’ coronavirus pandemic — that he would essentially exercise his right to remain silent “from this point forward” in a lawsuit filed against him and the Archdiocese of New Orleans in April 2019, according to court records.

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NEW YORK (NY)
The New York Times

May 6, 2020

By Erica L. Green

Education Secretary Betsy DeVos released final regulations for schools dealing with sexual misconduct, giving them the force of law for the first time and bolstering due-process rights.

WASHINGTON — Education Secretary Betsy DeVos on Wednesday issued final regulations on sexual misconduct in education, delivering colleges and schools firm new rules on how they must deal with one of the biggest issues that have roiled their campuses for decades.

The rules fulfill one of the Trump administration’s major policy goals for Title IX, the 48-year-old federal law that prohibits sex discrimination in programs that receive federal funding, bolstering due-process protections for accused students while relieving schools of some legal liabilities. But Ms. DeVos extended the reach of the law in other ways, establishing dating violence as a sexual misconduct category that must be addressed and mandating supportive measures for alleged victims of assault.

Title IX had become a flash point in recent years after sexual assault cases rocked high-profile universities like Stanford and Duke, and serial sex abuse by staff at the University of Southern California, Michigan State and Ohio State demonstrated how schools had failed to properly investigate complaints.

But enforcement of the law has also grown contentious, especially since the Obama administration issued guidance documents in 2011 and 2014 that advised schools to ramp up investigations of misconduct and warned that their failure to do so could bring serious consequences. Critics said schools felt pressured to side with accusers without extending sufficient rights to the accused. And dozens of students have won court cases against their colleges for violating their rights under the Obama-era rules.

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WASHINGTON (DC)
The Washington Post

May 10, 2020

By Michelle Boorstein

A months-long standoff between a Catholic bishop in Virginia and a priest who blogs frequent, strident criticism of the church’s handling of clergy sexual abuse has boiled over, with the diocese suspending the priest from ministry and changing parish and residence locks where he was assigned, the priest said Saturday.

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NEW JERSEY
SNAP

May 7, 2020

A deacon from New Jersey who was convicted and jailed in 2017 for sexually abusing a minor was released on May 5th , perhaps because of COVID-19. Now that this dangerous man is back on the streets we call on the Catholic officials who educated, trained, and ordained him to take extra steps to warn the community about him.

Deacon Joseph Prioli abused at least one child from the time she was 10 to 17 years old. During that time, he was also working as teacher at the Christian Brothers Academy and was a deacon at his local church, positions that would give him easy access to vulnerable children. Clearly, the courts believed that Deacon Prioli would continue to be a risk to children even after getting out of jail because his 2017 sentence prohibits him from living in a household with minor children for the rest of his life.

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YOUNGSTOWN (OH)
Mahoning Matters

May 11, 2020

The Catholic Diocese of Youngstown announced today that William Smaltz’s name has been removed from the list of clergy in the diocese against whom credible, substantiated allegations of sexual abuse of a minor have been made.

After further inquiry and consideration of additional and new information, the allegations are not deemed credible and substantiated, the diocese said in a news release.

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UNITED STATES
CNN

May 11, 2020

By Ariane de Vogue

The Supreme Court on Monday will tackle a dispute concerning two teachers who sought to file employment discrimination claims against the religious schools that fired them.

Seven years ago, the Supreme Court recognized a “ministerial exception” for the first time, holding that under the First Amendment the government could not interfere with a church’s hiring decisions. The justices held that the teacher in that case could be considered a “minister” under the law, triggering the exception.

Now the justices will address the scope of that decision and whether it bars teachers — who say they have limited religious duties — from bringing suit.

Like those last week, the oral arguments will be held remotely by telephone with audio broadcast live to the public.

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NEW YORK (NY)
Crux

May 11, 2020

By Christopher White

Governor Andrew Cuomo has extended the state’s lookback window for victims of abuse to file civil lawsuits until January 14, 2021 due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

The New York Child Victims Act (CVA) took effect last August and extends the statute of limitations for abuse victims which had originally allowed for a one-year window in which victims could bring suit. Further, the legislation extended the statute of limitations for civil claims, now allowing survivors to file a claim until they are 55 years old. In January, a similar window allowing for two years took effect in New Jersey.

Given that courts have been closed for nearly two months, the governor said on Friday that he would extend the special period into 2021.

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AUSTRALIA
Sydney Morning Herald

May 10, 2020

By Farrah Tomazin

After almost two years as Archbishop of Melbourne Peter Comensoli remains an elusive figure to many Catholics, and a study in contrasts to the wider public.

It’s August 2018, and Peter Comensoli is standing on a stage in a packed city restaurant, daring to do something none of his predecessors have ever done: subject himself to the scrutiny of the Melbourne Press Club.

After a wide-ranging speech, the newly installed Archbishop of Melbourne agrees to take questions.

That’s when he meets Eileen Piper, then 93, brandishing a large photograph of her dead daughter lying in her coffin.

Stephanie Piper was 32 when she killed herself in 1994, after informing authorities that she had been raped and assaulted as a child by Father Gerard Mulvale, a priest from the Catholic Pallottine order.

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PITTSBURGH (PA)
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

May 10, 2020

By Peter Smith

The criminal complaint against the Amish bishop is clear about how he learned of a church member’s alleged sexual assault on three young teenage girls:

“John G. Beiler confessed the sexual assault incidents to Bishop Levi S. Esh Sr.,” says the complaint, pending in Lancaster County and filed by Pequea police in April.

“Confessed.” Whether the case moves forward could hinge on that word.

In April, Pequea police charged Mr. Esh, 63, with felony and misdemeanor charges of failing to report suspected child abuse to authorities after Mr. Beiler allegedly confessed to the sexual assaults.

The case is believed to be the first in Lancaster County — hub of the nation’s largest population of Amish — in which one of their spiritual leaders is charged with violating a Pennsylvania law that includes clergy among those mandated to report suspected child abuse.

But Pennsylvania law allows a privilege, or exemption, for clergy who learn about suspected abuse in “confidential communications” while in the course of their “duties.”

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John M. Shuster: September 18, 1951 ~ February 7, 2020 [Obituary]

WASHINGTON
Haven of Rest Gig Harbor

[Note: John Shuster dedicated much of his life to clergy sex abuse survivors. Following a brief stint in the clerical priesthood, he went on to serve as a vice president of CITI Ministries and a longtime leader of the Seattle chapter of Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAP). In his work with SNAP, he developed a healing model for adults who needed spiritual guidance and counseling as a result of being abused as children. John passed away in February. He is greatly missed.]

John M. Shuster, Port Orchard, was born September 18, 1951 in Pittsburgh, PA to Andrew and Catherine (Miller) Shuster. He passed away from complications of a stroke on February 7, 2020 at St. Joseph Hospital in Tacoma.

John was ordained in 1979 by Bishop Joseph Francis to serve as a priest in the Roman Catholic missionary order, the Society of the Divine Word (SVD). He graduated from the Catholic Theological Union in Chicago in 1980 with a Masters of Divinity with specialization in cross-cultural ministry. During his four years as a celibate priest, he served in Mexico, and at parishes in East Los Angeles and South Central L.A. Due to his seeing the alarming disfunction that was present in the church, John left the clerical priesthood 1983, and began selling medical instrumentation. He had a successful career as a senior salesman of medical diagnostics at Abbott Laboratories, and retired in 2010.

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BROOKLYN (NY)
The Tablet (newspaper for the Brooklyn diocese)

May 8, 2020

By Monsignor Steven Aguggia

The crisis of sexual abuse of minors coming to light in the past two decades has taught us many things. In so many ways, the Church has learned how to understand and deal with this horrible scourge which harms so many, both victims and the whole Church, the Body of Christ. Those who are accused of sexual abuse of minors, especially the clergy, are subject to clear and stringent norms to investigate and adjudicate their crimes. The Charter for the Protection of Children and Young People is a set of procedures that the United States Bishops established in 2002 to address the allegations of sexual abuse of minors by some clergy. The Charter was revised in 2005, 2011 and in 2018. Topics addressed in the Charter include healing from abuse and the prevention of future acts of abuse. The Dallas Charter and the accompanying Norms govern the investigation of the crimes of sexual abuse of minors by priests and deacons. Over time, it became clear that it was necessary to create and implement Norms to direct the investigation of allegations against Bishops, as well. The Norms, issued by our Holy Father, Pope Francis, in May of 2019, are entitled Vos Estis Lux Mundi (“You are the Light of the World”).

