ABUSE TRACKER

Following a recent U.S. preaching tour, disgraced Hillsong founder Brian Houston and his wife, Bobbie, have returned to Australia—and are apparently attempting a comeback.

On November 9, the celebrity ministry couple has planned “An Evening with Bobbie and Brian,” billed as a time of connection, fellowship, preaching from Brian Houston, and prayer. The event will be held at Pioneer Theatre in Sydney—located about three miles from Hillsong’s flagship campus in the city’s Hills District, where the Houstons founded the global megachurch in 1983. 

In a Tuesday social post, Brian Houston announced that “all the tickets were gone in less than 2 hours!” and a second, earlier time has been added. Noting that the event will be live-streamed online, the event summary concludes: “Great things start with small beginnings!” 

A recent Instagram post suggests one purpose of the event. “We miss the congregation at Hillsong Church enormously…

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Although public information on The Lodge Retreat Center has lessened since the public announcement in September 2021, updated photos shared with MinistryWatch show that construction is underway on Alabama’s Church of the Highlands Grants Mill campus.

The Lodge, funded by the church’s Legacy donations, is a $4.5 million retreat center where pastors, leaders, and their families will be, according to an original pamphlet, “mentored, counseled, refreshed, and restored.” The program is the vision of Highlands Senior Pastors Chris Hodges and Dino Rizzo. Both are co-founders of the Association of Related Churches (ARC).

The project sparked concern over how Highlands and ARC reinstate morally-fallen pastors to the pulpit with seemingly minimal consequences. Some questioned whether the goal to extend forgiveness and redemption to fallen leaders would result in The Lodge becoming a “safe place” to harbor and enable unrepentant sin.

A former staff…

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As Agape Boarding School pushes to delay a hearing over abuse allegations until next summer, Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmitt said in a new court filing that a trial should start next month so no more children are harmed.

“Thirty-seven days have now passed since the State initiated action against Agape,” said the motion, filed Friday in Cedar County Circuit Court. It said the AG’s office would be ready to proceed by Nov. 15. “Yet still the State has not been allowed to present evidence or obtain relief for the children at Agape.

“The children at Agape have been forced to stay 37 days longer than they should have around the Agape staffers who have abused them or their fellow students in the past.”

The state also asked for current students to be interviewed off-site by forensic specialists.

The motion came after Agape’s attorney, John Schultz, proposed that a hearing…

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New revelations that the Vatican quietly sanctioned Bishop Michel Santier to a life of prayer and penance last year have caused a stir in a French Church already in deep crisis

The Catholic Diocese of Créteil (France) has confirmed on Friday October 14 that its former bishop, Michel Santier, had been credibly accused of sexual abuse in late 2019, leading to his retirement more than a year later, in January 2021, at the age of 73. Catholic bishops normally submit their resignations at 75.

The news left people of the diocese, which is located in the southern suburbs of metropolitan Paris, surprised and saddened. A press release from Bishop Dominique Blanchet, Créteil’s current ordinary, was read out at all Masses over the weekend indicating that “two people revealed that in the 1990s they were subjected” by his predecessor “to acts of such a nature as to bring the matter before…

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Evêque de Créteil depuis 2007, Mgr Santier a démissionné en 2021. Il avait reconnu s’être adonné à du voyeurisme sur deux jeunes majeurs dans les années 90.

Le blâme avait été donné en toute discrétion. Parti à la retraite en 2021, l’ancien évêque de Créteil Michel Santier a été sanctionné il y a un an par le Vatican pour des faits de voyeurisme dans les années 1990. Mgr Dominique Blanchet, l’évêque qui lui a succédé l’an dernier, a confirmé dans un communiqué vendredi soir cette information révélée plus tôt par l’hebdomadaire Famille chrétienne : Mgr Santier «a été sanctionné il y a un an par Rome pour des abus spirituels ayant mené à du voyeurisme sur deux hommes majeurs». Autant de faits que le principal intéressé a reconnus.

Ils ont été commis dans le cadre d’un accompagnement spirituel, selon son entourage. Les deux victimes n’ont pas souhaité porter plainte, ajoute cette même source….

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Les révélations des abus commis il y a 30 ans sur deux jeunes majeurs par Mgr Michel Santier, ancien évêque de Luçon (Vendée) puis de Créteil (Val-de-Marne), ont provoqué de nombreuses réactions au sein de l’Église. Les diocèses de Créteil, Coutances et Luçon ont immédiatement réagi.

Une onde de choc a de nouveau secoué l’Église ce vendredi 14 octobre dans la soirée, après la publication par Famille Chrétienne d’une enquête révélant que Mgr Michel Santier, évêque de Luçon puis de Créteil entre 2001 et 2021, avait commis des « abus spirituels à des fins sexuelles » dans les années 1990 sur deux hommes majeurs. Les faits ont été révélés en 2019. Les deux victimes ont souhaité rester anonymes et n’ont pas voulu porter plainte. Mgr Michel Santier avait démissionné de sa charge en 2020, deux ans avant l’âge de la retraite, évoquant des problèmes de santé mais sans mentionner cette affaire. Il…

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Créteil, le 14 octobre 2022

A la suite de la publication parue le 14 octobre sur le site web de Famille Chrétienne, conscient du choc que peuvent produire ces révélations, je tiens avant tout à assurer de ma compassion toute particulière les personnes ayant été victimes des faits. Je partage également la peine et la consternation de tous ceux qui se sentiront blessés par ces révélations et j’apporte les précisions suivantes :

En 2019, deux personnes ont révélé avoir subi, dans les années 1990, alors qu’elles étaient majeures, de la part de Michel Santier des faits de nature à saisir la justice canonique de l’Église. Les autorités romaines ont été immédiatement alertées.

Des mesures disciplinaires ont été prises pour Michel Santier en octobre 2021. Pour leur mise en œuvre il a dû déménager de son lieu de retraite afin de résider désormais au sein d’une communauté religieuse, avec un ministère…

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Church leaders dismissed the new allegations against him as a spiritual attack.

A prominent Catholic parish in Chicago denounced abuse allegations against its popular pastor and demanded an investigation into those allegations be resolved quickly.

“God would not have blessed this ministry for over 40 — close to 50 years — if something dark needed to come to light,” Kimberly Lymore, associate minister at St. Sabina Parish, said during a service Sunday (Oct. 16).

The Rev. Michael Louis Pfleger, the longtime pastor of the predominantly Black congregation, has been temporarily removed from ministry after the Archdiocese of Chicago received an allegation of abuse against him. The alleged abuse of a minor— which comes less than two years after Pfleger was cleared of separate abuse accusations — is more than 30 years old, according to a letter from the diocese.

Pfleger was reinstated as pastor of St. Sabina in May of…

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Shannen Dee Williams is associate professor of history at the University of Dayton. A Distinguished Lecturer for the Organization of American Historians, Williams has won numerous scholarly fellowships from organizations including the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, the American Historical Association, and the American Catholic Historical Association. She recently published Subversive Habits: Black Catholic Nuns in the Long African American Freedom Struggle (Duke, 2022). Jacqueline Willy Romero corresponded with Williams about the book earlier this year.

Jacqueline Willy Romero: In Subversive Habits, you argue that decisions by Black women to enter religious life in the United States have been “widely overlooked as political and arguably feminist acts of bodily liberation and respectability.” How does your research contribute to and disrupt understandings of feminism and feminist perspectives on history?

Shannen Dee Williams: Subversive Habits builds upon the work of historians of Black women and Black feminist theorists who have…

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St Patrick’s College Silverstream says “natural justice” stopped them removing the portrait of an alleged sexual offender from its walls – a claim which has outraged sexual abuse survivors and campaigners.

School officials appeared at the Royal Commission of Inquiry into State and Religious Care on Monday to answer for its horrific record of sexual abuse.

The school is owned by the Catholic Society of Mary – known as the Marist Fathers – and Stuff has reported how multiple Marist priests sexually offended against students from the 1940s to the 1980s.

The school removed a portrait of former rector Frank Durning, a prolific paedophile, in 2019. But it says it’s still considering whether to remove any more, and won’t offer a timescale for a decision.

It told the hearing that a decision to keep up the picture of another former rector, Patrick Minto, was because allegations were “unsubstantiated”.

Both Minto’s family…

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A bankruptcy judge in New Orleans has imposed a $400,000 sanction on a lawyer who represents victims of priest abuse for hinting about allegations against a Catholic priest in violation of a protective order.

U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Meredith S. Grabill of the Eastern District of Louisiana imposed the sanction on lawyer Richard C. Trahant of Metairie, Louisiana, in an Oct. 11 order.

Trahant had represented priest-abuse claimants in the bankruptcy of the Catholic Church’s New Orleans Archdiocese. Grabill had signed an order to protect confidential discovery information in the case.

The bankruptcy trustee investigated after a church lawyer notified the court that someone had wrongfully disclosed protected information about a priest accused of sexual misconduct. The priest went on to serve as a chaplain at a local high school before he went on medical leave.

The information was disclosed to the high school and a reporter.

The investigation found that…

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Three years ago, Pope Francis said the Catholic Church was committed to eradicating the “evil” of abuse. The pope and other church leaders drew up new guidelines to handle accusations. They pledged transparency. They said victims’ needs would come first.

