ABUSE TRACKER

10.09.2023

Medienmitteilung vom 10. September 2023

Heute morgen wurden Vorwürfe gegen verschiedene Mitglieder der Schweizer Bischofskonferenz öffentlich gemacht. Wir möchten Sie dazu in Kenntnis setzen, so weit uns dies das laufende Verfahren erlaubt.

In einem Brief von Ende Mai 2023 an den Apostolischen Nuntius der Schweiz, Martin Krebs, werden gegen mehrere emeritierte und amtierende Mitglieder der Schweizer Bischofskonferenz sowie gegen weitere Kleriker Vorwürfe im Umgang mit sexuellen Missbrauchsfällen erhoben. Gegen einzelne von ihnen steht der Vorwurf im Raum, in der Vergangenheit selber sexuelle Übergriffe begangen zu haben.

Auch der Präsident der Bischofskonferenz, Bischof Felix Gmür, erhielt Kenntnis von diesem Schreiben. Er versicherte sich umgehend beim Nuntius, dass der Brief bereits an die für solche Vorwürfe zuständige Behörde in Rom – das Dikasterium für die Bischöfe – weitergeleitet worden ist. Der Nuntius betätigte dies.

Am 23. Juni 2023 hat das Dikasterium zu dieser Angelegenheit eine kirchenrechtliche Voruntersuchung angeordnet und Bischof…

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A priest who fled the country with a recent Catholic high school graduate will be laicized, Archbishop Thomas J. Rodi of Mobile, Alabama, has announced on the archdiocese’s website, as family concerns mount over their inability to reach the young woman who is traveling with him.

Father Alex Crow, who was ordained in June 2021 and had served as a parochial vicar at Corpus Christi Parish in Mobile, abruptly left his assignment July 24.

The 30-year-old priest flew to Italy with an unnamed 18-year-old woman who is a recent graduate of McGill-Toolen Catholic High School in Mobile, which Father Crow also attended. Although he provided pastoral ministry to students, school officials have denied Father Crow was formally employed there.

In a July letter to the Archdiocese of Mobile, Father Crow said he had no intention of returning to the U.S. He and the young woman were located in Italy by…

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Cheektowaga Maryvale Union Free School District paid $8.4 million to settle five Child Victims Act lawsuits alleging sexual abuse of students in the 1970s by a music teacher.

The district agreed to separate confidential settlements with the five plaintiffs over the past year, according to legal documents released to The Buffalo News in response to a Freedom of Information Law request.

The largest settlement, for $3.5 million, went to a 60-year-old Lockport man identified in court papers as AB 504 Doe, who alleged being repeatedly molested by Stanley K. Bratt, a music teacher at Maryvale East Elementary School from 1968 to 1980.

The man said in court papers he was in third grade when Bratt first began providing private trumpet lessons. The teacher took the pupil on outings to see movies and play miniature golf and eventually brought the boy to his home, according to court papers. Bratt gained his…

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The coordinating body of the Catholic dioceses in Switzerland said Sunday a preliminary investigation had been launched into accusations of sexual abuse cover-ups within the Church.

The Bishops’ Conference of Switzerland said an investigation has been opened following accusations of both abuse and efforts to cover up abuse had been made against several former and serving members of the conference, as well as other members of clergy.

The conference statement came after the SonntagsBlick weekly on Sunday reported that a former prominent priest had in a letter accused four current and two former bishops of covering up cases of sexual abuse by clergy in Switzerland.

One of them was himself accused of sexually harassing a boy, the paper reported.

The conference acknowledged in Sunday’s statement that a letter dated in late May contained accusations involving “the handling of sex abuse cases”.

Some of those names “are accused themselves of committing…

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In matters of sexual abuse, Catholic Church is ‘morally and spiritually bankrupt’

It is with disgust, but not surprise, that I read about the Baltimore archdiocese’s plan to consider bankruptcy as a response to their history of child sexual abuse (“Archbishop concedes the Baltimore archdiocese is considering bankruptcy; survivors say they’d oppose the move,” Sept. 5). I would like to particularly respond to two points in Archbishop William Lori’s email to Baltimore archdiocese Catholics.

He states that “victim-survivors … suffered so profoundly from the actions of some ministers of the Church.” This is another blatant refusal to accept the institutional responsibility borne by the Archdiocese of Baltimore and many, many other dioceses. The Baltimore Attorney General’s Office report directly stated that their investigation uncovered “the enormous scope and scale of abuse and concealment perpetrated by the Archdiocese of Baltimore.”

Such findings have been replicated…

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Gregory Aymond’s letter contradicts promises made to schools and churches when archdiocese declared bankruptcy in May 2020

Contradicting promises he made when his archdiocese declared bankruptcy in May 2020, New Orleans’s archbishop, Gregory Aymond, told the area’s Catholic churches, schools and other ministries that they will now have to share some of the costs of resolving hundreds of clergy abuse claims.

Aymond’s notice came in a letter on Friday, at the end of a particularly bad news week for his organization. One day earlier, a grand jury in New Orleans indicted the retired archdiocesan priest Lawrence Hecker on charges of aggravated rape, aggravated kidnapping, aggravated crime against nature and theft.

Hecker’s indictment came less than three months after the Guardian exposed a typed statement that he gave in 1999 in which he admitted to leaders at the New Orleans archdiocese – the second oldest Catholic archdiocese in the US – that he had…

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The Justice Department announced today $58,860,034 in Office on Violence Against Women (OVW) grants to provide legal services and to improve effective coordination of justice systems impacting survivors of sexual assault, domestic violence, dating violence and stalking. OVW awarded the funds under the Legal Assistance for Victims (LAV) Program, Justice for Families (JFF) Program, Expanding Legal Services Initiative (ELSI) and the Domestic Violence Mentor Court Technical Assistance Initiative.