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AUSTRALIA
Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC)

May 10, 2020

By Matt Neal

Key points:
– Clergy abuse survivor Paul Levey has started a petition calling for Cardinal George Pell to be defrocked
– The petition has attracted 32,000 signatures in 48 hours
– Mr Levey created the petition following the release of the Royal Commission’s previously redacted findings, which Cardinal Pell says weren’t supported by evidence

A petition started by a clergy abuse survivor has received more than 30,000 signatures supporting his call for Cardinal George Pell to be defrocked.

Paul Levey, who was abused by convicted paedophile priest Gerald Ridsdale, began the Change.org petition on Friday and said he was surprised by the response.

“The first night I went to bed and it was at 600 and I thought that was fantastic. Now, I think it’s around 32,000 signatures,” Mr Levey said.

Mr Levey was 13 when he was sent to live with Ridsdale in the presbytery in Mortlake, in south-west Victoria, where he was abused daily for six months.

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AUSTRALIA
Sydney Morning Herald

May 8, 2020

By Barney Zwartz

It may be possible – remotely – as Cardinal George Pell claims, that he did not know about the crimes of paedophile Gerald Ridsdale until much later than the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse thinks he did. But if so, it must have required the most herculean effort, the most Nelsonian blind eye, to avoid something so well known that priests in Ballarat and Melbourne were gossiping about it.

But Nelson turning his blind eye to the telescope at the Battle of Copenhagen in 1801 was a matter of national heroism. Pell’s blind eye served only himself, and at a huge cost to victims, their families, and the professionals who tried to intervene.

For the young and ambitious Pell, a priest in Ballarat clearly destined for high office, knew one thing: whistle-blowers don’t go on to glorious careers in the institutions they hold to account. Embarrass the church, and you can forget about a cardinal’s red hat and a vital Vatican role.

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AUSTRALIA
BBC

May 7, 2020

Cardinal George Pell knew of child sexual abuse by priests in Australia as early as the 1970s but failed to take action, a landmark inquiry found.

The findings on Cardinal Pell – an ex-Vatican treasurer – come from Australia’s royal commission into child sexual abuse, which ended in 2017.

Details were only revealed on Thursday. A court had previously redacted the report because the cleric was facing child abuse charges at the time.

The cardinal has denied the findings.

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AUSTRALIA
The Guardian

May 8, 2020

By Melissa Davey

The cardinal maintains he didn’t know about the Victorian town’s notorious paedophile priests, a claim the royal commission found ‘implausible’

“Why isn’t all of Australia talking about what happened here in Ballarat?”

That’s the question Clare Linane remembers asking her husband, Peter Blenkiron, 12 years ago as they were sitting in the kitchen talking about his abuse. Linane’s husband, brother and cousin had all been abused when they were children between 1973 and 1974 by Christian Brother and now convicted paedophile Edward “Ted” Dowlan. They knew they were among thousands of people living in and around Ballarat – Victoria’s largest inland city – who had been affected by child sexual abuse perpetrated by clergy.

On Thursday, Australia’s five-year inquiry into child sexual abuse in Australian institutions published its findings about Ballarat in full, more than two years after its inquiry was complete. Previously, a heavily redacted version of the report had been published, missing details about Cardinal George Pell and what he knew about abuse in the town located about 100km north-west of Melbourne. At the time Pell was working in the diocese, Ballarat was home to some of the Catholic church’s, and Australia’s, most notorious paedophile priests. Survivor groups say at least 50 suicides in the town over the past few decades are the result of clergy abuse.

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ST. LOUIS (MO)
StlToday.com

May 9, 2020

Darrin Patrick, who co-founded The Journey megachurch in St. Louis, died Thursday (May 7, 2020) while target shooting with a friend, according to a news release from South Carolina-based Seacoast Church, where Mr. Patrick was a teaching pastor. He was 49 and lived in Webster Groves.

In 2002, Mr. Patrick and his wife, Amie, started The Journey in the Southwest Garden neighborhood with 30 members. The church now has five locations in the St. Louis area. By 2016, it was drawing 4,000 worshipers to its weekend services, and Mr. Patrick also was serving as the chaplain for the St. Louis Cardinals.

In the spring of that year, Mr. Patrick was fired from the church for what its leaders viewed as pastoral misconduct.

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AUSTRALIA
Crikey.com

May 11, 2020

By David Hardaker

Where does it leave the justice system if the highest court in the land says a jury isn’t capable of working out what it should believe?

There was a time in the not-so-distant past when a priest was the first person you would believe. Now? Not so much.

The royal commission into, among others, the Catholic Church and Cardinal George Pell, has killed that off. Then-prime minister Julia Gillard’s decision to bring it on in 2012 triggered an eight-year unravelling which reached its endpoint with the judges of the High Court and the royal commission now delivering their final verdicts.

In the space of four weeks, we’ve learnt there was a “significant possibility” that Pell was innocent of charges that he committed child sex abuse, but that he was most guilty of allowing predator priests to keep abusing children under the church’s care.

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AUSTRALIA
Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC)

May 10, 2020

By Jessica Longbottom

Key points:
— Attempts to prosecute other senior Catholics for knowing about clergy abuse have failed
— Mandatory reporting laws didn’t come into effect in Victoria until 2014
— Victoria Police says it will examine the royal commission’s findings
— It found Cardinal Pell was aware of general allegations that children were being abused in the Ballarat diocese from 1973.

After a two-year wait, the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses into Child Sexual Abuse has released its findings on what Cardinal George Pell knew about clergy abuse.

It also found that he was told that paedophile priest Gerard Ridsdale was being moved because of his alleged sexual abuse of children at a meeting in 1982.

The royal commission found that later on, as he rose through the ranks in the Archdiocese of Melbourne, Cardinal Pell should have advocated for the removal of paedophile priest Peter Searson when he received a list of allegations of bizarre behaviour by him in 1989.

The royal commission found that later on, as he rose through the ranks in the Archdiocese of Melbourne, Cardinal Pell should have advocated for the removal of paedophile priest Peter Searson when he received a list of allegations of bizarre behaviour by him in 1989.

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WASHINGTON (DC)
Washington Post

May 9, 2020

By Michelle Boorstein

A months-long standoff between a Catholic bishop in Virginia and a priest who blogs frequent, strident criticism of the church’s handling of clergy sexual abuse has boiled over, with the bishop this week suspending the priest from ministry and issuing a trespass order demanding he leave the parish residence by Saturday.

The Rev. Mark White, who has been assigned to two southwest Virginia parishes, is refusing to leave, saying Richmond Bishop Barry Knestout is the one violating canon law by not giving more details about what Knestout considers White’s wrongdoing and by not waiting for an appeal to the Vatican to play out.

White on Friday was consulting with his lawyer to figure out his options if the diocese changes locks at the parish residences at St. Joseph in Martinsville and St. Francis of Assisi in Rocky Mount, two half-English, half-Spanish parishes of about 400 families each. White was pastor to the two parishes from 2011 until April 13, when Knestout ordered him transferred to prison ministry in the midst of their conflict. White told The Post he is waiting for the appeal and is not leaving.

The dispute between the two men has been watched by the hundreds and sometimes thousands who read White’s blog, which is a mix of homilies and spiritual musings and frequent lambasting of church officials from Knestout to Pope Francis to disgraced ex-cardinal Theodore McCarrick, who ordained White in May 2003.

While a priest being removed by a bishop isn’t unusual, the White-Knestout standoff taps into remaining deep mistrust and anger over the McCarrick scandal and how few bishops and cardinals have been held accountable for his long rise — particularly those who have worked along the New York-New Jersey-Washington, D.C. corridor where rumors of McCarrick’s sexual misbehavior percolated for decades.

The case also reflects the challenge posed to the world’s largest church — one accustomed to tight, top-down control — by the power of social media. The Vatican is increasingly calling social media an essential part of ministry and evangelization, but metrics of what is effective vs. what is divisive are growing more subjective. White had paused his blog last fall at Knestout’s order but restarted it in March because of the coronavirus shutdown, saying online ministering is crucial while parishes and Mass are shut off.

“I can’t recall a case when a pastor was removed because he was blogging,” said Kurt Martens, a canon law expert at Catholic University. “Blogging is a new way of ministry, so how do you stop a priest?”

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MARTINSVILLE (VA)
Martinsville Bulletin

May 9, 2020

The relationships within the hierarchy of the Roman Catholic Church are strict and complicated. They are founded in a structure and formality that eludes those who didn’t grow up under the church and its papal sovereignty, and their complexities can be daunting in trying to understand decisions, practices and reactions.

But the one simple aspect of that structure that is without question is the church’s foundation in the principles of Jesus Christ, its purchase in the deep meaning and subtexts of Scripture.

If is for the latter and not the former that the dispute between Father Mark White and his boss the Rev. Barry Knestout, the bishop of the Catholic Diocese of Richmond, appears not only perplexing but just so ridiculously unnecessary.