“A change of mentality,” Francis called it.

But two recent major cases suggest that the church, for all its vows to improve, is still falling into familiar traps and extending its foremost crisis.

While the cases are markedly different — one involves a Canadian cardinal accused of inappropriately touching an intern; the other involves a Nobel-winning bishop from East Timor accused of abusing impoverished children — anti-abuse advocates say both instances reflect a pattern of secrecy and defensiveness. They say the church is still closing ranks to protect the reputations of powerful prelates.

In the case of the cardinal, Marc Ouellet, the Vatican did look into the…

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[Via MSN News]

A teenage girl whose disappearance from the streets of Rome ranks as one of Italy’s greatest unsolved mysteries was sexually assaulted by a senior Holy See figure, it has been claimed, in a chilling new twist to the long-running mystery.

The daughter of a Vatican office clerk whose family lived inside the tiny city state, Emanuela Orlandi was 15 when she vanished as she returned from a flute lesson in the capital in 1983. She has not been seen since.

Theories about the reasons for her disappearance have revolved around murky claims of Cold War skulduggery, sex trafficking, banking scandals, mafia vendettas and negotiations over the release of a Turkish gunman who shot and wounded Pope John Paul II.

Now a Netflix series called Vatican Girl, which will be released on Oct 20, has come up with a startling new theory…

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When a group of local Catholics decided to expand their advocacy work outside a Whitefish Bay living room, they had to come up with a name for their new organization.

They settled on “Awake Milwaukee.”

As Catholics who wanted to push for change on the issue of sexual abuse from within the church, the name represented their own views as well as what they hoped to do for others.

“We felt like we were finally awake. We were finally paying attention to something that had been there all along,” said executive director Sara Larson. “It’s also what we’re aiming to do for our broader community: to help people wake up to this reality.”

The group’s ethos is that while the Archdiocese of Milwaukee has come a long way in addressing clergy abuse, more can be done to support survivors and increase transparency. The group…

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The latest hearings into abuse in state and faith-based care ended with a number of survivors and advocates walking out as the head of the Catholic Church gave evidence.

Cardinal John Dew was speaking before the Royal Commission of Inquiry into Abuse in Care this afternoon on the subject of how the church deals with sexual abuse admissions that are divulged during the sacramental rite of confession.

In reference to a colleague’s earlier statement, he said: “As Tim Duckworth said this morning, in 40 years he hasn’t had anyone who’s confessed sexual abuse, and I certainly haven’t. Or in over 40 years [had] someone who has spoken about sexual abuse.”

One of those who walked out told 1News many had heard this as saying the church had not been made aware of abuse – when the evidence said otherwise.

Today’s hearings are part of a fortnight of sessions that look…

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A Catholic bishop has admitted recommending a priest who had been sacked for grooming a teenage girl be given a teaching job at a Catholic school.

Retired Auckland bishop Pat Dunn says that in 2021 he supported ex-priest Sosefo Sateki Raass for a teaching job because he was a “talented man”.

That was despite Raass’ conviction in March 2019 for indecent communication with a person under 16, when he was sentenced to serve 100 hours community service. Raass had groomed a 15 year old girl and asked her to meet him secretly, and send him nude photos.

Dunn was appearing before the Royal Commission of Inquiry into Abuse in Care to explain his handling of the Raass case.

Dunn said in hindsight, his recommendation of Raass as a teacher was “unwise”, but then walked that back during oral testimony before the Commission in Auckland on Monday, saying: “In some ways,…

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During Sunday Mass, parishioners wore shirts saying, ‘We stand with Father Pfleger.’ The popular priest denies the latest allegation — the fourth against him.

A day after the Rev. Michael Pfleger was accused again of child sex abuse, the popular priest was absent from Sunday Mass at St. Sabina Church. But he was the focus of the service.

“Show Father Mike what it means to be persistent in prayer,” the Rev. Tom Walsh told the congregation during the 2 1⁄2 hour service punctuated by support for Pfleger.

Walsh directed congregants to face a camera at the rear of the church broadcasting the service on the internet, where he said Pfleger would be watching.

“Father Mike, this is your army. These are your warriors,” Walsh said. “We’ve got you. We’re holding up your hands in prayer.”

The new allegation, dating back more than 30 years, come less than two years…

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Today’s headlines tell the story: Children everywhere may face the tragedy of sexual abuse, and every institution that cares for them must have responsible programs in place to protect the children they serve. This year, we mark the 30th anniversary of how one institution, the Archdiocese of Chicago, stepped forward to establish comprehensive policies to address the sexual abuse of children by its priests. As one who was there as these policies were being crafted, I believe it is important to review their impact and the hard work of protecting children still going on today.

In the early 1990s, Cardinal Joseph Bernardin, then-archbishop of the Chicago Archdiocese, recognized that only by breaking new ground could progress be made in healing victims of abuse and holding offenders accountable. The Chicago Archdiocese’s trailblazing policies called for a review board consisting of a majority of laypeople with relevant expertise, including…

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Sunday, 16 October 2022, 6:55 pm
Press Release: SNAP

The Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAP) in Aotearoa New Zealand is again calling on Catholic Church leaders to audit their National Office for Professional Standards. That Office is responsible for complaints of sexual abuse perpetrated by clergy and religious.

This follows an unrequited call to Pope Francis which asked him to compel the New Zealand Catholic bishops and congregational leaders to audit their National Office for Professional Standards.

SNAP believes it is important for the public to know how survivors are being treated when they reach out for healing. “We are talking about a particular group of people who have been abused sexually, physically, psychologically, and even spiritually by priests and religious. They are now being denied the ‘fair and compassionate’ response that Church leaders promised,” says Dr. Christopher Longhurst, National Leader of SNAP Aotearoa.

The Interim Report of…

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‘We’re trying to regroup and see now how can we help him and we know we’re going to stand 1000% behind him’: Joyce Wasner

Video: A man is accusing Father Michael Pfleger of sexually abusing him as a child at Saint Sabina Catholic Church, his lawyer said.

Sunday mass continued at St. Sabina Church without Father Michael Pfleger.

Parishioners were emotional as they returned for Sunday’s service, many of them showing their support for Pfleger as he faces another sexual abuse allegation.

“It’s gonna be a loss. It’s a scrambling feeling… we’re trying to regroup and see now how can we help him and we know we’re going to stand a thousand percent behind him,” said Joyce Wasner.

A man now in his 40s said Pfleger sexually abused him while he was a minor inside of this church in the late 1980s.

The Archdiocese of Chicago is looking…

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On Tuesday, the Archdiocese of Santa Fe in New Mexico filed for bankruptcy reorganization in order to compensate 400 survivors of clergy abuse with more than $121 million. The Servants of the Paraclete have also promised to provide an additional $4 million in compensation for these victims. 

Filed for Bankruptcy Reorganization to Resolve Increasing Abuse Claims

According to a report from the Albuquerque Journal, a federal bankruptcy court in the District of New Mexico will hold a hearing on Wednesday to review the plan proposed by the Archdiocese of Santa Fe.

As reported by The News Times, the long-awaited agreement was reached almost four years after the Archdiocese of Santa Fe filed for bankruptcy reorganization to handle increasing abuse claims that dated back decades.

It also revealed that according to the court petition, the plan calls for six different insurance companies to cover $46.5 million of the $121.5 million total….

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Dear Members of the Faith Community of Saint Sabina,

 I write to share some difficult news about your senior pastor, Father Michael Pfleger. The Archdiocese of Chicago’s Office for Child Abuse Investigations and Review has received an allegation of sexual abuse of a minor against him. The abuse is alleged to have occurred more than 30 years ago. In keeping with our child protection policies, Father Pfleger has been asked to step aside from ministry and live away from the parish while the allegation is investigated. He has agreed to cooperate fully with this request.

As is required by our child protection policies, the allegation was reported to the Illinois Department of Children and Family Services and the law enforcement officials. The person making the allegation has been offered the services of our Victim Assistance Ministry and the archdiocese has begun its investigation and we will do our best to keep you informed.

Your pastor, Father Thulani Magwaza will serve as  administrator and will attend to…

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The new accusation comes less than two years after the popular priest was cleared by the Archdiocese of Chicago of separate accusations.

The Rev. Michael Pfleger has been removed from his ministry at St. Sabina Church as the Archdiocese of Chicago investigates another decades-old claim of sexual abuse against the popular priest.

The new accusation, dating back more than 30 years, was announced by Cardinal Blase Cupich Saturday, — less than two years after Pfleger was reinstated at his Auburn Gresham parish after an investigation that cleared him of wrongdoing on unrelated accusations.

In a letter to parishioners delivering the “difficult news,” Cupich said Pfleger agreed to leave the parish while the new claim is investigated. It also has been reported to police and the Illinois Department of Children and Family Services.

Pfleger, 73, vehemently denied the new accusation in a letter posted to his church’s website, saying he’s been…

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Pfleger agrees to step away during investigation, calling the allegations ‘unfounded,’ saying he is ‘completely innocent.’