The need for specialized legal services is both urgent and essential for survivors of domestic and dating violence, sexual assault and stalking. These services provide interventions, such as securing restraining or protective orders and address issues such as child custody, immigration, housing and employment, that are essential for survivor safety. Moreover, there is a significant overlap between domestic violence and family law, particularly in cases involving children; survivors often need legal counsel to navigate complex issues like child custody, visitation and child…

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The proceeds were transferred to the Mother Cabrini Health Foundation, where they have remained out of reach in the Child Victims Act lawsuits

Attorneys for hundreds of alleged sexual abuse victims, as well as 1,100 former employees of the now-closed St. Clare’s Hospital in Schenectady, are scheduled to argue their request at an upcoming hearing in U.S. Bankruptcy Court for permission to examine where the proceeds went from the sale of a lucrative insurance business that had been controlled by New York’s bishops.

The 2018 sale of the Fidelis Care insurance company took place months before New York’s Child Victims Act passed — a law change that allowed alleged survivors of childhood sexual assault to sue their abusers or the institutions that may have harbored them. Attorneys for some of those plaintiffs have questioned the timing of the sale and whether it was done to shield billions of dollars…

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It often takes survivors decades before they have the courage to come forward. That’s why the current statute of limitations for sex abuse lawsuits should be lifted.

Criminal sexual assault charges against Theodore McCarrick were dismissed last month after a Massachusetts judge ruled that the 93-year-old defrocked cardinal was incompetent to stand trial. But Mitchell Garabedian, the lawyer who represented the plaintiff in that case, is still pursuing civil lawsuits related to McCarrick filed in New York and New Jersey.

He is able to do so because those states lifted statute of limitation restrictions on such cases for a set window of time. The victim — who in the 1970s was a 16-year-old boy when the alleged assault took place in Wellesley — could not do that in Massachusetts. That’s because under current state law, victims can file suit within 35 years of the alleged abuse, with the time limit…

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Leader of Archdiocese of New Orleans says lawyers underestimated how much settling abuse cases would cost.

More than three years after the Archdiocese of New Orleans filed for bankruptcy court protection amid mounting allegations of child sex abuse by local clergy, the financial cost to the country’s second-oldest archdiocese is coming into focus.

In a letter Friday to the clergy, religious and laity, Archbishop Gregory Aymond said for the first time that individual parishes, schools and charities will be asked to help cover the rising costs of abuse claims, which total nearly 500 to date. That number has grown dramatically over the course of the church’s bankruptcy.  

“When we filed Chapter 11 reorganization in 2020, I was advised by legal counsel that the Chapter 11 proceedings would only impact our administrative offices and not the apostolates – parishes, schools and ministries,” Aymond said in his letter, which was posted to…

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To the Clergy, Religious, and Laity of the Archdiocese of New Orleans:

Dear Sisters and Brothers in Christ,

As many of you are already aware, the Archdiocese of New Orleans filed for reorganization under Chapter 11 of the US Bankruptcy Code on May 1, 2020. This has been a much longer, complicated, and costly process than anyone could have predicted. However, I remain steadfast in my conviction that these Chapter 11 proceedings are the best path forward to justly address all past claims of abuse.  We will use this process to restructure our financials and streamline our organizational structure to be a local church of vitality and responsive to the needs of the faithful now and into the future.

At the time of the filing, there were over 30 claims of abuse filed in court against the Archdiocese of New Orleans, many of which were lawsuits, too costly to defend….

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Individual Catholic churches, schools and ministries in the New Orleans area will have to share some of the costs of resolving clergy abuse claims, Archbishop warns.

Individual Catholic churches, schools and ministries in the New Orleans area will now have to share some of the costs of resolving hundreds of clergy abuse claims, Archbishop Gregory Aymond warned in a letter Friday, contradicting promises he made when the archdiocese declared bankruptcy in May 2020.

Aymond distributed a letter to clergy at the annual convocation of priests, explaining that expenses from the archdiocese’s three-and-a-half-year bankruptcy case have far exceeded his attorney’s predictions. A letter Aymond sent the Vatican in April 2020 indicated out-of-pocket expenses for the bankruptcy would be less than $7.5 million.

It now appears the cost of settling more than 500 claims is likely to exceed $100 million.

As of last month, the bankruptcy attorneys’ fees alone…

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A state grand jury has charged a now-91-year-old disgraced priest with sexually assaulting a teenage boy in 1975, an extraordinary prosecution that could shed new light on what Roman Catholic Church leaders knew about a child sex abuse crisis that persisted for decades and claimed hundreds of victims.

The priest, Lawrence Hecker, has been at the center of state and federal investigations of clergy sex abuse and a deepening scandal over why church leaders failed to report his admissions to law enforcement even as they permitted him to work around children until he quietly left the ministry in 2002. It wasn’t until 2018 that the Archdiocese of New Orleans publicly identified Hecker as a suspected predator when it released its list of “credibly accused” priests.

Hecker faces felony counts of rape, kidnapping, aggravated crime against nature and theft. He is accused of choking the teen unconscious under the guise of…

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Warning: contains minor spoilers for The Nun II.

The Nun II is an arresting piece of storytelling which satisfies and subverts audience expectations in equal measure. On one level, it is an extremely watchable piece of action horror, comfortably divorced from reality. The demon from the previous film has resurfaced and is now stalking a group of thoroughly-likeable characters in a French boarding school.

Sister Irene (Taissa Farmiga), the eponymous nun who previously defeated the demon, has been called in once again by the church authorities. She is assisted by Sister Debra (Storm Reid), a novice who doubts her own faith. This premise makes for a classic battle between good and evil. And there’s a steady stream of scares as the tension builds, before exploding into a jump-out-of-your seat moment.

Those familiar with the real Catholic church will recognise that exorcisms, the sacraments, saints, holy relics and the respective roles of…

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There are at least 147 separate investigations into alleged sexual abuse at hands of clergy

Oviedo, Spain – Spain’s attorney general has asked prosecutors to start investigating Catholic leadership for allegedly covering up cases of sexual abuse of minors, according to an annual report published on Thursday.

The attorney general said that cases may broaden to consider the role of superiors like bishops, cardinals, or other high-ups in the church, which may also constitute criminal behavior.

So far, no bishops or members of church leadership have been criminally charged for their alleged role in enabling sexual abuse. However, Spanish daily El Pais has identified 75 of them who are accused of silencing victims or covering up crimes.

In Spain, by the end of 2022, there were at least 147 open investigations into specific cases of pedophilia at the hands of Catholic clergy. For the first time, the annual report includes…

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2 On Your Side spoke with Erie County District Attorney John Flynn about why that is.

