ABUSE TRACKER

The former choirmaster of an Altrincham church has been jailed for 12 years for three decades of abuse against underage boys.

Richard Owen, also known as Franklyn Stanowski, abused 14 boys at churches across Cheshire.

Chester Crown Court heard how Owen, from Hale, would abuse the boys for his own sexual gratification in private rooms.

The offences occurred between 1968 and 1998 when the boys were under 16.

Owen became choirmaster at St John’s in Altrincham – now converted into apartments – in the late 1980s and remained in the role until 1998.

During this time he also volunteered at a local primary school, teaching the children to sing as well as attending school trips to recruit choirboys.

The court heard he abused numerous boys during his time in Altrincham, with “hundreds” of occurrences leaving boys terrified.

The 70-year-old, from Winsford, admitted to 27 offences involving indecent assault of underage…

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Survivors of Guam clergy sexual assault are a step closer to obtaining compensation as a judge on Monday began hearing arguments that would get the Archdiocese of Agana out of bankruptcy and pay claimants $34 million to $101 million.

“We’re almost at the finish line,” U.S. District Court of Guam Chief Judge Frances Tydingco-Gatewood, who’s been serving as bankruptcy judge in the archdiocese case, said on the first day of the hearing.

The remaining concerns about the plan related to the Boy Scouts of America, among other things, are expected to be addressed, and the judge assured of a “reasonable, fair, expeditious” decision.

If the judge confirms or approves the fifth amended joint reorganization plan this week, payments could start reaching survivors in “90 to 120 days,” according to attorney Robert Kugler of Minneapolis-based Stinson LLP, counsel for the creditors committee.

Attorney Edwin Caldie, also representing the creditors committee, told…

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Two years after the Roman Catholic Church on Long Island became the largest diocese in the nation to declare bankruptcy, none of the hundreds of clergy sex abuse cases filed against the church has been settled.

That has some survivors and their attorneys saying it is adding to the pain and injury the victims suffered as children years or even decades ago.

“They declared bankruptcy and said they wanted to see the victims adequately compensated,” said Paul Mones, an attorney who is representing some of the survivors. “People who suffered continue to suffer through these legal machinations that they are forced to go through.”

The Diocese of Rockville Centre has hired a major international law firm, Jones Day, to defend itself in the complex proceedings, which sometimes involve nearly 100 attorneys meeting at the same time.

The diocese declined to comment on the proceedings, other than pointing to court documents…

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Clergy sexual abuse cases are casting a pall over the Catholic Church in Portugal, ensnaring senior officials even as authorities scramble to explain why shelter was given to a Nobel Peace Prize-winning bishop at the center of sexual misconduct allegations.

Senior Catholic leaders apologized over the weekend for the hurt caused by decades of alleged abuse and cover-up — current estimates number around 400 cases — with the archbishop of Lisbon begging the faithful to not lose faith in the church.

“Be confident that for our part we will do our best, with respect to the law and the Gospel,” Archbishop Manuel Clemente said after Sunday Mass.

A spotlight fell on Portuguese church authorities, as well as the Vatican, last week when the Holy See’s sex abuse office confirmed a Dutch media report that in 2020 it had secretly sanctioned Bishop Carlos Ximenes Belo, the revered independence hero of East…

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In October 1992 in New York’s Times Square, an industrial steamroller crunched over a pathway littered with Sinéad O’Connor CDs as onlookers cheered and journalists filmed the protest. Today, a building overlooking the square bears an enormous photo of the singer’s famous shaven head. Her Bambi eyes gaze out across the city – and a wider country which vilified, mocked and banned her.

When Kathryn Ferguson, director of a new documentary about the singer, came across the picture while walking through Manhattan, she stopped in her tracks. “There she is, this monolith!” she says. “I cried. Like a phoenix from the flames, she’s back.”

In an era when so many public figures are widely applauded activists, it is hard to overstate how alone, courageous, and yet how demonised O’Connor once was. Nor how huge the institutions she took on were: the Catholic church, the Irish constitution,…

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On the first Saturday of fall, a sweating Bart Barber trekked across a weedy pasture in search of Bully Graham, the would-be patriarch of the rural Baptist pastor’s fledgling cattle herd.