You likely have read the many words published about the conflict that has led Bishop Knestout to remove Father White in all facets except title as the pastor of St. Joseph’s in Martinsville and St. Francis of Assisi in Rocky Mount.

This began because Father White, disturbed by the way the church handled the sexual abuse charges against Cardinal McCarrick, the priest who ordained him, deigned to write in his blog about those feelings. Father White didn’t measure the tone in his comments, frankly and reasonably questioning the transparency and appropriateness of decision-making of the church all the way to the Vatican in Rome. He is not alone among Catholics in questioning this festering blemish on the church’s image.

Bishop Knestout told Father White to discontinue his blog or else. Father White did. Then the pandemic hit, and Mass was canceled, and Father White resumed the blog as a means to communicate with his flock. He asked for permission to do so and said he received silence. But this dispute has not been carried out in silence.

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NEW ORLEANS (LA)
Times-Picayune / New Orleans Advocate

May 6, 2020

By Ramon Antonio Vargas

Accused of sexually molesting a boy he taught before he become a priest, Paul Calamari walked into New Orleans Archbishop Alfred Hughes’ office on Feb. 5, 2004, to discuss what might be ahead.

The Catholic church had only recently been rocked by the sexual-abuse scandal in Boston. Bishops across the U.S. were dealing with allegations in their dioceses, and New Orleans was no different. Calamari ultimately chose to retire, and he began receiving a monthly pension of $1,566 from the archdiocese — which later rose to more than $2,500 a month, according to court records.

The archdiocese slashed the amount by several hundred dollars during the spring of 2019, citing “significant” budget issues.

But after the archdiocese petitioned for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection last week, U.S. District Judge Meredith Grabill ordered the organization to stop paying priests who — like Calamari — are credibly accused child molesters.

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NEW ORLEANS (LA)
Times-Picayune / New Orleans Advocate

May 8, 2020

By Ramon Antonio Vargas

Board said plaintiff agreeably resigned to avoid appearance of conflict of interest, but plaintiff says he felt forced out

The leader of the board of directors for one of the Archdiocese of New Orleans’ various ministries resigned his post recently after claiming in a lawsuit against the church that he was molested by one of its priests decades ago.

The plaintiff — whom The Times-Picayune | New Orleans Advocate is not identifying because he’s a victim of sex abuse — spoke out about his case after an April 30 letter from the ministry to his fellow board members said he had agreed to resign to avoid “at least the appearance of a conflict of interest.”

But the plaintiff said he had hoped to remain on the board and resigned under duress. He didn’t believe there was a conflict because the board is incorporated separately from the archdiocese’s administrative offices, which filed for federal bankruptcy protections on May 1, citing the financial fallout from clerical abuse lawsuits and the coronavirus pandemic.

*

The plaintiff’s case dates back to when he entered the fifth grade at St. Ann School in Metairie in 1980, according to records filed in Orleans Parish Civil District Court. One day that academic year, the plaintiff was behind the church rectory when he encountered James Collery, a Spiritan order member who was originally from Ireland and had just been transferred there.

Collery was pretending to tuck in the boy’s T-shirt when he used his hand to fondle the plaintiff’s genitals and penetrate him, the lawsuit alleged. The plaintiff, who served as an altar boy, said Collery, who died in 1987, molested him in similar fashion after catching the boy alone in the sacristy a couple of other times.

Despite the abuse, the plaintiff clung to his Catholic faith as he grew up and began serving on numerous charitable boards and committees associated with the archdiocese. He said he had been in those roles for a number of years when, in 2013, he decided to privately report Collery’s assaults to the archdiocese — specifically, to Archbishop Gregory Aymond, for whom the plaintiff had once been an altar boy.

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BUFFALO (NY)
WKBW

May 6, 2020

By Charlie Specht

Memo reveals Fr. Paul Salemi case

Paul Salemi graduated from Christ the King Seminary and became a priest in the Diocese of Buffalo in 2000.

But after serving at churches in Hamburg and Lancaster, and at St. Gregory the Great in Amherst, former Bishop Richard Malone quietly put Salemi on administrative leave in 2012.

Salemi never returned from that leave of absence and moved to the South. But he stayed on the diocesan payroll until last week, when the diocese announced it was removing from its payroll 23 priests with substantiated sexual abuse allegations.

Many parishioners in the last year have reached out to the 7 Eyewitness News I-Team wondering what happened to Fr. Salemi. They say they were told he had an anger problem, but internal documents show Salemi was also accused of sexual misconduct against a young man he met through his duties as a priest.

The most comprehensive account was written by Lawrence Vilardo, who is now a federal judge in Buffalo. In 2012, he was law partners with Terry Connors, longtime lawyer for the diocese, and wrote a memo to Connors that was obtained by the I-Team.

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ALBANY (NY)
Times-Union

May 6, 2020

By Cayla Harris

Albany – Advocates for survivors of sexual abuse are denouncing the Buffalo Diocese this week after the institution, temporarily headed by Albany Bishop Edward B. Scharfenberger, moved forward with two legal filings that activists say diminish victims’ experiences and could allow the diocese to dodge consequences for decades of alleged abuse and cover-up.

The most recent filing on Tuesday was a lawsuit against the federal Small Business Administration for denying the diocese’s application for relief under the CARES Act because of its ongoing bankruptcy proceedings. It followed a separate legal action on Saturday in bankruptcy court, in which the diocese argued that all cases filed against the institution under the state’s Child Victims Act, including those that also name local parishes and schools, should be permanently suspended.

Last summer, the act opened a one-year “look-back” window allowing survivors of sexual abuse to pursue previously time-barred cases against their alleged offenders. The Buffalo Diocese, the most-named defendant in claims filed under the act, is facing more than 250 actions.

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NEW YORK (NY)
Daily News

May 8, 2020

By Denis Slattery

Albany – New Yorkers who were sexually assaulted as children will have a little more time to take legal action against their alleged abusers.

Gov. Cuomo on Friday extended a “look back window” created as part of the Child Victims Act last year that allows survivors abused as kids, to file civil suits beyond the normal statute of limitations.

The one-year window, which was slated to expire in August, will be extended until Jan. 14 in response to the coronavirus crisis’ impact on the state court system, the governor said during a briefing Friday at the Murray Student Center at Marist College in Poughkeepsie.

“Because of the reduction in court services we want to extend that window and we’ll extend it for an additional five months,” Cuomo said. “Because people need access to the courts to make their claim, because justice too long delayed is justice denied.”

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BUFFALO (NY)
Spectrum News

May 8, 2020

By Fadia Patterson

Governor Cuomo is giving survivors an additional five months to file a civil claim against abusers under the Child Victims Act.

Attorney Steve Boyd, who is representing many survivors of child sexual abuse, says that when the Child Victims Act passed, New York had the shortest look-back window of a year. Because the COVID-19 pandemic, Gov. Cuomo has ordered an extension of the deadline for survivors to pursue legal action from August 13 to January 14.

“When the crisis hit and the courts closed down the filing system, people were not allowed to file,” said Boyd. “People who could’ve filed lawsuits between then, they filed lawsuits. I think it’s in a sense of general fairness. It’s a good thing that the governor has extended the time.”

While waiting on the reopening of the court filing system, Boyd says he’s still gathering information from those who do want to file a lawsuit. For those looking to sue the Buffalo Roman Catholic Diocese, Boyd lays out how this extension and the diocese’s bankruptcy proceedings will affect cases against clergy.

“There are several different tracks,” adds Boyd. “The Diocese of Rochester filed bankruptcy late last summer. In those cases the proof of claims form, the deadline for those is still August 13, 2020. Buffalo Diocese has filed bankruptcy, they have not yet set a bar date or a deadline to put the claims in. And then there are cases that don’t involve the diocese of Rochester or Buffalo. For those cases, people will have until January 14 to file a claim.”

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MANASSAS (VA)
CatholicCulture.org – Trinity Publications

May 7, 2020

By Phil Lawler

An Australian royal commission has found that Cardinal George Pell was aware of sexual abuse in the 1970s “but failed to take action.” Cardinal Pell says that he is “surprised” by that finding, and observes quite accurately that the evidence against him is very thin.

But even if the commission’s finding is accurate—and keep in mind that it is in dispute—that finding does not justify making Cardinal Pell the scapegoat for the sex-abuse scandal in Australia. What he did (if he did it) is what most bishops did—but at the most relevant times, he wasn’t a bishop!

The abuse in question occurred in the 1970s. Cardinal Pell was not appointed as a bishop until 1987. Even then he was an auxiliary in Melbourne, acting as an assistant to Archbishop Thomas Little, rather than making policy decisions for his own diocese. He became Archbishop of Melbourne in 1996. The BBC report on the royal commission’s finding says that he “failed to take action” against abusers. But as a parish priest he did not have authority to take action. The worst that could be said is that he did not urge the archbishop to take action.