A new person is accusing Saint Sabina’s Father Michael Pfleger of sexual abuse.

Chicago attorney Eugene Hollander said his client, a man in his late 40s, has filed a claim with the Archdiocese of Chicago.

Fr. Pfleger became a priest in the Archdiocese of Chicago in 1975. And in 1981, he became the pastor of St. Sabina.

In a statement released Saturday, Cardinal Blasé Cupich said Fr. Pfleger has been asked to step aside from ministry while an investigation is underway, and Pfleger agreed.

The man claims the abuse happened when he was a member of the Soul Children of Chicago choir in the 1980s.

In the claim, the man said he was sexually abused by Pfleger on two separate occasions in the parish rectory.

Hollander said the man is not speaking publicly about the…

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A Catholic priest who gained national fame as an activist has been asked to step away from his ministry while allegations that he sexually abused a minor decades ago are investigated.

The development came a little more than a year after another probe cleared the priest, the Rev. Michael Pfleger, of allegations that he sexually abused children.

In a letter sent Saturday, Cardinal Blase Cupich said Pfleger was asked to relinquish his duties at the church, Faith Community of Saint Sabina, after allegations were made that he sexually abused a minor decades ago.

Pfleger “has agreed to cooperate fully with this request,” Cupich said, adding that the archdiocese has notified the Illinois Department of Children and Family Services and law enforcement officials as required by archdiocese policies.

The accuser is a man in his late 40s who said Pfleger on two occasions abused him in the late 1980s during choir…

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St. Stanislaus school students learning remotely on Friday

An East Chicago, Indiana, teacher is in custody after allegedly telling a student she had a “kill list.”

The details of that list are horrifying, showing names of students and staff that she says she wanted to kill at her school.

Classes at St. Stanislaus Catholic School are being held remotely Friday as the investigation continues into one of its teachers.

Police said officers were called to St. Stanislaus School at 4930 Indianapolis Blvd. at about 5 p.m. Wednesday. There, the principal and assistant principal told them a student told their counselor that their fifth grade teacher made comments to them about killing herself, students and staff at the school.

Police said the teacher, 25-year-old Angelica Carrasquillo, told the student she had a list and that the student was at the bottom of that list. She has been charged with felony intimidation,…

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L’ecclésiastique, qui a démissionné en 2020, a reconnu avoir commis des faits de voyeurisme sur deux adultes dans les années 1990, en marge d’un accompagnement spirituel. Par Le HuffPost avec AFP

La sanction date d’il y a un an, et elle aurait pu passer inaperçue sans des révélations dans la presse. L’ex-évêque de Créteil Michel Santier a été sanctionné en 2021 par le Vatican pour des faits de voyeurisme sur deux personnes majeures dans les années 1990 dans le cadre d’une formation spirituelle. Des faits qu’il a depuis reconnus.

Parti à la retraite en 2021, l’ecclésiastique « a été sanctionné il y a un an par Rome pour des abus spirituels ayant mené à du voyeurisme sur deux hommes majeurs », a déclaré vendredi 14 octobre au soir à l’AFP l’entourage de monseigneur Dominique Blanchet, évêque qui lui a succédé l’an dernier.

Les faits se sont déroulés « dans les années 1990 », a précisé Dominique…

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Mgr Michel Santier a été sanctionné pour des « abus spirituels ayant mené à du voyeurisme », qui se sont déroulés dans les années 1990, à Coutances (Manche).

« Un choc, je suis sidéré. » Ce paroissien granvillais ne cache pas sa surprise après l’information de nos confrères de La Croix et Famille Chrétienne dévoilée vendredi 14 octobre 2022. Mgr Michel Santier a été sanctionné pour des « abus spirituels ayant mené à du voyeurisme », qui se sont déroulés dans les années 1990, à Coutances (Manche).

Ces révélations ont été confirmées à l’AFP par l’évêché de Créteil : Mgr Michel Santier, évêque de Créteil jusqu’en 2021, a été sanctionné il y a un an pour « abus spirituels ayant mené à du voyeurisme », sur deux hommes majeurs. Les faits se sont « déroulés dans les années 1990 », alors que Michel Santier était directeur de l’École de la foi à Coutances. Pour cet autre paroissien : «…

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Two young boys were locked in a dark closet, deprived of the lunches their mothers packed for them, and beaten with a “teacher’s stick,” according to a lawsuit filed against a daycare in Methuen.

The civil lawsuit was filed earlier this week in Essex Superior Court against the Children’s Center of the Faith United Methodist Church, alleging battery, assault, false imprisonment, intentional infliction of emotional distress, negligence, and invasion of privacy, court documents indicate.

The mothers are being represented by Attorney Matthew J, Fogelman of Newton. In an interview with investigative reporter Ted Daniel he said, “It’s been extremely difficult for the parents and for the children. What happened to them is completely inappropriate, quite frankly, shocking. And it’s been very traumatic for the kids and for their parents.”

In the suit, Attorney Fogelman said the younger child has been diagnosed with, “PTSD and anxiety” from the alleged abuse he…

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Previously, the list did not include priests accused when they were deceased and clergy from different religious orders.

The Archdiocese of Chicago’s list of priests accused of sex abuse nearly doubled Friday with the addition of dozens of names, including priests who were accused when they were no longer alive.

For years, the Archdiocese of Chicago has publicly named priests with substantiated allegations of sex abuse, but its list did not include the names of priests accused when they were deceased and clergy from different religious orders.

SEE THE LIST | Chicago Archdiocese list of priests, clergy accused of sex abuse

“The system wasn’t designed for that,” Archdiocese of Chicago General Counsel Jim Geoly said. “Even the website, when it was first created in 2006, was meant for the safety of children so people who were dangerous to children would be identified.”

But in the interest of…

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A retired priest from St. Louis pleaded guilty to federal charges of possession of child pornography.

According to court documents, James Beighlie, 72, admitted in court that colleagues of his at the Congregation of the Mission in St. Louis found compromising images of him on a church printer on May 17, 2021. The church launched its own investigation and called the FBI when videos of minors performing sex acts were found on electronics used by Beighlie.

Investigators found 6,000 images of child sexual abuse on one computer, including 3,000 photos of child pornography and 2,992 images of child erotica. Another computer had 236 photos and 40 videos of child sexual abuse.

Beighlie is set to be sentenced on January 10.

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Lamenting the damage that abusive Catholic clergy have caused to sexual abuse victims, the Archdiocese of Santa Fe has submitted its reorganization plan to a bankruptcy judge. The plan includes a proposed $121.5 million settlement for victims and disclosure of Church documents about sexual abuse.

“For many years, clergy members within the Church violated the sacred trust placed in them by families, children, and the Church by committing acts of sexual abuse,” the Archdiocese of Santa Fe said in one bankruptcy filing on Oct. 11. “This was left unaddressed for decades. Survivors of abuse were ignored, called liars, shamed and felt abandoned by their Church. This conduct is contrary to the teaching and traditions of the Church.”

The archdiocese had announced the massive proposed settlement in May but submitted the filings on Tuesday, the Albuquerque Journal reported. Six insurers will cover $46.5 million of the $121.5 million from the Santa…

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A newly filed lawsuit against a priest from the Archdiocese of Santa Fe is the latest reminder that the scourge of clergy sexual abuse is not a thing of the past but a problem in the present. We applaud the brave survivor for coming forward and we hope that this lawsuit will not only bring them some semblance of justice and healing but will also encourage other still-silent survivors to come forward and seek help.

According to the lawsuit, Fr. Daniel Balizan allegedly abused a then-15-year-old boy for months while working at Santa Maria de la Paz Catholic Community. Fr. Balizan has worked at Santa Maria since 2012 and given the nature of this allegation, we can only worry that others may have been abused during his tenure there. Especially given the concerning nature of how the victim was allegedly singled out and groomed, we worry that…

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Yet another priest has been criminally charged and convicted in Michigan thanks to the ongoing Attorney General investigation into clergy abuse. We are grateful to the survivors who came forward, the jurors who listened to and validated their testimony, and especially to the attorney general and her team for getting justice for the victims.

In Detroit’s 3rd Judicial Circuit Court, Joseph “Jack” Baker, 60, was found guilty of Criminal Sexual Conduct First Degree. Since 2008, Baker had served as the priest of St. Perpetua Parish in Waterford, Michigan. Prior to that, Baker served as associate pastor at Sacred Heart Parish in Dearborn, associate priest at St. Hugo of the Hills Parish in Bloomfield Hills, and pastor at St. Mary Parish in Wayne. Thanks to Attorney General Dana Nessel, we believe children are now safer with Baker behind bars.

We especially appreciate A.G. Nessel for diligently informing the public about her…

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Joseph Baker will be sentenced on Dec. 19

A 60-year-old priest has been convicted of child sex crimes in Wayne County.

Joseph “Jack” Baker, 60, of Wayne, was convicted of first-degree criminal sexual conduct sexual penetration with a person under 13.

Baker had been a pastor at St. Perpetua Parish in Waterford, Michigan since 2008. Before that, he was a pastor at St. Mary Parish in Wayne, associate pastor at Sacred Heart Parish in Dearborn, and associate pastor at St. Hugo of the Hills Parish in Bloomfield Hills.

