ABUSE TRACKER

A digest of links to media coverage of clergy abuse. For recent coverage listed in this blog, read the full article in the newspaper or other media source by clicking “Read original article.” For earlier coverage, click the title to read the original article.

February 10, 2021

Commentary: Former altar boy loses defamation suit

CINCINNATI (OH)
Cincinnati Enquirer

February 9, 2021

By Jack Greiner

Former altar boy Kevin DiMauro recently saw a New York state appellate court affirm the dismissal of his libel suit against a Staten Island newspaper.

DiMauro claimed that the Staten Island Advance identified DiMauro as a victim of sexual abuse by a Catholic priest. DiMauro’s case failed, however, because he couldn’t demonstrate that he was the subject of the reporting.

In October 2018 the Advance published an article reporting that allegations of sexual abuse against a pastor at Blessed Sacrament Roman Catholic Church had been substantiated.

In the print version of the article, between the headline “Longtime pastor ‘will never serve as a priest again’” and the subheading “Archdiocese affirms sex-abuse allegations against former Blessed Sacrament monsignor,” the Advance included a photograph from 2000 depicting the pastor at issue, two other priests, and three children—including DiMauro, walking in a church processional, with several parishioners in the background.

The caption to the photograph read, “Monsignor Francis Boyle, seen here at Blessed Sacrament Roman Catholic Church in West Brighton in 2000, faces sex-abuse allegations brought through the Archdiocese’s Independent Reconciliation Program.”

In granting the Advance’s motion to dismiss, the court ruled that DiMauro couldn’t establish that the article was “of and concerning” him. In a libel case, the plaintiff has to establish that the article is of and concerning him. That means the plaintiff must “prove that the statement referred to them and that a person hearing or reading the statement reasonably could have interpreted it as such.” DiMauro argued that by including the photo that depicted him in the procession with the abusive priest, the article sufficiently identified him as one of the victims.

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.

Xanana Gusmao’s sons ‘disappointed’ after their father attends accused paedophile’s birthday party

SYDNEY (NEW SOUTH WALES, AUSTRALIA)
ABC

February 9, 2021

By Anne Barker

The sons of Timor Leste’s former president Xanana Gusmao have expressed their disappointment to the victims of a former priest facing child sexual abuse allegations, after their father visited him for his birthday at his home in Dili.

Alexandre Sword-Gusmao, 20, and his brothers Kay Olok, 18, and Daniel, 16, wrote to the victims of former Catholic priest Richard Daschbach, who has been charged with sexually abusing girls at a remote Timorese orphanage that he ran for decades.

Xanana Gusmao, also the former prime minister, was filmed late last month visiting Mr Daschbach at his Dili home where he is under house arrest, toasting him on his 84th birthday with cake and drink.

Mr Daschbach, an American-born missionary who first arrived in Timor Leste in 1966, is regarded by many Timorese as a hero for his role in saving children during the country’s independence struggle.

But he was officially defrocked by Pope Francis in 2018, and expelled from the organisation SVD, or Divine Word Missionaries, after he admitted to the sexual abuse of minors.

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

Kansas bishop steps aside as abuse allegation is investigated

WASHINGTON (DC)
Catholic News Service

February 9, 2021

Dodge City KS – Denying any wrongdoing, Bishop John B. Brungardt of Dodge City has stepped away from his duties and pledged to cooperate with authorities investigating an allegation of abuse of a minor made against him.

The diocese said in a statement Feb. 8 that the accusation is being investigated by the Kansas Bureau of Investigation.

The bureau recently notified the diocese of the accusation.

The agency confirmed to The Associated Press that it is investigating the allegation. A spokeswoman said no arrests have been made and no charges have been filed but declined to release any other information.

As required, Bishop Brungardt informed his metropolitan archbishop, Archbishop Joseph F. Naumann of Kansas City, Kansas, of the allegation, the diocese said. The Congregation for Bishops at the Vatican has appointed Bishop Gerald L. Vincke of Salina, Kansas, as apostolic administrator while the investigation continues.

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.

Allegation Brought Forward

GAYLORD (MI)
Diocese of Gaylord

February 8, 2021

An allegation of sexual misconduct involving an adult woman against Father Eyob Merin, pastoral administrator of St. Mary Parish (Kingsley), has been brought forward. The allegation was made public at a parish meeting, and subsequently made known to the diocese thereafter. Father Merin has denied the allegation.

Until the allegation is further investigated and resolved, Father Eyob has, for the time being, voluntarily stepped aside from his role as pastoral administrator at St. Mary (Kingsley). The diocese will continue to take all steps necessary to investigate and bring this situation to resolution.

Any allegation of abuse by a priest, bishop or someone in the Church should be reported to law enforcement; the Michigan Department of Attorney General (844.324.3374); or the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services (855.444.3911). Reports should also be made to Church authorities by contacting the Diocesan Victim Assistance Coordinator, Larry LaCross (989.705.9010).

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.

February 9, 2021

‘I felt abandoned’: Catholic priests turn to defamation lawsuits to fight sex abuse claims

BERGEN (NJ)
The Record via NorthJersey.com

February 9, 2021

By Deena Yellin

As clergy abuse lawsuits proliferate across the U.S., a growing number of priests who say they were falsely accused are pushing back – by suing their accusers, investigators and even church officials.

The list includes the Rev. Roy Herberger of the Catholic Diocese of Buffalo. Last year, he filed a defamation case against a 42-year-old man who said the priest had assaulted him as a boy.

The diocese cleared Herberger after a six-month investigation, but the experience was devastating, he said.

Father Eduard Perrone, a popular Catholic priest for The Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary Parish in Detroit was suspended for alleged child sex abuse. He won a $125,000 settlement in a defamation lawsuit against a local sheriff’s investigator.
“I felt abandoned, embarrassed and betrayed,” Herberger said in an e-mail. “It was difficult for me to leave the shelter of my apartment lest I be seen by others who might recognize me and tag me as ‘one of them.'”

Catholic leaders from the Vatican to America have acknowledged a long history of abuse by some clerics, too often excused or even covered up by top officials.

But as the Church vows to be more transparent, some innocent priests have been swept up in the accusations as well, defense attorneys say. New laws in New Jersey and elsewhere lifting the statue of limitations on decades-old claims have made it more difficult for the wrongly accused to defend their reputations, they say.

“In my view, it’s unconstitutional to put people under a microscope” after so many years have passed, said James Porfido, a criminal defense attorney in Morristown. “It shifts the burden of proof to the defense.”

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.

St. John’s Catholic diocese named in proposed Vancouver class action

HALIFAX (NOVA SCOTIA, CANADA)
Chronicle Herald

February 8, 2021

By Barb Sweet

Notice of civil claim was filed in the Supreme Court of British Columbia Monday

Vancouver, British Columbia – The legal entity of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of St. John’s has been named in a proposed class-action lawsuit involving alleged sexual abuse at schools in Vancouver where Christian Brothers taught decades ago.

The notice of civil claim was to be filed in the Supreme Court of British Columbia Monday and the local archdiocese has not had legal notification yet, according to the lawyer Joe Fiorante who hopes to get the class action certified in B.C.

“The abuse at Vancouver College and St. Thomas More continued a pattern of systemic child abuse at institutions run by the Christian Brothers in Canada (CBIC) first revealed at the Mount Cashel Orphanage in Newfoundland in the mid-to-late 1970s,” alleges the notice of claim. (Early police investigations in Newfoundland and Labrador were covered up at the time.)

“Following incidents of abuse, the CBIC did not act to protect the children in their care, but to protect their abusers from criminal charges by moving them out of Newfoundland to teach at schools owned and operated by the CBIC, including Vancouver College and St. Thomas More. The transfers were carried out with the knowledge and approval of the Archbishop of St. John’s.”

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

Kansas Catholic bishop under investigation by KBI for alleged sexual abuse of a minor

WICHITA (KS)
Wichita Eagle from Kansas City Star

February 8, 2021

By Judy L. Thomas

Kansas’ top law enforcement agency is investigating an allegation of sexual abuse of a minor against Roman Catholic Bishop John B. Brungardt of Dodge City, the Archdiocese of Kansas City in Kansas announced Monday.

“An investigation conducted by the Kansas Bureau of Investigation (KBI) is under way,” the archdiocese said in a statement published in The Leaven, its official newspaper. “Bishop Brungardt denies the allegation and is cooperating fully with the KBl.”

Brungardt, a former high school science teacher, has asked to step aside from his duties until the matter is resolved, the archdiocese said. That decision is supported by Archbishop Joseph F. Naumann of the Archdiocese of Kansas City in Kansas.

The Congregation for Bishops has appointed the Bishop of Salina, Gerald L. Vincke, as temporary apostolic administrator of the Diocese of Dodge City during the investigation.

Naumann has been asked by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, or CDF, at the Vatican to conduct a canonical preliminary investigation into the matter, the archdiocese said. The CDF handles issues involving child sexual abuse.

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.

Vatican removed as defendant in Guam clergy sex abuse case

GUAM
Guam Daily Post

February 8, 2021

By Haidee Eugenio Gilbert

The nephew of former Guam Archbishop Anthony Apuron removed the Holy See, or the Vatican, from the list of defendants in his clergy sex abuse case.

Mark Apuron, through attorney Delia Lujan Wolff, filed a “notice of voluntary dismissal without prejudice” of all claims against “Defendant Holy See, State of the Vatican City, its instrumentalities and/or agents.”

A dismissal without prejudice means the matter is not dismissed forever, and can be brought to court again.

Mark Apuron’s claims against other defendants are not dismissed, he said in his Jan. 21 court filing. His claims against the Archdiocese of Agana, Anthony Apuron, the Capuchin Franciscans and others remain.

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.

WNY parishes benefit from PPP loans, but Diocese of Buffalo is left out

BUFFALO (NY)
WBEN

February 8, 2021

By Mike Baggerman

Hear thoughts from attorney Steve Boyd on AP report of $1.5 billion for US dioceses

Despite several Roman Catholic dioceses across the United States receiving at least $1.5 billion from taxpayers, the Catholic Church in Buffalo did not receive any funds due to the bankruptcy filing.

Though there was some benefit in the local church community.

“Parishes and schools are separately incorporated entities – many of which have suffered significant financial hardship as a result of Covid-19,” the Diocese of Buffalo told WBEN in a statement. “Moreover, the Diocese of Buffalo, as a separate corporate entity, does not qualify for any federal government funds allocated under the PPP program given that it is Chapter 11 reorganization.”

The Diocese of Buffalo also has not and said they will not apply for the next round of federal funding that is being advocated by the Biden Administration.

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.

Florida Diocese Hides Abuse Even during a 2020 Criminal Investigation

FORT LAUDERDALE (FL)
Horowitz Law – Lawyer’s Blog

February 8, 2021

And in the category of Most Secretive Florida Catholic Diocese, the award goes to. . . .St. Augustine!

Records obtained by law enforcement, show that St. Augustine diocesan officials hid recent abuse reports against a priest, EVEN IN THE MIDDLE OF A STATEWIDE ATTORNEY GENERAL INVESTIGATION into church abuse and concealment cases.

Link

And the records contain the names of several credibly accused predator priests whose identities would have almost certainly remained secret if not for that Attorney General probe.

Remember, it was nearly 20 years ago that every U.S. bishop pledged to reform their mishandling of abuse reports, a pledge often honored only in the breach. This pledge, it turns out, was apparently easier for them to make than to uphold.

While the Florida Attorney General’s Office of Statewide Prosecution was investigating the Catholic abuse scandal just a year ago, a St. Augustine priest – Fr. D. Terrence Morgan – was under investigation by a local police department for a lewd and lascivious act on a child, including allegations he grabbed a child’s butt and sent sexually explicit text messages.

Did St. Augustine Bishop Felipe Estevez share that report with the AG’s office? Nope.

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.

Editorial: NCR thanks the US bishops (well, their news service)

KANSAS CITY (MO)
National Catholic Reporter

February 8, 2021

In every industry, there are the die-hard professionals: the ones you can count on to do the job day-in, day-out, with a minimum of fuss or any clamor for recognition.

For those of us in the journalism business, that’s the wire service reporters: those often-harried folks usually clocking extended hours to make sure that any event with even a semblance of news interest receives coverage.

At daily newspapers, services like the Associated Press (AP) and Reuters fill the gap when an editor just doesn’t have the resources to assign an in-house reporter to a story. In the Catholic press, there’s really only one gold standard: Catholic News Service (CNS).

Founded in 1920 as part of what was then the National Catholic Welfare Council and is now the U.S. bishops’ conference, CNS is a reliable, fair-handed operation. Its journalists are professionals, many with previous experience in the secular realm, and not seeking to be catechists or, worse, apologists for the faith.

Pick a significant event in the life of church or country in the past 100 years and, more than likely, a CNS reporter was there to provide clean copy for subscribers like NCR to use as needed. Our editors often in fact mistakenly receive compliments for coverage that appears on our site but was provided by CNS. (We also often receive comments about the completely unrelated EWTN-owned outfit, Catholic News Agency, which NCR does not use).

In Rome, the steadfastness of the CNS bureau is the stuff of legend. Almost every papal speech gets coverage (including the many Pope Francis ad-libs), and almost every event is photographed (and often videoed, too). That its leader, Cindy Wooden, is a lay woman — and dedicated professional — in a city of clerics is an added important fact.

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.

Cruelty and abuse of power were not the preserve of religious orders

DUBLIN (IRELAND)
Irish Times

February 8, 2021

By Eoin O’Sullivan and Ian O’Donnell

State-run psychiatric hospitals were the single greatest contributor to coercive confinement in mid-20th century Ireland

The recently published report into mother and baby homes is the latest investigation into institutions that together constituted what we have described as a network of “coercive confinement” in Ireland.

This also included prisons, reformatory and industrial schools, psychiatric hospitals, county homes (former workhouses), and Magdalene laundries.

Yet the largest part of this landscape of confinement – institutions run by the State, particularly psychiatric hospitals – has gone unexamined.

The Commission to Inquire into Child Abuse, chaired by Justice Seán Ryan, estimated that 42,000 children passed through orphanages, reformatory and industrial schools between the 1930s and the 1970s. Former pupils gave evidence of the physical and sexual abuse they had experienced.

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.

Dodge City bishop steps away during abuse investigation

DODGE CITY (KS)
Associated Press

February 8, 2021

The bishop of the Catholic Diocese of Dodge City has stepped away from his duties after being accused of abusing a minor, the diocese announced Monday.

Bishop John Brungardt denies the allegations and will cooperate with the investigation, the diocese said.

The Kansas Bureau of Investigation recently notified the diocese of the accusation and will conduct the investigation.

Rev. Ted Stoecklein, spokesman for the Dodge City Diocese, said no further information would be released during the investigation

A KBI spokeswoman on Monday confirmed the agency is investigating the allegation. She said no arrests have been made and no charges have been filed but declined to release any other information.

In August, the KBI said it had received 205 reports of clergy sexual abuse and opened 120 cases since it began investigating the three Catholic dioceses in Kansas nearly two years ago,

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.

Statement

KANSAS CITY (KS)
The Leaven – Archdiocese of Kansas City

February 8, 2021

The Archdiocese of Kansas City in Kansas has been made aware of a complaint concerning Bishop John B. Brungardt of Dodge City, who is accused of sexual abuse against a minor.