The Diocese of Buffalo‘s Independent Review Board conducted an investigation into a retired priest and found the allegation he abused a minor is true. 

However, The Rev. Joseph Vatter will not be facing any criminal charges. 

Erie County District Attorney John Flynn says the alleged abuse happened back in the early 1980s. However, he says the statute of limitations in this incident was only three years, so no charges can be filed. 

Flynn says Vatter allegedly forcibly touched a girl in her early teens at a Catholic school. He says there was no rape or serious felony misconduct. 

Flynn adds if the statute of limitations wasn’t an issue in this case, it would be a misdemeanor.

To this day, Flynn says forcibly touching someone has a three-year statute of limitations on…

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Lawrence Hecker, 91, charged with first-degree rape two months after Guardian report on 1999 statement in which he admitted ‘overtly sexual acts’

A retired Catholic priest from New Orleans who years ago secretly admitted to church leaders that he sexually molested or harassed numerous children is now facing criminal charges.

State prosecutors in New Orleans obtained an indictment charging Lawrence Hecker, 91, on Thursday with aggravated rape, aggravated kidnapping, aggravated crime against nature and theft.

The crimes allegedly occurred at a church attached to a Catholic high school where Hecker worked in 1975, when the accuser was a 15- or 16-year-old child, according to the alleged victim’s civil attorney, Richard Trahant.

The accuser recalls that Hecker approached him under the guise of showing him a wrestling move, choked him unconscious, and “sodomized” him, Trahant said. Trahant said his client and the victim’s mother reported it to the school at the time,…

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[Includes the text of an interview with Anne Barrett Doyle.]

Last week, a Massachusetts judge dismissed the criminal charges of sexual abuse against Theodore McCarrick, a priest who was once one of the most powerful men in the Catholic Church in America.

A former cardinal and bishop, McCarrick had been charged with sexually assaulting a teenager nearly 50 years ago. The victim alleges the abuse lasted for about two decades. McCarrick, now 93, reportedly suffers from dementia, and Judge Paul McCallum of the Dedham District Court deemed him incompetent to stand trial.

The victim submitted a statement to the court, writing: “I have trouble reconciling the concept that someone who is intelligent and articulate is also not competent to stand trial and answer for his actions. I brought the charges in this matter in the hope of finding justice in this court. Instead, McCarrick walks a free man, and I am…

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[See also the full video interview.]

he Irish prelate credited with being among the first to tackle the clerical abuse crisis head-on said he did not believe there will be women priests in the Catholic Church in his lifetime.

He also warned that synodal consultations could lead to “frustrated expectations” when people realize that the process will not lead to a radical change in church teaching on hot-button issues such as the ordination of women.

Retired Archbishop Diarmuid Martin of Dublin also said that he believes that St. John Paul II was guilty of “bad theology” when the pontiff said during the AIDS crisis that it was not permitted for Catholics to use condoms to halt the spread of the virus.

Regarding sexual abuse, Archbisop Martin, who was on the front line of facing this in Ireland, said the scandals had “badly damaged the church,” especially “the faith of…

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TOPLINE

A grand jury in Louisiana indicted 91-year-old retired Catholic priest Lawrence Hecker Thursday afternoon on charges of rape and kidnapping for allegedly sexually assaulting a teenage boy five decades ago, marking the latest charges against a figure in the Catholic Church.

KEY FACTS

• Hecker was also charged with aggravated crime against nature and theft, according to Orleans Parish District Attorney Jason Williams (Forbes has reached out to the New Orleans Archdiocese).
• Hecker had admitted to the Catholic Archdiocese in New Orleans that he had sexually molested or shared a bed with multiple teenagers as a Catholic priest, according to a June report in the Guardian, though the Archdiocese only named Hecker as a suspected sexual predator in 2018, saying it learned about the allegation in 1996 and that he had been removed from the ministry in 2002.
• According to the Archdiocese, Hecker had committed the abuse in…

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A state grand jury in Louisiana has indicted a retired Roman Catholic priest on multiple felony charges related to claims that he sexually assaulted a teenage boy in the 1970s. The long-sought charges come after public allegations that leaders in the Archdiocese of New Orleans knew about accusations against the priest for decades.

The retired priest, Lawrence Hecker, 91, faces charges of aggravated rape, aggravated kidnapping, aggravated crime against nature and theft, the district attorney of New Orleans, Jason Williams, said in a news conference on Thursday.

“We’ve had to fight very vigorously through the courts and behind the scenes for disclosure of any and all information and evidence,” Mr. Williams said, referring to a “cone of silence” that often protects clergy members.

The charges come months after The Guardian reported that Mr. Hecker confessed to his superiors in the archdiocese in 1999 that he had either sexually…

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A Catholic priest ordained just over four years ago for the Diocese of Syracuse, New York, has been charged with several counts of child sexual abuse and removed from ministry.

Fr. Nathan W. Brooks, 36, faces four misdemeanor counts of third-degree sex abuse, forcible touching and endangering the welfare of a child for incidents that took place between 2019-2021.

According to a news release issued by the Cortland County Sheriff’s Office, the complaint was filed Aug. 22, and Brooks was arrested Aug. 31.

The sheriff’s office said in its release the investigation regarding Brooks “revealed that the defendant … had subjected one victim to inappropriate sexual contact on multiple occasions over several years.”

The victim “was known” to Brooks, the release said.

Brooks was arraigned Sept. 5 in Homer Town Court in Homer and then again Sept. 6 in Cortland City Court, since the alleged incidents occurred in both locales…

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The lay Catholic women published an open letter saying they experienced an environment of abuse similar to what the plaintiff described in her complaint

A group of 32 former Consecrated Women of Regnum Christi, lay women who dedicate their lives fully to Christ through their membership in an international Catholic federation that also includes the Legion of Christ, published an open letter on September 5 supporting a Chilean women who alleges being gang-raped by Legion of Christ priests in Santiago (Chile) between 2008 and 2010. “We experienced an environment where abuse of power and conscience was prevalent, and where the described sexual assaults in the lawsuit could have taken place,” stated the signatories of the civil lawsuit filed last June. The alleged victim, now 32 years old, is a former teenaged student of Colegio Cumbres, an exclusive educational institution managed by the Legion of Christ in Chile’s capital city.