It is alleged that Pell was aware of abuse by the notorious ex-priest Gerald Ridsdale in the 1970s and early 1980s. But it is an established fact that the late Bishop Ronald Mulkearns of Ballarat moved Ridsdale from one parish to another to cover the abusive priest’s trail. Here the worst that can be said (and again, Pell disputes it) is that Pell, a parish priest, was aware that his superior, a bishop, had covered up abuse. Literally hundreds of Catholic priests could be indicted on the same charge.

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ALBANY (NY)
Times-Union

May 7, 2020

By Cayla Harris

New claims have been frozen during pandemic

The state court system will make an exception to allow new filings under the Child Victims Act “in the next few weeks,” even as other non-essential filings remain frozen during the pandemic, a spokesman for the state Office of Court Administration said Thursday.

“We will not deny those litigants the ability to file,” the spokesman, Lucian Chalfen, said in an email.

The exception, first reported by the New York Law Journal, comes amid growing calls from survivors and advocates to extend the act’s one-year “look-back” period that is set to expire in August. The window has resulted in more than 1,700 lawsuits filed by individuals who had previously been time-barred from lodging claims against their alleged sexual abusers. But court filings were paused in March as the coronavirus pandemic effectively shut down the state court system.

It is unclear whether alleged survivors will be able to make up for lost filing time during the pandemic; Chalfen said any extension of the window would require executive or legislative action. Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo issued an executive order in March suspending statutes of limitations during the state of emergency, but there is uncertainty among lawyers and legal experts as to whether that moratorium also applies to the Child Victims Act’s one-year window.

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CANTON (NY)
North Country Public Radio

May 9, 2020

By Karen DeWitt

Gov. Andrew Cuomo is extending a one-year look-back window for victims of childhood sexual abuse to file lawsuits for an additional five months, to mid-January.

The governor announced the change at his daily coronavirus briefing, where he also said his health officials are looking into a new related illness in children that killed a 5-year-old boy on Thursday.

The Child Victims Act opened a one-year window for New Yorkers who were sexually abused as children that lifts the statute of limitations to file civil suits against their alleged abusers. It was set to expire in mid-August, but because the courts have been virtually closed since March, many people have been unable to proceed with their legal actions.

Cuomo said victims will now have until Jan. 14 to sue.

“People need access to the courts to make their claim,” Cuomo said.

Sponsors of the original measure had sought to extend the look-back window for another full year.

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SAN ANTONIO (TX)
News 4 WOAI

May 8, 2020

Helotes, Texas – The Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAP) is asking why a priest at a local church has not come forward after being accused of sending sexually inappropriate texts.

According to a letter from San Antonio Archbishop Gustavo Garcia Siller, Monsignor Carlos Davalos was removed as pastor of Our Lady of Guadalupe Catholic Church in Helotes.

The letter went out April 30, but others wonder where he is now.

“The church did the right thing by removing him,” Patti Koo, SNAP San Antonio Volunteer Chapter Leader, said. “However, they could go a step further and let us know where he’s at. Is he somewhere in San Antonio near a school, near public places where children might be? So, that’s our concern.”

Archbishop Garcia Siller says there have been no other allegations of misconduct against Davalos.

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MELBOURNE (VICTORIA AUSTRALIA)
The Age

May 8, 2020

By Chip Le Grand and Farrah Tomazin

The Catholic Church is facing hundreds of civil claims by victims of clerical sex abuse, bolstered by the royal commission’s findings about Cardinal George Pell’s role in the “catastrophic failure of leadership” in the Ballarat diocese.

The royal commission’s finding that Cardinal Pell knew nearly 40 years ago of the church’s practice of shifting notorious paedophile Gerald Ridsdale to different parishes to avoid scandal is likely to bolster the cases of abuse survivors who must demonstrate a breach of duty of care to successfully sue the church.

A separate finding that Cardinal Pell in 1974 dismissed a plea by a St Patrick’s College student to stop Christian Brother Edward Dowlan abusing other boys at the school will strengthen the compensation claims of people subsequently molested by the convicted child sex offender, their lawyers say.

One victim expressed his disappointment that Cardinal Pell and other church leaders were not going to take responsibility for the harm that “could [and] should have been stopped”.

A deluge of civil claims against the church and its entities has prompted the Supreme Court to establish a specialised Institutional Liability List to administer lawsuits relating to child sex abuse.

The new list includes claims for damages arising from the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse as well as the Victorian Inquiry into the Handling of Child Abuse by Religious and Other Organisations. At the end of April, there were 347 cases on the list.

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CAMBRIDGE (MA)
Harvard Crimson

May 8, 2020

By Isabel L. Isselbacher

After more than a year of reviewing comments on a draft of the new guidelines, U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos released the highly-anticipated Title IX rule Wednesday. The new rule offers a narrow definition of sexual misconduct and imposes new guidelines for schools’ Title IX procedures.

Title IX, a law that prohibits discrimination on the basis of sex in educational institutions that receive federal funding, underpins universities’ sexual harassment prevention and adjudication policies across the country.

The new regulations — which were first released as a draft in November 2018 — shift the definition of sexual misconduct to “unwelcome conduct that is so severe, pervasive, and objectively offensive.” Previous Obama-era guidance defined sexual harassment as “unwelcome conduct of a sexual nature” that includes “requests for sexual favors, and other verbal, nonverbal, or physical conduct of a sexual nature.”

The new rule encompasses “all of a school’s education programs or activities,” both on and off campus. However, for a complaint to be addressed under the new policy, the alleged sexual misconduct must have taken place on-campus or, if off-campus, in the context of a school-sponsored activity, building, or event in which the institution has “substantial control.”

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ROCHESTER (NY)
WHAM 13 ABC

May 8, 2020

[In the video on this webpage of Cuomo’s daily COVID-19 presentation, the announcement of the window extension comes at 13:20.]

Gov. Andrew Cuomo says New York is extending the window to file claims under the Child Victims Act as a result of the coronavirus pandemic.

During his daily briefing Friday at Murray Student Center at Marist College in Poughkeepsie, Cuomo said the window to file claims has been extended to January 14.

The CVA gave survivors of child sexual abuse a one-year window to file civil claims through August. Because courts have been closed amid the pandemic, Cuomo said the state will extend that window.

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NEW YORK (NY)
New York Times

May 7, 2020

By Livia Albeck-Ripka

The cardinal, whose sexual abuse conviction was overturned last month, knew decades ago that priests had victimized children but failed to take action, a government inquiry concluded.

Melbourne, Australia – Cardinal George Pell, the Australian prelate whose sexual abuse conviction was overturned last month, knew decades ago that other Roman Catholic priests had sexually abused children but failed to take action, an Australian government inquiry found.

That conclusion was reached in 2017 by the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse, which issued a lengthy report on the victimization of children within the Catholic Church and other institutions in Australia. But its findings about Cardinal Pell were redacted from the original report to avoid prejudicing potential jurors in the cardinal’s pending trials on sexual abuse charges.

Cardinal Pell, who had been the Vatican’s chief financial officer and an adviser to Pope Francis, was found guilty in 2018 of sexually abusing two 13-year-old boys in 1996, making him the highest-ranking Catholic leader to be convicted of a crime in the church’s sexual abuse crisis. But Australia’s highest court overturned the conviction last month, saying that there was “a significant possibility” that he was not guilty.

That decision cleared the way for the release of the Royal Commission’s findings about Cardinal Pell from its 2017 report, which were made public on Thursday.

The commission found that the cardinal had been “conscious of child sexual abuse by clergy” as long ago as the 1970s, when he was a priest in the diocese of Ballarat, and that he had failed to report priests who were suspected of abuse.

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MARTINSVILLE (VA)
Associated Press

May 6, 2020

A Catholic priest in Virginia has been suspended of all priestly duties from the two parishes he leads in southwestern Virginia.

The suspension is the latest development in the ongoing dispute between Father Mark White and the Bishop of Richmond. White had maintained a well-known blog that was critical of the church’s handling of the sexual abuse scandal.

The Martinsville Bulletin reports that Bishop Barry Knestout announced the suspension on Wednesday. It means that White is prohibited from practicing ministry, including the public celebration of the sacraments.

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NEW ORLEANS (LA)
Times-Picayune / New Orleans Advocate

May 6, 2020

By Ramon Antonio Vargas

Accused of sexually molesting a boy he taught before he become a priest, Paul Calamari walked into New Orleans Archbishop Alfred Hughes’ office on Feb. 5, 2004, to discuss what might be ahead.