With the afternoon temperature in the mid-90s, the 52-year-old Texan found the bull — whose nickname reflects his owner’s deep affection for the late Rev. Billy Graham — and 11 heifers cooling under a canopy of trees.

“Hey, baby girl,” Barber said as he patted one of the cows, a favorite he dubbed Lottie Moon after the namesake of his denomination’s international missions offering.

For nearly a quarter-century, Barber enjoyed relative obscurity as a minister in this town of 3,600, about 50 miles northeast of Dallas. That changed in June as delegates to the Southern Baptist Convention’s annual meeting in Anaheim, California, chose Barber to lead the nation’s largest Protestant denomination at a time of major crisis.

The previous…

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They were in the Bible study room when Deryk Terril, a shy 11-year-old with shaggy hair in 1976, found the courage to finally say something: An elder at a Jehovah’s Witnesses congregation in Spokane, Wash., had been molesting him for years, Terril, now 57, recounts in a lawsuit filed in August.

He says he told a church leader he trusted to protect him.

Instead, the church leader got angry and told Terril they could do nothing about it without a second witness, Terril says. Police weren’t notified, he says, nor were his parents. The church allowed the alleged abuser, John Earl Jones, to continue spending time with Terril, and he molested the boy for years after, court documents say.

Around the same time, the mother of another boy in the congregation, Daniel Enholm, reported to the church that Jones had touched her son, too. Again, the other church leaders failed to…

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With the approach of the 105th anniversary of The Miracle of the Sun at Fatima in central Portugal, Catholics have been shocked by yet another revelation about the sexual abuse of children within the church.

The Vatican has at long last acknowledged that in 2020 a Nobel Peace Prize-winning Catholic bishop received “disciplinary restrictions” and was banned from “contact with minors” because of allegations that he raped and abused teenage boys.

Bishop Carlos Ximenes Belo is accused of carrying out these crimes decades ago in the former Portuguese colony of East Timor. The Vatican first became involved in the case in 2019 if not before, but information about its disciplinary action only came last week, a day after a Dutch magazine, De Groene Amsterdammer, published the accusations in explicit accounts by two of the priest’s alleged victims.

Bishop Belo, 74, shared the 1996 Nobel Peace Prize with his friend José Ramos-Horta for…

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Parishioners of Our Lady of Hope Catholic Church in Rosemont have been notified that an allegation of sexual abuse of a minor has been filed against retired priest Fr. John Clemens.

The accusation is from an alleged incident nearly 50 years ago, according to a statement from the Catholic Archdiocese of Chicago.

Clemens served as pastor at Our Lady of Hope from 2008 to 2018 when he retired. He is currently the church’s pastor emeritus. The church serves Catholics in Rosemont, Des Plaines, travelers through O’Hare Airport, and other neighboring communities.

“I have asked Father Clemens to step aside from ministry until our independent Review Board can investigate the allegation and present its recommendation to me,” said Cardinal Blase Cupich in a recent statement. “We have reported the allegation to civil authorities and have offered assistance to the accuser. Father Clemens has agreed to cooperate fully with this process, and…

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The trial over the Secretariat of State’s financial scandal resumed Thursday, offering a preview of the prosecution’s witness list.

The trial over the Secretariat of State’s financial scandal resumed Sept. 28 in Vatican City, kicking off the second year of hearings in the case, and offering a preview of the prosecution’s witness list.

The beginning of a three-day slate of hearings saw the final appearance of a former senior lay official at the Secretary of State’s investment office, and the release of the first slate of witnesses to be called by the prosecution.

The court has been in recess since July. In the intervening months, the judges have been considering a list, submitted by prosecutors and lawyers, of proposed witnesses still to be called in the trial, now in its second year.

Before the court adjourned for the summer in July, chief judge Giuseppe Pignatone told the court that around…

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Thrissur: District Sessions Court rejected the bail plea of a priest who sexually abused a woman on the pretext of “special puja”. The accused Alappuzha native Vadassery Nikarthil Kailas (45) had allegedly raped a woman by intoxicating her with psychotropic drugs while conducting puja.

The incident pertaining to the case happened in April 2021. The priest misled the woman by offering her milk and tamarind solution as “Prasadam”, which was already laced with drugs. Later, the priest sexually abused the woman and recorded the act when she went unconscious.