The 16-year-old…

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An Episcopal priest in the Diocese of Maryland has resigned his cure after being named in a report by the Maryland attorney general’s office into child sexual abuse in the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Baltimore.

On 31 July 2023 the Rev. Thomas Hudson resigned as priest in charge of St George’s Episcopal Church in Mount Savage, Maryland. On 21 May 2023 Fr Savage wrote to his congregation saying the Rt. Rev. Eugene Sutton, Bishop of Maryland, had directed him to take a leave of absence pending an investigation into an unstated personal matter. 

On 25 May 2023, Bishop Sutton issued a pastoral message to the diocese saying: “On April 24, I was notified by the Rev. Thomas Hudson, rector of St. George’s, Mt. Savage, that he had learned his name was listed in a redacted version of an investigative report from the Maryland Attorney General’s Office detailing abuse allegations in the Archdiocese…

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Pope Francis has tried to put the clergy sexual abuse scandal behind him, but a perceived lack of transparency about who is being disciplined and why continues to dog the church.

After a judge declared him incompetent to stand trial on charges that he sexually assaulted a 16-year-old boy in Wellesley in the 1970s, the Zoom image of Theodore McCarrick showed an old man with a blank face, hunched over a table in a room at the assisted living facility in Missouri that is now his home. Yet when the remote session ended, one could still imagine the defrocked and disgraced cardinal smiling in triumph — just like any other aging gangster who beat the system.

The charges against McCarrick, 93, were dismissed last week after two medical experts found he suffered from dementia. That makes him a living symbol of the…

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Dear Friends in Christ, 

Last spring, the Maryland General Assembly passed a new law that enables victims of child sexual abuse to file civil lawsuits regardless of how long ago the abuse occurred. This legislation has the potential to have devastating financial consequences, not only for every public school system in the State of Maryland but for many other institutions and organizations as well, including for the ministries of the Archdiocese of Baltimore.

In anticipation of the October 1 effective date of the new law, it is my intention to undertake multiple consultations in the coming days with various ordained and lay leaders in the Archdiocese about the manner in which the Archdiocese will respond to the new law. It is about that response that I write to you today.

In considering how the Archdiocese might respond to the new law, it is important to keep in mind two overarching…

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The Archdiocese of Baltimore will consider filing for bankruptcy as it awaits the implementation of a new law that will end the statute of limitations for civil lawsuits for negligence in relation to child sexual abuse. 

Effective Oct. 1, the law will allow a victim of child sex abuse to sue private entities for up to $1.5 million if he or she can show the organization failed to properly respond to sexual abuse that occurred under its watch. Previously, the statute of limitations was seven years after the victim’s 18th birthday. 

Because the new law will apply retroactively, victims whose statute of limitations had already passed will be able to file lawsuits against private entities. An attorney’s general report from April accused the archdiocese of covering up child sex abuse for decades, and the archbishop believes this law could lead to multiple lawsuits that could have “devastating financial…

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Two weeks after the San Francisco Archdiocese of the Roman Catholic Church filed for bankruptcy amid hundreds of outstanding lawsuits from victims of sexual abuse, an organization representing survivors is demanding the Diocese of Oakland withdraw its Chapter 11 protections and pay victims with the proceeds.

“According to our research, the Diocese of Oakland owns a real estate portfolio valued at about $3.3 billion,” the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAP) wrote in an official statement shared with National Review on Tuesday. “Of those properties, it appears to us that about $600 million are held in ‘non-core’ real estate. That is, those particular properties do not seem to be central to the Diocese’s mission.”

“Based on our assessment, we believe that the Diocese has the resources needed to care for survivors without resorting to bankruptcy,” the group argued.

In May, the Roman Catholic Diocese of Oakland filed for bankruptcy, making it…

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When Teresa Lancaster learned the Archdiocese of Baltimore could file for bankruptcy in the face of an anticipated deluge of lawsuits over its history of child sexual abuse, the news only strengthened her resolve.

Lancaster, a victim of childhood sexual assault in the 1970s and an attorney based in Annapolis, is a prominent voice for fellow abuse survivors. She helped wage the political battles that got Maryland’s landmark Child Victims Act passed in April.

So, if America’s first and oldest Catholic diocese does file for Chapter 11 ― as a chain of internal emails obtained by The Baltimore Sun suggested it could and that Archbishop William E. Lori conceded in a Tuesday night letter to parishioners that he is considering — she said she and her allies will do whatever they can to halt the effort in its tracks.

“They’re going to be in for a hell of a fight,”…

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This is what government should not do: fail to offer relief, year after year, to adult survivors of childhood sexual abuse.

As Spotlight PA’s Stephen Caruso reported last week, “Survivors of childhood sexual abuse must continue waiting for their day in court after the Pennsylvania General Assembly failed to meet the deadline to get a proposed constitutional amendment on the November ballot.

“This failure continues nearly two decades of idleness, intrigues, and slip-ups that have blocked a measure that would give thousands of survivors a two-year window to seek monetary damages against their abusers and the institutions that shielded the accused.”

The civil statute of limitations had expired for many of these survivors before they even knew such a statute existed.

We have repeatedly implored state lawmakers to pass a two-year litigation window so survivors can face their abusers in civil court and hold accountable those who enabled their abuse.

…

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Homer, N.Y. — A teen girl and her mother have accused a priest in the Syracuse Catholic Diocese of having an inappropriate relationship with the girl since she was 14, according to court documents.

Rev. Nathan Brooks, 36, of LaFayette, has been charged with third-degree sex abuse, forcible touching and endangering the welfare of a child. The incidents happened between 2019 and 2021, authorities said.

On Tuesday, Brooks was arraigned in the Homer Town Court.

Court documents obtained by Syracuse.com | The Post-Standard Tuesday reveal new details in the case.

The girl, who recently turned 18, and her mother came forward to authorities after the girl saw Brooks interacting with others and became concerned that he was treating other girls the way he had treated her, according to a deposition the girl gave to the Cortland County Sheriff’s Office.

Brooks met the…

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[Includes trailer.]