The Catholic church had only recently been rocked by the sexual-abuse scandal in Boston. Bishops across the U.S. were dealing with allegations in their dioceses, and New Orleans was no different. Calamari ultimately chose to retire, and he began receiving a monthly pension of $1,566 from the archdiocese — which later rose to more than $2,500 a month, according to court records.

The archdiocese slashed the amount by several hundred dollars during the spring of 2019, citing “significant” budget issues.

But after the archdiocese petitioned for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection last week, U.S. District Judge Meredith Grabill ordered the organization to stop paying priests who — like Calamari — are credibly accused child molesters.

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VATICAN CITY
Associated Press

May 7, 2020

A Roman Catholic bishop in Cincinnati has resigned after not going to his superiors with concerns about a priest who now is set to be tried on charges that he raped a boy.

Pope Francis recently accepted the resignation of Auxiliary Bishop Joseph R. Binzer, the Vatican announced Thursday. The announcement gave no details.

But the Archdiocese of Cincinnati noted that Binzer had already been removed as director of priest personnel “after he failed to bring past concerns about Father Geoffrey Drew’s conduct to the attention of Archbishop Dennis Schnurr” and the priests’ personnel board.

Drew is accused of raping the boy in the 1980s and 1990s, years before he was ordained as a priest and while he was music director at a suburban Cincinnati parish. Drew has pleaded not guilty to nine counts of rape. His trial was scheduled for October.

“I am deeply sorry for my role in addressing the concerns raised about Father Drew, which has had a negative impact on the trust and faith of the people of the Archdiocese of Cincinnati,” the archdiocese quoted Binzer as saying. “In April, having studied this matter since last summer, the Holy See informed me that it agreed with this assessment.”

Binzer, a Cincinnati native, was ordained as a priest on June 4, 1994, and later served as chancellor of the archdiocese for eight years before being ordained a bishop. He was installed as auxiliary bishop in 2011. Binzer remains a priest in the archdiocese.

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CANBERRA (AUSTRALIA)
Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse

May 7, 2020

[The reports are lengthy. To help locate the unredacted portions, use Control-F to search for Pell.]

The Royal Commission’s Terms of Reference required that its work did not prejudice current or future criminal or civil proceedings. For this reason, the Commissioners delivered an un-redacted and a redacted version of certain reports and recommended that the un-redacted version should be tabled and published at the conclusion of the relevant criminal proceedings. The below un-redacted versions were tabled on 7 May 2020:

• Un-redacted Report of Case Study No. 28: Catholic Church authorities in Ballarat (PDF)

• Un-redacted Report of Case Study No. 35: Catholic Archdiocese of Melbourne (PDF)

• Un-redacted Volume 16, Religious institutions Book 2 (PDF)

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SYDNEY (NEW SOUTH WALES, AUSTRALIA)
Catholic Weekly – Archdiocese of Sydney

May 7, 2020

By Marilyn Rodrigues

Royal Commission views “not supported” by evidence

Cardinal George Pell has rejected statements of the Royal Commission into Institutional Child Sexual Abuse that he must have known about notorious paedophile priest Gerard Risdale following the release of redacted reports on 7 May.

In a statement a spokesperson for the cardinal said he was surprised by some of the views of the Royal Commission about his actions.

“These views are not supported by evidence,” the spokesperson said. “He is especially surprised by the statements in the report about the earlier transfers of Gerald Ridsdale discussed by the Ballarat Diocesan Consultors in 1977 and 82.

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KINGSCOTE (SOUTH AUSTRALIA)
The Islander

May 7, 2020

By Megan Neil
.
Cardinal George Pell knew pedophile priest Gerald Ridsdale was moved between parishes because of sex abuse allegations and failed to push for another’s removal, a royal commission concluded.

The child abuse royal commission findings surprised Australia’s most senior Catholic cleric, who argues they are not supported by the evidence.

The commissioners rejected Cardinal Pell’s claim he was deceived in “a world of crimes and cover-ups” about Ridsdale, his 1973 Ballarat housemate who was later revealed to be Australia’s worst pedophile priest, and the unstable and disturbed Melbourne priest Peter Searson.

The commission found Cardinal Pell was aware of child sexual abuse by clergy in the early 1970s, after the former Vatican treasurer conceded it was “on his radar”.

“We are also satisfied that by 1973 Cardinal Pell was not only conscious of child sexual abuse by clergy but that he also had considered measures of avoiding situations which might provoke gossip about it,” the commissioners wrote in their unredacted report released on Thursday.

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CANBERRA (AUSTRALIA)
Associated Press

May 7, 2020

By Rod McGuirk

Australian Cardinal George Pell knew that a notorious pedophile priest had been sexually abusing children years before his arrest and had been aware of the Catholic Church’s clergy abuse problem since the early 1970s, a government inquiry concluded.

A report from the inquiry on child sexual abuse had been released in 2017, but findings concerning Pell — who was formerly Pope Francis’ finance minister and at one time the third-highest ranking cleric in the Vatican — had been redacted until Thursday to avoid prejudicing juries in any future prosecutions.

The government decided to release the full report after the High Court last month overturned convictions against Pell on charges he molested two choirboys in a Melbourne cathedral in the late 1990s when he was an archbishop. The 78-year-old cleric spent 13 months in prison before being released last month.

The findings undermine Pell’s criticisms of what he described as the church’s inadequate response to the global abuse crisis and concealing its extent.

Pell, who now lives in a Sydney seminary, said in a statement that he was “surprised by some of the views” of the inquiry about his actions.

“These views are not supported by evidence,” Pell said.

The inquiry rejected Pell’s evidence given by video link from Rome in 2016 that he was deceived and lied to by church officials about Australia’s worst pedophile priest, Gerald Ridsdale, and disturbed Melbourne parish priest Peter Searson.

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ATLANTA (GA)
CNN

May 7, 2020

By Hilary Whiteman

Brisbane, Australia – Nearly three years after the release of a damning national report into child sexual abuse, the Australian government has published dozens of previously redacted pages of text relating to Cardinal George Pell.

Three unredacted reports published Thursday reveal for the first time the commission’s findings into what Pell knew about allegations of child sex abuse committed by priests decades ago in the Australian state of Victoria.

The commission found that, as early as 1973, the former Vatican Treasurer “was not only conscious of child sex abuse by clergy but that he also had considered measures of avoiding situations which might provoke gossip about it.”

The commission’s findings had been redacted to avoid prejudicing a trial involving Pell on five charges of child sexual assault allegedly committed in the mid-1990s. Pell was convicted in December 2018, but the decision was overturned by Australia’s High Court in a unanimous ruling by the full bench of seven judges in April.

The redacted pages appeared in the final report of the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Assault, which was published in December 2017. Black lines obscured multiple pages of Case Studies 16, 28 and 35, which examined allegations of abuse in the Diocese of Ballarat, the Archdiocese of Melbourne, and the church’s mechanism to address assault claims.

Large portions of the report relate to one of Australia’s most notorious pedophiles, Gerald Ridsdale, who is serving a 34-year prison sentence for a string of child sex attacks spanning decades. In 2017, the commission found former Bishop Ronald Mulkearns knew about Ridsdale’s offending from 1975 and failed to stop it. Instead, he moved him between parishes, which gave the priest access to more victims, the commission found.

For a time, Pell served under Bishop Mulkearns as one of his consultors, a small group of priests tasked with advising the bishop on the movement of parish priests and other matters.

Pell has consistently denied ever being involved in any decision to move Ridsdale. In a statement to the commission in May 2015, Pell said, “I would never have condoned or participated in a decision to transfer Ridsdale in the knowledge that he had abused children, and I did not do so.”

The unredacted report released Thursday said the commission was “satisfied” that in 1973 Pell had “turned his mind to the prudence of Ridsdale taking boys on overnight camps.” It said the most likely reason for this was the possibility that “if priests were one-on-one with a child then they could sexually abuse a child or at least provoke gossip about such a prospect.”
“By this time, child sexual abuse was on his radar,” the unredacted report said.

The reports released Thursday also said Pell should have acted sooner to advise Archbishop Frank Little to remove Father Peter Searson, a parish priest who had been accused of a litany of abuse.

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ALAMOGORDO (NM)
Alamogordo Daily News

May 6, 2020

By Nicole Maxwell

[See also the lawsuit.]

A lawsuit centered on child molestation by Fr. David Holley named two Alamogordo Catholic parishes and several dioceses as defendants.

The suit, filed in the 2nd Judicial District Court in Bernalillo County, alleged the Servants of Paraclete, the Catholic Diocese of El Paso, Diocese of Worcester, Dioces of Las Cruces, the Immaculate Conception Parish and St. Jude Parish allowed Holley to prey on boys within the Alamogordo parishes during his time in New Mexico in the 1970s.