An investigation conducted by the Kansas Bureau of Investigation (KBI) is under way. Bishop Brungardt denies the allegation and is cooperating fully with the KBl. He has, however, asked to step aside from his duties until the matter is resolved, a decision supported by his Metropolitan, Archbishop Joseph Naumann. Consequently, the Congregation for Bishops has appointed, with immediate effect, Most. Rev. Gerald L. Vincke, Bishop of Salina, as Apostolic Administrator sede plena of the Diocese of Dodge City.

The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, which is competent in cases involving sexual abuse of minors, has asked Archbishop Joseph F. Naumann to carry out a canonical preliminary investigation of the matter, in conformity with the provisions of the Apostolic Letters motu proprio, Sacramentorum sanctitatis tutela and Vos estis lux mundi. Archbishop Naumann will send the results of this preliminary investigation to the Congregation, along with his opinion about the initial findings, in the shortest time possible, taking into account that the State investigation is still ongoing.

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.

Bishop Vincke named temporary Apostolic Administrator of the Diocese of Dodge City

SALINA (KS)
Diocese of Salina

February 8, 2021

The Diocese of Dodge City announced on February 8th that Bishop John Brungardt has been accused of sexual abuse of a minor. The Kansas Bureau of Investigation is conducting the investigation. Bishop Brungardt denies the allegation.

Bishop Brungardt has willingly asked to be placed on a leave of absence during the investigation. The Congregation for Bishops has appointed Most Reverend Gerald L. Vincke the temporary Apostolic Administrator of the Diocese of Dodge City, effective immediately. Bishop Vincke remains as the Bishop of Salina in addition to his role as Apostolic Administrator of the Diocese of Dodge City.

Chancery officials answered the following questions about Bishop Brungardt’s absence.

Q. What kind of authority does an apostolic administrator have?

A. An apostolic administrator is equivalent in canon law to the diocesan bishop and has, essentially, the same authority as a diocesan bishop.

Q. How long will Bishop Brungardt be on leave?

A. The length of leave will be determined by the results of the investigation, along with the decision of the Holy Father.

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.

Official Statement Regarding Bishop John B. Brungardt

DODGE CITY (KS)
Diocese of Dodge City

February 8, 2021

Bishop John B. Brungardt of the Catholic Diocese of Dodge City has been notified by the Kansas Bureau of Investigation of an accusation of abuse of a minor made against him. Bishop Brungardt denies the allegation and is fully cooperating with the ongoing investigation. He has decided to step aside from his duties until the matter is resolved and has informed his Metropolitan Archbishop, Joseph Naumann. Consequently, the Congregation for Bishops has appointed, with immediate effect, Most Rev. Gerald Vincke, Bishop of Salina, as Apostolic Administrator of the Diocese of Dodge City. Due to the ongoing investigation, no further details can be shared at this point. To report abuse, call law enforcement and if an allegation involves a bishop, it can be reported to the bishop third-party reporting system at 1.800.276.1562 or online at https ://reportbishopabuse.org. Please pray for all involved.

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.

Rev. Piotr Calik named vicar general for Roman Catholic Diocese of Springfield

SPRINGFIELD (MA)
Republican via MassLive

February 8, 2021

By Anne-Gerard Flynn

The Rev. Piotr Stanislaw Calik, currently pastor of All Saints and St. Mary parishes in Ware, has been named vicar general for the Roman Catholic Diocese of Springfield by Bishop William Byrne.

The position, the highest under a bishop in overseeing a diocese and its administrative offices, has been vacant since last summer when the diocese’s ninth bishop – Mitchell T. Rozanski – was named Archbishop of St. Louis, and the Rev. Monsignor Christopher Connelly, rector of St. Michael’s Cathedral, said he would not seek reappointment.

A report issued at that time had been critical of Connelly in its investigation into how the diocese had handled sexual abuse allegations against the late Bishop Christopher Weldon.

“After much prayer and consultation, I am appointing Father Piotr Calik as vicar general and moderator of the curia for the Diocese of Springfield,” said Byrne in an announcement on the diocese’s Catholic Communications’ website.

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.

Bishop Byrne names Father Piotr Calik vicar general, moderator of the curia

SPRINGFIELD (MA)
iObserve – Diocese of Springfield

February 8, 2021

Bishop William Byrne has named Father Piotr Calik as vicar general of the Diocese of Springfield. A vicar general reports to the bishop and is the moderator of the curia, or administrative affairs.

“After much prayer and consultation, I am appointing Father Piotr Calik as vicar general and moderator of the curia for the Diocese of Springfield. Father Piotr’s many gifts are well-suited for this time of transition,” said Bishop Byrne.

“The position will be full-time to allow me to be bishop, not of an office, but of our diocese. I am grateful that Father Piotr has agreed to serve in this capacity because I know he loves being a pastor,” Bishop Byrne said.

Father Calik is currently the pastor of All Saints and St. Mary parishes in Ware.

“Of course, being asked by Bishop Byrne to be vicar general was a huge surprise to me. I do remember very well that after that news, I wasn’t able to sleep the whole night,” said Father Calik. “However, I am a strong believer in obedience, which comes from the rite of priestly ordination. For sure, it is a very humbling experience.”

Father Calik attended SS. Cyril and Methodius Seminary in Krakow, Poland from 2007-2008, before attending SS. Cyril and Methodius Seminary in Michigan from 2008-2013. He was ordained a priest in the Diocese of Springfield in 2013 by then Springfield Bishop Timothy A. McDonnell.

He serves on the College of Consultors and the Presbyteral Council. In addition, he was assigned to the World Youth Day Committee in 2016, the Vocation Advisory Team, New Pastors Program, and the Commission for the Clergy. Father Calik is currently the dean of the Hampden-East Deanery.

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.

February 8, 2021

North Dakota bill to close child abuse reporting loophole nixed after Catholic opposition

GRAND FORKS (ND)
Grand Forks Herald

February 1, 2021

By C.S. Hagen

https://www.grandforksherald.com/news/government-and-politics/6867218-North-Dakota-bill-to-close-child-abuse-reporting-loophole-nixed-after-Catholic-opposition

Backers of the bill said it was not aimed at the Catholic Church. But the legislation came at a time when North Dakota dioceses were under scrutiny for historical inaction on child sex abuse.

Bismarck – A bill that would have required North Dakota clergy to report cases of child abuse and neglect learned during confession or other private religious conversations has been withdrawn from consideration this session.

Current state law presents a loophole that does not mandate that pastors, priests and other clergy report abuse to a law enforcement agency if it’s information received when acting as a spiritual advisor.

The withdrawal of Senate Bill 2180 on Friday, Jan. 29, came after the Catholic Church publicly condemned the legislation as “draconian.”

In a Jan. 20 letter, William Donohue, president of the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights, said that legislation to break the seal of the confessional was a “direct assault on our faith.”

On the Senate floor, bill co-sponsor Sen. Judy Lee, R-West Fargo, asked for it to be withdrawn, saying that because of a “lack of understanding about the goal and the circumstances, the bill has become a distraction.”

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.

N.L. Roman Catholic parishioners told Mount Cashel resolution to mean ‘sacrifice’

KAMLOOPS (BRITISH COLUMBIA, CANADA)
Kamloops This Week from Canadian Press

February 7, 2021

St. John’s, Newfoundland and Labrador – Roman Catholic parishes in St. John’s were informed Sunday the resolution of claims by victims of abuse at the Mount Cashel orphanage will mean “changes and sacrifices” to deal with the financial fallout.

The Supreme Court of Canada dismissed the archdiocese’s application for leave to appeal a decision by the Newfoundland and Labrador Appeal Court on Jan. 14, meaning the church is liable for abuse committed in the 1940s, 50s and 60s.

He says in the letter he can’t promise the road ahead will be an easy one, but he hopes the resolution process will bring healing for victims, their loved ones and the entire faith community.

The archbishop said “the resolution of the claims will have significant implications for the parishes and parishioners,” in the diocese, adding in a news release he’s not available for further comment.

The case first shook Newfoundland and Labrador decades ago, and the recent Supreme Court decision has determined once and for all that the church has a responsibility to the victims of the abuse that took place at the notorious former orphanage at the hands of the Christian Brothers.

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.

Catholic schools in US hit by unprecedented enrollment drop

NEW YORK (NY)
Associated Press

February 8, 2021

By David Crary

Enrollment in Roman Catholic schools in the United States dropped 6.4% from the previous academic year amid the pandemic and economic stresses — the largest single-year decline in at least five decades, Catholic education officials reported Monday.

Among the factors were the closure or consolidation of more than 200 schools and the difficulty for many parents of paying tuition fees that average more than $5,000 for grades K-8 and more than $10,000 for secondary schools, according to the National Catholic Educational Association.

John Reyes, the NCEA’s executive director for operational vitality, said the pandemic has been an “accelerant” for longstanding challenges facing Catholic education.

Between the 2019-2020 school year and the current year, nationwide enrollment dropped by 110,000 to about 1.6 million students. Back in the 1960s, enrollment was more than 5 million.

With the recent wave of closures, there are now 5,981 Catholic schools in the United States, compared with more than 11,000 in 1970.

Reyes said they disproportionately impacted urban communities where significant numbers of Black children, including many from non-Catholic families, attended Catholic schools.

Indeed, some of the largest enrollment losses were in big-city dioceses, including 12.3% in Los Angeles, 11.1% in New York and 8.2% in Chicago.

The only big-city dioceses that saw significant increases were in Western cities with large Hispanic populations: up 5.5% in Las Vegas, 4.6% in Denver and 2.4% in Phoenix.

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.

House Sponsors Hope Derailed Sex Abuse Survivor Rights Amendment Will Get Back on Track

VESTAL (NY)
WSKG / NPR

February 8, 2021

By Sam Dunklau

Harrisburg PA – A proposal to give childhood sexual abuse survivors in Pennsylvania two more years to sue after the statute of limitations has expired is getting another chance in the state legislature.

The measure would have amended the commonwealth’s Constitution, but its years-long approval process was set to start over when the Department of State revealed this week it failed to advertise the amendment last year, as required by the Constitution.

Representatives Jim Gregory and Mark Rozzi speak to reporters after the successful passage of their bills from the House Judiciary Committee. Katie Meyer / WITF

Under Pa. law, constitutional amendments need to be approved twice in each chamber in two consecutive sessions before heading to voters, which takes at least two years to accomplish.

The snafu prompted bipartisan criticism and the resignation of Secretary of State Kathy Boockvar, who officially stepped down Friday.

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.

Pope to Focolare: Continue to grow in dialogue with today’s world

WASHINGTON (DC)
Catholic News Service via Catholic San Francisco / Archdiocese of San Francisco

February 8, 2021

By Carol Glatz
Catholic News Service

Vatican City – Pope Francis encouraged members of the Focolare movement to remain open to and in dialogue with the world around them, and to be courageous in confronting problems within their community, particularly in regard to revelations of abuse.

“This approach of openness and dialogue will help you avoid every self-referentiality, which is always a sin; it is a temptation to look at oneself in the mirror,” he said in an audience in the Paul VI audience hall Feb. 6 with member-delegates taking part in the movement’s general assembly.

This self-referential tendency must be avoided by everyone in the church because being “turned inward on oneself,” he said, “always leads to defending the institution to the detriment of people and can also lead to justifying or covering up forms of abuse.”

“Instead, it is better to be courageous and face problems with ‘parresia’ (boldness) and truth, always following the indications of the church, who is a mother, a true mother, and responding to the demands of justice and charity,” he said.

The topic of abuse and safeguarding was part of discussions during the Focolare general assembly Jan. 24-Feb. 7. Co-president Father Jesus Moran Cepedano, who is responsible for moral and disciplinary issues for the movement, was scheduled to give “an ad hoc intervention” during the general assembly as part of a more in-depth discussion, he said in an interview published on the Focolare website Jan. 20.

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.

Diocese of Wilmington again found in compliance with plan to deal with sexual abuse of minors

WILMINGTON (DE)
The Dialog – Diocese of Wilmington

February 5, 2021

The Catholic Diocese of Wilmington has once again been found to be in compliance with the Charter for the Protection of Children and Young People, the comprehensive action plan adopted by the U.S. bishops in 2002 to effectively deal with sexual abuse of minors by members of the clergy and other church personnel.

The findings are a result of a review of data collected for the 2019/2020 Charter audit period by StoneBridge Business Partners, an independent firm hired by the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops. The Diocese of Wilmington has been found to be in compliance in all audits including its first audit in 2004.

Currently, there are approximately 11,000 active individuals – including clergy, deacons and parish and school staff and volunteers – that have undergone background checks and have been cleared for ministry with young people in the Diocese of Wilmington through its For the Sake of God’s Children safe environment program.

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Diocese of Buffalo says audit shows it to be complying with youth safety procedures

BUFFALO (NY) and TORONTO (ONTARIO, CANADA)
WBFO / NPR

February 2, 2021

By Michael Mroziak

The Catholic Diocese of Buffalo says a newly-completed audit by a Rochester firm finds it is fully complying with guidelines put forth to protect children and young people from harm.

StoneBridge Business Partners looked at the years 2019 and 2020, collecting and measuring data from parishes, schools and key diocesan departments. The information collected covers topics including appropriate training, screening and hiring processes and procedures for working with victims.

The purpose of the audit was to determine whether the Diocese of Buffalo has been following the Charter for the Protection of Children and Young People issued by the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops.

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Poles Lose Faith as PiS Drives Politicisation of Church

SARAJEVO (BOSNIA AND HERZEGOVINA)
Reporting Democracy/Balkan Investigative Reporting Network

February 8, 2021

By Dariusz Kalan

Distrust of the Polish Catholic Church’s takeover of many aspects of life, its inability to handle internal scandals, and the discord between conservative dogma and some priests’ ostentatious wealth are driving many Poles away.

Warsaw – For Michal Rogalski, his Catholic faith meant much more than Sunday gatherings, decorating a Christmas tree and other religious routines. It was something he felt deeply about and has explored in various ways throughout his whole life.

Born in a staunchly Roman Catholic family, Rogalski, a 32-year-old translator, became an altar boy at the age of four. Later, for a year, he attended a pre-novitiate program required to join the Dominican friary, which he eventually abandoned, and he wrote a PhD thesis on Catholic modernism.

Now, asked the most fundamental question about whether God exists, Rogalski, after a while and with some hesitation, replies: “It would be nice if he did.”

In July, it will be two years since this former fervent believer undertook an apostasy – an act of formal disaffiliation from religion, seen as a major sin by Catholic dogma – but is only now prepared to talk about it, following last year’s mass protests against the tightening, with the church’s backing, of the abortion law.

In his case, leaving the church and faith has been spread over years. Yet what ultimately weighed the scales in favour of apostasy were reports on the scale of clerical child abuse and the cover-ups of it, as well as the church’s tight alliance with the ruling right-wing Law and Justice (PiS) party.

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Bishop of Raphoe issues apology after former priest jailed

LETTERKENNY (DONEGAL, IRELAND)
Highland Radio

February 5, 2021

The Bishop of Raphoe Alan McGuckian has issued a statement on behalf of the Diocese of Raphoe, apologising to the family of a man who was abused by a former priest from the diocese.

The Bishop said that the Church must continue to ensure that such crimes never happen again and that victims feel their voices are heard and that they are supported.

Yesterday, at Letterkenny Circuit Court, a former priest of the Diocese of Raphoe, was sentenced to two years imprisonment for the sexual abuse of a minor in 1985.