Scout’s Honor: The Secret Files of the Boy Scouts of America

Directed by Brian Knappenberger, Documentary, Crime, Not Rated, 1h 34m

Almost three years ago, ahead of a bankruptcy court deadline, more than 82,000 people came forward with sexual abuse claims against the Boy Scouts of America. The mostly male survivors were of all ages and came from every state. Some of them had kept mum for decades.

“Scouts Honor: The Secret Files of the Boy Scouts of America,” directed by Brian Knappenberger and streaming on Netflix, is essentially a walk-through of the monumental case. A solid chunk of its running time is spent with Michael Johnson, a former director at the Boy Scouts who has since become an outspoken critic of its youth protection practices. As the film tracks the organization’s history of abuse and cover-ups, Johnson recounts hitting brick walls during his efforts to reform…

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A Catholic priest in New York’s Diocese of Syracuse has been arrested on charges of sexual abuse, including that of a minor, for alleged incidents from 2019 to 2022. In response, the local bishop suspended the priest from ministry and called for prayers for everyone involved.

Father Nathan Brooks, 36, faces several misdemeanor charges filed Aug. 31 in Cortland County Court in central New York. These include endangering the welfare of a child, forcible touching, and sexual abuse in the third degree.

Brooks, who resides in the town of Lafayette, has been serving as administrator of three churches: Church of the Nativity at St. Joseph in Lafayette; Immaculate Conception in Pompey; and St. Leo, Tully and St. Patrick Mission in Otisco.

Bishop Douglas J. Lucia on Friday said that Brooks has been suspended from all ministry during the investigation.

“This is distressing news, most certainly to me, and to all…

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As a result of an investigation conducted through the Independent Review Board, Bishop Michael W. Fisher has accepted the board’s recommendation and has determined that a claim made against retired priest Father Joseph Vatter that he had abused a minor female has been substantiated.

Bishop Fisher had placed Father Vatter on administrative leave in February 2023. As a result of the substantiated claim, Father Vatter will continue to be removed from ministry and be listed on Priests with Substantiated Claims of Abuse on the diocesan website. Prior to being placed on leave, Father Vatter had occasionally celebrated Masses at various churches within the Diocese of Buffalo.

If you have any information specific to clerical sexual abuse you would like to share, please contact Jackie Joy, our victim assistance coordinator, who may be reached at 716-895-3010.

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A longtime Buffalo Diocese priest and pastor who retired in 2022 sexually abused a child, the diocese said Tuesday in a news release.

The Rev. Joseph E. Vatter, 71, who retired in 2022 as pastor of St. Paul Parish in Kenmore but continued to occasionally celebrate Mass at various churches, had been on leave since February after an abuse allegation was reported.

The diocesan review board, a group of clergy and lay Catholics appointed by Bishop Michael Fisher, determined that a claim that Vatter “had abused a minor female” had been “substantiated.” Fisher accepted that recommendation, the news release said.

Dioceses across the country have put in place review boards to help bishops handle child sex abuse allegations.

Buffalo Diocese officials did not say when the alleged incident occurred, but it appears to be separate from an allegation involving a man that was reported by The Buffalo News…

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The criminal charges involving the sexual assault and abuse of a minor were dismissed Wednesday after a judge ruled Theodore McCarrick, 93, was not mentally competent to stand trial.

A group known as BishopAccountability.org, which tracks sexual abuse in the Catholic Church, condemned a Massachusetts district judge’s Wednesday decision to dismiss criminal charges against former cardinal Theodore McCarrick.

The criminal charges involving the sexual assault and abuse of a minor were dismissed Wednesday after a judge ruled McCarrick, 93, was not mentally competent to stand trial.

Anne Barrett Doyle, co-director of the bishops accountability group, told CNA that “the dismissal of the case against McCarrick is hugely disappointing” and that “our hearts go out to the courageous victim who brought this case and to all of McCarrick’s victims.”

McCarrick, the disgraced former archbishop of Washington, D.C., was facing three counts of indecent assault and battery on a person over the…

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A priest ordained by the Catholic Diocese of Syracuse has been arrested for sexual abuse allegations.

On August 31, the Cortland County Sheriff’s Office announced the arrest of Reverend Nathan Brooks, 36, of Lafayette. Brooks allegedly subjected one individual to inappropriate sexual contact on multiple occasions from 2019 to 2021 in the Town of Homer and in the City of Cortland.

Brooks was charged with endangering the welfare of a child, forcible touching, and sexual abuse in the third degree. According to a news release from the Diocese, Brooks has been suspended from all priestly ministry at this time. The investigation is ongoing.

Brooks serves as an administrator at the Church of the Nativity at Saint Joseph in LaFayette, Immaculate Conception in Pompey, Saint Leo in Tully and Saint Patrick Mission in Otisco. He was ordained in 2019.

Most Rev. Douglas Lucia, Bishop of the Diocese of Syracuse said in…

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[Includes a one hour and fifteen minute video podcast interview of Marcus Mescher by Paul Fahey.]

I first came across Dr. Marcus Mescher late last year when a friend of mine shared something he posted on Twitter about an upcoming research study he worked on titled, “Measuring & Exploring Moral Injury Caused by Clergy Sexual Abuse.”

Because of my own interest and research into spiritual abuse in the Catholic Church, I read the study as soon as it was published, and I’ve been thinking about it ever since.

Marcus’s research connected a handful threads about the relationship between abuse, trauma, conscience, and deconstruction. So I was excited when he agreed to come on the podcast and discuss his work.

First, the study defines moral injury as:

“Moral injury results from a betrayal of trust, disrupting one’s beliefs and moral compass. It comprises persistent psychological and emotional…

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A church lay leader sexually abused a child. The victim’s family says the institution protected him.

For years, Cherin Marie’s life near Big Rock, Illinois, revolved around her family and her faith. She and her husband were raising their young children in the Christ Our Light Anglican Church, a tiny but active congregation within the Diocese of the Upper Midwest of the Anglican Church in North America. Her weeks revolved around service, volunteering, and life alongside fellow parishioners. Her world came undone in 2019, when her then-9-year-old daughter told her that Mark Rivera, a prominent lay leader in the church, had sexually abused her. Cherin Marie says that when her family came forward about the sexual abuse, their congregation spurned them and diocesan leaders initially sided with Rivera.