The complainant informed the court that she was raped again threatening that the videos would be leaked. By considering the arguments of the prosecutor KB Sunil Kumar, the court observed that the case exists prima facie against the accused and dismissed the bail petition.

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Germany’s bishops are meeting in Fulda, a town in the center of the country, this week ahead of a crucial trip to the Vatican.

Their fall plenary meeting, which began on Monday, is dedicated to two major themes: the controversial “synodal way” and the bishops’ November ad limina visit to Rome.

The stakes are high: The Vatican has repeatedly expressed misgivings about the synodal way – the multi-year German initiative bringing together bishops and lay people to discuss four main topics: power, the priesthood, women in the Church, and sexual morality.

In July, the Vatican’s Secretariat of State underlined that the synodal way has no power “to compel the bishops and the faithful to adopt new ways of governance and new approaches to doctrine and morals.”

Earlier this month, the bishops attended an acrimonious session of the synodal way at which they endorsed documents proposing new ways of governance and new approaches to doctrine and…

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The United Nations and advocacy groups for survivors of clergy sexual abuse are urging Pope Francis to authorize a full investigation of Catholic Church archives on three continents to ascertain who knew what and when about sexual abuse by Nobel Peace Prize-winning Bishop Carlos Ximenes Belo, the revered independence hero of East Timor.

The Vatican’s sex abuse office said last week that it had secretly sanctioned Belo in 2020, forbidding him from having contact with minors or with East Timor, based on misconduct allegations that arrived in Rome in 2019. That was the year Francis approved a new church law that required all cases of predator prelates to be reported in-house and established a mechanism to investigate bishops, who had long escaped accountability for abuse or cover-up during the church’s decades-long scandal.

But a brief statement by the Vatican, issued after Dutch magazine De Groen Amsterdammer exposed the Belo scandal by…

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The building at 60 Sloane Avenue in London is at the center of the Vatican’s historic corruption trial, which began at the end of July 2021.

After a break of over two months, the Vatican trial on financial corruption in the Secretariat of State continued this week with the interrogation of witnesses for the prosecution.

The court reconvened Sept. 28, 29, and 30, to begin the questioning of the first of what the prosecution expects to be a total of 41 witnesses it will call.

The witness list includes Vatican gendarme Stefano De Santis, who assisted the Vatican’s now chief Prosecutor Alessandro Diddi during the trial’s preliminary investigation; he is expected to testify at the next scheduled hearing on October 12. 

A British-Italian architect, Luciano Capaldo, has been called to testify by the prosecution the same week. Capaldo was the registered director of the holding company London 60 SA Ltd,…

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Over a year into the proceedings, the Vatican mega-trial of 10 individuals accused of defrauding the Catholic institution’s finances through a controversial real estate deal began again this week after a summer recess with an interrogation of the prosecution’s witnesses.

The trial, which resumed Wednesday (Sept. 28) after being on break since July, revolves around a 2018 London real estate purchase by the Vatican’s Secretariat of State that ultimately cost the institution well over $200 million, mainly taken from papal funds destined for charity.

After more than a year of hearing from defendants, including Cardinal Angelo Becciu, judges will now be presented with testimony from the Vatican prosecutor’s submitted list of 27 witnesses.

On Friday, Revisor General Alessandro Cassinis Righini described to judges a culture of mismanagement within the Vatican’s Secretariat of State. Righini was appointed to oversee Vatican budgets and transactions by Pope Francis in March 2021 but had…

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The Vatican auditor general said he was surprised by the lack of ethical standards demonstrated by officials considering investment opportunities, including a failed London property development deal.

During the Vatican trial of 10 defendants accused of various charges related to financial malfeasance, Alessandro Cassinis Righini, auditor general of the Holy See and Vatican City State, criticized the mismanagement of funds as well as the Vatican’s association with people “with clear conflicts of interest,” which resulted in the loss of millions of euros.

“That was not the way to manage funds from Peter’s Pence,” Cassinis told the court Sept. 30, referring to the papal fund used for charity and to support the running of the Roman Curia and Vatican embassies around the world.