“I want victims of abuse to know they have an advocate in the Attorney General’s office,” said Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel. “We are committed to ensuring that every case of sexual abuse and assault is thoroughly reviewed and that whenever we are able to pursue justice for a victim, we do so aggressively and relentlessly. We must all commit…

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Cardinal Becciu offered to personally reimburse the Holy See for funds paid to Cecelia Marogna, the Vatican City court heard on Wednesday.

Cardinal Angelo Becciu offered to personally reimburse the Holy See for funds paid to Cecelia Marogna, the Vatican City court heard on Wednesday.

In testimony from the cardinal, and from a senior Vatican police officer, judges in the Vatican’s sprawling financial crimes trial heard that Becciu made the offer after he was informed Interpol had flagged payments to Margona, the self-styled international security consultant and private spy, which had been authorized by the cardinal.

According to Stefano De Santis, a senior officer in the Vatican City’s corps of gendarmes, he and Vatican police chief Gianluca Broccoletti visited Becciu at his Vatican apartments in early October of 2020, at the cardinal’s request, to update him on their findings regarding Marogna.

De Santis told the court that he and Broccoletti…

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A man who presents himself as a Orthodox Christian monk and an attorney he lived with fraudulently obtained $3.5 million in federal pandemic relief funds for nonprofit religious organizations and related businesses they controlled, and spent some of it to fund a “lavish lifestyle,” federal prosecutors said Thursday.

Brian Andrew Bushell, 47, and Tracey M.A. Stockton, 64, are charged with conspiracy to commit wire fraud and unlawful monetary transactions, the U.S. attorney’s office in Boston said in a statement.

Both were released with conditions after an initial court appearance.

The defendants’ attorneys didn’t immediately reply to emails seeking comment.

Bushell, who referred to himself as “father” or “reverend father,” controlled several organizations based in the coastal town of Marblehead, including an Orthodox Christian charitable foundation, a monastic house, a brewery and a salt maker, prosecutors said.

Investigators have not been able to confirm whether Bushell is an Orthodox monk who…

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A Catholic priest has been convicted of sexual assaulting a 7-year-old boy in 2004 in a Detroit-area church.

A Wayne County jury convicted the Rev. Joseph “Jack” Baker on Thursday on a charge of first-degree criminal sexual conduct. Baker, 60, gasped as the verdict was read, The Detroit News reported.

Baker was a priest at St. Mary Parish in Wayne when Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel charged him in July 2019 with sexually abusing a minor.

Prosecutors alleged that Baker raped the boy in a church sacristy when the child was a second-grade student.

The victim, now 26, testified that he didn’t tell anyone about the incident at the time because Baker told him afterward that the sexual assault was “his own sin.”

Baker’s attorney, Patrick Bagley, said he plans to appeal. Baker will face a minimum sentence of 25 years in prison when he is sentenced on…

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‘Treat it as a dead subject,’ the victim says the dean of the Catholic school in Aurora told him. The Benedictines are still keeping secrets about clergy sex abuse, a Sun-Times investigation has found.

When he was a high school student in the 1980s at Marmion Military Academy in Aurora, a former suburban man says he was assigned to collect athletic equipment after intramural sporting events at the Catholic boarding school and take it to a secluded “basement area.”

The former student says that’s where a monk named Jerome Skaja — a member of the Benedictine religious order that still runs the nearly century-old school — sexually assaulted him more than a “half dozen times” his sophomore year.

“I was prepubescent at the time of this; I was a little kid,” the former student, a lawyer who worked for years as a prosecutor, tells the Chicago Sun-Times.

Asking to be…

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An 80-year-old man from St. Louis County faces several charges Wednesday for the alleged sexual abuse of two children while a prominent church member during the 1970s.

According to court documents, Spencer Main, 80, was charged with two counts of sodomy of a child, four counts of indecent liberties, and one count of first-degree criminal sexual conduct of a child for the alleged abuse of two girls from 1971-1975.

The two women, identified as “juvenile A” and “juvenile B” in the criminal complaint, say the alleged abuse took place between the ages of 8-12. The majority of the alleged abuse occurred in Main’s home just north of Virginia in St. Louis County.

During this time, Main was an active member of the Plymouth Brethren church in Virginia and would “occasionally preach in church,” the criminal complaint reads.

Both women told police that Main groomed them, which escalated into sexual acts….

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A former Detroit area priest has been convicted of sexually assaulting a 7-year-old boy in 2004.

Joseph Baker, 60, was convicted Thursday, Oct. 13, by a Wayne County jury of first-degree criminal sexual conduct.

Baker was accused of assaulting the boy at St. Mary Parish in Wayne. He is now 26 and testified at trial.

State Attorney General Dana Nessel announced the conviction Thursday.

“We are committed to ensuring that every case of sexual abuse and assault is thoroughly reviewed and that whenever we are able to pursue justice for a victim, we do so aggressively and relentlessly,” Nessel said in a written statement. “We must all commit to breaking down the walls of silence that so often surround sexual assault and abuse.”

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Aidan Clohessy (82) was principal of a school for boys with learning disabilities

A St John Of God Brother who was principal of a school for boys with learning disabilities is to go on trial in 2024 charged with indecently assaulting four boys at the school.

Aidan Clohessy (82) with an address at Hospitaller Order of St John of God, Grenada, Stillorgan faces nine charges of indecently assaulting four boys at St Augustine’s School, Carysfort Avenue, Blackrock on dates between August 31, 1968 and August 17, 1986.

The defendant was formerly principal of the school.

On Thursday Brother Clohessy appeared at Dublin Circuit Criminal Court where Judge Martin Nolan set a trial date for November 18, 2024 . He remanded him on continuing bail to that date.

At an earlier court date, Judge Nolan lifted reporting restrictions put in place by the District Court which prevented the media from naming…

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A priest in Michigan has had his faculties removed after a report that he engaged in sexual activity with a 16-year-old he met on the hookup app.

A priest in the Diocese of Lansing has had his faculties removed after a report that he engaged in sexual activity with a 16-year-old boy whom he met on the hookup app Grindr.

An Oct. 13 statement from the diocese said Fr. Shaun Lowery is seeking laicization after resigning as pastor of Saint Mary Magdalen this spring.

Lowery in 2009 was ordained a priest of the Oblates of Saint Francis de Sales. In 2018, he was incardinated in the Diocese of Lansing, after leaving his religious institute.

A high school student filed a report with the Diocese of Lansing in March 2021, saying a 16-year-old male friend had engaged in a sexual encounter with Lowery, which had been initiated through the hookup app…

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Father Shaun Lowery was ordained as a priest for the Oblates of Saint Francis de Sales in 2009. While serving with the order, he held various positions in the States of Ohio and Michigan including within the Diocese of Lansing. In 2018, Father Lowery received dispensation from his vows with the Oblates and was incardinated into the Diocese of Lansing. In 2019, he was appointed as Pastor of Saint Mary Magdalen parish in Brighton.

In March 2021, a high school student reported to the Diocese of Lansing that the person’s friend, a 16-year-old male, had engaged in sexual activity with Father Lowery. The encounter, the person claimed, had been organized using the mobile app Grindr. The person said that the friend recognized Father Lowery as a priest. The person was rightly concerned by these events and reported it to the Diocese while also concealing the friend’s identity.

The Diocese of…

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Mgr Michel Santier a été sanctionné pour des abus spirituels qui auraient été commis à des fins sexuelles sur deux majeurs il y a 30 ans dans la Manche. Évêque de Luçon puis de Créteil de 2001 à 2021, Mgr Santier aurait commis ces abus dans le cadre d’une fausse assistance spirituelle: ils ont eu lieu à l’École de la foi de Coutances. Le sacrement de pénitence aurait même été instrumentalisé. Ce n’est qu’en 2019 que ces faits ont été révélés. Mgr Laurent Le Boulc’h a demandé à Mgr Santier de mener désormais « une vie de retrait et de prières » pour y assurer « un ministère restreint ».

Voici le communiqué du diocèse de Coutances :Communiqué du diocèse de Coutances et Avranches sur la situation de Mgr Michel Santier

En 2021, Rome a pris des mesures disciplinaires à l’encontre de Mgr Michel Santier pour des faits commis contre deux jeunes adultes dans les années…

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Lamenting the damage that abusive Catholic clergy have caused to sexual abuse victims, the Archdiocese of Santa Fe has submitted its reorganization plan to a bankruptcy judge. The plan includes a proposed $121.5 million settlement for victims and disclosure of Church documents about sexual abuse.

“For many years, clergy members within the Church violated the sacred trust placed in them by families, children, and the Church by committing acts of sexual abuse,” the Archdiocese of Santa Fe said in one bankruptcy filing on Oct. 11. “This was left unaddressed for decades. Survivors of abuse were ignored, called liars, shamed and felt abandoned by their Church. This conduct is contrary to the teaching and traditions of the Church.”

The archdiocese had announced the massive proposed settlement in May but submitted the filings on Tuesday, the Albuquerque Journal reported. Six insurers will cover $46.5 million of the $121.5 million from the Santa…

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A southeast Michigan priest has been convicted of criminal sexual conduct by a jury in Wayne County, Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel announced today.