This past March, Judge John Barsanti sentenced Rivera to 15 years in prison after finding him guilty of two counts of predatory sexual…

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The bad days aren’t as bad as they used to be for Frank Schindler.

He has a good life now. He’s married to Betsy Schindler, a woman he adores. They have a nervous orange tabby cat named Leo and live in a cozy Canton row home, a few minutes’ walk from the water. He has a job he cares about and friends who care about him.

But there are still days when the darkness creeps back in.

Dread without any discernible cause grips his chest. The urges to self-harm resurface. In his mind, he returns to his kindergarten classroom, on the second floor of a New York City convent, across the street from the church his family attended. There had to be a reason why the priest picked him out of all the other children in his classroom, he tells himself. The man must have seen something in him that…

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St. Jude Community Center, Catholic Book Store are on the list of potential real estate sales.

More than three years after filing for bankruptcy protection amid mounting claims of child sex abuse by local clergy, the Archdiocese of New Orleans is preparing to sell off seven properties — including the shuttered Sacred Heart of Jesus Church, the St. Jude Community Center and the Catholic Bookstore Uptown — as a way to generate cash that could be used to help settle those claims.

In court documents filed this week, the archdiocese is seeking court approval to hire commercial real estate broker The McEnery Company to market the properties. If sold for their proposed asking prices, the properties would generate nearly $10.4 million for the local Roman Catholic Church.

That’s likely a drop in the bucket relative to the cost of the bankruptcy process and the claims an estimated 500 or so abuse…

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The Archdiocese of New Orleans is seeking bankruptcy court approval to put several New Orleans properties on the market, part of a plan to settle potentially hundreds of claims of child sex abuse as it seeks to exit Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection.

The seven properties and four vacant lots, if sold at their asking prices, would generate some $10.4 million.

A hearing on Sept. 21 will determine if the archdiocese can move forward with selling the properties. If approved, the properties will be on the market in late September.

Below are the properties that are pending approval and their asking prices.

1. St. Jude Community Center – $1.95 million.
2. Catholic Bookstore – $1 million.
3. Sacred Heart of Jesus Church – $2.275 million
4. Bishop Perry Community Center – $1.95 million.

The St. Jude Community Center and the Catholic Bookstore currently house establishments.

The other properties on the market — the Sacred Heart of Jesus Church and…

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No evidence of human remains has been found during the excavation of a Catholic church basement on the site of a former Manitoba residential school.

Chief Derek Nepinak of Minegoziibe Anishinabe shared the results of the search in a social media video.

He says it takes nothing away from the difficult truths experienced by those who attended the Pine Creek Residential School.

Fourteen anomalies were detected in the basement using ground-penetrating radar last year.

The First Nation, northwest of Winnipeg, hired an archeological team from the University of Brandon to do the four-week excavation earlier this summer.

Nepinak says he is aware the results will feed into a denialist narrative of what happened at residential schools and urged people to continue supporting the search for truth.

He says it does not mark the end for the community and they will engage with members to find a path forward.

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The son of an Irish teacher who blew the whistle on paedophile Jesuit priest Joseph Marmion said his father should be recognised for his role in helping to end the reign of the predator who sexually abused at least 60 boys.

Riocard Mór Ó Tiarnaigh reported Marmion to the then principal of Belvedere College in September 1977, prompted by his son’s disclosures about a school trip to Vienna. His son, also Riocard, said the teacher’s actions helped “light the fuse” that led the Jesuits to remove Marmion from teaching duties at the end of that school year.

The then Jesuit principal, Fr Noel Barber, has no memory of that meeting with Riocard Mór Ó Tiarnaigh, a report on Fr Marmion published by the Jesuits on August 23 said, although he accepted it must have happened.

Riocard Mór Ó Tiarnaigh died in 2000, but his son vividly recalls the events that…

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The former head lawyer for the Boy Scouts of America denies that the organization ever lied about or covered up sexual abuse, in a new documentary coming to Netflix.

Steve McGowan served as the Boys Scouts’ General Counsel from 2013 to 2022. In Scouts Honor: The Secret Files of the Boy Scouts of America, coming to Netflix on September 6, director Brian Knappenberger, confronts McGowan with the facts: For years, the Boy Scouts insisted sexual abuse was a “minuscule” problem in the organization, only for over 82,000 men to come forward with claims they were sexually abused as children while doing Scouts-related activities. Therefore, Knappenberger concludes to McGowan, “That was a lie. That was a cover-up, right? The Boy Scouts lied about that being a problem.”

“No, we didn’t,” McGowan responds. “No, we didn’t. 82,000… over what period time? And we don’t even know that that’s the number.” Then, as if…

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Retired Archbishop of Dublin Diarmuid Martin has said there is “a huge amount of resistance among the Catholic education establishment” to pluralism in schools’ patronage. He does not believe there will be women priests in the Catholic Church in his lifetime and described as “bad theology” the banning of condoms in the fight against Aids. The clerical child sexual abuse scandals had “badly damaged the church,” he said and, in particular, “the faith of young people”.

Now living in Dublin’s Stoneybatter, Archbishop Martin (78) has also admitted finding retirement in 2020 “very difficult at the beginning because I retired right in the middle of Covid.” He remembered “one day in the Phoenix Park, I was out in an open-necked shirt and there was a man sitting on a bench. He looked up and said: ‘Are you enjoying your retirement?’ And I said: ‘Yeah.’ And he said: ‘Did they take the…

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The retired Catholic Archbishop of Dublin, Dr Diarmuid Martin, has revealed that during his priestly ministry he met two people he could have imagined as “a life partner”, one of whom remains a friend and is in contact with him.

He said one of the women “lives a long way away” and she taught him how to use WhatsApp.

In the new series of The Meaning of Life, due to be broadcast on RTÉ One tomorrow evening, Dr Martin told Joe Duffy: “I would have met one, two people that I certainly could have become a life partner to.”

Discussing celibacy and priesthood, the 78-year-old said: “So you had to decide, what do you want to do with your life? Where do you want to go? Falling in love may happen but you don’t want to do it just to satisfy yourself.”

He explained that he was 17 when he joined…

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THE former Archbishop of Dublin Diarmuid Martin has revealed how he invoked the ire of other priests after speaking out over child sex abuse in the Catholic Church.