The suit was filed by “John Doe” and demanded a jury trial and restitution. The complaint alleged negligence, intentional infliction of emotional distress, vicarious liability, public nuisance and racketeering.

Immaculate Conception Catholic Church offered no comment on the suit.

The suit places most of the blame on Holley’s home diocese: the Diocese of Worcester, located in Massachusetts.

It gives a history of child sexual offenses that Holley was alleged to have perpetrated in Massachusetts prior to transfer to the Servants of the Paraclete in New Mexico.

The Servants of the Paraclete operated a rehabilitation center initially for priests with substance abuse issues before it admitted priests with psycho-sexual disorder, which was what Holley had, according to the complaint.

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SPRINGFIELD (MA)
New England Public Radio

May 6, 2020

By Adam Frenier

The Springfield Roman Catholic Diocese and three western Massachusetts prosecutors have reached a deal on how the church will report sexual abuse allegations.

Under the memorandum of understanding, the diocese has to turn over information about sexual abuse claims it receives to the appropriate district attorney’s office. The church also will suspend its own investigation for three months, or longer if a criminal probe is taking place.

The deal comes after Hampden District Attorney Anthony Gulluni said last year the diocese was failing to refer all cases to prosecutors. Gulluni said this latest agreement should clear up those concerns.

“We’re happy with this, that this will be in place going forward, to make sure that if any of those allegations come forward to the diocese, that they’re given to law enforcement [and] law enforcement has the appropriate opportunity to investigate cases,” Gulluni said.

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PINELLAS PARK (FL)
Legal Examiner – Saunders and Walker

May 6, 2020

By Joseph H. Saunders

The Catholic Diocese of Buffalo, which has recently been hit by hundreds of child sex abuse claims, has announced it will terminate pay and health benefits for 23 priests involved in the allegations. The move comes after the diocese filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in late February.

The diocese is facing over 250 lawsuits alleging child sex abuse by its priests. That’s more than any other diocese in New York.

In a letter, Bishop Edward B. Scharfenberger explained that the termination of pay was part of an agreement reached in federal bankruptcy court with the committee representing over 200 survivors suing the diocese under New York’s Child Victims Act. Enacted on August 15, 2019, the statewide Child Victims Act opened a one-year window for survivors to sue the Catholic Church for abuse they suffered as children, despite how much time has passed.

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SYDNEY (NEW SOUTH WALES, AUSTRALIA)
Catholic Weekly – Archdiocese of Sydney

May 7, 2020

By Dr Philippa Martyr

A difficult conversation – but necessary

If we are going to do real soul-searching about clergy sexual abuse, it’s time we turned the spotlight on to the laity and their role in enabling abusers.

This is a difficult conversation to begin. We are used to seeing ourselves as the good guys, and the solution, not the problem: that if we had lay-led parishes or diocesan offices, this would rid us of clergy abuse for good.

Unfortunately, history is not on our side. Cases of clergy sexual abuse in the English-speaking world reveal any number of compromised lay people who have helped with covering up and explaining away, either directly or indirectly.

The ‘lay clericalism’ of the insiders

They are usually wealthy and influential, or employed by the Church, or in useful professions. Start with the Boston case, so admirably narrated in ‘Spotlight’- a good reminder that almost all clergy abuse has been exposed by outsider journalists, not by people inside the Church.

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NEW ORLEANS (LA)
Associated Press

May 5, 2020

By Jm Mustian and Michael Rezendes

A bankruptcy filing by New Orleans’ Roman Catholic archdiocese freezes sexual abuse lawsuits and could help bury the details of alleged coverups of predator priests and thousands of internal emails documenting a behind-the-scenes alliance with the New Orleans Saints.

Attorneys for those suing the church attacked last week’s Chapter 11 filing as a veiled attempt to keep church records secret, scrap a long-awaited legal deposition of Archbishop Gregory Aymond and deny victims a public reckoning that had been years in the making.

“Those victims were on the path to the truth,” attorney Soren Gisleson wrote in court papers. “The rape of children is a thief that keeps on stealing.”

Among the most explosive legal fights now in disarray is a lawsuit alleging Aymond and his three predecessors systematically concealed the crimes of the Rev. Lawrence Hecker, an 88-year-old priest removed from active ministry in 2002 after accusations that he abused “countless children.”

A recent court motion drew direct parallels between the church’s handling of Hecker and John Geoghan, a serial pedophile who molested scores of children during his 30-year career as a Massachusetts clergyman.

The bankruptcy also freezes a court battle over a cache of confidential emails describing the behind-the-scenes public relations work New Orleans Saints executives did for the archdiocese in 2018 and 2019 to contain fallout from clergy abuse scandals.

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PHILADELPHIA (PA)
Archdiocese of Philadelphia

May 5, 2020

By Archbishop Nelson J. Pérez

Dear Sisters and Brothers in Christ,

With the worldwide outbreak of the coronavirus, life as we understand it has temporarily changed in drastic and necessary ways for the good of public health. I know that these difficult times have brought concerns about physical and mental health, family, loved ones, and finances to the forefront of your minds. As a people of faith, we will continue to navigate these challenging waters together.

As your Shepherd it is my duty to provide for the pastoral and temporal well-being of every member of our local Church. Some of those most in need of our care and compassion are survivors of sexual abuse at the hands of Archdiocesan clergy. I deeply regret the pain and suffering of survivors and any decisions that failed to protect them. The pain and damage are profound.

In November of 2018, the Archdiocese of Philadelphia committed to creating new modes of support focused on a path toward healing and helping survivors. To supplement the Victim Assistance Program in place since 2002, the Archdiocese launched the Independent Reconciliation and Reparations Program (IRRP). It has provided an opportunity for survivors to share their experiences, identify their abusers, and receive compensation to assist them in healing and recovery. From its outset, this program included a comprehensive financial plan to provide for its funding. As the claims submission period has now passed, we are providing you with an update on the progress of this important ministerial outreach.

As of April 22, 2020, a total of 800 individuals have come forward to the IRRP. 615 of these individuals have submitted formal claims. The Archdiocese remains fully committed to funding this program and paying claims in the amounts assigned by the independent IRRP Claims Administrators. Given the claims experience to date, the Archdiocese currently estimates the total cost of the IRRP to be approximately $130 million. As of April 22, 2020, $43.8 million of total compensation had already been paid to resolve 208 claims fully.

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PHILADELPHIA (PA)
Philadelphia Inquirer

May 5, 2020

By Harold Brubaker

The Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Philadelphia said Tuesday that it expects to pay $126 million to sexual-abuse victims under a reparations program announced in 2018.

The archdiocese said its Independent Reconciliation and Reparations Program has received a total of 615 claims, and had settled 208 of them for $43.8 million as of April 22. That averages out to about $211,000 per claim, which is in line with what other dioceses have been paying under similar programs.

The archdiocese said it still has $20 million on hand to pay claims and will raise the rest of the money through loans or property sales. The diocese made the $126 million estimate as part of an audited financial statement for the year ending June 30, 2019.

“I deeply regret the pain and suffering of survivors and any decisions that failed to protect them,” Archbishop Nelson J. Pérez wrote to parishioners in a letter Tuesday. “The pain and damage are profound.”

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PHILADELPHIA (PA)
WPVI ABC 6

May 6, 2020

By Dann Cuellar

In a profound letter to parishioners, the newly installed Archbishop of Philadelphia, Nelson Perez, addressed claims of prior priest sex abuse of children head-on, saying the archdiocese is committed to paying about $130 million in reparations.

When new Archbishop Perez came to Philadelphia from Cleveland a few months ago, he inherited a mess stemming from the priest sex abuse scandal. But on Tuesday, he says in a letter that he deeply regrets the pain and suffering of survivors and any decisions that failed to protect them.

A victim of sex abuse and spokesman for a survivors group called SNAP (Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests), recently met with the archbishop.

“I found the archbishop to be compassionate. I found him to be concerning, and he expressed his own personal anger and disgust of what has happened,” said Mike McDougal.

In the letter, the archbishop says that the archdiocese remains fully committed to funding a reparations program for victims and paying claims of approximately $130 million. That’s roughly about $211,000 per claim.

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NEW ORLEANS (LA)
Times-Picayune / New Orleans Advocate

May 4, 2020

By Matt Sledge

A federal judge said Monday that the Archdiocese of New Orleans can keep its lights on, but she held off on other decisions as the first hearing of the archdiocese’s bankruptcy process turned into a skirmish between lawyers for alleged victims of sexual abuse and the church.