Joseph “Jack” Baker, 60, was convicted of Criminal Sexual Conduct First Degree – sexual penetration with a person under 13 in Detroit’s 3rd Judicial Circuit Court. Baker had been a pastor at St. Perpetua Parish in Waterford, MI since 2008. Prior to that, Baker was a pastor at St. Mary Parish in Wayne, associate pastor at Sacred Heart Parish in Dearborn, and associate pastor at St. Hugo of the Hills Parish in Bloomfield Hills.

“I want victims of abuse to know they have an advocate in the Attorney General’s office,” said Nessel. “We are committed to ensuring that every case of sexual abuse and assault is thoroughly reviewed and that whenever we are able to pursue justice for a victim, we do so aggressively and relentlessly. We must…

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Per chiarire la notizia pubblicata dal quotidiano Público relativa all’apertura di un’indagine da parte del Ministero di giustizia nei confronti del vescovo José Ornelas, di cui non è formalmente a conoscenza, informiamo che:

1. La prima denuncia del caso di padre Abel Maia risale al 2003 ed è stata oggetto di un’indagine interna da parte della Congregazione dei Padri Dehoniani; la presunta vittima ha negato ogni abuso. Nel 2014 ha riconfermato la sua posizione in tribunale.
2. Riaffermiamo quanto dichiarato da mons. José Ornelas, ossia che un’indagine interna sul caso di padre Abel Maia è stata aperta dall’arcidiocesi di Braga, l’ente competente a farlo nel 2014 quando padre Abel Maia aveva già lasciato la Congregazione dei Padri Dehoniani ed era già incardinato nell’arcidiocesi. Questa indagine, su richiesta dell’arcidiocesi di Braga, è stata condotta dall’allora superiore provinciale dei dehoniani in Portogallo.

Cogliamo l’occasione per ribadire la volontà di tutta la Chiesa di trovare i meccanismi più…

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The president of Portugal has directed the nation’s attorney general to investigate the bishop of Leiria-Fátima for covering up clerical sex abuse. 

Bishop José Ornelas, who oversees one of the world’s most famous Marian shrines, was appointed to the prestigious diocese in January 2022 by Pope Francis, despite a decade of media reports on abuses in a Mozambique orphanage run by the Dehonians.

Rushing to Rome

Ornelas, the current president of the Portuguese Episcopal Conference (CEP), was the superior general of the Dehonian congregation from 2003 to 2015 when the abuses were reported. This past weekend, Ornelas flew to Rome for a private meeting with Francis. 

On Oct. 1, Portugal’s Ministry of Justice confirmed that it was investigating Ornelas for allegedly covering up clerical sex abuse after “receiving an intervention” from Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa, president of the Portuguese republic.

Ornelas told the media that he received a call from de…

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There are many things wrong with Ross Douthat’s recent New York Times op-ed, “How Catholics Became Prisoners of Vatican II,” but the most glaring is his failure to mention the impact of the sexual abuse crisis anywhere in his 1400-word assessment of the past 60 years of Church history. Furthermore, his portrayals of the Council, its implementation, and the current state of the Church are shallow caricatures that reflect common tropes but are not consistent with reality.

The impact of abuse

No scandal or event has caused greater damage to the credibility and reputation of the Catholic Church in centuries than the revelations of the horrifying and widespread sexual abuse of children by priests, which was often enabled by bishops who committed the further crime of covering it up.

The sexual abuse crisis delivered crippling blows to the Catholic Church in overwhelmingly Catholic countries like Ireland, which boasted…

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Bishops claim “potentially ruinous liability,” and the “heavy burden of litigation expenses” is keeping them from doing spiritual work

The sexual abuse scandal roiling the Catholic Church, although mostly under the radar in the recent past, has not gone away.

In California–and elsewhere–the lawsuits are mounting — middle-aged men, saying they were sexually assaulted as children by a Boy Scout leader or a priest. A woman, now in her late 30s, detailing how she was allegedly assaulted in a center for foster children. A man who said he was abused while volunteering with the Salvation Army.

At least 750 of those lawsuits filed since January 2020 are against Catholic dioceses, and more than 800 people are in the process of filing to beat a Dec. 31 deadline, according to lawyers involved in the cases.

California has twice extended the statute of limitations on child sex abuse claims, prompting nine state…

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A retired St. Louis priest faces sentencing in January after admitting that he possessed thousands of images containing child pornography.

James T. Beighlie, 72, pleaded guilty Wednesday in federal court to two counts of possession of child pornography.

Federal prosecutors say that in May 2021, colleagues of Beighlie found images on a church printer. He was working at the time for Congregation of the Mission in St. Louis. Church leaders launched an investigation that included a review of computers and a smartphone used by Beighlie.

The U.S. attorney’s office in St. Louis said that when an IT support company found what appeared to be videos of minors engaging in sex acts, the FBI was contacted.

One computer alone contained about 3,000 images of child pornography and 2,992 images of child erotica, according to the plea. Another computer had 236 images and 40 videos containing child sexual abuse material.

A Congregation…

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A Tennessee man is suing a Santa Fe priest who he said sexually assaulted him a decade ago at a local parish when the plaintiff was 15.

In the lawsuit, the man accuses the Rev. Daniel Balizan of exploiting his trust and ingrained obedience to church authority to sexually abuse him for several months, including at Santa Maria de la Paz Catholic Community.

Balizan was removed as pastor of the church in August amid an investigation of misconduct. The Archdiocese of Santa Fe at the time would not outline the nature of the accusation against the longtime priest, although a spokeswoman called it “an allegation that is not substantiated but not beyond the realm of the possible.”

Balizan had served at Santa Maria de la Paz, a large parish near Santa Fe Community College on the city’s south side, since 2012. Before his posting in Santa Fe, he had served…

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A Michigan priest has been convicted for sex crimes against a child, Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel announced Thursday.

Joseph “Jack” Baker, 60, has been convicted of first-degree criminal sexual conduct — sexual penetration with a person under 13, in Detroit’s 3rd Judicial Circuit Court, Nessel said.

Baker’s sentencing is scheduled for December 19 at 9:00 a.m.

“I want victims of abuse to know they have an advocate in the Attorney General’s office,” Nessel said. “We are committed to ensuring that every case of sexual abuse and assault is thoroughly reviewed and that whenever we are able to pursue justice for a victim, we do so aggressively and relentlessly.”

Baker had been a pastor at St. Perpetua Parish in Waterford, the Michigan Department of Attorney General said.

Baker was charged as a result of a tip that was received by the Archdiocese of Detroit, who then sent…

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Baker was pastor of Waterford’s St. Perpetua when arrested

A priest accused of raping a young boy in 2004 testified on his own behalf Wednesday, repeatedly denying the allegation and giving the jury an explanation for his apology to the boy’s father on a recorded telephone call: He was questioning what was being said, and was in his role as a pastor, offering comfort to a person who was suffering.

Joseph “Jack” Baker, 60, is charged with first-degree criminal sexual conduct – sexual  penetration with a person less than 13 years old.  The alleged victim claims that while he was a second-grader at St. Mary Catholic School in Wayne, he was sent to the church sacristy during an after-school religious program to retrieve a book — and that’s where he was put over a table and raped.

The Oakland Press is not naming the victim due…

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On Wednesday, a Roman Catholic priest confirmed in court that he had thousands of photographs and films of child pornography and had spent years putting them into two PowerPoint presentations.

Father James Beighlie, 72, was a Vincentian priest who worked as an assistant pastor at St. Vincent de Paul Parish in St. Louis. According to the Congregation of the Mission, he formerly taught at St. Thomas Aquinas/Mercy High School in St. Louis, Vincent Gray Academy in East St. Louis, and Our Lady Queen of Peace church in House Springs, Missouri.

While investigators have only uncovered “known photos” of child pornography so far, we are fearful that he may have victims among the pupils with whom he worked. Possessing child pornography can be another grooming technique for individuals who abuse in person, consequently, we feel church and school officials should be on guard to ensure this man did…

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The Rev. Anthony Oelrich pleaded guilty to criminal sexual conduct, yet is still a member of the priesthood.  

What happens when an abusive priest gets out of prison?

One Minnesota woman — who testified in 2019 that St. Cloud priest Anthony Oelrich sexually abused her — is still trying to find out, even as Oelrich’s release date nears.

Oelrich pleaded guilty to one felony count of third-degree criminal sexual conduct, but he has yet to be dismissed from the priesthood — and it’s unclear when or if he will be.

“Now I’m just in limbo waiting,” said Deborah, who lives in a northern Twin Cities suburb and asked to use her first name only. “My faith is so wounded. I would like to see my church do something better and not once again put an abuser out there to abuse.”

Deborah asked the Diocese…

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The study of the late Bishop Bernhard Stein of Trier’s actions was due to be released this month

A report examining a German bishop’s handling of clerical abuse cases in the 1960s and 70s will not be published this month as planned.

Gerhard Robbers, a spokesman for an independent commission assessing abuse in the Diocese of Trier, said that the study of Bishop Bernhard Stein’s actions would now be released in December, reported KNA.