Speaking to Joe Duffy for RTÉ’s ‘The Meaning of Life’ programme on Sunday night, the 78-year-old retired cleric recalled the reaction to his public condemnations following the publication of the Ryan and Murphy reports in 2009.

As Catholic Archbishop of Dublin, Dr Martin handed over 80,000 documents to the Murphy Commission.

“There were a lot of priests who were very angry with me because I began talking about this subject,” he said.

“It was only later on that many of them realised we did have a very serious problem with these habitual paedophiles.”

In 2012, Dr Martin called for an independent international commission of inquiry into the crimes of notorious paedophile priest, Brendan Smyth.

“I was angry at what happened to those poor kids,”…

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The Diocese of Lansing today welcomed the conviction of former priest, Timothy Crowley, for sexual crimes against a minor. 74-year-old Crowley pleaded guilty to two counts of Second Degree Criminal Sexual Conduct at Washtenaw County Circuit Court, Wednesday, August 22.

“Crowley’s crimes were a gross betrayal of the trust placed in him by the Catholic community within the Diocese of Lansing and, especially, of those families and young people entrusted to his pastoral care,” said David Kerr, Director of Communications for the Diocese of Lansing, August 23.

“While giving thanks that justice has been served, the primary focus of our prayer today is for the victim whose bravery led to the present conviction and also for anyone else who may have been harmed by Crowley. To them we say: ‘This should not have happened to you and we are profoundly sorry that it ever did’.”

Timothy Crowley was ordained a…

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• Diocese said it hopes to quickly revise bankruptcy settlement
• Judge said a revised plan must include more safeguards against invalid and inflated claims

The Catholic Diocese of Camden New Jersey said Wednesday that it was reworking an $87.5 million settlement with 300 sexual abuse victims after a U.S. bankruptcy judge said that the proposal could put insurers on the hook for inflated or invalid claims.

U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Jerrold Poslusny issued a decision late Tuesday which said that the proposed bankruptcy plan would create a settlement trust that was “biased” against insurers and could allow for payment of inflated, invalid or fraudulent claims, in addition to excessive attorneys’ fees.

The diocese, which serves 480,000 Catholics in six New Jersey counties, said Wednesday that it intended to submit a revised bankruptcy plan incorporating the judge’s feedback as quickly as possible.

“The Diocese remains hopeful that it will expeditiously exit the Chapter 11…

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The Diocese and the attorneys representing survivors of sexual abuse will renegotiate the terms of the agreement.

A federal judge rejected the Camden Diocese’s $87.5 million settlement to sexual-abuse survivors Tuesday, saying it would leave insurance companies on the hook for invalid claims and inflated attorneys’ fees.

The Catholic Diocese of Camden, bankrupted by sexual-abuse lawsuits, agreed last year to compensate more than 360 survivors as it navigates Chapter 11 bankruptcy. The plan called for some insurers to pay $30 million into a trust covering claims and expenses.

However, the Diocese’s insurers expressed concerns that loopholes in the proposal could leave them paying more than $30 million. In the coming weeks, the Diocese and the abuse survivors’ attorneys will renegotiate the settlement.

Attorneys representing the survivors said they respect the decision from Bankruptcy Judge Jerrold Poslusny Jr. and criticized the insurers.

“The Diocese paid its insurance companies millions of dollars…

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On August 31, the Cortland County Sheriff’s Office arrested 36-year-old Nathan Brooks of Lafayette for three misdemeanors surrounding multiple occasions of sexual abuse.

Back on August 22, Cortland County Sheriff’s received reports of allegations of sexual abuse by Brooks, a priest with the Diocese of Syracuse, that took place between 2019 and 2021.

Cortland County Sheriff’s Office says an undisclosed location in the Town of Homer and an undisclosed location in the City of Cortland are where the allegations stemmed from.

“The investigation revealed that the defendant, Nathan Brooks, had subjected one victim to inappropriate sexual contact on multiple occasions over several years. The victim was known to Mr. Brooks,” said the Cortland County Sheriff’s Office.

Brooks is due in Homer Town Court, Tuesday, September 5th and Cortland City Court September 6th.

In July, the Syracuse Roman Catholic Diocese agreed to pay $100 million to sex abuse victims, as part…

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A priest in the Syracuse Catholic Diocese has been charged with forcibly touching a minor over several years, deputies said.

Rev. Nathan Brooks, 36, of LaFayette, is accused of touching the minor between 2019 and 2021 in the town of Homer and in the city of Cortland, Cortland County Sheriff’s Office deputies said in a news release Friday.

Brooks is an administrator at the Church of the Nativity at St. Joseph in LaFayette, Immaculate Conception in Pompey, St. Leo in Tully and St. Patrick Mission in Otisco.

Brooks was ordained in 2019 at the Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception in Syracuse. He graduated from Bishop Grimes High School in 2005 before attending St. Mary’s Seminary & University in Baltimore, according to The Catholic Sun.

Brooks has been suspended from all priest duties as the criminal investigation plays out, the diocese said in…

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Dissident Russian artist Andrei Molodkin has created a sculpture he plans to fill with blood donated by victims of abuse in the Catholic Church, which he says he will project on to the gates of the historic city – the home of the Pope.

Human blood is set to “soak” the Vatican in a protest inspired by the late singer Sinead O’Connor.

Dissident Russian artist Andrei Molodkin has created a sculpture he plans to fill with blood donated by victims of abuse in the Catholic Church, which he says he will project on to the gates of the historic city – the home of the Pope.

Molodkin – who made headlines after selling blood-soaked copies of Prince Harry’s memoir earlier this year – says he expects Catholics to be offended by his latest stunt but insists: “It doesn’t bother me.”

He believes there will be outrage similar to that caused…

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The Abuse Reform Implementation Task Force (ARITF) held an in-person meeting on Monday in Dallas, TX. This was our first in-person meeting since President Bart Barber announced changes to the ARITF on August 11. The ARITF wishes to express our gratitude to the messengers to the 2023 SBC Annual Meeting in New Orleans for granting us an additional year to fulfill our assignment and for once again demonstrating overwhelming support for the work of abuse reform.

