ABUSE TRACKER

The principal of Brisbane’s Citipointe Christian College released a video message to parents late yesterday giving them a two-week extension to sign an enrolment contract that demands families denounce homosexuality and subscribe to traditional gender roles.

The contract was sent to families on Friday and has resulted in a backlash from some parents and politicians.

In the video message to parents, principal Brian Mulheran said he had listened to their concerns and wanted them to “make the right decisions for themselves”.

“The declaration of faith has been in place for the whole of last year,” Mr Mulheran said.

“We want families to consider this ethos so that they can make the right decisions for themselves.

Yesterday, a group of parents said they would file a complaint to the Human Rights Commission, arguing they were not consulted about the contract and that the college was discriminating against students on the basis of sexuality…

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When Dan started to explore his attraction to other boys as a teenager, the voices of his teachers and pastors at Citipointe Christian College in Brisbane swirled in his head. Time and again, they told him that sex existed only within a marriage between a man and a woman, and people like him would “go to hell”.

“As a 13-year-old, you feel that the adults in your world tell the truth and you own that truth. I knew that there must be something wrong with me. I thought I have to hide this now, I have to keep it a secret,” he told SBS News.

Confused and shamed as the years wore on, Dan confided in a pastor in Year 12 and was met with a “horrible reaction”.

“I was referred to one of the pastors of the church who put me through prayer counselling, but essentially it was conversion…

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Complaints alleging that two priests sexually abused children in the 1950s and 1970s have been deemed credible by the Roman Catholic Diocese of Portland.

One of the complaints focused on Renald Hallee, who served in Bangor and Fort Kent, who’s accused of abusing a high school student in the 1970s, the Bangor Daily News reported. Hallee left the priesthood in 1977 and retired in 2007 as a school teacher in Massachusetts.

The other involved Eugene Descombes, who allegedly abused a minor in the mid-1950s during a trip to Canada. He died in 1980, the newspaper said.

Bishop Robert Deeley this month accepted the recommendation of a diocese review board that advises him on allegations of clergy sexual abuse against children. It recommended that he declare the allegations against Hallee and Descombes to be substantiated.

A spokesperson for the diocese didn’t immediately respond Tuesday to a request…

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After the bishops’ conference of Spain (CEE) refused to launch an independent commission to look into historic clerical abuse cases, the government gave a green light for Congress to launch its own commission.

The left-wing Spanish government, led by Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez, has decided to play an active role in the investigation of abuse cases against minors within the Catholic Church. The decision comes days after a request made by the allies of this coalition government, including Unidas Podemos, for Congress to create the body.

Meanwhile, the State Prosecutor’s Office – headed by the former socialist minister Dolores Delgado – has initiated its own procedure. The 17 senior prosecutors of all the autonomous communities of Spain have been asked to forward within 10 days all the complaints and lawsuits that are being processed on sexual assaults and abuse of minors within any religious institution.

The government’s spokeswoman, Isabel Rodríguez,…

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After decades of neglect, victims of sexual abuse by the Spanish clergy say that they are finally seeing momentum building in their quest for real accountability and reparations.

On Tuesday, Spanish lawmakers took the first step toward opening a parliamentary inquiry on the issue, a move that victims hail as a potential game-changer.

Prosecutors are also stepping up efforts to dig deeper into existing and new allegations. And Spain’s left-to-center government is gauging whether to back the parliamentary probe or to launch another independent effort.

“It looks like as if public institutions have finally realized that the raping of children is of general interest, a grave violation of human rights and that the state should intervene,” said Miguel Hurtado, who has campaigned against impunity since disclosing his own account of being abused at a monastery in northeastern Spain.

“We can’t say we are happy until we see results, but this…

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A report released by the New Zealand bishops’ conference found allegations of abuse were made against 14% of diocesan clergy who have ministered in the country since 1950.

The report, published Feb. 1, said that “a total of 1,680 reports of abuse were made by 1,122 individuals against Catholic clergy, brothers, nuns, sisters and laypeople from 1950 to the present, with 592 alleged abusers named.”

“Almost half the reported abuse involved sexual harm,” the report said. “The 1960s and 1970s were the decades with the most abuse reported, with 75% dated before 1990.”

In a statement published after the release of the report, Cardinal John Dew, president of the New Zealand bishops’ conference, said the investigation’s findings were “horrifying and something we are deeply ashamed of.”

“As we continue to respond to the Royal Commission into Abuse and we build a safer church for everyone, I firmly hope that facts…

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New Zealand’s Catholic church has admitted that 14% of its diocesan clergy have been accused of abusing children and adults since 1950.

The church released the figures at the request of the royal commission on abuse in care, set up in 2018 by prime minister Jacinda Ardern, who said the country needed to confront “a dark chapter” in its history, and later expanded it to include churches and other faith-based institutions.

An interim report by the commission in December found up to a quarter of a million children, young people and vulnerable adults were physically and sexually abused in New Zealand’s faith-based and state care institutions from the 1960s to early 2000s.