The delay is reportedly due to the discovery of new files and the emergence of new witnesses.Share The Pillar

Stein led the diocese, located at Germany’s border with Luxembourg, from 1967 to 1980. He died in 1993 at the age of 88. He is accused of covering up abuse cases.

The independent commission on sexual abuse in the Trier diocese released an interim report in August on cases from 1946 to 2021. It said it had so far identified…

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Unfortunately for the victims, abused kids just aren’t politically relevant to Eric Schmitt

Eric Schmitt treated Agape very differently than he treated other school districts not accused of abuse.

For decades, children at the Agape Boarding School for Boys have allegedly been subjected to mental, physical and sexual abuse at the hands of the Christian school’s staff. Here is some of what took place (all denied by the school) according to lawsuits filed against what one survivor described as a “torture compound”:

Boys were routinely beaten. One was choked with an electrical cord. Another was handcuffed for two weeks. Another ended up with his arm in a sling from an overzealous restraint. Another was nearly starved during punishment. One was chased around a volleyball court (captured on video) wearing just a bathrobe, in view of other students, before getting kicked and dragged by a staff member after falling. Multiple boys…

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Dear Editor:

Anderson Cooper’s “60 Minutes” interview of Bart Barber began on a hopeful note. Asked if he believed the 2020 presidential election was stolen, the Southern Baptist Convention president answered: “No.” Asked if he believes Joe Biden is the legitimate president of the United States, he responded: “I do, absolutely.”

Southern Baptists are the largest evangelical group in the country, a voting bloc that has enthusiastically embraced Donald Trump’s Big Lie that the election was stolen. Sixty percent of white evangelicals believe it. To hear an SBC president repudiate that belief was refreshing. So was his commitment to cooperate fully with the current Justice Department investigation of sexual abuse in the SBC and clean it up.

But from there the interview took a turn. It was not so much about what was said as about questions not asked.

First is whether the list of 700 sex offenders compiled by the…

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The attorney for a young Athens County woman who is suing her parents and other parties for years of sexual abuse at the hands of her family has asked a federal judge to rule that a Waverly, Ohio-based church, which has already lost its part of the lawsuit for failing to respond to it, is liable for money damages.

These would include, says attorney Michael L. Fradin, compensation for the “deep and irrevocable” psychological and emotional damage his client has suffered, and for the intensive counseling she has undergone and will need to continue to receive for the foreseeable future.

The plaintiff, once known as Serah Bellar, has legally changed her name, and is pursuing her lawsuit under the pseudonym “Jane Doe” to keep her new name a secret. In her suit, filed in February 2022 in UlS. District Court for Southern Ohio, Eastern Division, she alleges that her parents,…

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Portugal’s president is scrambling to quell an outcry over his comments appearing to make light of revelations that more than 400 people were victims of child sex abuse by members of the Portuguese Catholic Church.

A lay committee looking into historic child sex abuse in the church said Tuesday it has so far compiled a list of 424 alleged victims dating back to 1950. Hundreds of priests, some deceased, are under suspicion.

President Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa commented on the revelation: “Having 400 cases doesn’t seem to me to be a lot because in other countries investigating shorter time periods there were thousands of cases.”

Portugal has 10.3 million people.

The head of state’s remark drew wide criticism, with accusations he lacked compassion, and several hours later a statement on the presidential website sought to clarify his thinking.

The president, it said, “regrets that not more people have come forward,…

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Three children who were sexually abused by their father are accusing a Utah state legislator and a prominent Salt Lake City law firm of conspiring with The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints to cover up the abuse, allowing it to go on for years.

In a court filing in Cochise County, Arizona, made public Wednesday, the children of the late Paul Adams asked a judge for permission to add Republican state Rep. Merrill F. Nelson and law firm Kirton McConkie as defendants in their lawsuit against the church, widely known as the Mormon church.

The suit accuses the Mormon church of failing to notify police or child welfare officials that Adams was abusing his older daughter.

In 2010, Adams confessed to his bishop, John Herrod, that he had sexually abused his daughter, according to legal records. Herrod reported the abuse to a church “abuse help line” and was advised…

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A senior Portuguese Catholic Church official who has been named in investigations involving alleged cover-ups of sex abuse by priests said Wednesday his conscience is clear.

The head of the Portuguese Bishops Conference, Bishop José Ornelas, denied any wrongdoing or improper conduct in the cases dating from 2011 and 2014. Ornelas also presides over Portugal’s world-famous shrine at Fatima.

“I’m not worried,” Ornelas said of the investigations. But he conceded about what happened years ago that “these kinds of cases are handled differently now.” He didn’t elaborate.

Ornelas, authorities recently revealed, is being investigated by Portugal’s attorney general’s office on suspicion he covered up for abuser priests in Mozambique, a former Portuguese colony. He also faces accusations he covered up for an abusive priest in northern Portugal several years later.

“There was no cover-up” in those cases, Ornelas told a televised press conference in Fatima, 130 kilometers (80 miles) north…

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Order says attorney violated protective order by revealing information given about chaplain in Archdiocese of New Orleans’ bankruptcy case

A federal bankruptcy judge in New Orleans leveled a whopping $400,000 penalty Tuesday against a lawyer for clergy abuse survivors who allegedly revealed protected information about a priest to a Catholic school principal and a news reporter.

U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Meredith Grabill issued the sanctions against attorney Richard Trahant in a 30-page order, claiming he wrongfully disclosed information from discovery materials handed over in December in the Archdiocese of New Orleans’ bankruptcy case.

The information related to the Rev. Paul Hart, then chaplain at Brother Martin High School.

Hart left his post in early January, days after the school was notified of allegations from 1990 that he kissed and fondled a Mount Carmel Academy senior while serving at another local Catholic institution. It wasn’t the embattled archdiocese that first alerted the…

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Bankruptcy judge orders Richard Trahant, attorney representing dozens of victims of sexual abuse by Catholic priests, to pay $400,000 in sanctions.

A federal bankruptcy judge ordered an attorney representing dozens of victims of sexual abuse by Catholic priests to pay a massive $400,000 fine on Tuesday, because he disclosed the name of an active priest accused of sexual abuse in confidential church records.

The judge, Meredith Grabill, ruled the attorney, Richard Trahant, violated a protective order by notifying a local high school and a news reporter in early January about a priest who was still working at the school, after Trahant had seen church records marked “confidential” that implicated that priest in sexual misconduct.

According to an investigation by The Times-Picayune | New Orleans Advocate, those Archdiocese records showed an internal church investigation had concluded that Father Paul Hart had “dry sex” while fully clothed with a 17-year-old girl,…

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Richard Trahant was fined $400,000 for violating confidentiality rules around a bankruptcy filing by the local archdiocese

A New Orleans attorney who represents victims of clerical sexual abuse faces a $400,000 fine after alerting a local Catholic high school that a priest who worked there once admitted to fondling and kissing a teen girl he met at another church institution.

The lawyer, Richard Trahant, said he would appeal against the hefty sanction handed to him on Tuesday, which stemmed from a federal judge’s ruling that his alert violated confidentiality rules governing a Chapter 11 bankruptcy filing by the local archdiocese.

A spokesman for the archdiocese – the second-oldest in the US, serving about 400,000 parishioners – declined comment other than to say: “The wisdom of the judge’s ruling speaks for itself.”Advertisement

At the center of the dispute is a priest named Paul Hart, who officials found kissed, groped and at least once…

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In New Mexico, one of the oldest Roman Catholic dioceses in the U.S. has filed its bankruptcy reorganization plan to compensate nearly 400 clergy abuse survivors with more than $121 million.

A federal bankruptcy judge in the District of New Mexico will hear the Archdiocese of Santa Fe’s plan in a hearing Wednesday, the Albuquerque Journal reported.

The long-anticipated agreement comes nearly four years after the Archdiocese of Santa Fe filed for bankruptcy reorganization to resolve mounting abuse claims that dated back decades.

Under the plan, six insurers will cover $46.5 million of the $121.5 million, according to the court filing, which the newspaper obtained. That leaves the archdiocese responsible for $75 million. The archdiocese has over $69 million in an escrow account, as well as a $5.4 million promissory note that must be paid off by March 31.

The Servants of the Paraclete, which ran a treatment…

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A former Catholic priest admitted Wednesday to possessing thousands of images and dozens of videos of child pornography and spending years compiling two PowerPoints of the images. 

Father James Beighlie, 72, was a Vincentian priest who most recently served as an associate pastor at St. Vincent de Paul Parish in St. Louis. Previously, he served on the faculty at St. Thomas Aquinas/Mercy High School in St. Louis, at Vincent Gray Academy in East St. Louis and later as associate pastor at Our Lady Queen of Peace parish in House Springs, according to the Congregation of the Mission. 

Beighlie was investigated beginning in May 2021 when office staff at the Congregation of the Mission in St. Louis found nude images of him on an office printer. The church seized his electronics and found at least a dozen videos appearing to depict minors engaged in sex acts, according to a plea agreement….

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After the Sandusky child abuse scandal rocked Pennsylvania, the state required more professionals to report suspected child abuse. That led to a strained child welfare system and more unsubstantiated reports against low-income families.

ProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power. Sign up to receive our biggest stories as soon as they’re published.

More than a decade before the Penn State University child sex abuse scandal broke, an assistant football coach told his supervisors that he had seen Jerry Sandusky molesting a young boy in the shower. When this was revealed during Sandusky’s criminal trial in 2012, it prompted public outcry: Why hadn’t anyone reported the abuse sooner?

In response, Pennsylvania lawmakers enacted sweeping reforms to prevent anything like it from ever happening again.

Most notably, they expanded the list of professionals required to report it when they suspect a child might be in danger, broadened the definition for…

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The sexual-abuse crisis and ‘epistemic injustice’

What have we learned from the Catholic Church’s sexual-abuse scandal? What didn’t we know before that we know now? One way to answer these questions is to catalogue the revelations of the past few decades. To begin with, we now know, better than we did before, the extent of the abuse. In France, for example, with the recent publication of the monumental report from the Independent Commission on Sexual Abuses in the Church, it’s clear that this is by no means just an “American problem,” as the French bishops had wanted to believe in the early 2000s. We also know that framing sexual abuse as a problem of chastity rather than justice was a deep mistake that led many bishops to send offenders to psychological treatment and then assign them to a different parish or ministry—what Peter Steinfels has called the “Go and sin…

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Several years ago, Into Account hosted a series of posts from students and faculty in the Bethel College (North Newton, KS) psychology department, exploring the implications of a 2018 report on sexual harassment in academia from the National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM). The last planned post in that series, on the problems with mandatory reporting policies in higher education, fell through the cracks when the pandemic hit.

Now is a good time to pick it up again. As the U.S. Department of Education moves towards a much-needed overhaul of the Trump era Title IX regulations, one proposed change drawing extensive criticism is a proposal to place near-universal mandatory reporting requirements on all federally funded colleges and universities. In the time since our original series was released, more empirical evidence is emerging that confirms what advocates like those of us at Into Account have long suspected:…

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Cardinal Virgilio do Carmo da Silva of Dili, Timor-Leste’s first archbishop who was named a cardinal in August, is set for a baptism of fire that will test his every fiber and that of his countrymen.

A credible allegation of sexually abusing minors has been made against one of Cardinal da Silva’s predecessors — the former Apostolic Administrator of Dili Carlos Filipe Ximenes Belo, who has already had travel and other restrictions placed on him, and it does not surprise many in the tiny country that is only 20 years old.

Dutch news magazine De Groene Amsterdammer published on Sept 28 an investigative report, accusing the 74-year Salesian bishop of sexually abusing underage boys in Timor Leste over a 20-year period and buying their silence.

On the following day, the Vatican responded, admitting it had known about the allegations since 2019 and placed restrictions on Bishop Belo in 2020. Yet,…

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A commission investigating child sex abuse in the Portuguese Catholic Church said on Tuesday it has already gathered more than 400 testimonies of alleged victims but admitted the number of actual cases was “much higher”.

The Portuguese commission started its work in January after a report in France revealed around 3,000 priests and religious officials sexually abused over 200,000 children over the past 70 years.

The Portuguese Catholic Church has been rocked in recent weeks by various cases of alleged cover-up of sexual abuse including by bishops who remain active in church roles.

“Concealment is inherent in sexual abuse cases,” said commission member Daniel Sampaio, a Portuguese psychiatrist. “Of course there was concealment by the Church.”

One of the highest-profile cases involves Jose Ornelas, who is the head of the Portuguese Bishops Conference (CEP). Public prosecutors have said they are investigating Ornelas. A teacher has accused him of covering up sex…

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Richard Trahant was fined $400,000 for violating confidentiality rules around a bankruptcy filing by the local archdiocese

A New Orleans attorney who represents victims of clerical sexual abuse faces a $400,000 fine after alerting a local Catholic high school that a priest who worked there once admitted to fondling and kissing a teen girl he met at another church institution.

The lawyer, Richard Trahant, said he would appeal the hefty sanction handed to him on Tuesday, which stemmed from a federal judge’s ruling that his alert violated confidentiality rules governing a Chapter 11 bankruptcy filing by the local archdiocese.

A spokesman for the archdiocese – the second-oldest in the US, serving around 400,000 parishioners – declined comment other than to say: “The wisdom of the judge’s ruling speaks for itself.”

At the center of the dispute is a priest named Paul Hart, who officials found kissed, groped and at least once engaged…

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After decades of disbelief, denial and silence, more than 270 people who were sexually abused by Guam clergy members are closer to being compensated for their injuries after a federal judge approved the Archdiocese of Agana’s bankruptcy exit plan Tuesday.

The lead legal counsel for the Archdiocese of Agana’s Chapter 11 reorganization said Wednesday that the survivors trust fund would receive at least $34 million to $45 million. The final amount will depend on how much money is raised by the sale of archdiocese properties.

Family members of survivors will also receive school vouchers for students from kindergarten through 12th grade, as well as cemetery plots.

Descriptions of the abuse endured by the survivors, detailed in the civil lawsuits filed against the archdiocese, are horrifying. Those who did report the abuse as children said they were ignored or admonished by adults.

Back in 2016, a number of former altar boys…

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A Valencia County woman alleges in a lawsuit that, as a girl, she was repeatedly sexually abused by the youth minister at a church-run school in Truth or Consequences.

The woman, who was born in 1988, said she was abused from sixth through eighth grades while attending a school operated by a church affiliated with the Assemblies of God, the lawsuit alleges. It was filed Sept. 19 in 2nd Judicial District Court.

The unidentified woman alleges the abuse began when she took piano lessons from a man identified in the suit as a youth minister and Sunday school teacher.

The abuse continued in seventh and eighth grades while she was formally enrolled at Appletree Education Center, a school run by the Full Gospel Tabernacle in Truth or Consequences, it said.

Amelia Wilcox, director of Appletree Education Center, said in a phone interview Monday that she was unaware that a suit…

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Mark Ryan says he is appalled by ‘disgraceful’ evidence heard at inquiry and calls for changes to system

Queensland’s police minister has acknowledged that the force’s disciplinary system has “failed” officers subjected to sexual assaults by their police colleagues.

The commission of inquiry into police responses to domestic violence last week heard how officers who perpetrated sexual assault, sexually harassed junior female colleagues or made racist or misogynistic comments often faced little to no consequences for their behaviour.

In most cases officers were dealt with through local management resolution (LMR) – a remedial conversation with a supervisor, the inquiry heard.

The police minister, Mark Ryan, said on Wednesday he was “appalled” by evidence of officers harassing or abusing their colleagues.

“We’ve seen over the last couple of weeks with the commission of inquiry is that there is some quite appalling behaviour and there has been some instances where the system has…

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49-year-old Kevin Buelow appeared in a Waukesha County courtroom Monday morning for one of two trials against him alleging sexual assault of former students

On Monday morning 49-year-old Kevin Buelow, his accusers, attorneys and jurors met in a small Waukesha County courtroom.

In Waukesha, Buelow faces five counts of sexual assault, four of them against a child.

The alleged assault happened at the Holy Apostles Catholic School in New Berlin.

Attorneys on both sides made their opening statements in front of jurors Monday. Buelow sat silent during the morning hours.

He also faces one count of child sexual assault in Milwaukee for a similar case at St. Matthias Parish School.

It was the St. Matthias case that prompted other students at Holy Apostles to step forward, alleging similar abuse.

Investigators said that while interviewing other former St. Matthias students, they said Buelow would pat their butt and put his hands…

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In a display of power and hope, family members and secondary survivors of historic clergy abuse have told their stories in an Australian-first book.   

The Quilt of Hope book was launched in Ballarat, a collation of tales from inspirational people who took a stand to make their voices heard.

The book comes following the creation of the Quilt of Hope, a blanket made of 80 hand and machine-stitched panels that are embroidered with messages and symbols.

It’s a compelling and tangible piece of art to display the “gruesome” truth of institutional clergy abuse, each square dedicated to honouring the abuse survivors.

The quilt now resides in the Museum of Australian Democracy in Canberra.

It was created by more than 80 Catholic parishioners in Ballarat, the mothers of survivors of abuse who contributed to the quilt between 2010 and 2019. It was envisioned, designed, and made by Beryl Andersen and Carmel Moloney.

…

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U.S. Catholic bishops will elect new leadership in November. The election could say a lot about the state of the USCCB – and its future.

When the U.S. bishops’ conference meets next month for its annual fall plenary meeting, the bishops will hold a leadership election that promises to be among the most interesting in more than a decade, as the USCCB vice president will not be the favorite, or even a candidate, in the conference presidential election.

Without the customary expectation that the sitting conference vice- president will win the presidency, November’s unusually open election of both the USCCB president and vice president will be an especially useful barometer of the concerns and perspectives of the American Catholic bishops.

While the bishops announced the presidential field Tuesday morning, the rest of the USCCB’s fall meeting agenda has not yet been announced. Conference observers can expect at least some of…

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Gannett Corp. is unfairly stalling any handover of documents needed to help former Democrat and Chronicle newspaper carriers prove they were molested as young teenagers decades ago by an adult route supervisor, an attorney for one of the ex-carriers charges.   