The archdiocese filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection on Friday, citing the financial fallout from abuse lawsuits and the coronavirus pandemic. The move essentially kicks a multitude of lawsuits against the church out of state court and into a single federal case.

While the bankruptcy process continues, the church asked for approval to keep paying utility bills, salaries for hundreds of employees and insurance premiums.

Such requests are standard procedure at the time of a bankruptcy filing, but attorneys wrangled over them for more than two hours during a telephone hearing on Monday.

Accusers’ lawyers said the judge should order that no salary or pension payments be made to predator priests and demanded to know the archdiocese’s plan for using cash in one bank account.

U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Meredith S. Grabill said she would approve requests from the church to keep making utility and insurance payments. She also approved salary payments for nearly 800 full-time and part-time employees.

However, Grabill also said the church should not make salary or pension payments to employees who have been credibly accused of sexual abuse. The church in 2018 revealed a list of dozens of suspected predator priests.

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LONDON (ENGLAND)
Australian Associated Press via The Guardian

May 5, 2020

The federal attorney general says two separate reports on abuse in the Melbourne and Ballarat dioceses can now be released in full

A royal commission’s findings about Cardinal George Pell’s knowledge of historical child sexual abuse complaints will be released within days.

The federal attorney general, Christian Porter, says he has been advised that the two royal commission into institutional responses to child sexual abuse reports can now be published in full.

Porter said that would happen within days, although he would not give a specific release date.

“The advice is that it is now okay to publish the unredacted version,” he told the ABC on Tuesday.

Porter said he would read the reports and consider the final legal advice, but did not expect there to be any problem with the release of the documents.

“They’ve only just arrived with me now that that advice has been received, so it’s just a matter of process from here and that will be a matter of days.”

The reports into the Catholic church’s response to abuse complaints and allegations in the Melbourne archdiocese and Victoria’s Ballarat diocese were released in December 2017.

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COLUMBIA (MO)
Religion News Service

May 4, 2020

By Christa Brown

For more than a decade, abuse survivor advocates have been asking the Southern Baptist Convention to establish a clergy predator database, and for just as long they’ve been confronted with a denomination determined to do nothing.

Now Megan and Dominique Benninger, who brought to light their former pastor’s record as a convicted child molester after the leadership of their Pennsylvania church failed to disclose it, have launched a new Baptist sex abuser database at BaptistAccountability.org.

Their work builds on the StopBaptistPredators database that I started and maintained from 2006 to 2012, containing 170 entries of convicted, admitted and credibly accused Southern Baptist clergy sex abusers and on the “Abuse of Faith” database that the Houston Chronicle published in 2019, documenting 263 criminally convicted and plea-bargained Southern Baptist sex offenders over the prior 20 years.

BaptistAccountability has incorporated the information from these prior databases and is continuing to expand through crowdsourcing. You can submit an entry here.

In explaining the purpose of their database, the Benningers focus not only on protecting kids and congregants but also on their stated desire that the site serve as “a testimony” to the fact that “it’s just not that hard” and that the SBC could do this if it wanted. “Again and again,” they say, “we’ve been told that the Southern Baptist Convention takes this issue seriously. But if you take something seriously, it causes you to ACT.”

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)
Associated Press

May 4, 2020

The Roman Catholic Diocese of Buffalo has taken legal action seeking to stop all outstanding clergy sexual abuse lawsuits while it navigates bankruptcy proceedings in federal court.

The diocese filed a motion in federal bankruptcy court on Saturday seeking an injunction on lawsuits filed under New York’s Child Victims Act. About 250 lawsuits have been filed against the diocese since August, when the act gave victims one year to pursue even decades-old allegations of abuse.

Lawsuits against the diocese were moved to bankruptcy court in February and permanently frozen, but the bankruptcy filing only temporarily halted lawsuits against individual parishes or Catholic schools. Those cases could be moved back into state supreme court unless the diocese is granted a permanent injunction.

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BUFFALO (NY)
Spectrum News

May. 4, 2020

Lawyers for the Buffalo Catholic Diocese are asking for the abuse lawsuits filed under the Child Victims Act to be put on hold.

Attorneys for clergy sex abuse survivors are rallying against the latest legal move by the diocese.

Lawyers representing the diocese filed an adversary proceeding in bankruptcy court, stating the abuse lawsuits could prevent the diocese from reorganizing its debts.

A local attorney who’s filed more than 100 sex abuse claims against the diocese says this move could force those cases out of state supreme court, and limit what information the diocese would be forced to reveal.

It’s something lawyers already had to deal with in the Rochester Diocese.

“What we did in that case is we negotiated a stipulate stay with them on a temporary bases in exchange for the personnel files and in Rochester the diocese has turned over about 43,000 some pages of personnel files and other records,” said attorney Steve Boyd. “We don’t think those records are complete yet, but it’s a lot more than nothing.”

Mitchell Garabedian is another attorney representing 39 survivors who are suing the diocese.

“This legal maneuver by the Diocese of Buffalo is just another example of the Catholic Church coldly putting its needs before the needs of victims,” he said. “Instead of trying to negotiate an agreement the Diocese has chosen to litigate and accordingly once again shown how little it cares about the healing of victims.”

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NEW YORK (NY)
The Conversation

April 30, 2020

By Jane Barter

When Jean Vanier passed away in May 2019, the Canadian Catholic founder of the L’Arche International movement that challenged barriers between people with disabilities and able-bodied people was hailed as a “saviour to people on the margins.”

But since news of his abuse of six women broke in Feburary 2020, many who once thought him a hero have struggled to make sense of the man and his legacy.

I include myself in this group.

As a former caregiver of people with disablities, I came to see Vanier’s theology of disability as one that had the capacity to transform not only hearts and minds, but also communities and structures. But since learning of the abuse, I have come to see it otherwise.

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SAULT STE. MARIE (ONTARIO, CANADA)
SooToday

May 1, 2020

https://www.sootoday.com/local-news/supreme-court-says-basilian-fathers-responsible-for-25m-in-damages-to-sexual-abuse-victim-rod-macleod-2318411

Canada’s highest court upholds decision from Ontario Court of Appeals that religious order liable for damages

Rod MacLeod, the victim of a pedophile priest in the 1960s at a Sudbury high school, said he hopes his latest legal victory will inspire other sexual abuse victims to come forward and “seek justice through the court.”

MacLeod made the comments on April 30 when the Supreme Court of Canada rejected the Basilian Fathers of Toronto’s bid for a further appeal after they were held responsible when one of their priests was convicted in 2011 of abusing 17 students at schools over a 38-year period.

MacLeod was one of those students. He was abused by Father William Hodgson Marshall when he attended St. Charles College from 1963-1967.

MacLeod received $500,000 in punitive damages and more than $1.5 million for lost earnings.

“It is possible to achieve justice in Canada,” MacLeod said in a news release following the decision from the Supreme Court of Canada.

Marshall worked in Rochester, Toronto, Windsor, Sudbury and Sault Ste. Marie, and was reported a total of six times over his career, but continued in his role as a priest and teacher. He died in 2014.

Instead of reporting Marshall to the police, the Basilian Fathers moved him to another school when abuse complaints emerged. The Basilians are a Roman Catholic Religious Order of priests who operate on three continents, including in Canada and the United States, with their headquarters located in Toronto, Ontario.

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BUFFALO (NY)
WIVB

May 3, 2020

The Diocese of Buffalo has taken legal action to stop lawsuits filed under the Child Victims’ Act from moving forward.

The Diocese recently filed an adversary proceeding.

Currently, all of the lawsuits against the Diocese are frozen because it’s in bankruptcy. However, lawsuits that name a parish or school are only stopped temporarily because the parish or school is not in bankruptcy, meaning that they could still go to trial.

Attorney Steve Boyd told News 4 that this action is meant to freeze the cases so that they don’t reach the courtroom.

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BROOKLYN (NY)
Brooklyn Reader

May 2, 2020

By Albert Cooper

The Child Victims Act (CVA), which was enacted last year, is widely lauded for opening up the time frame for victims of child sexual abuse to file lawsuits over claims that were previously barred from court due to the statute of limitations.

Amid the pandemic that has nearly clogged the wheel of justice, state lawmakers are yet to decide on extending a one-year legal window that allowed survivors of child sex abuse to sue over decades-old allegations.

The legal window is set to close in August, but New York’s court system is no longer accepting CVA lawsuits. Since the state’s court system has postponed all non-essential services and the CVA lawsuits were not listed as essential under an order from Lawrence Marks, the state’s chief administrative judge, this has effectively placed a hold on new litigation under the act.

It should be noted that an executive order from Cuomo last month paused the state’s statute of limitations, tolling “any specific time limit for the commencement, filing, or service of any legal action, notice, motion, or other process or proceeding.”