He was a priest in the diocese from 1976 and was removed from ministry immediately on reception of the complaint in 1998. The Gardai and HSE/ Tulsa were informed then.

In a statement and on behalf of the Diocese of Raphoe, Bishop Alan McGuckian said that he was deeply saddened that an innocent child had to endure this devastating abuse.

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Lawmakers consider fast-track plan for abuse lawsuit window

HARRISBURG (PA)
Associated Press

February 4, 2021

By Mark Scolforo and Marc Levy

A bid to amend the Pennsylvania Constitution to give victims of child sexual abuse a new legal window to sue over otherwise time-barred allegations got new life Thursday, days after the disclosure of a paperwork error threw it into disarray.

Rep. Mark Rozzi, D-Berks, told colleagues during a state House session that Republican leaders in both chambers were working with him and he hoped to get the proposed amendment on the spring primary ballot through a rarely used emergency process allowed in the constitution.

“We’ll be able to pass a standalone quickly and get this on the May ballot as originally intended,” Rozzi said.

Rozzi, a prime backer of the amendment who has told of his rape by a priest when he was 13, said the top-ranking senator in the GOP-majority Senate, President Pro Tempore Jake Corman, supports an emergency amendment process. Corman and other top Senate Republicans were noncommittal or silent Thursday.

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Pa. House leaders plan emergency fix on abuse lawsuits after filing error

PITTSBURGH (PA)
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

February 4, 2021

By Peter Smith

Pennsylvania House leaders support using an emergency declaration to overcome a paperwork blunder by the secretary of state’s office and get a proposed constitutional amendment to voters this May that would allow lawsuits over long-ago sexual abuse.

The measure was made public Thursday afternoon on the House floor by Rep. Mark Rozzi, D-Berks County. Leaders of both parties in the House voiced their support. Mr. Rozzi also said Senate President Pro Tempore Jake Corman, R-Centre, indicated to him he supports the idea and would discuss it with the majority Republican caucus there.

The measure has been long sought by victims of sexual abuse by Catholic priests and others in cases often going back decades. They have been barred by state law against filing suits against dioceses and other organizations over long-ago abuse by the statute of limitations.

Thursday’s legislative move comes three days after it was revealed that the secretary of state’s office failed last year to publish as required the Legislature’s endorsement of the constitutional amendment in 2020. That failure, which cost Secretary of State Kathy Boockvar her job, would have prevented the amendment from going on this year’s ballot.

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Abuse survivors and advocates push emergency measure for May ballot

TARENTUM (PA)
TribLive

February 6, 2021

By Deb Erdley

A bipartisan team of Pennsylvania lawmakers will invoke a rare emergency provision of the Pennsylvania Constitution, seeking to restore a constitutional amendment ballot question long sought by victims of child sex abuse. An administrative error by the Department of State, discovered late last month, prevents the question from appearing on the May 18 ballot.

The proposed amendment gives child sexual abuse victims a retroactive two-year “window” in which to file civil lawsuits, no matter how long ago the alleged abuse occurred. The enabling legislation was approved in the General Assembly on three separate votes — two in the House and one in the Senate — and was headed for a final Senate vote this month to put it on the May ballot. But the Department of State failed to complete an essential task: legal advertising of the proposed amendment.

The failure led to the resignation of Secretary of State Kathy Boockvar, who officially left office Friday, and derailed the two-year process. Abuse survivors, bitterly disappointed, are scrambling for a way to move the bill over the finish line.

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Former archpriest is permanently banned from duties over sex abuse

MALTA
Times of Malta

February 7, 2021

By Matthew Xuereb

Case had been referred to Vatican by then bishop Mario Grech

The Vatican has banned the former archpriest of Xagħra, who was investigated for sexually abusing an altar boy more than two decades ago, from ever again exercising his functions as a priest, including administering any sacraments.

Sources close to the Vatican confirmed that Mgr Eucharist Sultana, 82, had his temporary restrictions on the exercising of his ministry turned permanent following a canonical penal process by the Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, which is a sort of trial over breaches in Canon law.

The case had been referred to the Vatican by former Gozo bishop Mario Grech upon receipt of a report by the Church’s Safeguarding Commission in 2018, which had concluded that victim’s allegations of sexual abuse against Fr Sultana were deemed “credible”.

The matter had also been referred to the police for a criminal investigation into the allegations but these hit a brick wall when investigators found that the case had been time-barred.

Sources said Eucharist Sultana allegedly abused the boy for four years in return for gifts.

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Former Xagħra archpriest investigated over abuse claims in 2018

MALTA
Times of Malta

February 3, 2021

By Matthew Xuereb

Case could not be taken to court because it was time-barred

The former Archpriest of Xagħra, Gozo, Mgr Eucharist Sultana, was investigated by the police over allegations of having sexually abused a teenage altar boy but no criminal action had been taken as the case was time-barred, a police spokesman has told Times of Malta.

Sultana was investigated in 2018 at the same time that he was stopped from carrying out any priestly duties, including saying mass.

Earlier this week he was one of the witnesses summoned by the police in the case against two other priests who were arraigned last week and accused of abusing an altar boy.

He told the court that he had been at the seminary with the other priests but could not remember the victim or whether he had been an altar boy at the time that he was archpriest.

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Catholic Church ‘apologises for the suffering’ caused by ‘sexual sadist’ priest

STOKE-ON-TRENT (ENGLAND)
StokeOnTrentLive

February 8, 2021

To the outside, ‘Father Joe’ was seen as a saviour, a man carrying out God’s work. Behind closed doors, he was a sinner possessing sewer urges

The Roman Catholic Church has apologised for the ‘suffering’ caused by a ‘sadist priest’ when he sexually and physically abused a teenage boy.

Depraved Father Joseph Quigley committed a catalogue of offences against his teenage victim.

These included:

– Rubbing the boy’s inner thigh after making him wear gym kit;
– Making him take showers with the door open;
– Inflicting ‘sado-masochistic’ punishments on him such as locking him in the church’s crypt, a cold and dark room containing tombs;
– Beating the boy with a hurling stick and;
– Making the boy do sit-ups and press-ups as punishments, to stand in the corner and suck paracetamols, which have a bitter taste.

Quigley, aged 56, of Aston Hall, Church Lane, Stone, was convicted of a number of offences in December following a trial.

He was then jailed for 11-and-a-half years on January 29.

The offences took place while he was the parish priest at the church from 2002 until he was forced to resign in disgrace.

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February 7, 2021

Mississippi trial delayed for friar accused of sex abuse

MISSISSIPPI
Associated Press

February 7, 2021

A trial has been postponed until April for a former Franciscan friar accused of molesting students in the 1990s at a Catholic school in Mississippi.

Paul West had been scheduled for trial in February. His case was delayed so he could undergo a mental evaluation, The Greenwood Commonwealth reported, citing dockets on the local district attorney’s website.

A Leflore County grand jury indicted West in August on two counts of sexual battery and two counts of gratification of lust. If convicted, he faces life in prison.

This is the second time the case has been postponed since West pleaded innocent in September.

West’s attorney, Wallie Stuckey, said in November that he had not received all the information he’s legally due from the Mississippi attorney general’s office about witnesses and evidence.

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Did ‘the Roman Catholic Church’ unjustly collect federal aid? AP story misrepresents Church finances, expert says

UNITED STATES
Catholic News Agency

February 5, 2021

By Jonah McKeown

https://www.catholicnewsagency.com/news/did-the-roman-catholic-church-unjustly-collect-federal-aid-ap-story-misrepresents-church-finances-expert-says-18615

A Feb. 4 investigative story from the Associated Press inaccurately portrays “the Roman Catholic Church” as a “giant corporate monolith” that raked in federal aid while sitting on billions of dollars that they could have used to pay employees, a canon and civil law expert told CNA.

In reality, “the Roman Catholic Church” in the US is made up of tens of thousands of separate nonprofits, most of which did not have legal access to liquid cash necessary to pay their employees when the pandemic took hold last year.

The CARES Act, passed in March 2020, initially authorized some $350 billion in loans to small businesses, known as the Paycheck Protection Program, which was intended to allow them to continue to pay their employees.

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Ayala: Archdiocese of San Antonio plans to update its clergy abuse list

SAN ANTONIO (TX)
San Antonio Express-News via lmtonline.com

February 6, 2021

By Elaine Ayala

Two years ago, when Archbishop Gustavo García-Siller released a landmark list of priests credibly accused of sexually assaulting and abusing children, he said that apologizing once wouldn’t suffice.

Two years after that defining moment, his words torment survivors of crimes that amounted to rape.

None of the cases might have resulted in imprisonment, but they embroiled the Catholic Church in a global cover-up and scandal.
.
Survivors involved in SNAP San Antonio, a chapter of the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, say the archdiocese hasn’t been forthcoming since.

Instead, they say the archdiocese has been managing the fallout and liability.

This week, the Archdiocese of San Antonio said in a statement that it plans to update its 2019 list.

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EDITORIAL: Legislation needed to help victims of child sexual abuse

PENNSYLVANIA
Observer-Reporter

February 6, 2021

To err is human, so the saying goes.

We’ve been told by thinkers and self-help gurus through the years that mistakes can be a source of learning, inspiration and growth, that we shouldn’t fear them, and we should courageously move on from them.

Advice along these lines has undoubtedly been ricocheting through the mind of now-departed Pennsylvania Secretary of State Kathy Boockvar in recent days. Boockvar fell on her sword and resigned last week after a mistake the State Department made that had the distinction of being both trivial and exceptional.

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The Catholic Church has a dangerous influence on Poland

EUROPE
The Boar (publication of the University of Warwick, England)

February 7, 2021

By Nikki Siriprasert

The Polish Catholic Church and some of those who follow their teaching have a rather “interesting” take on sexuality. According to them, contraception is a serious sin, sexual education promotes paedophillia, gay rights movement is a “rainbow plague”, abortion should be banned even when the foetus is severely deformed, and of course, abstinence is the virtuous way to avoid unwanted pregnancies.

Yet, along with preaching these “moral” codes, many priests and bishops sexually abuse young girls and boys, and those in charge choose to turn a blind eye on the issue. Many Polish people, especially the younger generation, sees through the church’s hypocrisy and views the teachings as impractical, harmful and hateful. The recent near-total abortion ban might well be the last straw for many Poles. Refusal to adapt to the younger generation might cost the church its authority and power in the long run.

Backed by the church, the Law and Justice party (PiS) has been pushing for a near-total ban on abortion since 2016. They want to criminalise the abortion of deformed foetuses, leaving legal only the cases of rape and incest and the cases where the women’s life and health is severely at risk. Jarosław Kaczyńsky, currently the leader of the PiS, made a vow to pursue this cause, saying that “We will strive to ensure that even cases of very difficult pregnancies, when the child is certain to die, very deformed, still end up in a birth, so that the child can be baptized, buried, have a name.”

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Truth forum to hear tales of mother and baby homes

IRELAND
Sunday Times

February 7, 2021

By Justine McCarthy

Varadkar backs ‘less clinical’ look at abuse in church and state institutions

Leo Varadkar, the tanaiste, wants to establish a public truth forum to hear the stories of women and children who survived abusive church and state institutions, and of those who ran them.

“I very much respect the painstaking work done by the commission on mother and baby homes and previous bodies like the Ryan Commission,” said the Fine Gael leader.

“They spent years listening to testimony and examining documentary evidence to try to establish the truth of what happened, to a legal or academic standard. That’s important for the state, for society and for historical accuracy — but for many survivors it can be cold and clinical, including the fact it’s been done behind closed doors.”

A forum on truth, gender and transformation was proposed by Katherine Zappone when she was minister for children and youth affairs in the previous government. Varadkar, taoiseach at the time, supported the idea and a memo was being prepared for cabinet when last year’s general election was called.

Zappone envisaged the forum as a state-funded but independent body, whose report would start a process of national reconciliation.

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Roman Catholic church in Birmingham ‘sorry’ as ‘sadist’ priest Joseph Quigley jailed

ENGLAND
Birmingham Mail

February 7, 2021

By Mike Lockley

Case against 56-year-old ‘Father Joe’ involved one victim, a teenager at the time, but another key witness had also been abused

The Catholic church in Birmingham has dubbed the crimes of perverted priest Father Joseph Quigley – the sexual sadist who forced his young victim to suck bitter Paracetamol as punishment – deplorable.

And the Archdiocese issued an apology for the suffering caused by twisted Quigley while at St Charles Borromeo RC Church, near Warwick.

The depravity inflicted by 56-year-old Quigley – sentenced to 11 years last Friday – near beggars belief.

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Catholic Church ‘apologises for the suffering’ caused by ‘sexual sadist’ priest

ENGLAND
Coventry live

February 7, 2021

By Mike Lockley and Madeleine Clark

Father Joseph Quigley was jailed for 11 and a half years

The Roman Catholic Church in Birmingham has apologised for the “suffering” caused by Father Joseph Quigley when he sexually and physically abused a teenage boy at a church in Warwickshire for six years.

Described as a “sexual sadist”, Quigley rubbed his teenage victim’s inner thigh after making him wear gym kit, made him take showers with the door open and inflicted ‘sado-masochistic’ punishments on him such as locking him in the church’s crypt.

He also beat the boy with a hurling stick during his time at St Charles Borromeo RC church in Hampton-on-the-Hill near Warwick, reports BirminghamLive.

Quigley has now been jailed for 11 and a half years after being handed his sentence on January 29.

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‘What are other organisations doing about child abuse?’

MALTA
Times of Malta

February 6, 2021

Head of Church’s safeguarding commission says its example should be copied

The Church’s progress in developing ways of exposing child abuse cases is not being repeated by other organisations which are involved with children, the head of its Safeguarding Commission has said.

Andrew Azzopardi said that such organisations – from football clubs to schools – needed safeguarding structures of their own, to ensure victims of abuse had a way of reporting it.

“How can the police know what is going on in a football ground, school or church? Building a safe culture must come internally,” Azzopardi said.

The Safeguarding Commission was established in 2015 to investigate cases of alleged abuse, facilitate reporting of such cases and train people to better identify and respond to abuse cases.

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Former Staten Island priest ‘groomed’ and sexually abused boy, another lawsuit alleges

STATEN ISLAND (NY)
Staten Island Advance

February 6, 2021

By Frank Donnelly

“Grooming’ and sex-abuse allegations leveled at former Staten Island priest in another lawsuit

Former priest Ralph LaBelle plied a young parishioner with beer and Rangers’ hockey tickets to gain the boy’s trust and sexually abuse him, a lawsuit alleges.

Recently filed in state Supreme Court, St. George, the suit is the latest involving allegations of molestation against LaBelle while he was assigned to St. Clare’s R.C. Church in Great Kills.

A civil complaint names the Archdiocese of New York and St. Clare’s as defendants.

LaBelle first abused the plaintiff around 1987 when he was 11 years old, alleges the complaint.

He continued to molest the youngster about “a dozen times” over the course of two years, the complaint alleges.

“LaBelle was a sexual predator and was engaged in a sexually inappropriate relationship with plaintiff,” the complaint contends. “LaBelle was a trusted authority figure within the church and community … (and) took advantage of the status and credibility afforded him by St. Clare’s and the Archdiocese of New York and exploited his position to gain plaintiff’s trust and abuse him.”

The defendants “took no steps to prevent or stop the abuse of plaintiff,” the complaint alleges.

