ABUSE TRACKER

Legal action filed against a New York state diocese shows the Catholic Church in the U.S. has significant work to do in safeguarding adults from clerical abuse.

The Diocese of Rochester, New York, announced on its news website, the Catholic Courier, that it had been served Nov. 16 with a civil lawsuit involving an adult and Father Matthew Jones.

The action alleges that the 41-year-old Father Jones, then pastor of All Saints Parish in Corning, New York had sexually abused male parishioner in his 20s who had sought pastoral counseling. According to the filing, the priest had plied the young man with alcohol and dinners (paid for with a diocesan credit card) and engaged in “non-consensual sexual contact” with him on numerous occasions over a six-month period. In some instances, the young man was too intoxicated to resist the priest’s advances, according to the suit.

The diocese placed Father Jones…

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[With video]

Victims of child abuse in the Catholic Church spoke out Thursday, calling on church leaders to do more to expose predatory priests.

Last week, the Catholic Church settled a lawsuit over the first-ever complaint against the Vatican for $2 million.

Activists with the group Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests are urging the Church to issue a warning about local priests, claiming they’re dangerous.

“The Archbishop of Chicago has vast resources, church bulletins, parish websites, pulpit announcements, church publications, church mailings. They could and should take action right now to at least warn the public,” said David Clohessy, a victim from St. Louis.

The group plans to hold another event Thursday afternoon.

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The Catholic Church is being criticized after a priest was stripped of his administrative duties for allowing singer and actor Sabrina Carpenter to film a music video in a Brooklyn church, with many accusing it of being a hypocritical decision.

In September Carpenter used Our Lady of Mount Carmel-Annunciation Parish—a part of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Brooklyn which oversees the Catholic churches in Brooklyn and Queens—as a backdrop for her “Feather” music video. The 24-year-old—who gained recognition for her leading role in the Disney Channel series Girl Meets World—was filmed dancing among pastel-colored coffins on the altar while wearing a short tulle dress and a black veil.

The day after the video was released the church issued a statement saying that proper procedures around allowing filming had not been followed and told the Catholic News Agency that it was “appalled.” A few days later Monsignor Jamie Gigantiello, the pastor who approved…

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Almost as soon as Pope Francis became the head of the Roman Catholic church in 2013, Raymond Burke, an American cardinal, emerged as his leading critic from within the church, becoming a de facto antipope for frustrated traditionalists who believed Francis was diluting doctrine.

Francis frequently demoted and stripped the American cleric of influence, but this month, the pope apparently finally had enough, according to one high-ranking Vatican official who spoke on the condition of anonymity. Francis told a meeting of high-ranking Vatican officials that he intended to throw the cardinal out of his Vatican-subsidized apartment and deprive him of his salary as a retired cardinal.

The news of the possible eviction was first reported by the conservative Italian newspaper La Nuova Bussola Quotidiana, which is close to Cardinal Burke and recently sponsored a conference featuring the prelate criticizing a major meeting of bishops convened by Francis….

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A Catholic priest who gained fame for blessing an NRL team on their way to glory is facing allegations he abused a boy decades ago.

A Catholic priest with decades of service to church communities is facing allegations he abused a boy in historical sex crimes going back decades.

Queensland Police allege Father David Lancini, a priest from Townsville in the state’s north, abused a boy under the age of 14 between 1969 and 1971.

Fr Lancini now faces eight counts of indecent treatment of a boy under 14 and he will appear in Townsville Magistrates Court for the first time on December 5.

In a statement to NCA NewsWire, a Catholic Diocese of Townsville spokesman said Fr Lancini denied the allegations against him.

“Fr Dave Lancini strongly denies any involvement in the alleged offences,” the spokesman said.

“Fr Dave Lancini is currently not involved in any public ministry until…

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About five years ago, Joe Montañez sat in the parking lot of St. Peter Claver Catholic Church in Simi Valley, feeling immensely nervous and shaky over what he was about to do. Minutes later he walked into a meeting with representatives of the Archdiocese of Los Angeles to reveal “shameful abuse by my predator” – a priest who sexually abused him almost 50 years earlier.

“It’s amazing how many things an abused person goes through, but I wanted to somehow try to get well,” said Montañez, a retired teacher who taught in the San Fernando Valley for over three decades. At that first pivotal meeting, Dr. Heather Banis, coordinator of the archdiocesan office of Victims Assistance Ministry, was there to listen. “[When] I first reached out to Dr. Banis, she took my hand and I cried for about an hour – I couldn’t believe that I was telling my story.”

…

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The Diocese is offering $200 million in compensation, which includes a minimum $100,000 cash payout for survivors.

The Diocese of Rockville Centre has made its “best and final proposal” for victims of sexual abuse.

The offer announced on Tuesday totals $200 million in compensation, Diocese spokesperson Sean Dolan said, adding that the amended plan is the “most efficient and most effective means to immediately begin compensating all eligible survivors.”

The proposal from the Diocese comes after three years of legal maneuvering “allowing the Diocese to emerge from bankruptcy and continue its charitable mission,” Dolan said, while equitably compensating victims of sexual abuse by the church.

As Patch reported in Oct. 2022, hundreds of sexual abuse claims were frozen in the wake of the diocese’s declared bankruptcy.

