ABUSE TRACKER

A canonical investigation is however underway and Maurice Gardès is subject to sanctions.

Une enquête canonique est toutefois en cours et Maurice Gardès fait l’objet de sanctions.

Une procédure pénale pour agression sexuelle à l’encontre de l’ancien archevêque d’Auch, Maurice Gardès, a été classée sans suite, a fait savoir jeudi 27 avril le parquet, l’Eglise catholique expliquant pour sa part que le prélat fait toujours l’objet de sanctions et d’une enquête canonique.

Après un signalement du diocèse de Lyon le 1er décembre 2020, le procureur d’Auch a « immédiatement » ouvert une enquête pénale et entendu une religieuse accusant Maurice Gardès « d’agression sexuelle et de tentative de viol entre fin 2007 et 2009 », écrit le parquet dans un communiqué. « A les supposer avérés, les faits d’agression sexuelle, de nature délictuelle, étaient atteints par la prescription », précise-t-il, ajoutant que « l’enquête n’a pas permis d’établir (…) les faits de tentative de viol dénoncés, de nature criminelle »….

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In September 2020, the diocese of Lyon received the testimony of a nun reporting facts of “moral and sexual harassment, spiritual abuse and sexual assault” involving Bishop Maurice Gardès, former archbishop of Auch.

Retrouvez ci-dessus le communiqué des diocèses d’Auch, Lyon et Toulouse, du 27 avril 2023, au sujet de Mgr Maurice Gardès.

Le diocèse de Lyon a reçu en septembre 2020 le témoignage d’une religieuse faisant état de faits de « harcèlement moral et sexuel, d’abus spirituels et d’agressions sexuelles » mettant en cause Mgr Maurice Gardès, ancien archevêque d’Auch.

A la suite de ce témoignage, le diocèse de Lyon a effectué un signalement auprès du Procureur de la République de Lyon, qui a transmis le dossier à celui d’Auch. Parallèlement, la justice canonique a été saisie et des mesures conservatoires ont été signifiées à Mgr Gardès par l’archevêque de Lyon.

En avril 2022, le Procureur de la République d’Auch a ordonné un…

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Following the publication of a press article concerning an investigation targeting Maurice Gardès, former archbishop of AUCH, the public prosecutor of AUCH provides the following details.

Communiqué du procureur de la République d’Auch concernant l’affaire Maurice Gardès  : 

A la suite de la parution d’un article de presse concernant une enquête visant Maurice Gardès, ancien archevêque d’AUCH, le procureur de la République d’AUCH apporte les précisions suivantes.

Le 1er décembre 2020, le procureur de la République d’AUCH a reçu du procureur de la République de LYON, pour compétence, un signalement du diocèse de LYON concernant des faits de nature sexuelle qui auraient été commis dans le Gers par Maurice Gardès sur une religieuse.

Le procureur de la République d’AUCH a immédiatement diligenté une enquête pénale.

Entendue, la religieuse a indiqué que Maurice Gardès avait commis sur elle des faits d’agression sexuelle et de tentative de viol entre fin 2007 et…

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A state district judge late last year rejected a consolidated plea prosecutors had offered a former school health aide accused of molesting four children after parents of two of his alleged victims spoke in opposition to the agreement.

An attorney representing one of the accusers says in a new court filing the First Judicial District Attorney’s Office days later dismissed the charges related to his client — the most serious of those leveled against Robert Apodaca — and is making access to the teenager’s protected mental health records a condition for refiling them.

Paul Linnenburger filed an emergency motion last week, requesting a protective order for the records, which he says the District Attorney’s Office has “demanded as a precondition to further prosecution.”

The state never interviewed his client or asked for the records prior to dismissing the case “pending further investigation” in December, according to the motion.

New Mexico…

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Lovingly displayed in a windowsill of Elizabeth Ann Murphy’s home in Timonium is a rectangular ceramic sculpture depicting a sailboat tossed on a stormy, turquoise sea. God’s outstretched hands hover over the fragile vessel, a reminder of his constant presence.

Standing near the painted ceramic are three other pieces of art: a figure of the Blessed Virgin Mary, a small wooden carving of Christ carrying his cross, and a little glass rooster – an ever-present symbol of betrayal.

For Murphy, who experienced horrific sexual abuse for three years while a student at Catholic Community School in South Baltimore in the early 1970s, the artwork offers consolation. It’s also a reminder of suffering.

The agony she endured wasn’t just at the hands of John A. Merzbacher, her abuser who is serving four consecutive life terms for his crimes against Murphy. It also came from a church that failed to…

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Lawyers for the Catholic Church have argued that the new law violates the state constitution.

The viability of hundreds of lawsuits alleging childhood sexual abuse within the Catholic Church and elsewhere hung in the balance as the Louisiana Supreme Court heard oral arguments Monday over a challenge to a recent state law that created a 3-year “lookback” window to sue.

At issue is a law the Legislature first passed in 2021 and revised last year in response to eruptions in a long-running clergy sex abuse scandal in Catholic churches in Louisiana, backed by studies on delayed recognition of abuse by survivors.

The legislation, which passed overwhelmingly, granted victims of childhood sexual abuse until 2024 to sue over their alleged mistreatment regardless of their age. Previously, they had until age 28.