When asked by Vatican prosecutors if he was sure that funds from the annual collection were used in the London property deal, Cassinis replied, “Yes.”

The trial, which…

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Pope Francis reconfirmed the leadership of the Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors and expanded its membership from 17 to 20 people, naming 10 new members and reappointing 10 returning members.

U.S. Cardinal Seán P. O’Malley of Boston, president of the commission, said, “Coming from all over the world with varied backgrounds and a common passion for the well-being of children and vulnerable people, the members announced today include advocates and practitioners of prevention and protection to the many areas in which the church ministers to children.”

The members include “representatives from canon law, social work, the medical and psychological professions, law enforcement and the judiciary as well as pastoral experts who currently work in dioceses and religious congregations,” he said in a statement Sept. 30, the day the appointments were announced.

“They have all spent significant amounts of their professional lives listening to and supporting victim/survivors of sexual…

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A pastor and his son have been booked for raping a college girl in Tamil Nadu. The pastor’s son refused to marry her after sexually exploiting her on the promise of marriage. The girl had leveled rape charges against the father and another pastor as well.

Pastor David Jacob runs a Pentecostal church named Zion Prayer House near Panagudi in Tirunelveli. His son Anis Paul(25) made acquaintance with a 22 year old MCA student who attended the church. Anis Paul proposed to her and took her out on many occasions. As per Tamil media reports he also promised to marry her.

On this promise he sexually exploited the girl. But when she started asking him to marry her Paul stopped talking with her. He asked her to stay away from him for 2 years as their relationship would bring bad repute to his family…

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A 62-year-old man who served as pastor of a Baptist church in Missouri City will spend a decade in prison after pleading guilty to the charge of aggravated sexual assault of a child.

William Benjamin Woodward pleaded guilty June 14, but he elected to have his punishment assessed by U.S. District Judge J. Christian Becerra. The first-degree felony is punishable by five to 99 years, or life, in prison and a fine of up to $10,000. 

Woodward was executive pastor at Heritage Baptist Church from 2009 until his arrest in April 2021. The church was rebranded and the name was changed to Horizon Baptist Church a few weeks after Woodward’s arrest.

By pleading guilty to the crime and waiving his right to a jury trial, Woodward became eligible to ask the court for deferred adjudication, a form of probation. During the hearing June 20, his attorney argued that his client was…

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A former Missouri City pastor has been sentenced to prison after he pled guilty to aggravated sexual assault of a child on June 14, according to the Fort Bend County District Attorney’s Office.

William Benjamin Woodward, 62, previously served as pastor for a Baptist church in Missouri City from 2009 until his arrest in April 2021, according to the DA. Woodward elected to have his punishment assessed by Judge J. Christian Becerra of the 434th District Court.

Aggravated sexual assault of a child is a first-degree felony, punishable by 5 to 99 years, or life in prison and a fine up to $10,000.

Woodward’s hearing was held on June 20 where his attorney argued that he was an excellent candidate for deferred adjudication because he had no criminal history, had served his community as a church leader, and had immediately started sex offender therapy after the child in this case…

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U.S. District Judge Ronnie L. White on Thursday sentenced a former youth pastor from New York to 13 years and four months in prison for the sexual abuse of a Missouri 15-year-old in 2013.

Judge White also ordered Jesse E. Vargas, 38, to pay $146,594 in restitution to his victim.

Vargas originally met the then 11-year-old girl at a religious camp in Michigan where he worked.

“Over the course of the next four years Jesse played with my family and I like frogs in a pot,” the victim said in court during Thursday’s hearing. “Slowly increasing the temperature of his manipulation until we each were unaware of the water we had been submerged in, let alone its suddenly scalding temperature. By age thirteen I abandoned most of my spiritual leaders and friendships at his suggestion. By fourteen he even guided me to push away my two closest friends,” she said.

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A former youth pastor from New York was sentenced to 13 years and four months in prison.

Jesse Vargas, 38, originally met the girl when she was 11 years old at a religious camp in Michigan. Vargas kept in touch with the family for the next four years and came to her St. Louis home in January 2013, preached at her church and then sexually assaulted her. He returned in March of that year and assaulted her again. He arranged for her to go to New York in June and abused her again.