In April 2019, the Archdiocese unveiled a list of clergy credibly accused of abuse. LaBelle was among those named.

He was laicized in 2005, after several victims had come forward.

The plaintiff, listed in the filing under the pseudonym “John Doe 5,” suffered “emotional and psychological trauma and humiliation,” said the complaint.

As a result, he has “struggled with drug addiction from an early age” and has been arrested “numerous times” for theft and assault, the complaint maintains.

At present, the plaintiff is incarcerated in Arizona, said the complaint.

He seeks unspecified compensatory and punitive damages.

“This is yet another lawsuit involving abuse by Father LaBelle,” said Bradley L. Rice, the plaintiff’s lawyer.

Joseph Zwilling, an Archdiocese spokesman, did not comment on the specific allegations in the lawsuit, per church policy on active cases filed under the Child Victims Act.

But he did say the Archdiocese “takes all allegations of sexual abuse seriously and responds with compassion and respect.”

“We have made great strides both in responding to victim-survivors, but also putting into place measures in our parishes, schools, and other agencies, including background checks and safe environment training, to ensure that such acts never happen again,” said Zwilling.

CHILD VICTIMS ACT

Enacted in August 2019, the Child Victims Act created a one-year window for plaintiffs of any age to sue alleged abusers regardless of when the abuse occurred.

That window has since been extended to August 2021.

The law also allows victims of sexual abuse to sue their alleged abuser any time before they turn 55.

The range of complaints sent shockwaves across Staten Island, with lawsuits being filed against Roman Catholic schools and churches, the Boy Scouts, a youth athletic institution and even one man’s parents.

The complaint alleges LaBelle first approached the plaintiff in a playground at PS 8, near St. Clare’s. His recognized the priest because his family was parishioners.

LaBelle then began “grooming” the boy, spending time with him, alleges the complaint.

Among other things, the priest allegedly offered the plaintiff and other kids Communion out of the back of his white Mazda van.

He even took them to his vacation home in the Poconos, the complaint alleges.

LaBelle sought to curry favor with the plaintiff by buying him beer and giving him gifts, including Rangers’ tickets, alleges the complaint.

One time, he allegedly took the boy to a Rangers’ game.

On the car ride home, the priest pulled over in Great Kills and began kissing the boy’s cheek. He also grabbed the youngster’s genitals, the complaint alleges.

Because LaBelle was priest and friend, the boy mistakenly believed their relationship was “normal,” said the complaint.

The priest went on to abuse the plaintiff about 12 times over two years, the complaint alleges.

OTHER CASES

The plaintiff is at least the fourth individual to sue the Archdiocese alleging LaBelle molested them while assigned to St. Clare’s.

K.M., a Manhattan resident and former St. Clare’s parishioner, alleges the priest sexually abused him around 1979 “including during his first reconciliation and church services.”

He was about 6 years old then.

In a separate suit, Donald O’Brien alleges LaBelle “groomed” and sexually abused him in the mid-1980s when he was between the ages of 13 and 16.

LaBelle was also assigned to St. Clare’s then.

In 2019, former Staten Island resident Christopher Hansen filed a suit claiming he was “groomed” and then abused by LaBelle between the ages of 14 and 16. Hansen’s family also attended Mass at St. Clare’s.

Those suits are all pending.

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[Media Statement] Catholic Officials in St. Augustine Withheld Information from Florida AG

UNITED STATES
SNAP (Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests)

February 5, 2021

When Florida’s Office of Statewide Prosecution released their report into clergy sexual abuse, we noted that investigations into the institutional Catholic Church routinely found that officials “actively worked to prevent parents and parishioners from learning about abusers.” A news article out of Jacksonville shockingly shows that abusers were being hidden even while the attorney general was actively investigating cases of cover-up.

According to the media report, Catholic officials in the Diocese of St. Augustine did not disclose allegations against several priests, including Fr. John Dux and Fr. D. Terrence Morgan. The latter was under investigation for “lewd and lascivious acts” at the time the state investigation was ongoing. We find it very concerning that Church leaders were not fully transparent with investigators in Florida, although we are not surprised. In our experience, Catholic officials have lied for decades about the extent of clergy abuse and cover-ups to parents and parishioners, why should state investigators be treated any differently?

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[Opinion] Ayala: Survivor questions San Antonio archdiocese for failing to ‘walk with’ victims after list of clergy abusers released in 2019

SAN ANTONIO (TX)
San Antonio Express News

February 4, 2021

By Elaine Ayala

https://www.expressnews.com/news/news_columnists/elaine_ayala/article/Ayala-Survivor-questions-San-Antonio-archdiocese-15922815.php

If you ask Zac Zepeda how he’s doing, he says, “OK.” He just got his COVID-19 vaccine, he adds.

At 72 and retired from USAA after 30 years, Zepeda can look back at a life well-lived. He attended San Antonio College, served in the military during the Vietnam War and graduated from the University of Texas at San Antonio.

He has been married for 44 years, “to the same woman,” he jokes, and they have two adult children.

Zepeda is a survivor of sexual assault and abuse. He was 12, in seventh grade at a Catholic school, when it happened. His predator was a young, popular Catholic priest named Michael J. O’Sullivan.

The first incident was in 1961 in the sacristy of Blessed Sacrament Church on Oblate Drive, he said. A sacristy is the room behind or near the altar where priests prepare for service and don their vestments for Mass.

The abuse ended in 1962.

“He was such a charming person,” Zepeda said, recalling that many children chose confirmation names in his honor, Michael or variants of it.

So, when Zepeda says he’s OK, it’s only in the context of all this — only in the way in which victims like him can say they’re OK, only in the way that such survivors manage to live, work and heal.

Two years ago, a tearful, sometimes angry Archbishop Gustavo García-Siller went before cameras and released a landmark list naming 54 credibly accused priests in cases dating back to 1941.

It was part of a national reckoning that came after decades of mostly newspaper reports of crimes and cover-ups that forced the Vatican to repent.

Since its list was released, along with a concurrent report by a commission that looked at the evidence and delivered damning conclusions, the Archdiocese of San Antonio has been mostly mum on the topic.

It has been hard to tell what it has done or continues to do to address these cases and others that likely surfaced after 2019, when some victims might have summoned the courage to report their priest abusers.

Dioceses statewide revealed nearly 300 perpetrators. San Antonio’s list was the longest.

It included 10 credible allegations against O’Sullivan, starting in 1962, when he was at Blessed Sacrament. He “re-offended,” was dismissed and ended up in a diocese in Georgia. He re-offended and returned to Ireland, where new allegations surfaced.

By 2006, 45 years after sexually assaulting and abusing Zepeda, actions were taken to remove O’Sullivan from the priesthood. He reportedly died in 2013.

Zepeda didn’t know his abuser was in Ireland when he vacationed there that same year.

Today, he’s the co-leader of SNAP San Antonio, a local chapter of the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests.

The archdiocese has responded to Zepeda in one way, legally. He says he’s closing in on a settlement with the archdiocese that will pay for his continued counseling, which he says has done wonders for him.

No punitive damages are being sought, he said.

Surprisingly, Zepeda never left the church and serves as a deacon at Our Lady of Guadalupe Church in Helotes.

He’d rather not speak of the details of his abuse, only that O’Sullivan told him what happened was “something special between us.”

Zepeda told no one for decades.

He says he’s “disgusted” with the archdiocese’s record since 2019. “The list seems to have become static. I don’t see a whole lot of movement from the archdiocese.”

SNAP San Antonio feels the same.

Like other survivors, Zepeda had hoped the archdiocese, especially the archbishop, would have reached out and “walked with” survivors.

He tried to get in to see the archbishop, he said. But every effort has been short-stopped. It “angers me,” he said. “It’s why I got active in SNAP.”

Zepeda says individual priests have shown compassion and have addressed centuries of misdoings. “But I haven’t seen it from the top,” he said.

García-Siller did apologize to victims in 2019. He was contrite and moving.

But that’s the thing about apologies. Sometimes, one isn’t enough to mend a wound and get it to heal. Sometimes, one apology can’t cover a crime so massive, a deceit so evil.

Zepeda, and other survivors I’ve recently interviewed for this and another upcoming column, say it’s time for church leaders to re-atone and update its lists publicly.

The word “repent” offers some advice in its prefix. “Re” means “again” or “back.”

It’s also a good time. Feb. 17 is Ash Wednesday, the start of weeks of penitence before the celebration of Easter.

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.

TMIS Editorial: Sex abuse and omertà

MALTA
Malta Independent

February 7, 2021

Malta has once again been shaken to the core by allegations of sexual abuse carried out by clergymen, and a feeling of great anger has swept over our society.

But will the rage we are collectively feeling lead us to become a more alert and compassionate society?

Will it make us finally ditch the sense of omertà that still prevails in certain communities, and which keeps well-known ‘secrets’ from being reported to the authorities?

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.

The False Memory Syndrome at 30: How Flawed Science Turned into Conventional Wisdom

UNITED STATES
Mad in America (blog)

February 7, 2021

By Joshua Kendall

In early December of 1990, the young academic was feeling confused. Though she had recently been granted tenure and was a happily married mother of two, with another child on the way, she was weighed down by a surprising surge in anxiety. To get some relief from her distress, she decided to enter psychotherapy.

When she mentioned in an early session how much she was dreading the prospect of seeing her parents during the upcoming Christmas vacation, her therapist asked if she had ever been abused. “I said, ‘No,’ but later that day, I began experiencing disturbing flashbacks. Over the next few weeks, I remembered that my father had molested me when I was a young child,” said Jennifer Freyd, a professor of psychology at the University of Oregon, in a phone interview. “When my parents arrived for their visit, I couldn’t handle being with them, and my husband blurted out the reason. They ended up leaving earlier than planned.”

Over the next couple of years, Jennifer and her parents—Peter Freyd, a professor of mathematics at the University of Pennsylvania, and Pamela Freyd, then a research associate at the university’s Institute of Research in Cognitive Science—corresponded about this conflict. But as it became apparent that there was no way to resolve the family’s differences, these communications stopped. Jennifer has not been in touch with either parent since then.

While Peter Freyd has denied that any sexual abuse ever occurred, he has confessed to some inappropriate behavior around his daughter during her childhood. “I’m quite prepared to say,” he told The Baltimore Sun in 1994, “the attitude I thought was appropriate of being open about things of a sexual nature – in retrospect may have been wrong.” He has also publicly acknowledged that he himself was sexually abused by a much older man when he was a teenager and that he has struggled with alcoholism—a condition for which he received in-patient treatment at a substance abuse rehab facility in the early 1980s.

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.

DCI won’t share results of priest abuse investigation due to statute of limitations

RAPID CITY (SD)
Rapid City Journal

February 6, 2021

By Arielle Zionts

https://rapidcityjournal.com/news/local/crime-and-courts/dci-won-t-share-results-of-priest-abuse-investigation-due-to-statute-of-limitations/article_8526b90e-68b5-5142-bbaa-eb8a7e43a3d7.html

The Division of Criminal Investigation won’t share the scope or results of its investigation into a Rapid City priest accused of child sexual abuse because any crime that might have happened can no longer be charged in court.

“While the investigation is not closed it is at a point where due to the statute of limitations there is nothing chargeable,” said Tim Bormann, spokesman for the Attorney General’s Office. “Should any new information or allegations be forthcoming that evidence would then be examined.”

Bormann declined to share the nature of the allegations and the results and scope of the investigation into Father Michel Mulloy, a priest who was set to become Bishop of Duluth.

“The statute of limitations places this matter into a category where it cannot be brought into a court of law, similarly it would not be proper to release any details that would conversely be considered in the court of public opinion,” he said.

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.

February 6, 2021

[Media Statement] Catholic Officials Apparently Raided PPP Loans Unnecessarily at the Expense of Small Businesses

SNAP (Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests)

February 4, 2021

It appears that Catholic officials in the US plundered the American taxpayer by accepting payroll protection program funds in dioceses that had billions in assets and cash.

According to the AP, “112 Roman Catholic dioceses in the U.S. collectively had over $10 billion in cash and other funds when they received at least $1.5 billion from the Paycheck Protection Program.” It is disturbing that an entity with so much already in the bank was able to so much of the money intended to keep small businesses afloat. It is even more concerning considering that these dioceses have billions more in property and real estate that was not included in the AP calculations.

There are 178 Catholic dioceses and nearly 200 Catholic religious orders in the United States. That the AP only analyzed 112 of them and did not have access to the financials of some of the richest, such as the Archdiocese of New York, shows that that the AP’s stunning assessment is only a partial look and that the reality is probably even more egregious.

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.

Claimed $2 Million in Federal Small Business Relief Funds

WEST VIRGINIA
West Virginia Public Broadcasting

February 5, 2021

By Duncan Slade

The Diocese of Wheeling-Charleston received an almost $2 million loan from federal COVID-19 relief, according to an audit released Friday.

As the church faced a considerable revenue decline due to the pandemic and corresponding economic recession, it applied for a federal Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) loan in April and secured $1,996,372 through the program.

“There was no reason for our church employees, who pay taxes, to lose their jobs and possibly their homes when the government was making funds available precisely to keep people at work,” wrote Bishop Mark Brennan in a letter released with the audit Friday.

The funds were used to pay employee salaries and healthcare, according to accompanying documents. PPP loans are eligible for forgiveness if used for payroll and other select expenses, and the diocese plans to apply for forgiveness from the federal government.

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.

St. Augustine Diocese did not disclose priest was under investigation, AG’s office says

JACKSONVILLE (FL)
News4JAX

February 5, 2021

By Kelly Wiley

Top leaders with the Diocese of St. Augustine did not disclose to state prosecutors investigating sex abuse within Florida churches that one of its priests was the subject of two local criminal investigations until after the state concluded its investigation.

Now, the Florida Attorney General’s Office is looking further into Fr. David Terrance Morgan, a retired priest.

Morgan, 72, is a former religion teacher at Bishop Kenny High School and was last assigned to Cathedral Basilica of St. Augustine before retiring in 2019.

The Florida Attorney General’s Office announced it was beginning an investigation into sex crimes inside Florida’s Catholic churches in October 2018.

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.

Trainee Catholic priest accused of downloading indecent images of children wearing nappies was arrested following a tip-off from the US security services before judge dismissed his case due to lack of evidence

ENGLAND
Daily Mail

February 5, 2021

By Matt Drake

— Henry Balkwill, 33, was arrested at Saint John’s Seminary in Guildford, Surrey
— It followed a tip-off from the US Department of Homeland Security, a court heard
— But the case was dropped due to lack of evidence and he was free to go

A trainee priest accused of downloading indecent images of children wearing nappies had the case thrown out by a judge due to lack of evidence.

Henry Balkwill, 33, was arrested in his room at Saint John’s Seminary in Guildford, Surrey, following a tip-off from the US Department of Homeland Security, a court was told.

He denied a charge of printing off 12 indecent images before scrapping them later.

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.

Christian pastor Bob Cotton’s call to increase penalties for covering up child sex abuse

NEWCASTLE (AUSTRALIA)
Newcastle Herald

February 6, 2021

By Sage Swinton

When Maitland Pastor Bob Cotton’s hard-fought push to increase penalties for concealing child sex abuse became a reality, he thought things would change.

He thought the NSW government agreeing to increase the maximum jail term from two to five years in November 2018 would mean more people who covered up child abuse in church hierarchies would be sent to prison.