Te Rōpū Tautoko, the group that coordinates church engagement with the royal commission, sought and examined records from the country’s six Catholic dioceses and from 43 Catholic religious congregations (also known as religious institutes, orders or associations). The research included records…

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Apologies should come from the Catholic liturgy, not be written by lawyers. When it comes to sin, in Catholic liturgy, there is no beating about the bush in the handling of clergy sex abuse.

Too many Catholic prelates believe that, when it comes to clergy sexual abuse, being in charge means never having to say you’re sorry.

For as long as the crisis has been going on, lawyers for bishops have advised many of them not to apologize, as this would be an admission of guilt that would come back as evidence when they were sued in court.

Some were too arrogant and cowardly to admit guilt.

Others refused to apologize because they believe they are blameless since they made decisions based on the advice they got from psychologists and canon lawyers who themselves were ignorant. Some even foolishly thought that acknowledging responsibility would somehow harm the church.

But whatever…

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Bishop Thomas Daly of Spokane, Washington, was a San Francisco priest assigned to Marin Catholic High School when the Vatican approved the 2002 Dallas Charter for the Protection of Children and Young People, including a new “zero-tolerance” policy mandating the removal of  priests facing “credible” accusations of abuse.

For Bishop Daly, ordained in 1987 and appointed the bishop of Spokane in 2015, much of his ministry has been shaped and shadowed by the shocking revelations of clerical predation and episcopal cover-up that ignited the 2002 clergy-abuse crisis.

“My years as a high-school administrator taught me the importance of having procedures in place to protect young people,” Bishop Daly told the Register, noting that those lessons were reinforced when he served on the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ Committee for the Protection of Children & Young People. 

But after searing revelations of episcopal abuse brought down disgraced former-cardinal Theodore McCarrick in 2018,…

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[Includes brief video with photos of Paul Spisak and the Target store. See also the Spisak profile in the Pennsylvania Grand Jury Report.]

A former priest who was named in the state’s grand jury report on clergy sexual abuse and charged with recording a young boy in a Target bathroom has died.

The Diocese of Pittsburgh said they were informed of 77-year-old Paul Spisak’s death Monday. The medical examiner said he died Sunday but did not list a cause of death.

Spisak was accused of recording a 13-year-old boy at the Target in East Liberty in December. When police searched his phone, investigators said they found photos of the victim and others using the bathroom.

Spisak was named in Pennsylvania’s scathing grand jury report in 2018 investigating church sex abuse. He was also arrested in 2006 after recording someone in the men’s bathroom at the South Hills Village mall…

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A Queens priest has been stripped of his clerical collar after a Catholic Church review board substantiated claims of misconduct, officials said Monday.

Not only was the Rev. John O’Connor forced to step down as pastor of St. Gregory the Great in Bellerose, he was completely removed from the ministry upon the recommendation of an independent panel investigating allegations in a lawsuit against O’Connor.

The board had been investigating claims made in a Child Victims Act lawsuit filed against O’Connor on Aug. 13, 2020. This probe turned up new evidence concerning a March 2000 accusation detailing “inappropriate internet communications with teenagers” while assigned at St. Athanasius Roman Catholic Church in Brooklyn, the board said.

O’Connor’s removal from the ministry means that he is no longer permitted to celebrate Mass publicly, cannot exercise any public ministerial duties and cannot live in an ecclesiastical residence.

His name will also be added to…

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f you or someone you know needs resources or support related to sexual violence, contact the Maine Coalition Against Sexual Assault’s 24/7 hotline at 800-871-7741.

The Roman Catholic Diocese of Portland has found recent complaints credible that allege two priests, including one who served in Bangor in the 1970s, sexually abused children in the 1950s and 1970s.

The diocese received the complaint against Renald Hallee, who served as a priest at St. John’s Catholic Church in Bangor between 1970 and 1973, in 2020. It alleged that he had sexually abused a high school student when he was a priest sometime in the 1970s. The diocese did not specify dates or location.  

Hallee served as a priest in Fort Kent after his time in Bangor.

The other complaint, which the diocese received in 2021, involved Eugene Descombes, a Canadian priest who died in 1980. It alleged that he sexually abused…

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A priest has been suspended from his duties while the Archdiocese of Baltimore investigates allegations that he sexually abused a minor in the 1970s, the archdiocese announced Sunday.

The archdiocese said Rev. Samuel Lupico was retired, but had been assisting at St. Mary of the Assumption in Baltimore and St. Pius X in Towson, The Baltimore Sun reported.

The alleged abuse took place in the mid-1970s, while Lupico served at St. Ann’s Catholic Church, the archdiocese said. He served there from 1974 to 1982. Lupico denies the allegations, the archdiocese said. The newspaper’s efforts to reach him were not successful.

The archdiocese said it hasn’t made a determination of credibility, but the announcement was made to solicit relevant information and fulfill its commitment to open communication.

Lupico served at a number of parishes dating back to the early 1970s, including St. Edward Catholic Church, Blessed Sacrament…

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