Protecting the vulnerable and caring for the abused is at the heart of every gospel-centered ministry. Collectively, we recognize the significance and the urgency of the task entrusted to us. We are grateful to President Barber for the confidence he has placed in this task force and for his unwavering support for this cause. We also wish to thank Send Relief for its generous financial support and ongoing partnership with the ARITF.

…

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Dozens of Chicago-area residents are speaking out against a city plan to sell public land to Plymouth Brethren Christian Church (PBCC) to build a local church. Some claim the religious group will benefit from the deal at taxpayers’ expense, while others allege a pattern of abuse in the denomination.

On Wednesday, at a South Barrington Park District board meeting, residents objected to the proposed $1.7 million purchase of public land by PBCC, a Protestant denomination headquartered in Australia. The group had planned to construct a church and school on a 34-acre site in the wealthy northwest Chicago suburb.

An attorney for the park district, Scott Puma, announced at the public meeting that “The real estate closing is on hold,” according to a report in the Daily Herald. 

Several residents spoke up against the proposed land sale in the meeting and later to media. Resident Sage Fattahian  View Cache

Today a judge in Massachusetts dismissed the criminal case against former Catholic Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, saying that he was incompetent to stand trial.  The disgraced and defrocked McCarrick was being prosecuted for sexually assaulting a child decades ago. His attorneys claimed that the once-powerful 93-year-old American prelate suffered from dementia and lacked the mental capacity to stand trial.

Our hearts go out to McCarrick’s accuser. We stand in solidarity with him and commend him for his pursuit of justice. We believe a verdict of guilty would have been rendered had the case been allowed to proceed. 

There is another case on behalf of the same survivor being prosecuted in Wisconsin. We hope that the courts in that state will reach a different decision, and finally allow this brave survivor his day in court.

McCarrick is the first Catholic cardinal in the United States to face criminal…

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The former home of a notorious paedophile priest has been set alight in Co Down.

Police spotted the blaze at the vacant parochial house in Hilltown where Fr Malachy Finegan had lived early on Thursday morning.

Extensive damage was caused to the building during the blaze, which police believe was started deliberately.

Finegan, who died in 2002, was parish priest for Clonduff parish in Hilltown in the 1990s.

He has been accused of sexually abusing numerous children over several decades. He was never prosecuted.

Finegan, who also taught and worked at St Colman’s College in Newry from 1967 to 1987, is alleged to have carried out some of his abuse at the parochial house.

In 2019, the Clonduff Parish with which the building is connected launched a consultation among parishioners on the future of the building. It has lain vacant for a number of years.

A PSNI spokeswoman said: “A passing…

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Sir, — I read Canon Judith Maltby’s letter on the breaking of the seal of the confessional for confession of sexual abuse (25 August) with interest, because I consider this debate has far wider implications for the seal generally, which have either not been recognised or, if recognised, have not been articulated by either side in the debate, so far as I have seen.

This has been carried on entirely, it seems, in the context of sexual abuse by clerics and others, which is understandable, given the gravity of the offence and the Church of England’s lamentable past failure to deal with it and seeming continued inability to do so. It is consequently also understandable that there should be calls to require any confessor who receives a confession from an abuser, confessing to what they have done, to be required to break the seal and report the abuser. The…

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Sir, — In no way do I wish to minimise the ethical complexities surrounding breaking the seal of confession to those of us in the Catholic tradition of the Church of England. Any discussion, however, must take place in full acknowledgement of the catastrophic safeguarding failures of the Church and its chronic poor performance in incorporating learning from external reviews or inquiries.

I had hoped for a more substantial defence of the seal from The Society’s submission to the IICSA response unit at the Home Office (News, 16 August). Disappointingly, the submission is thin on evidence.

The Society bishops state: “[It is a] a remote contingency, and unproven concern, that perpetrators will abuse the Seal. . . We are not aware of examples of penitents in the Church of England alleging that the ‘process’ of Confession has been in some way misused by priests to cover up instances of…

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[Includes timeline.]

Former mayor calls for psychiatrist’s contract to be terminated, wants to know what policies are in place to protect patients

Former Mountain View Mayor Sally Lieber is asking the El Camino Healthcare District to terminate a psychiatrist’s contract and explain what actions it took after the hospital learned in 1988 that the doctor, who has practiced at El Camino Hospital since 1980, was accused of sexual misconduct while a priest in Southern California.

In a July 11 email to the five elected board members of the El Camino Healthcare District, Lieber asked for details on what policy changes, if any, were made as a result of the accusations against Dr. Thomas Havel. The allegations were first brought to light in a 1988 civil suit that accused Havel of repeatedly touching, caressing and attempting intercourse with a girl he was counseling beginning in 1968 when she was 13 and he…

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Fr Joseph Marmion SJ’s abuse of more than 60 pupils in Ireland throughout the 1960s and 1970s is detailed in a newly published report.

The newly published report “A Restorative Response to the Abuse of Children Perpetrated by Joseph Marmion SJ” interviewed 62 past pupils of the Irish priest who was a teacher in three schools in Ireland throughout the 1960s and 1970s.

The report, written by Catherine O’Connell and Barbara Walshe, cautions readers of “explicit examples of abuse” perpetrated by Marmion that can make for “difficult reading and may cause upset.”

Fr. Marmion, who died in 2000, taught at Clongowes Wood College in Kildare, Crescent College in Limerick, and Belvedere College in Dublin throughout the 1960s and ’70s.

The Irish priest was removed from school teaching in 1978 following disclosures of sexual abuse during a school trip to Vienna in 1977. He was…

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Survivors’ group say Archbishop questioned why survivor did not return to police with claims a second time

The leader of the Catholic Church in Ireland has this week denied an accusation of “victim blaming” following a meeting with a clerical sex abuse survivors group.

Primate of all-Ireland Archbishop Eamon Martin met with a group of child sex abuse survivors in the Dromore diocese earlier this year.

The Dromore Survivors group say the Archbishop questioned a man who was abused as child by the pedophile priest Fr Malachy Finegan about his failure to take his case to police for a second time, after an initial report was not followed up.

Survivor Sean Faloon, who says he was raped “at least 350 times” by the late Fr Finegan, told Belfast Live he had first reported his abuse to police in the 1990s at the age of 17.

He told Belfast Live that,…

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