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BRISTOL (CT)
ESPN

May 1, 2020

Detroit – A former wrestler who claims he was sexually assaulted by a University of Michigan sports doctor waited too long to file a lawsuit, the school said Friday as it asked a judge to dismiss the case.

The university said it believes Dr. Robert Anderson assaulted athletes, and it wants to compensate victims. But it added that it’s trying to avoid “drawn-out litigation” while a law firm investigates what happened during Anderson’s decades in Ann Arbor. He died in 2008.

“The university is committed to grappling with those findings, whatever they may be, to ensure that nothing like this can ever happen again,” attorneys said in a filing in U.S. District Court.

In his lawsuit, a man identified as John Doe MC-4 said he was molested by Anderson during exams approximately 16 times, from 1987 to 1991. Hundreds of others have said they too were assaulted, some as far back as the 1960s.

“The university has great sympathy for what plaintiff suffered,” attorney Cheryl Bush said of Doe.

But in Doe’s case, Bush noted that decades have passed since the last abuse, making the lawsuit untimely.

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ATLANTA (GA)
CNN

May 4, 2020

By Eliott C. McLaughlin

It was the snap of the doctor’s glove that spooked him right out of the exam room.

Chuck Christian is a large fellow, a 6-foot-4 former tight end for one of the most decorated college football programs in the country. He doesn’t come off as squeamish.

Yet about 15 years ago, when a physician prepared to perform a prostate exam after Christian discovered blood in his semen, the big man simply walked out of the office. He harkened back decades to his days as a Michigan Wolverine, when team Dr. Robert Anderson allegedly performed unwarranted prostate checks on athletes.

“Nobody’s going to do that again,” he thought as he escaped the urology clinic. “That’s why I didn’t go get the exam because of my fear of these digital exams that Dr. Anderson used to give me.”

Today, Christian, 60, has stage 4 prostate cancer that has spread to his spine, tailbone, hips, ribs and shoulders.
Doctors told him in 2016 he had three years to live, but he just passed the four-year mark, he said, explaining that he opted for alternative treatments over chemotherapy and radiation.

The married father of three wishes he would’ve realized sooner that his fear of doctors stemmed from the trauma he says he suffered as a University of Michigan student-athlete in Anderson’s exam room. He’s speaking up so other former athletes don’t make the mistake he made, of waiting too long to get checked.

No one should be ashamed of being a victim, he said.

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GUAM
Guam Daily Post

May 4, 2020

By Haidee Eugenio Gilbert

A former Guam resident now living in Virginia sits on an official committee that represents the interests of potentially thousands of survivors of child sexual abuse in the Boy Scouts of America’s bankruptcy case.

Guam’s abuse claims represent more than a quarter of the approximately 275 pending civil actions asserting personal injury claims against the Boy Scouts across the nation, as of Feb. 18.

Across the United States, some 1,400 additional claims of abuse against the Boy Scouts are anticipated.

Morgan Wade Paul, a former Guam altar boy and Boy Scout, was appointed to sit on the nine-member official committee of unsecured creditors in the Boy Scouts bankruptcy.

Paul, represented by Lujan & Wolff LLP, filed a Guam lawsuit in 2017, alleging that Guam priest and Boy Scout scoutmaster Louis Brouillard had sexually abused him repeatedly for a scout swimming merit badge around 1975.

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 ORLEANS (LA)
Archdiocese of New Orleans

May 1, 2020

By Archbishop Gregory M. Aymond

Dear Sisters and Brothers in Christ,

The past few years have been extremely trying times for us in the Archdiocese of New Orleans. The resurgence of the clergy abuse crisis has been particularly challenging, especially as it has played out regularly in the local media.Most importantly, again, I extend daily prayers to those who are victims and survivors. May God give you healing and renewed hope. This issue coupled with ongoing budget challenges has created an impossible situation.

After much prayer and consultation, we have made the difficult decision to pursue Chapter 11 reorganization. I, along with a team of advisors, believe that reorganization will create an opportunity for us to renew our commitment to the faithful and the New Orleans community by restructuring our financials, increasing our transparency and creating a path forward in hopes that we can continue and strengthen our core mission: bringing Christ to others. This reorganization will affect only the archdiocesan administrative offices.

The prospect of more abuse cases with associated prolonged and costly litigation, together with pressing ministerial needs and budget challenges, is simply not financially sustainable. Additionally, the unforeseen circumstances surrounding COVID-19 have added more financial hardships to an already difficult situation.

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AUSTRALIA
Daily Mail

May 3, 2020

By Australian Associated Press and Jackson Barron for Daily Mail

– Gerald Ridsdale is facing 14 more assault charges from Victoria in 1973 to 1979
– The charges will likely extend his release date and have Ridsdale die in prison
– He has been charged with 136 offences, with some victims as young as four
– Ridsdale admitted more rapes and his lawyer argued he shouldn’t get more time
– Barrister Tim Marsh said he should have been sentenced for his crimes at once

Paedophile priest Gerald Ridsdale is likely to die in jail as he faces more sexual abuse charges.

The 85-year-old will be heard on May 14 for 10 indecent assault charges and four buggery charges in Victoria between 1973 and 1979 to further his time behind bars.

The charges will likely extend his time behind bars beyond 2022, his earliest release date.

Ridsdale is suffering chronic health problems including heart conditions, arthristis, bowel problems and high blood pressure.

He has been charged with 136 offences since 1994, with his barrister Tim Marsh telling The Australian he is ‘a repugnant figure to many, and for reasons that are only too understandable’.

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AUSTRALIA
Malaysia Sun

By Chris Fiel

May 3, 2020

– In the wake of Cardinal George Pell’s acquittal, commentators have asked whether the Australian national broadcaster engaged in a witch-hunt.

– I have written on Farlow previously identifying the close links with the lawyer who acted for Pell’s complainant.

In the wake of Cardinal George Pell’s acquittal, commentators have asked whether the Australian national broadcaster, the ABC, engaged in a witch-hunt.

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NEW ORLEANS (LA)
Associated Press

May 1, 2020

By Kevin McGill

The Roman Catholic Archdiocese of New Orleans announced Friday that it is seeking federal Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection amid growing legal costs related to sexual abuse by priests.

The filing for reorganization could free the archdiocese from the threat of creditors’ lawsuits while it reorganizes its finances. The New Orleans archdiocese is the latest of more than 20 dioceses nationwide to take such action.

Friday’s statement said costs associated with preventing the spread of coronavirus also have contributed to financial pressures.

The archdiocese said the filing applies only to the administrative offices of the archdiocese. “The Archdiocese’s action will not affect individual church parishes, their schools, schools run by the various religious orders, or ministries of the church,” the statement said.

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WAUKESHA (WI)
Fox 6 TV News

May 1, 2020

The Waukesha County District Attorney will not pursue new charges against a priest accused of sexual assault of a teenage girl.

Father Charles Hanel was accused of sexually assaulting a 13-year-old girl in December 2017 during confession at Queen of Apostles Church.

At trial, the judge agreed to a motion for a mistrial and dismissed the jury.

Now, in a letter obtained by FOX6 News, District Attorney Sue Opper said she will not seek new charges to avoid the strain of a new trial for all of the parties involved.

Hanel’s defense attorney said the decision is welcome news for “an innocent man who has been through a terrible ordeal.”

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NEW ORLEANS (LA)
Nola.com

May 1, 2020

By Ramon Antonio Vargas

Archbishop Gregory Aymond, facing the mounting financial toll of the Catholic church’s child sexual-abuse crisis and the more acute money troubles wrought by the coronavirus, filed the paperwork early Friday morning to seek bankruptcy protection for the Archdiocese of New Orleans.

Aymond, the leader of the two-century old archdiocese serving half a million area Catholics, broke the news in person to dozens of mask-wearing clergy Thursday evening at a Metairie church before officially submitting the documents to federal bankruptcy court a little after midnight.

On Friday, he told the faithful that the filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy petition is aimed at putting the archdiocese on sounder financial footing in the wake of millions of dollars in abuse claims.

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NEW ORLEANS (LA)
Nola.com

May 2, 2020

By John Simerman

For the Archdiocese of New Orleans, shadow-boxing the sins of its past became a fight too risky to stomach.

Now, in the wake of filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy on Friday, the archdiocese and its creditors — mostly sexual abuse claimants — will begin to negotiate the price for a move bound to have lasting repercussions for the archdiocese and its accusers, for better or worse.

The outcome will hinge on several factors, as clergy abuse claims move en masse from the drag-it-out halls of state court, to a single federal bankruptcy proceeding with no jury and a swifter pace, say lawyers and advocates familiar with the 26 previous bankruptcy filings by U.S. dioceses since 2004.

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