Vargas pleaded guilty to two felony counts of travel with the intent to engage in illicit sexual contact and coercion and enticement of a minor.

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A Hartford Superior Court jury on Tuesday convicted minister Robert Lee Nichols of touching a 10- or 11-year-old boy in sexual ways during a 10-day visit to Nichols’ family’s Manchester home in the summer of 2009 or 2010.

The year of the visit was disputed, but the real issue was whether the sexual touching happened. The boy testified Monday morning that it did, and Nichols, 43, flatly denied that in testimony later that day. Nichols’ wife, Tamara, subsequently took the witness stand and corroborated important parts of his testimony.

The six-member jury convicted Nichols of two felonies, risk of injury to a child and fourth-degree sexual assault. He faces a mandatory minimum of five years in prison and a maximum of 25 years when Judge Michael Gustafson sentences him Nov. 29.

The judge raised Nichols’ bond to $500,000 after the verdict. Online court records showed Wednesday that he had posted…

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In a rare admission of sexual harassment in Japan’s military, its army chief apologized Thursday to a former soldier for suffering caused by a group of servicemembers.

Yoshihide Yoshida, head of Japan’s Ground Self-Defense Force, said an internal investigation found evidence that several servicemen were involved in the case brought by former soldier Rina Gonoi last month.

“Representing the Ground-Self Defense Force, I deeply apologize to Ms. Gonoi for the pain she had to suffer for a long time,” Yoshida told a news conference. “We offer a sincere apology.”

The investigation is continuing and further details, including the assailants and their punishment, have not been released.

Gonoi welcomed the apology and thanked those who supported her, but added that “my battle is not over.”

“I’m determined to get an apology directly from the perpetrators,” she tweeted.

Japan’s Defense Minister Yasukazu Hamada earlier this month ordered a ministry-wide investigation into growing…

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Cambodia urges China to do more in combatting human trafficking

The death toll from a boat that capsized at sea on the Cambodian-Vietnamese maritime border has risen to 11 after eight bodies were washed ashore on an island off the south coast, officials said.

The incident has been tied to human traffickers and is under investigation.

Forty-one Chinese were reported lost at sea almost a week ago after their boat, believed to be headed for Sihanoukville on Cambodia’s south coast, got into trouble.

Authorities from both countries launched a search, rescued 30 people, and reported another three people had died. A statement released from city hall in Sihanoukville this morning said the missing eight had been found on a beach, on the Vietnamese island of Phu Quoc.

A separate statement from Vietnam’s Ministry of Public Security said two of the bodies were carrying Chinese identification papers in their pockets.

“The bodies found were…

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The many survivors of convicted pedophile, Kenneth Estabrooks’ horrendous sexual abuse are deeply saddened and hurt by the recent decision not to hold anyone liable for decades of sexual abuse of vulnerable children by a Saint John Police officer. Estabrooks was a Saint John City police officer for over two decades.

The evidence at trial was unequivocal and uncontested that he used a City of Saint John police car to kidnap young children. He used a City of Saint John police-issued gun to threaten them and their families. He used City of Saint John police-issued handcuffs to restrain the young children while he raped them.

Class Counsel advised they will immediately launch an appeal to the New Brunswick Court of Appeal on behalf of the class.

John McKiggan, co-lead counsel said: “This is the most devastating decision I have seen in 32 years. The city employed Kenneth Estabrooks. The City gave him his uniform. The City issued him his gun. The City owned the vehicle…

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The Vatican acknowledged Thursday that it imposed restrictions in 2020 on the ministry and residency of Bishop Carlos Ximenes Belo, a Nobel Peace Prize winner who is accused of sexually abusing teenage boys decades ago.

But Vatican officials will almost certainly face more questions about those restrictions, and about the bishop’s past, as details of the allegations against Belo come into focus in the weeks to come.

The Vatican’s admission came after a Dutch magazine reported this week the serial abuse allegations against the bishop, who has been regarded as a hero of the fight for independence in his native country of East Timor.

The allegations are grave. The bishop is accused of raping young men in the 1980s and ‘90s, and of taking advantage of their poverty, and his power, to keep them silent.

The Holy See’s restrictions on Bishop Belo might seem familiar to U.S. Catholics — the bishop…

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