But more than two years later, there’s little to show for it.

Bureau of Crime Statistics and Research data shows that since the sentencing reform was introduced, there have been six charges for concealing child abuse in NSW, three of which resulted in guilty verdicts.

None of the convictions resulted in prison terms.

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.

Vatican investigates German women’s group

GERMANY
The Tablet

February 4, 2021

By Christa Pongratz-Lippitt

The Vatican Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF) has begun an investigation of Maria 2.0, a group of German Catholic women.

At the same time, the CDF has decided to drop its centuries-old title of “Inquisition”.

According to the German daily Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ),the reason for the investigation is connected with Maria 2.0’s protests against the Archbishop of Cologne’s refusal to publish an abuse report.

Cardinal Rainer Maria Woelki initially promised to publish the report he commissioned on the handling of abuse cases in the archdiocese of Cologne by an independent Munich law firm, but in the end refused to publish it.

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.

February 5, 2021

Cardinal Blase Cupich demanding details on abusive order priests but won’t post findings

CHICAGO (IL)
Chicago Sun-Times

February 5, 2021

By Robert Herguth

The Archdiocese of Chicago has been getting explicit details from religious orders on problem priests in the area for over two years. But it’s keeping that information secret. Some orders won’t release it, either.

Two and a half years after the latest sex abuse scandal rocked the Catholic church and prompted new pledges of transparency, the church in the Chicago region has yet to make a full accounting to the public of its problem priests.

Cardinal Blase Cupich has demanded for more than two years now that Catholic religious orders that operate in his territory fully disclose to him any information on their clergy members who now face or previously have faced accusations of child sexual abuse.

But Cupich — who heads the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Chicago, which covers Cook County and Lake County, and who reports to Pope Francis — has kept those findings secret. The archdiocese won’t say how many clerics from orders in the Chicago area have faced such accusations or make public any information about them, such as where those clergy members are today.

That’s despite Cupich’s stepped-up behind-the-scenes demands on the semi-autonomous religious orders to produce detailed reports on predator priests and other problem clergy in their ranks — information that some orders have made public but that others have declined to.

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.

A child sex abuser evaded justice in Kenya. Then an ‘ordinary woman’ took matters into her own hands.

KENYA
The Washington Post

February 4, 2021

By Max Bearak and Rael Ombuor

NAIROBI — Some coincidences are impossible to ignore.

Margaret Ruto, a Pennsylvania nurse in her mid-30s, thought she was returning to the rolling green hills of Kenya’s tea-growing region to care for her ailing mother-in-law.

Instead, a fluke of fate awaited her: A man who lived just 10 minutes from her home in the United States had opened an orphanage not 10 minutes from her ancestral village in Kenya — and children were saying they had been sexually abused there.

It was the summer of 2018, and she found the village in uproar. Two girls, 12 and 14, had recently escaped and shared horror stories of sexual abuse at the hands of the orphanage’s director, Gregory Dow.

Ruto was led to a rumpled patch of earth behind the orphanage. Former employees said a 9-month-old boy buried there had died a few years earlier after choking on something while he’d been left unsupervised.

Standing over the grave, she felt dizzy. It was a moment that would divide her life into a before and an after: a transformation from an “ordinary woman” into a detective.

Dow, whom she would spend the next year chasing, had already fled back to Pennsylvania after members of the community confronted him and alerted authorities. Kenyan police say they missed catching him at the airport by just a few hours.

Locals told Ruto they feared that this entitled, White foreigner claiming to be a devout Christian was going to evade justice.

“I was meant to know about this,” she remembered thinking. “And I was meant to do something about it.”

Turmoil lay ahead that Ruto, a dual U.S.-Kenyan citizen, could scarcely have imagined: sleuthing on two continents, constantly looking over her shoulder, working through the trauma of child sex abuse survivors, and sobbing uncontrollably in her car, all while compiling a shocking investigation that would eventually make it into the hands of FBI agents, splash across the front pages of every Kenyan newspaper and dramatically alter Kenya’s child services policies.

The only hint of her involvement until now has been an official acknowledgment that the FBI was “acting on a tip.”

After agreeing to a plea deal, Gregory Dow, now 61, was sentenced Thursday in a U.S. federal court to 188 months in prison on four counts of “engaging in illicit sexual conduct in foreign places.” Dow will be nearly 80 years old if he makes it to the end of his sentence.

Dow’s plea deal acknowledges guilt on all charges brought against him. His attorneys did not make Dow available to respond to the allegations of deaths at the orphanage, saying only that he had never publicly addressed those claims. A special clause in the U.S. penal code allows for prosecution of child abuse cases committed by Americans overseas.

During the sentencing hearing Thursday, Dow apologized “for the pain that I’ve caused.” Judge Edward G. Smith called him “a missionary from hell.”

Ruto is coming forward with her story because she — and the FBI and the U.S. attorney’s office that prosecuted Dow — hope it will inspire similar sleuthing instincts in others.

“Ultimately, Ms. Ruto’s information found its way to a team of dedicated FBI agents, who … gathered the evidence required to charge Dow and hold him accountable for the monstrous abuse he perpetrated on his victims,” William M. McSwain, the U.S. attorney at the time in the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, said in a statement to The Washington Post. “This case is a textbook example of the ways in which the public can assist law enforcement in bringing sexual predators like Dow, and other criminals, to justice.”

Separately, Kenyan police exhumed and autopsied the body of the 9-month-old, James Kipkirui, as part of an ongoing investigation into the circumstances of his death, according to Johansen Oduor, the government’s chief forensic pathologist.

Three summers ago, Ruto made a silent, solemn promise that nothing would stop her — not corrupt authorities in Kenya and not sticky-slow bureaucracy in the United States — from pursuing justice for the children at the orphanage.

“I’m just an ordinary woman, a nurse, a mother,” she recalled recently. “I had no idea what I was getting into.”

The main building of the former Dow Family Children’s Home, where Gregory Dow carried out acts of sexual abuse. He pleaded guilty to four charges of illicit sexual conduct and was sentenced Thursday.

‘Will someone believe me?’

Kenya has a vast array of missionary-run institutions, including nursing homes, schools and orphanages. Often, impoverished families avoid extra financial burden by sending their children and elderly to live at these charitable institutions.

When the Dow Family Children’s Home opened in 2008, foreigners were not required to submit to background checks. It is possible that no one in Kenya was aware Dow had been a registered sex offender in the United States until 2006.

Dow’s case was the latest abuse scandal linked to White missionaries in Kenya. In 2016, for instance, a 21-year-old Oklahoma man named Matthew Durham was sentenced in a U.S. federal court to 40 years in prison for molesting eight children at a Nairobi orphanage. Years earlier, a prominent Italian Catholic priest was accused of molesting boys in his care, and while Kenyan authorities dropped charges for a lack of evidence, suspicion still lingers.

At least 83 children ages 9 months to 18 years lived in Dow’s home before it was closed in 2017, after two girls escaped and their parents filed cases with the police.

Those tip-offs and others led to the arrest of Dow’s wife, Mary Rose, who ran the orphanage with him, on child abuse charges. Dow, however, “managed to escape” to the United States, where he insisted on his and his wife’s innocence, according to Simon Chelugui, Kenya’s minister of labor and social services. Kenyan authorities said that they informed Interpol, the international policing body, of the allegations against Dow, but that he remained free in Pennsylvania, where he continued to deny any wrongdoing.

A repossession notice hangs in a window at the former Dow Family Children’s Home.
In an email to his funders and supporters in September 2017, Dow explained his wife’s arrest and his decision to flee Kenya as resulting from “an orchestrated effort by a number of disgruntled youth, dysfunctional family members, a former employee and some family members” who had “fanned a fire of rebellion and hatred over the locals and authorities.”

On her trip back to Kenya, Ruto took stock of the community’s anger. She gained the trust of the abused girls and their parents and took down their gut-wrenching version of events in notepads and videos on her phone.

Twelve- and 14-year-old girls told her about being taken by Mary Rose to a clinic to have “matchsticks” put in their upper arms. Recognizing them as the birth-control implant Norplant, Ruto began to understand the extent of the crimes that the husband and wife who ran the home might have committed.

Kenyan and U.S. investigators would later confirm Ruto’s hunch, with McSwain describing the procedure as a way for Dow to “perpetrate his crimes without fear of impregnating his victims” in a Department of Justice news release on the case.

“The girls would tell me how Dow would take the older ones, a different one each time, and force them to have sex with him,” she said on a trip back to Kenya last year. The girls spoke of being forced to drink alcohol or eat soap if they disobeyed any advances Dow made. Court documents in the U.S. trial against Dow as well as the Kenyan trial for Mary Rose include testimony from girls relaying the same experiences.

Mary Rose was found guilty in January 2018 on four counts of child abuse, but was released after paying a fine of about $500 in lieu of two years’ imprisonment. During the trial, in which she pleaded not guilty, she told a Kenyan court that she took girls to get birth-control implants because they were “promiscuous.” (Mary Rose has since left Kenya. She did not respond to a request for comment, and U.S. law enforcement authorities would not say why she wasn’t charged alongside her husband.)

That same year, from her home just down the road from Dow’s in Pennsylvania, Ruto sought what information she could about him, using his public Facebook page to contact people in his network. She even knocked on Dow’s door, but he didn’t open it. She enlisted a Facebook group called KWITU — Kenyan Women in the United States — to help raise public outcry in Pennsylvania.

When Ruto approached the police in Lancaster, they referred her to the district attorney’s office, which passed her to the State Department and ultimately the U.S. Embassy in Kenya.

“I hit a wall there. Nobody would commit to following it up,” she said. “For the longest time, I wondered, will someone hear me, will someone believe me? Dow had been saying Kenyans are volatile people, jealous people — that people made this all up to try and take his land. I was afraid people were going to believe that.”

After several months of trying, Ruto changed course and took her investigation to the LNP, a newspaper in Lancaster. She believes that is what it took to get U.S. authorities more seriously involved. Just days after the LNP piece published, she got a call from the FBI requesting a meeting. Dow was arrested months later after the FBI concluded its own investigation.

Coping with the trauma

To cooperate with that investigation, Ruto kept her involvement mostly to herself at the request of law enforcement officials.

But locals who live in the area around the orphanage say they knew of her involvement and admired her decision to help instead of just returning home to the United States. In Kenya, it often takes money or status to spur the police to file cases or otherwise pursue justice. She had influence in a way few in the village did.

“If it were not for Maggie’s extreme efforts, everybody and everything would have been in darkness,” said Davis Bett, who used to work as a gardener at the orphanage.

Bett and other employees had confronted Dow about his abusive behavior and also tried to alert local social services officials, but say they were rebuffed.

“At one point, I reached out to the children’s department and one of the officials told me that the home was ‘a small America in the village’ and that I should leave Gregory alone,” Bett said.

Ruto, Bett and others say that, based on their conversations with girls from the home, Dow sexually abused more than the four in whose cases he was convicted. They also say Kenyan authorities have been slow to investigate the deaths of children at the home like 9-month-old James.

Local officials say that James’s body was exhumed and that an autopsy was performed in June 2019. But no cause of death was determined and the body was not returned to his family members, who say they are still waiting for communication from the government.

“I allowed my daughter to take her children to the White man because of poverty,” said Lucia Langat, 50, James’s grandmother. “I do not think any person in this village can ever give their children out to a White man again.”

After the orphanage closed, the children were sent to other homes or back to parents who had left them there as infants and toddlers.

Since then, Kenya has imposed a moratorium on foreigners opening orphanages, and requires more-stringent background checks to be done during the processing of missionary visas. Locals supported those moves and were pleased that Dow will potentially spend the rest of his life in prison, but they expressed bitterness at being left alone to cope with the trauma.

Dow “deserved a life sentence. These children called him ‘Dad.’ That was a deep betrayal,” said Mary Rotich, Langat’s neighbor. “What can ease the suffering of these families is compensation to make their lives better.”

Ruto, too, is haunted by the cases the FBI was ultimately unable to corroborate. It is part of what spurred her to enroll this year in an online criminal justice course, which she attends in between grueling shifts taking care of coronavirus patients at a Lancaster nursing home.

“It was not just four girls,” Ruto said. “The rest of the victims and their families deserve so much better. You can’t say that justice has been fully done yet.”

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.

Priest working at Catholic retirement home in Mandeville convicted of battery on recently-widowed resident

LOUISIANA
WWL-TV

February 4, 2021

By David Hammer, WPO-TV, and Ramon Antonio Vargas, The New Orleans Advocate

https://www.wwltv.com/article/news/crime/priest-at-catholic-retirement-home-in-mandeville-convicted-of-battery-on-recently-widowed-resident/289-7193340b-f1ee-411d-92de-191cc036bae6

Weeks after commending her dying husband’s soul to God, the chaplain at a Catholic retirement home in Mandeville forcefully reached under an elderly woman’s blouse multiple times in an unsuccessful attempt to seduce her, according to authorities.

The Rev. Michael Mulenga was convicted of a simple misdemeanor battery charge Wednesday and was immediately sent to prison for five months, officials said.

Mulenga — who reports to a diocese in the East African nation of Zambia, but was in the area as a visiting priest — met Lynn Michler in 2019 while working as the chaplain of Rouquette Lodge, an independent living facility run by an Archdiocese of New Orleans nonprofit that provides affordable housing to low-income seniors.

Michler’s husband of more than 50 years, George “Butch” Michler, was dying at the time. Mulenga administered the Catholic sacrament known as the Anointing of the Sick — or the “last rites” — to the 74-year-old Butch Michler before his death on Nov. 4, 2019, according to records filed in 22nd Judicial District Court in St. Tammany Parish.

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Former Jacksonville bishops failed to report sexual abuse allegations, records show

FLORIDA
News4Jax

February 4, 2021

By Kelly Wiley

Archives show church didn’t tell state about allegations against retired priest during its investigation

Since the early 1990s, at least four women have repeatedly come to the Diocese of St. Augustine with complaints of how now-deceased priest William Malone molested and fondled them, impregnating at least one of them, in the 1980s.

His victims were young girls, the youngest just 11 years old.

The Diocese of St. Augustine told its parishioners in 2019 — for the first time — it knew of credible allegations against Fr. Malone. Church leaders didn’t specify how many victims came forward or what they knew.

The archive records, provided by the Diocese of St. Augustine to the Florida Attorney General’s Office of Statewide Prosecution, reveal the diocese — specifically late Bishop John Snyder — knew about Fr. Malone’s problems at least starting in 1991.

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.

Zirkin Returns to Old Committee to Testify Against Wilson’s Child Sex Abuse Bill

MARYLAND
Maryland Matters

February 5, 2021

By Hannah Gaskill

Former Senate Judicial Proceedings chairman Robert A. Zirkin (D-Baltimore County) returned to his former committee this week to testify against a high-profile bill that’s a follow-up to a measure he once championed.

The woman who replaced Zirkin in the Senate last year, Sen. Shelly L. Hettleman (D-Baltimore County), has joined Del. CT Wilson (D-Charles) in his fight to eliminate the statute of limitations for child sex abuse survivors to launch civil suits. The bill was up in the Judicial Proceedings Committee, where Hettleman serves, on Tuesday.

But in lieu of a packed room full of survivors comforting each other and crying as they waited to testify, almost 200 pages of testimony were submitted to the panel, detailing heartbreaking stories of childhood shame, abuse, molestation and rape.

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.