Meanwhile, Gannett is doubling down on an aggressive strategy aimed at entirely thwarting seven former news carriers’ efforts to sue it for allowing the alleged sexual abuse to occur. That strategy centers on the media chain’s assertion that New York’s workers’ compensation system, and not the Child Victims Act, is the former carriers’ only recourse.

The former paperboys sued Gannett in 2019 shortly after the CVA took effect. The carriers claim they were sexually abused as teenagers in the 1980s by Jack Lazeroff, a D&C route supervisor. Lazeroff died in 2003 at 74.

Passed and signed into law as a fast-rising tide of long-buried abuse accusations were surfacing against…

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A Catholic priest formerly of Providence who was granted bail last year after being charged with possessing and transferring child pornography is back behind bars after authorities alleged he violated the conditions of his pretrial release while living in Kansas.

U.S. Magistrate Judge Patricia Sullivan last week ordered The Rev. James Jackson detained after a separate child pornography investigation in Kansas this summer led police to search a home in Leawood, Kansas, where Jackson, former pastor at St. Mary’s on Broadway, was staying with a relative. 

Federal court documents say the investigation “identified internet activity linked to Mr. Jackson from May 2022 to June 2022 in which he allegedly engaged in accessing child pornography.” 

During the July search, police seized a Microsoft Surface Pro computer and an external hard drive. Jackson was not arrested. But a federal probation report says Jackson, who “appeared…

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[AUDIO]

LEILA FADEL, HOST:

One of the oldest boys choirs in Europe recently began admitting girls for the first time since it was founded more than a thousand years ago. The choir is known as the Regensburg Domspatzen, or Cathedral Sparrows in English. And the decision to allow girls into the prestigious choir and school is part of an effort to leave behind a troubled history. NPR’s Rob Schmitz brings us this story.

(CROSSTALK)

ROB SCHMITZ, BYLINE: The Cathedral Sparrows seem to be chirping all at once on their bus ride from their boarding school to a concert venue in their Bavarian hometown of Regensburg. The boys range from 8 years old to teenagers. They represent the Regensburg Cathedral, whose gothic spires have dominated the city’s skyline since the year 700.

REGENSBURGER DOMSPATZEN: (Vocalizing).

SCHMITZ: A few centuries later, this boys choir was established. And through the next thousand years,…

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The head of a lay committee looking into historic child sex abuse in the Portuguese Catholic Church said Tuesday the problem in the past had been “widespread” and on some occasions reached “truly endemic” proportions.

Pedro Strecht, a psychiatrist who heads Portugal’s Independent Committee for the Study of Child Abuse in the Catholic Church, said his panel has compiled a list of 424 alleged victims. Before the committee started its work in January, senior church officials had claimed that only a handful of cases had occurred.

The panel, which was created by the Portuguese Bishops Conference, is looking into alleged abuse cases from 1950 to the present involving minors aged two to 17. It is due to publish a report on Jan. 31.

Information obtained so far indicates that “a significant number” of Catholic Church priests and members allegedly have committed sex abuses since 1950, Strecht told a news conference…

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Press Release – October 11, 2022

With District Court of Guam Chief Judge Frances Tydingco-Gatewood approving the confirmation of the Fifth Amended Joint Plan of Reorganization on Tuesday, Oct. 4, the process to make restitution to victim survivors of clergy abuse on Guam can begin.

Attorney  Ford Elsaesser, lead legal counsel for the Archdiocese of Agaña’s Chapter 11 Reorganization said Monday that the amount that the victim survivors trust fund will receive would be in the range of at least $34 million to $45 million. The final amount would be dependent on the actual sum that the sale of respective archdiocese properties would bring in.

The settlement amount encompasses actual cash contributions from the combined Catholic schools and parishes; archdiocese properties that are being transferred to the victim survivors trust fund; plus money from the insurance companies that insured the archdiocese.

Additionally, the archdiocese will provide the following to family…

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In light of sex abuse charges against Bishop Carlos Ximenes Belo, keeping quiet is no longer an option

When Dutch magazine De Groene Amsterdammer first exposed sex abuse allegations against Bishop Carlos Ximenes Belo, the long silence about the shameful past finally broke. Several mainstream media outlets around the globe followed suit in covering the allegations.

Two alleged victims, now in their 40s, cited in the story, had the courage to break the silence. Their courage is expected to inspire more alleged victims to come forward. It is indicated that Bishop Belo may have also allegedly abused other minors in the 1980s at the Salesians’ education center, where he taught before becoming a bishop.

The question is: will other alleged victims have the same courage to at least recount their memories and stories? The media circus and criminal trial of the case may or may not be helpful in bringing justice, particularly…

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The Catholic Church of Costa Rica was convicted of sexual abuse against a minor. A Costa Rican Court indicated that the Church had to pay the compensation of 65 million colones ($100,000) and the legal costs, equivalent to 10.6 million colones, close to US$16,000.

The sentence establishes that the Episcopal Conference of Costa Rica, Temporalities of the Archdiocese of San José, and the Archbishop of San José, José Rafael Quirós Quirós, must make a joint payment for the damages caused to the victim by the sexual abuse of former priest Mauricio Víquez Lizano.

In March, the Costa Rican Criminal Court sentenced Víquez Lizano to 20 years in prison. The Court found the ex-priest guilty of sexual abuse and rape of an 11-year-old boy in 2003.

Additionally, the court ruling indicates that the ecclesiastical authorities covered the crimes.

“Quirós Quirós (the archbishop), temporalities of the Archdiocese of San…

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The Diocese of Arlington, Virgina’s former director for the Office of Child Protection, Father Terry Specht, was found not guilty Oct. 5 of aggravated sexual battery.

Specht was indicted in December 2021 on two charges related to child sexual abuse. One of those charges was dropped during court proceedings.

Bishop Michael Burbidge of the Diocese of Arlington issued a statement after the priest’s acquittal. “While Father Specht was found not guilty, I nevertheless convey my heartfelt and sincere sorrow to anyone who has suffered sexual abuse,” Burbidge said.

“The Diocese of Arlington continues to offer whatever counseling or pastoral support we can to help them manage their pain and suffering,” he added.

Specht’s lawyer, Dawn Butorac, told the Washington Post that it was “obvious” that Specht was not guilty of the charges.

“They put a man who has dedicated his life to service of his community, both in the Navy…

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Od 2019 r. Watykan zajmował się skargami na 18 polskich hierarchów. W kilku sprawach nałożonych sankcji nie ujawniono.

Biskup Henryk Tomasik, który zaniedbał wyjaśnienie sprawy księdza oskarżonego o wykorzystywanie małoletnich, został przez Stolicę Apostolską obłożony sankcjami. Nie ogłoszono ich jednak publicznie. Podobnie postąpiono w odniesieniu do biskupa Jana Tyrawy, który w maju 2021 r. zrezygnował z funkcji ordynariusza bydgoskiego. Kary wymierzono, ale po cichu – ustaliła „Rzeczpospolita”.

Z naszych informacji wynika, że obaj hierarchowie zastosowali się m.in. do nakazu wpłaty na Fundację Świętego Józefa. Do dziś nie zrobił tego biskup Tadeusz Rakoczy (b. ordynariusz bielsko-żywiecki), na którego sankcje były nałożone publicznie.

Płacą, ale nie wszyscy

W maju 2019 r. papież Franciszek ogłosił dokument „Vos estis lux mundi”, ustanawiający m.in. procedury postępowania w przypadkach oskarżeń biskupów oraz wyższych przełożonych zakonnych o wykorzystywanie seksualne małoletnich, a także zarzutów o zaniedbania przy wyjaśnianiu tych przestępstw. Dokument wszedł w życie 1…

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The Catholic diocese of Toruń has been ordered by a court to pay 600,000 złoty (€123,000) compensation to a man who was sexually abused by a priest for almost a decade when he served as an altar boy.

“I am glad, though no compensation could be adequate for what happened to me,” the victim, who was nine years old when the abuse began, told news service Onet. In a statement issued by the diocese, it said that “the bishop of Toruń respects the ruling of the court”.

The decision marks the end of a longrunning legal battle by the victim, whom the church initially treated as an “accomplice in the sin of adultery” during an ecclesiastical trial that found the priest not guilty. The priest was, however, eventually sentenced by a state court.

The abuse in question was carried out between the years 2000 and 2009 by Jarosław Pestka, a…

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German Catholics involved in the Synodal Path are convinced the church must address the “systemic causes” of the clerical sexual abuse scandal and that will require change, said Charlotte Kreuter-Kirchhof, a member of the German Synodal Assembly.

And while some of the assembly’s proposed changes sound radical to some people — with the harshest critics even warning that the Synodal Path could lead to schism — Kreuter-Kirchhof said, “We are members of the Roman Catholic Church, and we will stay members of the Roman Catholic Church.”

Kreuter-Kirchhof, a professor of law and member of the Vatican Council for the Economy, spoke about the Synodal Path at a conference Oct. 4 at the German Embassy to the Holy See.

The fourth assembly of the Synodal Path was in September. The fifth and final meeting is scheduled for March.

In the wake of the clerical abuse scandal and with the release of…

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