Louisiana is among more than two dozen states that have carved out grace periods from laws…

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The top Bolivian prosecutor launched an investigation Monday into a late Spanish priest who allegedly abused several minors in Bolivia dating back to the 1980s.

The case of Jesuit priest Alfonso Pedrajas Moreno, who died in 2009, came to light over the weekend in a report by the Spanish newspaper El País.

Attorney General Wilfredo Chávez said on Twitter that he was seeking information from the Spanish consulate on the case, and that he was asking the Catholic Church to comment.

“This horror would have been covered up by the leadership of the Catholic Church at the time,” Chávez alleged on Twitter.

El País had published excerpts of the personal diary of Pedrajas Moreno, who allegedly admitted to having abused dozens of children while he was a teacher in Bolivia until 2009 when he died.

“We feel embarrassed by the situation,” Bolivia’s Jesuit congregation said in a statement, and vowed…

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Should the US government, in this day and age, be doing business with an organization with a gruesome history of protecting predators?

My relationship with the Catholic Church is, um, complicated.

Consider a report in The New York Times last week: “An Oklahoma state education board is weighing whether to approve the nation’s first religious charter school…potentially setting up a high-profile constitutional battle over whether taxpayer money can be used to directly fund religious schools.”

The Times added that “the proposed school…would be run by the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Oklahoma City and the Diocese of Tulsa, would be the first to operate as an explicitly religious school, with religious instruction.”

So, yes, there are a whole bunch of questions about whether or not, or how, taxpayers should be supporting religious institutions.

But that’s not the complicated part for me.

This is: The president of Americans United for Separation of…

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Religious organizations should not pay damages for crimes perpetrated by their leaders or members in private homes outside of church-organized religious activity, the court said.

On April 26, 2023, the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom issued an important decision on the question of vicarious liability by a religious organization for a crime committed by one of its elders in a non-institutional setting.

These cases have been hotly debated, not only in the United Kingdom. In several countries, courts have stated that a religious organization is liable for crimes committed by its leaders or employees in an institutional setting. For instance, several decisions in different countries affirm that if a Catholic priest sexually abuses a minor during a retreat or youth camp organized by the parish, the Catholic diocese or religious order is responsible and should pay damages to the victims. This is highly significant for the victims…

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Nearly four years after his election, Morris Fiddler has been consecrated as the first suffragan, or assistant, bishop for Northern Ontario in the Indigenous Spiritual Ministry of Mishamikoweesh, a position arising, among other things, from the difficulty and cost of travel in the North as well as the need for suicide and addictions ministry.

Elected as bishop in June 2019, Fiddler was consecrated March 11 at St. Matthew’s Anglican Church in his home community of Muskrat Dam.

His consecration was initially scheduled to take place in September 2019, he says, then rescheduled to February 2020 to accommodate clergy who planned to attend. But the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic led to widespread travel restrictions and more postponement.

Fiddler told the Journal that before the 2019 election, he was anxious and spent much time praying during a hunting trip with friends off the Hudson Bay coast.After the election, he says, “I was at…

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Over the past year, calls steadily trickled in to the Rice, Murtha & Psoras law firm in Lutherville, while Maryland lawmakers considered allowing survivors of child sex abuse to sue their attackers and the institutions that enabled their torment, no matter how long ago it happened.

Seizing on the momentum of a sweeping report from the Maryland Attorney General’s Office revealing decades of child sex abuse by Catholic clergy in the state, Democratic Gov. Wes Moore signed the widely supported Child Victims Act into law April 11.

Since then, “the phones are blowing up” at the law firm, said partner Randolph Rice.

Describing conversations with survivors, Rice said they’re saying: “I raised this issue 20 years ago and nobody listened to me. Here’s the church. Here’s the pastor. Here’s the clergy member. Here are the dates. Now I can finally be heard and I can finally do something…

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Review: Ghosts of the Orphanage – Christine Kenneally (Hachette); Crazy Bastard – Abraham Maddison (Wakefield Press)

Recent publicity about the continuing abuse of children in out-of-home care may be a source of shame for Australians, but it does not come as a surprise.

A series of inquiries at both state and Commonwealth level over the last quarter century exposed such “care” as inherently abusive. The inquiries also detailed the lengths to which the governing institutions were prepared to go to deny this reality.

The United States has resisted the “age of inquiry” that has swept across much of the western world, leaving former orphanage residents to pursue their cases through the courts as individuals.

It is this struggle that forms the core of journalist Christine Kenneally’s latest book, Ghosts of the Orphanage. Her focus is on St Joseph’s Orphanage in Burlington, Vermont, where generations of children were under the control of untrained and…

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As California legislators prepared to pass a law providing victims of childhood sexual abuse a new window to file lawsuits, the bill’s chief backer recalls most of the resistance coming from entities with famously troubled histories: school districts, colleges and youth athletic groups, along with some of their insurance companies.

Los Angeles County “just didn’t come up,” said former Assemblywoman Lorena Gonzalez Fletcher (D-San Diego), who sponsored the Child Victims Act.

But three years after the law went into effect, L.A. County — responsible for facilities meant to protect and rehabilitate the region’s youth — has emerged in court filings as one of the biggest alleged institutional offenders.

Two weeks ago, in an otherwise dry budget document, county officials delivered figures that stunned even some of the most seasoned California sex abuse attorneys. County officials predicted that they may be forced to spend between $1.6 billion and $3…

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