[Opinion] Five myths about Catholics

WASHINGTON D.C.
Washington Post

February 4, 2021

By Candida Moss

Actually, the pope isn’t always infallible — and Francis isn’t a liberal.

For the second time in its history, the United States has a Catholic president. The 2020 election season was distinctive for the ways Joe Biden’s Catholic credentials were challenged by his opponents even as they were highlighted by his own campaign. Though there have always been misconceptions about the beliefs of Roman Catholics — the second-largest religious group in the country — the last year has underscored the considerable confusion about what the Catholic Church teaches and what it means to be Catholic.

Myth No. 1: Celibacy and homosexuality caused the pedophilia scandal.

For the last two decades, the biggest scandal in the Catholic Church has been the child sex abuse crisis. In explaining the genesis of the abuse, a number of Catholic leaders and organizations have claimed that it was caused by the presence of gay priests among the clergy. In 2005, the Vatican’s Congregation for Catholic Education issued a document arguing that ordaining gay men would be “absolutely inadvisable and imprudent, and from the pastoral point of view, very very risky.” A statement by Archbishop Silvano Maria Tomasi to the United Nations in 2009 sought to recategorize the child abuse as “a homosexual attraction to adolescent males.” Bill Donohue, president of the Catholic League, claimed in an op-ed in The Washington Post in 2010 that the pedophilia crisis was “a homosexual crisis all along.”

Others have traced the problem to the church’s insistence on celibacy. A 2019 op-ed for the National Catholic Reporter suggested that celibacy creates a culture of secrecy and lies that protects pedophiles as well as sexually active priests. And a number of letters to the NCR have said that sex abuse among the clergy will end when celibacy does.

But sexual orientation, sexual abstinence and child abuse are in no way linked to one another. An independent study overseen by Margaret Smith at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice found no connection “between homosexual identity and an increased likelihood of sexual abuse.” In her report to the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, Smith said: “We have not found that the problem [of sexual abuse of minors] is particular to the church. We have found it to be similar to the problem in society.” Writing in Psychology Today, Thomas Plante, a psychiatry professor, cited further evidence that celibacy “doesn’t increase the risk of child sexual abuse.” At the risk of pointing out the obvious, if priests want to break their vows of celibacy, there are many consenting adults with whom to do so.

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Why “he seems such a nice guy” is the wrong response to abuse allegations

UNITED KINGDOM
The Stylist

February 4, 2021

By Kayleigh Dray

“If we’re looking for monsters, we’ll never find them.”

On 2 February, Evan Rachel Wood took to her official Instagram account to name Marilyn Manson (real name Brian Warner) as her former abuser.

“He started grooming me when I was a teenager and horrifically abused me for years,” alleged the Westworld actor, who met Manson at the age of 18, when he was 36 and married to Dita Von Teese, according to a 2016 Rolling Stone profile.

“I was brainwashed and manipulated into submission.”

Standing alongside four other women, all of whom have accused Manson of abuse, Wood added: “I am done living in fear of retaliation, slander, or blackmail.

“I am here to expose this dangerous man and call out the many industries that have enabled him, before he ruins any more lives.”

In light of these disturbing allegations, which he has emphatically denied, Manson has been dropped from his recording label, Loma Vista Recordings, as well as an upcoming episode of fantasy drama series American Gods.

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[Opinion] New AP report details ongoing abuse of PPP funds by Catholic Church

UNITED STATES
Freedom from Religion Foundation (blog)

February 4, 2021

Another new bombshell report by the Associated Press shows once again that churches are stealing from the American taxpayer:

“As the pandemic began to unfold, AP reveals today, “scores of Catholic dioceses across the U.S. received aid through the Paycheck Protection Program while sitting on well over $10 billion in cash, short-term investments or other available funds, an Associated Press investigation has found. And despite the broad economic downturn, these assets have grown in many dioceses.”

AP reports that “[t]he 112 dioceses that shared their financial statements collected at least $1.5 billion in taxpayer-backed aid. A majority of these dioceses reported enough money on hand to cover at least six months of operating expenses, even without any new income.”

The PPP is not even a year old and already the grift and abuse by church has been enormous. And unfortunately we’ll see more: The Paycheck Protection Program was reopened on January 11, 2021.

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No criminal misconduct found after AFP investigation into Vatican payments

AUSTRALIA
Catholic Leader

February 5, 2021

By Mark Bowling

THE Australian Federal Police has found no criminal misconduct after completing an investigation into huge payments made from the Vatican to Australia.

There were claims that money transfers of almost $3million sent to Australia could have been connected to an international money laundering and fraud scandal.

The Australian international financial watchdog, AUSTRAC, referred the transfers during the last six years to the Australian Federal Police as “actionable financial intelligence”.

However the AFP has released a statement confirming that it had “completed analysis of the financial intelligence provided by AUSTRAC” and found “no criminal misconduct… to date.”

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Catholic Church paedophile networks to be mapped ‘like organised crime’ by academics

AUSTRALIA
Australian Broadcasting Corporation

February 4, 2021

By Giselle Wakatama

A “mafia-like” code of silence among “dark networks” within the Catholic Church has begun to emerge from a world-first project mapping clerical paedophile networks, says an academic behind the project.

The research builds on work done by Sally Muytjens, one of Dr Death’s doctoral students, who mapped Catholic paedophile networks in Victoria.

The mapping will now include other hotspots such as Newcastle and the role of women in the church, nuns and seminaries.

The Victorian project identified 99 clergy members as abusers linked to 16 paedophile networks in the Melbourne and Ballarat dioceses.

It found there was a “mafia-like” code of silence among clergy perpetrators who formed dark networks (DNs) within the Victorian Catholic Church.

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German cardinal says he will keep promise to publish abuse report

GERMANY
Catholic News Agency

February 5, 2021

A German cardinal facing calls to resign confirmed on Thursday that he would release an eagerly awaited report on abuse cases in his archdiocese next month.

Cardinal Rainer Maria Woelki told the Kölnische Rundschau newspaper on Feb. 4 that he stood by his promise to release the Gercke Report on clerical abuse on March 18.

He also said that an independent commission would be granted access to another report, by the Munich law firm Westphal Spilker Wastl, which the Archdiocese of Cologne controversially declined to publish.

Woeki, the Archbishop of Cologne since 2014, has been asked repeatedly to resign by journalists in recent weeks. He has also been sharply criticized by clerics and Catholic associations for his handling of abuse reports and cover-up allegations, according to CNA Deutsch, CNA’s German-language news partner.

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Germany: Catholic Church child abuse scandal widens

GERMANY
Anadolu Agency

February 4, 2021

By Ayhan Şimşek

Nuns sold orphaned children to priests, businessmen to serve as sex slaves, new confidential report reveals

Germany’s Catholic Church covered up the sexual abuse of orphaned children for decades, a new confidential report has revealed.

Nuns in the western city of Speyer sold orphaned children to priests and businessmen to serve as sex slaves between the 1960s and 1970s, but the scandal was covered up by the church authorities, The Daily Beast reported.

According to the 560-page report obtained by the US media outlet, at least 175 children, mostly boys between the ages of 8 and 14, were sexually abused over two decades.

The report was commissioned by the German church after a lawsuit was filed by more than a dozen victims against the Archdiocese of Cologne last year, but authorities have so far kept the report under wraps.

According to the findings of the internal investigation, around 80% of the victims of systematic abuse were male and 20% were female.

The investigation also found that 80% of the abusers were now dead, and 37 had left the priesthood or religious order.

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[Opinion] Bishop had to take a sabbatical after reading a ‘gory’ abuse report

Patheos.com (blog)

February 4, 2021

By Barry Duke

AFTER reading a report about the sexual abuse suffered by orphans at boarding houses run by Germany’s Order of the Sisters of the Divine Redeemer, Karl-Heinz Wiesemann, above, Catholic Bishop of Speyer, reportedly had to take a month’s sabbatical to recover from the shock.

According to this Daily Beast report, the investigation into the activities of nuns who rented out orphans – mainly boys – to paedophile priests, politicians and businessman in the 1960s and ’70s, led to a report that the church then attempted to quash.

The details of that investigative report were so horrific that Archbishop Reiner Maria Woelki, above, refused to make it public, demanding that any journalists who see it sign confidentiality agreements.

Eight German journalist stormed out of a press conference in January after being denied access to the church’s investigation unless they agreed not to publish its cont

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German archbishop under fire over clergy sex abuse report

BERLIN (GERMANY)
Associated Press

February 5, 2021

The head of the German Bishops’ Conference has criticized the handling by one of Germany’s most prominent Roman Catholic archbishops of a report on past child sexual abuse by clergy.

Cologne Archbishop Rainer Maria Woelki faces mounting discontent in his diocese over his decision to keep under wraps a study he commissioned on how local church officials reacted when priests were accused of sexual abuse. Woelki has cited legal concerns about publishing the study conducted by a law firm.

The head of the national bishops’ conference, Limburg Bishop Georg Baetzing, criticized Woelki at a news conference on Thursday.

German news agency dpa quoted Baetzing as saying the “crisis that has arisen because the report is not now public was not well-managed, from my point of view.”

The law firm that prepared report has offered to publish the document on its website and to take sole responsibility for it, but the diocese has rejected that idea.

Woelki has drawn fierce criticism from Catholics in Cologne. The local diocesan council called last month for “full transparency” and said the confidence of the area’s Catholic faithful in church leaders had been damaged.

“After years of secrecy and denial, people in our diocese finally expect plain talk and concrete steps of responsibility,” the council said. “That is always possible. And it is high time.”

Woelki said Thursday he was “painfully aware that confidence had been lost” and acknowledged that he had made mistakes.

He pointed to the planned March 18 publication of a new report he also commissioned, and said that “after that, those affected and then everyone who is interested will get an insight into the first report.”

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February 4, 2021

[News Release] Salem Film Fest Hosts World Premiere of Sipe: Sex, Lies, and the Priesthood

SALEM (MA)
Salem Film Fest and BishopAccountability.org

February 4, 2021

As part of its winter series preceding its festival dates, Salem Film Fest is presenting the World Premiere of the documentary Sipe: Sex, Lies, and the Priesthood. Streaming of the film will be available starting on Saturday, February 20, 2021, at 4:00 p.m. EST on Salem Film Fest’s streaming channel. The one-hour film is produced by Zingerplatz Pictures and BishopAccountability.org. A free live panel with the wife, friends, and scholars of the subject, Richard Sipe, will take place at 8:00 p.m. EST on Saturday, February 20th, with a live chat function. The film and discussions will then be available via Salem Film Fest’s video-on-demand channel through Thursday, March 4. Ticket link and information can be accessed at SalemFilmFest.com.

The documentary, directed by Joe Cultrera (Hand of God, Frontline, 2006), explores the life and work of the late A.W. Richard Sipe (1932–2018), the revolutionary scholar of sex, celibacy, and clergy sexual abuse in the Catholic church. Sipe’s key role in the Boston abuse crisis was dramatized in the Academy Award-winning movie Spotlight (2015).

Long before 2002, when the Boston Globe’s Spotlight team made it headline news, Richard Sipe was a key figure in the Catholic church and its problems with sex. As a Benedictine therapist-monk, Sipe helped hundreds of priests in their struggles with celibacy. Sipe: Sex, Lies, and the Priesthood, takes us back to those days and Sipe’s upbringing in Minnesota, and forward to his work with survivors and his groundbreaking books: A Secret World: Sexuality and the Search for Celibacy and Sex, Priests, and Power: Anatomy of a Crisis.

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Sitting on billions, Catholic dioceses amassed taxpayer aid

UNITED STATES
Associated Press

February 4, 2021

By Reese Dunklin and Michael Rezendes

When the coronavirus forced churches to close their doors and give up Sunday collections, the Roman Catholic Diocese of Charlotte turned to the federal government’s signature small business relief program for more than $8 million.

The diocese’s headquarters, churches and schools landed the help even though they had roughly $100 million of their own cash and short-term investments available last spring, financial records show. When the cash catastrophe church leaders feared didn’t materialize, those assets topped $110 million by the summer.

“I am gratified to report the overall good financial health of the diocese despite the many difficulties presented by the Covid-19 pandemic,” Bishop Peter Jugis wrote in the diocese’s audited financial report released last fall.

As the pandemic began to unfold, scores of Catholic dioceses across the U.S. received aid through the Paycheck Protection Program while sitting on well over $10 billion in cash, short-term investments or other available funds, an Associated Press investigation has found. And despite the broad economic downturn, these assets have grown in many dioceses.

Yet even with that financial safety net, the 112 dioceses that shared their financial statements, along with the churches and schools they oversee, collected at least $1.5 billion in taxpayer-backed aid. A majority of these dioceses reported enough money on hand to cover at least six months of operating expenses, even without any new income.

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Lafayette attorney accused of rape in Boy Scout case denies charges

LOUISIANA
KATC-TV

February 3, 2021

The Lafayette attorney accused of rape in an investigation related to the Boy Scouts held a press conference Wednesday to deny the allegations made against him.

“I want to begin by making it very clear. I completely deny any and all charges made against me by an anonymous alleged victim,” Barry Rozas said during the press conference. “It simply did not happen. And there are no circumstances that can ever be misconstrued as inappropriate in all of my years as being a scout leader. While I’m sympathetic to true victims of sexual abuse. There’s no victim in this case, as it relates to me, because I never abused anyone.”

Rozas, 52, was booked with one count of first-degree rape yesterday and released on a $25,000 bond, records show. The victim has alleged that he was raped by Rozas at a location in the 400 block of Cajundome Boulevard. This is the block where the Cajundome is located, as well as much of the UL Athletics complex. The records are not specific as to location; they just list the 400 block of that street. The complaint was one of 28 turned over to the Lafayette Parish Sheriff’s Office in November by the Evangeline Council after the council received them from a commission working on the Boy Scouts of America bankruptcy case.

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Bills aim to give childhood sexual assault survivors more time to seek justice

NORTH DAKOTA
KXnet.com

February 3, 2021

By Maddie Biertempfel

A trio of bills meant to give victims of child sexual abuse more time to seek justice heard gut-wrenching testimony this morning from survivors, prosecutors, psychologists and more.

“My dentist was a prolific pedophile,” Jeffrey Dunford said.

Dunford recounts horrific memories of sexual abuse from his childhood dentist in Fargo.

“This particular office manager suggested she had witnessed 400 boys abused in her tenure at the dental office, so I was just one of that section,” Dunford said.

He wasn’t the only one to share his experience.

“I was sexually abused by a priest at Selfridge when I was about 10. Five other boys told me they were also abused by the same priest,” Ted Becker said.

Memories of abuse from priests, parents and other trusted figures filled the hearing room.

“I had one child victim who, her perpetrator had showed her pictures of his wife and his kids and at 7 years old she said, ‘I was worried he would lose his wife and kids and wouldn’t get to see them again.’ That was in the mind of a 7-year-old child,” Assistant Attorney General Britta Demello Rice said.

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Church volunteer accused of child sex assault knew victim through family, police said

SANTA ROSA (CA)
The Press Democrat

February 3, 2021

By Kaylee Tornay and Nashelly Chavez

A Santa Rosa man in jail on suspicion of repeatedly sexually assaulting a minor over a period of five years knew his victim socially through a family connection, police said Wednesday.

Drue James Mordecai, 55, remained in the Sonoma County Jail, held on $3 million bail, and faces several felony charges related to the statements of a teenage victim, who reported to police that the man had abused them, said Sgt. Chris Mahurin, a spokesman for the Santa Rosa Police Department.

Court records listed 27 felony charges and two enhancements against Mordecai in the case, which included nine charges of assaulting a minor with the intent to commit a felony and five counts of committing a lewd act with a child.

Mordecai was arrested Jan. 28, after investigators with the Police Department determined they had gathered enough evidence to arrest him, police said.

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Church leader who worked with kids charged with sexual abuse, California cops say

CALIFORNIA
Sacramento Bee

February 3, 2021

By Maddie Capron

A California church leader is accused of sexually abusing a child for four or five years, officials said.

The Santa Rosa Police Department investigated Drue Mordecai, a 55-year-old Santa Rosa resident and “small group leader” at New Vintage Church, for sexual assault, the department said in a Wednesday news release.

“As a result of the investigation, probable cause was established that the suspect sexually abused a juvenile victim for approximately four to five years,” police said in the release. “The abuse began when the victim was 12 years old.”

Mordecai was one of six volunteers who worked with high school students at the church, police said. Officials are investigating if there are other victims.

“As soon as we found out [about the allegations], we proactively began calling families to make sure children were safe,” Lead Pastor Darren Youngstrom told the police department.

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Church Volunteer Accused Of Sexually Abusing Minor For Years: PD

SANTA ROSA (CA)
Santa Rosa Patch

February 3, 2021

Police said they’re working with leadership of the Santa Rosa church to determine whether there are more potential victims.

A 55-year-old Santa Rosa man is accused of sexually abusing a minor he met while volunteering at a local church, police said.

Drue Mordecai was arrested Thursday on suspicion of 12 charges related to the investigation and remains behind bars in lieu of $3 million bail, according to a Santa Rosa Police Department news release.

The day prior to Mordecai’s arrest, the Santa Rosa Police Department’s Sexual Assault and Domestic Violence Team began a sexual assault investigation that involved a “Small Group Leader” at New Vintage Church and a juvenile victim, police Sgt. Christopher Mahurin said.

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[Opinion] New Diocese of Oakland Sex Abuse Lawsuit Reveals Seminaries as a Hot Bed for Abuse

CALIFORNIA
Legal Examiner (law firm’s blog)

February 3, 2021

New revelations of disturbing sexual abuse at a seminary are coming to light after a sexual abuse lawsuit against the Diocese of Oakland settled last year.

According to a local NBC affiliate, “The accusations come from a former seminarian, 28, who had previously alleged in 2019 that he was raped by Livermore priest Fr. Michael Van Dinh three years ago. He does not wish to be identified, so NBC Bay Area is calling him John Doe.

A police report obtained by NBC Bay Area shows Livermore police found a meth pipe and sex toys in the priest’s living quarters while investigating the alleged assault. Detectives recommended two felony charges, including sodomy by force, but the Alameda County District Attorney’s Office said there wasn’t enough evidence. After going through therapy for the alleged assault at the hands of Fr. Van Dinh, Doe’s attorney said he later disclosed being sexually abused by two other priests within the Diocese: Fr. Luis Lopez and Fr. Ricardo Chavez, who is now retired. Lopez is currently assigned to Fremont’s Corpus Christi Church, according to its website.

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Bill aims to extend time for abuse victims to file claims

NORTH DAKOTA
Associated Press

February 3, 2021

By James MacPherson

Several adult victims of child sexual abuse appealed to lawmakers in emotional testimony Wednesday to back legislation that would give survivors more time to sue their alleged perpetrators for crimes that could date back decades.

The bipartisan legislation, HB 1382, would provide a two-year window to suspend the statute of limitations to file claims against alleged abusers or institutions that protected them.

“I appeal to you to bring justice to victims of child abuse in North Dakota,” West Fargo Republican Rep. Austen Schauer, the bill’s sponsor, told the House Judiciary Committee, which took no immediate action.

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Sex abuse in the Church: majority of victims don’t report cases, says expert

MALTA
Malta Today

February 3, 2021

By Laura Calleja

Psychologist who followed 80 patients with drug problems who experienced child and adolescent abuse never opened up about their abusers

Victims of child and adolescent abuse rarely report their abuse, meaning many perpetrators are still within the community, a 2000 study by psychologist Mariella Dimech of 80 people with drug problems had found at the time.

‘Numbing The Pain’ focused on the link between child and adolescent abuse and drug addiction by following 80 people who had drug problems over time – 90% of these vicims had been abused during childhood and adolescence.

“The abuse was sexual, physical, and emotional and or neglect,” Dimech said, who was asked to comment on the recent arraignment of two Gozitan priests for the alleged rape of an altar boy.

“100% of the victims never reported their abuse. This means that no help was given, offered or perceived as being available. This also means that all the perpetrators are still out there,” Dimech said.

In 2019 there were 26 court cases related to paedophilia, whose perpetrators were in the main male (24). Every month, social welfare agency Appoġġ receives two to five sexual abuse cases.

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Former Xagħra Priest Escapes Police Action For Sexually Abusing Altar Boy As Case Was Time-Barred

MALTA
Lovin’ Malta

February 3, 2021

By Tim Diacono

Two former Xagħra priests were recently charged with sexually abusing an altar boy, but a third clergy member who served in the same parish managed to escape similar charges despite the Church deeming the allegations credible.

Eucharist Sultana, a former Xagħra parish priest, was suspended from the priesthood in 2018 after being accused of sexually abusing a former altar boy over 16 years earlier.

He allegedly groomed the boy for four years, summoning him for sexual encounters in return for gifts. The abuse is believed to have lasted for four years and ended when the victim was 17 years old.

The Church’s Safeguarding Commission referred this case to the police, who launched an investigation. However, a police spokesperson has now confirmed with Lovin Malta that they were legally prohibited from prosecuting Sultana because the case was time-barred.

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Victim speaks out after abusive priest sentenced

ENGLAND
The Tablet

February 3, 2021

By Catherine Pepinster

The victim of a priest sentenced to serve more than a decade in jail for child sexual abuse has attacked the Archdiocese of Birmingham for trying to dissuade him from reporting the assaults to police.

Last week, Fr Joseph Quigley was jailed for 11 years and six months for sexually and physically abusing a young man. At one stage he locked him in the crypt of a church as a punishment for supposed wrongdoing.

The priest, who was once a national education adviser to the Catholic bishops, groomed the boy during tutoring sessions in his presbytery which eventually led to assaults, involving sexual touching. The judge described the priest as a sexual sadist. During the trial, Warwick Crown Court heard the abuse took place in the 2000s when Quigley was serving at a parish in Warwickshire within the Archdiocese of Birmingham. The victim eventually told his mother in 2009

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German bishops resume meetings to discuss women in the church, LGBT issues and the sexual abuse crisis

GERMANY
Religion News Service via America

February 3, 2021

By Claire Giangravé

Germany’s Catholic bishops will resume discussions this week to plan the Synodal Path, a set of conferences slated to address controversial questions such as women’s roles and LGBT acceptance, even as the country faces yet another scandal of sexual abuse by clergy.

Many churchmen believe that the social questions and the abuse crisis are related. “The abuse crisis hurts the church very deeply,” the Rev. Martin Maier, a Jesuit priest and former editor at the German Catholic magazine Voices of the Time ( Stimmen der Zeit ), told Religion News Service. “One of the most painful consequences is the loss of trust. One of the goals of the Synodal Path is to restore trust, which is crucial and vital.”

Started in 2019 and scheduled to last two years, Synodal Path was put on hold in September 2020 as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. Its purpose is to debate questions of power structures in the Catholic Church, priestly life, sexual morality and the role of women in the church.

“The abuse crisis hurts the church very deeply,” said the Rev. Martin Maier. “One of the most painful consequences is the loss of trust. One of the goals of the Synodal Path is to restore trust, which is crucial and vital.”

While the bishops’ summit officially considers only Germany’s local dioceses and parishes, the discussions and decisions will likely have consequences around the global church. Bishops from Australia to South America and Ireland are grappling with the devastating impact that the sexual abuse crisis has had, as well as with mounting secularization that has depleted church attendance and vocations.

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Australian federal police find no criminal misconduct in mysterious Vatican transfers

ROME (ITALY)
Catholic News Agency

February 3, 2021

By Hannah Brockhaus

The Australian Federal Police said on Wednesday that it had found no evidence of criminal misconduct in its investigation into money transfers from the Vatican to Australia.

Australian authorities have been investigating the suspicious payments, equivalent to about $7.4 million, for several months.

The federal police (AFP) said in a statement on Feb. 3 that “no criminal misconduct has been identified to date.”

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Catholic brother allowed to live by school had been charged with abuse of seven victims

LIVERPOOL (ENGLAND)
Liverpool Echo

February 3, 2021

By Jonathan Humphries

The teacher was never convicted after a judge ruled there had been an “abuse of process”

A Catholic brother who was allowed to live on school grounds was the former head of a school accused of abusing multiple children.

The man spent several years living in France before moving onto accommodation connected to St Francis Xavier’s (SFX) College in Woolton.

The ECHO has since learned that the man, a member of the French Catholic order the Brothers of Christian Instruction, was charged with 10 counts of indecent assault against seven victims, some under 13, at a school outside the Merseyside area.

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Crisis deepens in Cologne as cardinal pins hopes on March abuse report

GERMANY
Catholic News Service via National Catholic Reporter

February 3, 2021

The Archdiocese of Cologne, which has the largest membership in the German-speaking world with almost 2 million Catholics, is sliding into a crisis of confidence.

The German Catholic news agency KNA reports that parish councils, priests and most recently the diocesan council have criticized Cardinal Rainer Maria Woelki for his handling of an abuse investigation, and the ferocity of their criticism is unusual.

Tim Kurzbach, archdiocesan council chairman, said in late January that Woelki had “failed as a moral authority” and was not confronting the problem. In protest, the council, made up of elected representatives of Catholic laypeople, said it was suspending its cooperation on diocesan reforms.

It was a rare step, and it was taken despite the cardinal’s pledge to conduct a rigorous investigation.

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February 3, 2021

There’s another path for survivors of clergy sex abuse to get justice. It faces an uphill climb in the legislature.

PENNSYLVANIA
Spotlight PA

February 2, 2021

By Angela Couloumbis and Cynthia Fernandez

When Republican state Rep. Jim Gregory learned Monday from Gov. Tom Wolf that an administrative error will delay a decision on whether survivors can sue for decades-old sexual abuse, he broke down and sobbed uncontrollably.

“That’s where I had to leave it with him — to hope he understood the gravity of what this means to victims, to know that we could be so close to achieving something for them that has been decades in wait,” Gregory, a survivor of child sexual abuse, said of his conversation with Wolf. “To now have to say, again, you’re going to have to wait. I would believe that my emotions mirrored the emotions of other victims.”

The Department of State recently discovered that it failed last year to advertise a proposed change to the state constitution that would create a two-year window so victims of decades-old abuse can sue perpetrators and the institutions that covered up the crimes.

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[Opinion] Sex-abuse law blunder on Kathy Boockvar’s watch is a titanic mess for Pa. child victims | Maria Panaritis

PENNSYLANIA
Philadelphia Inquirer

February 2, 2021

By Maria Panaritis

For years, Pa. Republicans stalled on expanded rights to sue abusers. Now “human error” by Democratic Gov. Wolf’s administration has derailed a long-awaited law.

If an 860-word column could hope to convey speechlessness, this one would be it.

Hours after news broke of a bureaucratic blunder in Harrisburg that resulted in further damage to victims of child sexual abuse in Pennsylvania, it remained hard to know what to say.

“It just never ends,” State Rep. Mark Rozzi put it moments after answering my call Monday night. I couldn’t have agreed more with those four words.

For 16 years in the commonwealth of Pennsylvania, people like Rozzi, who was molested as a child within a corrupt institution that knowingly harbored and hid pedophiles, were told they could not sue as adults. After the Catholic abuse scandal broke open in 2002, lawmakers in Harrisburg began blocking legislative efforts to alter the civil statute of limitations so that victims could sue as adults many years beyond what the merciless law had allowed.

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PA Attorney General urges lawmakers to take action and support abuse survivors

PENNSYLVANIA
WPXI-TV

February 2, 2021

PA Attorney General urges lawmakers to take action and support abuse survivors

By Rick Earle, WPXI-TV and Greg Deffenbaugh, WPXI.com

Pennsylvania Attorney General Josh Shapiro is sending a strong message to the state legislature: support survivors of sexual abuse by passing critical legislation that would allow them to seek justice over a two-year window.

The attorney general spearheaded the groundbreaking grand jury report on clergy sex abuse in Pennsylvania’s Catholic Dioceses.

In an interview with Channel 11′s Rick Earle, Shapiro voiced his disappointment with the secretary of state’s office, after the department mismanaged the process to get a constitutional amendment on the ballot that would allow abuse survivors a two-year window to file civil lawsuits.

”This conduct at the department of state was truly shameful and these survivors deserve better. I can tell you, I’ve had some productive conversations with the governor and legislative leaders about trying to remedy this error and trying to get the victims in a position where we can bring justice as quickly and humanly possible,” said Shapiro.

According to the Associated Press, the proposed amendment, which is in response to the child sexual abuse by Catholic clergy, first passed the Legislature as House Bill 963 in November 2019. The Department of State was constitutionally required to advertise the wording of the proposed constitutional amendment in two newspapers in every county, in each of the three months before the next general election when members of the General Assembly are elected.

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[Media Statement] Defrocked Serial Abuser Still Enjoys “Celebrity Status” in the Country Where He Abused Children

SNAP (Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests)

February 2, 2021

A self-admitted pedophile and ex-priest from a Chicago-based Catholic group has made the news again in East Timor as he evades criminal justice in the United States. We fear for the vulnerable children that this serial abuser may still have access to and call on those that hired, trained, and ordained him to use every resource at their disposal to bring this disgraced cleric home to face justice.

For decades, Richard Daschbach ran an orphanage called Topu Honis, a shelter for homeless children, disabled adults, and women fleeing domestic violence in East Timor. In 2019, he was arrested for abusing young girls at this facility, a year after he admitted to sexually abusing the children under his care. Daschbach has since been defrocked by the Vatican, but despite these arrests and his own admissions, he apparently continues to enjoy “celebrity status” in East Timor, one of the poorest and most Catholic countries in the world.

Prior to his exodus from the US, Daschbach was ordained at St. Mary’s Mission Seminary in Chicago and was a member of the Chicago-based Society of the Divine Word (SVD). We believe that both of these institutions have far more resources at their disposal than their counterparts in East Timor. They should be using those resources to bring the abuser they hired, trained, and ordained home so that he can no longer use his status to abuse children.

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[News Release] Diocese has new sex abuse victim assistance coordinator

HONOLULU (HI)
Diocese of Honolulu via Hawaii Catholic Herald

February 3, 2021

Kristin J. Leandro, director of the diocese’s Safe Environment office announced Jan. 12 the appointment of the new diocesan victim assistance coordinator, the person who provides support and services for adult survivors of child sexual abuse by clergy, religious or church workers.

Lora Daniel, a licensed mental health counselor at Catholic Charities Hawaii, takes the place of Elizabeth Lyons who moved to the Mainland this month.

Daniel is a therapist in Catholic Charities’ Child Sex Abuse Treatment Program and Child Victims of Crime Program. She also works with other families and individuals in need of counseling.

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[NEWS RELEASE] Promulgation Of New Safe Environment Policy

YOUNGSTOWN (OH)
Diocese of Youngstown

February 1, 2021

The Most Reverend David J. Bonnar, Bishop of Youngstown, has promulgated the Safe Environment Policy for the Protection of Children and Vulnerable Adults of the Catholic Diocese of Youngstown, effective immediately. This policy replaces the 2008 Child Protection Policy while incorporating the vast majority of its policies and procedures. Significant additions include an explicit reference to vulnerable adults, a specific section relating to social media and electronic communication, and updated resources for those seeking to report misconduct or abuse.

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[Opinion] How New Orleans Priest Abuse Is Being Handled

NEW ORLEANS
Legal Examiner (law firm blog)

February 2, 2021

Sexual abuse allegations and claims against priests in New Orleans made headlines throughout 2020, especially after the Archdiocese of New Orleans filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in May – a response due to the costs of their legal troubles. The bankruptcy prompted a March 1, 2021 deadline for claims against the church. Since the deadline was set, more victims have overcome their silence and fear to pursue justice for abuse at the hands of religious leaders.

The number of clergy with claims against them has grown steadily since the scandal broke, with victims coming forward about abuse and sexual advances that took place, many of them decades ago. The types of claims range from rape and molestation to sexually inappropriate letters and text messages.

In October, a survivor made abuse claims against two priests who taught at his Catholic school in the 70s. He claims the church gave him unlimited therapy, but no actions were taken against the priests at the time.

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Pope Francis tells Catholic journalists he has hope for ‘courageous’ US church

VATICAN CITY
Religion News Service

February 2, 2021

By Claire Giangravé

The news media is plagued by four sins, the pope told reporters: disinformation, calumny, defamation and ‘coprophilia,’ by which he apparently meant love of scandal.

Addressing the current challenges of the U.S. Catholic Church, Pope Francis warned against the polarization in the country and the “sins” of the media.

“The church in the United States is a church that has been courageous — the history it has and the saints — and has done so much,” Pope Francis said during an impromptu interview with journalists from Catholic News Service on Monday (Feb. 1) at the Vatican.

The audience marked the 100th anniversary of the news agency, which is an arm of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops.

“A divided church is not the church,” the pope told the CNS reporters, while at the same time making a distinction between unity and uniformity. “Unity with differences, but one heart,” Francis he said.

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Cardinal Ladaria: Vatican doctrinal office is ‘no longer the Inquisition’

VATICAN CITY
Catholic News Service via National Catholic Reporter

February 2, 2021

By Carol Glatz

Established almost 500 years ago, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith is no longer “the Inquisition” — rather, its main focus is handing down the teachings of the apostles, said the office’s prefect.

“Our mission is to promote and protect the doctrine of the faith. It is a task that will always be necessary for the church, which has the duty to transmit the teaching of the apostles to the next generation,” Cardinal Luis Ladaria Ferrer, congregation prefect, told Vatican News Feb. 1.

Called the Sacred Roman and Universal Inquisition when it was instituted in 1542, the congregation was initially a tribunal exclusively for cases of heresy and schism, but soon its responsibilities were expanded to include “everything relating directly or indirectly to faith and morals,” according to the congregation’s website.

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German Nuns Sold Orphaned Children to Sexual Predators: Report

ROME (ITALY)
Daily Beast

February 2, 2021

By Barbie Latza Nadeau

SICK SISTERS: A report German authorities tried to silence shows how Catholic nuns peddled orphaned boys to predatory priests and perverts for decades.

A jarring report outlining decades of rampant child sex abuse at the hands of greedy nuns and perverted priests in the Archdiocese of Cologne, Germany, paints a troubling picture of systematic abuse in the German church.

The report is the byproduct of a lawsuit alleging that orphaned boys living in the boarding houses of the Order of the Sisters of the Divine Redeemer were sold or loaned for weeks at a time to predatory priests and businessmen in a sick rape trade. The men involved in the lawsuit say as boys they were denied being adopted out or sent to foster families because selling them for rape lined the sisters’ coffers for their “convent of horrors.” Some of the boys were then groomed to be sex slaves to perverts, the report claims.

The alleged abuse went on for years, with one of the males claiming the nuns even frequently visited their college dorms after they had left the convent. He said the nuns often drugged him and delivered him to predators’ apartments. The Order of Sisters of the Divine Redeemer did not answer multiple requests for comment about the allegations.

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St. Pius X campus could be sold due to bankruptcy

ALBUQUERQUE (NM)
Albuquerque Journal

February 2, 2021

By Pilar Martinez

St. Pius X High School may soon have to find a new home, according to a letter sent by the Archdiocese of Santa Fe announcing that it may be forced to sell the West Side campus as part of its bankruptcy reorganization.

The letter sent to members of the St. Pius community by Archbishop of Santa Fe John C. Wester in January said the school’s campus, as well as buildings used by archdiocesan staff, may be sold as a result of the Archdiocese of Santa Fe’s Chapter 11 bankruptcy filing in 2018 following hundreds of settlements with victims of sexual abuse by Catholic clergy members.

“We deeply regret the distress that this possible marketing of the campus will cause in the St. Pius X community of students, parents, alumni, staff and the surrounding communities,” Wester wrote in the letter.

Wester said bankrupt organizations are required to monetize assets deemed non-essential to the organization’s primary mission and the St. Pius campus and archdiocesan buildings fell under this category.

He said church staff are looking at ways the archdiocese can monetize the campus to avoid listing it on the open market, but he did not provide details.

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Wilson showed no self-pity over abuse case

AUSTRALIA
Australian Associated Press via Yahoo News

February 3, 2021

By Tim Dornin

Unjustly convicted but later acquitted on charges of covering up child sex abuse, former Catholic Archbishop of Adelaide Philip Wilson felt no self-pity or rancour, but rather accepted the cross he was forced to bear, his funeral service has been told.

The 70-year-old, who died last month, served as the eighth archbishop of Adelaide from 2001 until his resignation in 2018.

At a service in St Francis Xavier’s Cathedral on Wednesday, Bishop Greg O’Kelly described him as a warm and compassionate man who was devoted to those who sought his ministry.

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Philip Wilson, former Catholic Archbishop of Adelaide, farewelled at St Francis Xavier’s Cathedral

AUSTRALIA
Australian Broadcasting Corporation

February 2, 2021

By Sara Tomevska

Former Catholic Archbishop of Adelaide Philip Wilson has been farewelled at a funeral at St Francis Xavier’s Cathedral.

The Catholic Church paid its respects to the 70-year-old, who died unexpectedly last month.

Several church leaders spoke including Apostolic Nuncio Adolfo Tito Yllana, who also read a statement from Pope Francis.

“His holiness Pope Francis was saddened to learn of the death of Archbishop Emeritus Philip Wilson, and he sends heartfelt condolences,” he said.

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[Opinion] Why the case for mandatory reporting is now beyond doubt

ENGLAND
The Tablet

February 2, 2021

By Richard Scorer

Last Friday Joseph Quigley, Catholic priest and former religious education advisor, was sentenced to 11-and-a-half years in prison for serious offences against children. The police investigation which resulted in his conviction began in 2017, following a complaint from one of Quigley’s victims, who was encouraged to go the police by his therapist. As The Tablet reports today, this same victim alleges that several years earlier he had discussed the possibility of reporting his allegations about Quigley to the police with Jane Jones, the then Archdiocese of Birmingham Safeguarding Advisor. He says she actively discouraged him from taking his allegations to the police, telling him: “You won’t win.”

If this victim’s story is true – and his account of what Jane Jones said to him is corroborated by another family member present at the same meeting – then this is appalling. However it is not surprising. After 25 years of representing victims and survivors of clerical sex abuse, I have heard countless examples of victims being discouraged, subtly or not, from taking their allegations to the authorities.

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[Media Statement] Disturbing Details Revealed in Case Against UK Catholic Priest

SNAP (Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests)

February 1, 2021

A priest has been jailed in the UK for physically and sexually torturing a young student for years, enabled by Catholic officials. We are glad that these allegations came to light and that this dangerous abuser has been identified and removed. We now call on law enforcement to investigate the disturbing decisions that allowed this perpetrator to go unchecked and untethered for so long.

The abuse that this young boy suffered at the hands of Fr. Joseph Quigley has been termed a “gothic horror.” Our hearts break for the victim and we hope that he is getting the help and support he needs. In addition to the appalling tortures this youth experienced, we are outraged at the indifference shown by UK Catholic officials to the allegations against Fr. Quigley. Accusations of abuse by the priest first came to light in 2008, and in response, Church leaders shipped him off to St. Luke’s for six months, a “treatment center” for abusive priests.

We are not sure what is worse – that Catholic officials truly believed that six months was enough time to treat someone with violent abusive tendencies, or that Church leaders allowed Fr. Quigley to routinely visit schools following his return to the UK. Catholic officials had been made aware of allegations against Fr. Quigley more than once and still saw fit to send him as a representative of their institution to schools full of vulnerable children. Hundreds of children were exposed to unnecessary risk due to these decisions and we hope that law enforcement officials are investigating to determine whether any other laws were broken.

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February 2, 2021

The Boston Archdiocese’s list of priests accused of abuse does not include cases settled with alleged victims

BOSTON (MA)
Boston Globe

February 2, 2021

By Shelley Murphy

The Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Boston has paid alleged victims millions of dollars in recent years to resolve claims that they were sexually abused by priests working in local parishes. Yet, the names of many of those priests are missing from the Archdiocese’s public roster of clergy accused of sexually abusing children, an accounting that began a decade ago under pressure from victims.

Their exclusion has angered survivors of abuse, particularly in light of Cardinal Sean P. O’Malley’s longstanding pledge to be transparent about clergy sexual abuse after decades of secrecy.

“It just seems like they’re trying to cover up,” said David, who in November received a settlement in “the high five figures,” from the archdiocese, according to his attorney, Mitchell Garabedian. It was awarded after David underwent painful questioning from church lawyers and an arbitrator tasked with corroborating his claims against John H. Curley, who died in 1999.

David, who asked to be identified only by his first name, said he was frustrated by Curley’s absence from the Archdiocese’s list because the priest ruined his life by sexually assaulting him in 1981 when he was 12 and living at a home for troubled boys in Braintree.

“They’re trying to hide that the person is a pedophile,” he said.

Curley routinely brought groups of boys from the Pilgrim Center on trips to the park or to play basketball that ended with an overnight stay at his home, David said. While the group watched television, Curley would “bring kids up to his bedroom one at a time,” he said.

He said he was sleeping one night when Curley awakened him and told him “we had to do penance.” He said the priest told him to pray as he sexually assaulted him. He said he refused to go on any more trips with Curley.

Garabedian, a longtime advocate for sexual abuse victims who has settled claims involving more than 340 clergy and church personnel, has identified 20 priests whom the Boston Archdiocese does not list as accused child molesters although it has paid settlements totaling more than $1.2 million to their victims since 2011. In that time, the archdiocese also paid about $1.3 million to the victims of nine clergy members listed as accused of “unsubstantiated” claims of child sexual abuse, according to Garabedian. Several of those priests were accused of sexual abuse by multiple victims, he said.

“Why would they pay us a settlement if the priest didn’t do it?” Garabedian asked. “They’re hoping the clergy sexual abuse crisis is going away when it isn’t. You’re dealing with an entity that has engaged in coverup, so they’re not changing their stripes now.”

Attorney Tyler Fox said two of his clients who were sexually abused by priests decades ago while working as altar boys at churches in the Boston Archdiocese were paid settlements of $85,000 and $99,000 last year, yet both priests are absent from the church’s roster of accused abusers.

Terrence Donilon, an Archdiocese spokesman, declined to comment on specific cases and would not disclose how many settlements involved claims against priests who are omitted from the Archdiocese’s roster or listed as being accused of “unsubstantiated” allegations.

He said archdiocesan leadership has been actively considering whether its criteria for identifying accused clerics should be updated.

“In many situations, choosing to resolve an allegation by reaching a settlement is often the best decision financially for all the parties involved,” Donilon said. “In many ways we are acknowledging the harm that was done by offering compensation and counseling services.”

He said the Archdiocese immediately reports allegations of clergy sexual abuse of minors to law enforcement and publicly discloses when a clergy member is removed from active ministry after a conviction or during an investigation into an allegation of child abuse.

The Boston Archdiocese’s website lists 132 clerics in various categories, including those convicted of child sexual abuse in criminal or church proceedings, those who left or were suspended from the church pending investigations, and those who died before victims came forward. Another 38 priests are listed as “unsubstantiated cases” because a review board concluded the allegations were unfounded or the priest was cleared of wrongdoing during church proceedings.

The Boston Archdiocese settled agreements with 33 people for $2.3 million in the last fiscal year to resolve sexual abuse claims, Donilon said. The year before, it settled 20 allegations totaling $1.2million, he said. It also paid $2.4 million in each of those years for “abuse-related prevention, outreach, healing, and reconciliation efforts as a whole to both new and ongoing survivors,” he said.

In 2011, O’Malley released the first list of clerics who were accused of sexually abusing children, saying the Archdiocese’s “commitment and responsibility is to protect children and to ensure that the tragedy of sexual abuse is never repeated in the Church.”

At the time, he said some names were excluded to balance “the critically important need to assure the protection of children” with “the due process rights and reputations of those accused clergy whose cases have not been fully adjudicated.”

He omitted the names of many deceased priests because they were unable to respond to the allegations. He also excluded the names of dozens of priests from religious orders and other dioceses who were accused of abusing children while assigned to the Boston Archdiocese. It was the responsibility of the priest’s order or diocese, he said, to investigate allegations against them.

Those guidelines remain in place today. O’Malley has been urging religious orders to identify accused priests, Donilon said.

Fox represents a man who was awarded $85,000 last year to settle a sexual abuse claim against Lawrence Buckley, a Redemptorist priest who worked for the Boston Archdiocese and was described in his 2008 obituary as a champion for social justice.

The man, who asked to be identified only by his first name, Chris, said he was a 7-year-old altar boy at Our Lady of Perpetual Help in Roxbury in 1987 when Buckley first sexually assaulted him in the sacristy, where priests change into their robes before Mass. He said the abuse continued for four years, even on the day that Buckley came to his home to deliver the news that his father had died.

He said he never told anyone until he became a father himself, fiercely protective of his two little girls. Two years ago, he disclosed the abuse to the Boston Archdiocese.

“It’s frustrating,” Chris said of the Archdiocese’s omission of Buckley’s name from its list of accused priests because he belonged to a religious order. “It was a Catholic church and I was a Catholic altar boy. I just wish they owned up to something that happened here.”

The Redemptorists have not released a list of clergy accused of molesting children and did not respond to inquiries regarding Buckley.

Terry McKiernan, founder of Bishop-Accountability.org, a volunteer group that tracks clergy sexual abuse, said it’s a “glaring peculiarity” that some of the worst offenders have been left off the Boston Archdiocese list. Recent high-profile investigations into clergy sexual abuse and court settlements have prompted more dioceses and religious orders to release lists identifying abusers. Currently, 152 of the nation’s 178 Roman Catholic dioceses and 24 religious orders have done so, he said.

David O’Regan, Massachusetts leader of the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, said identifying abusive priests helps their victims heal and often gives those who have suffered in silence the courage to come forward because they realize “that happened to somebody else. It wasn’t just me.”

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