An immediate minimum cash payment of $100,000 per claimant will be available: the Diocese said; the plan offers those without qualifying lawsuits an immediate minimum cash…

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Pope Francis met a group of abuse victims from France at his residence on Tuesday afternoon after assuring them in a written message of his commitment to eradicate abuse in the Church.

The greeting at the pope’s Santa Marta residence followed a meeting the group of 21 victims had with the Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors on the morning of Nov. 28.

Francis had been scheduled to receive the group on Monday, but the appointment was canceled due to his ongoing illness, which the Vatican has said is “influenza and inflammation of the respiratory tract.”

The Vatican meetings were organized by the Commission for Recognition and Reparation, a group formed to support abuse victims following the release of the final report by the Independent Commission on Sexual Abuse in the Church in France in 2021.

The people who met Pope Francis on Tuesday were victims of…

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Survivors are pushing back against a February deadline proposed by the Archdiocese of Baltimore for potential victims to provide proof of claims of child sex abuse in the Catholic Church’s bankruptcy case.

In a filing Wednesday, attorneys for the creditors committee, a group of seven abuse survivors selected to represent the interests of hundreds more in the bankruptcy proceedings, said setting Feb. 26 as a cutoff for claim submissions was unreasonable.

Known as a “claims bar date,” the deadline effectively acts as a statute of limitations for potential lawsuits against the Baltimore diocese for clergy abuse. It was one of several paramount procedural issues the survivors committee raised in the filing Wednesday in which it also signaled optimism about resolving with the church.

“Survivors have been disbelieved and shamed for decades,” attorneys for the creditors committee wrote. “Now that Survivors finally have access to the legal process,…

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The Evangelical umbrella organisation CNEF in France is taking the initiative to help Protestant churches deal with sexual abuse in their structures.

A working group has now presented the results of this initiative, CNEF writes on its website. The members of the working group created, first of all, a booklet with guidelines on how to deal with abuse in the church and above all, how to combat the criminal practice. These tips include the necessity of the churches to emphasise the concept of respect in their work.

Czechia debuts handbook on dealing with church domestic abuse19-09-2023Central Europe

In addition, churches should implement sufficient checks and balances during the activities they organise so that risky situations can be avoided. In addition, it is important for churches to set up guidelines and rules for dealing with church members, and minors in particular. Also, requiring church leaders to…

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If only this wasn’t real life—if we were talking about a fictional novel plot instead—this situation could very well be laughable. But we aren’t, and the consequences couldn’t be further from humorous—they’re frightful and terribly high stakes. Somewhere in the dusty halls of the Archdiocese of San Francisco, church officials say that in recent years, they’ve gotten abuse reports against somewhere between four and eight priests. This is not some abstract concept or a faceless, nameless collection of methods; these are individuals, human beings accused of inflicting profound harm on the most vulnerable among us. Yet, according to these officials, not a single report is deemed credible.

To put this into perspective, we’re saying that the Catholic hierarchy within this archdiocese is claiming every single one of these reports is either false or ‘not substantiated.’ Consequently, the accused clerics—accused of something as dreadful as child molestation—are under no restrictions whatsoever….

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• Summary
• Law Firms

• Judge says parishes must disclose finances or “forget it”
• Abuse claimant attorney says current plan lacks support
• Diocese offer would be largest Catholic bankruptcy settlement

The Catholic Diocese of Rockville Centre, New York, proposed a revised $200 million settlement of sex abuse claims, but faced immediate pushback on Tuesday from a U.S. bankruptcy judge who demanded more detailed financial information from the bankrupt Long Island diocese.

The diocese said in a Tuesday statement that its revised bankruptcy plan filed Monday was its “best and final” offer. It would pay claimants $200 million in cash, plus the potential for additional recoveries from the diocese’s insurers.

U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Martin Glenn in Manhattan, who is overseeing the diocese’s Chapter 11, and attorneys for abuse survivors called the proposal a non-starter at a court hearing later Tuesday morning.

The diocese’s attempt to resolve about 600 sex abuse claims has been stalled for months,…

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A Massachusetts priest charged with stealing more than $100,000 reached an agreement with prosecutors in September, admitting in court that enough evidence existed to convict him of a lesser larceny charge than he had originally faced.

But while Fr. Tomaz Gorny was sentenced to probation and ordered to pay back $12,000, the Diocese of Springfield has declined to answer questions about the allegation that he lived with a female parish employee for almost 10 years.

And while the diocese told The Pillar that Gorny is facing a “canonical process,” the priest’s probation agreement indicated that he would petition for a voluntary laicization, leaving questions unanswered, both about Gorny’s unusual history in the Springfield diocese, and about his future.

While Gorny was charged last year with stealing more than $100,000 from Immaculate Heart of Mary Parish, the priest made in September a plea agreement, admitting in court that the prosecutor’s evidence could…

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Inter-denominational body in Mumbai has launched online petition seeking an end to land scams involving church officials

A Christian body has launched an online campaign to mobilize support for enactment of a law to protect properties of the Indian Church, which is said to own the second-largest land bank after the nation’s government.

“We launched this online signature campaign after Church leaders of different established denominations continued to alienate Church properties illegally for their personal greed,” said Cyril Samuel Dara, a lawyer from Mumbai who is instrumental behind the move.

Dara is secretary of the inter-denominational Christian Reform United People Association (CRUPA) which launched the online petition on Nov. 24. It has so far generated more than 1,300 signatories.

He told UCA News on Nov. 28, that “our goal is to protect Church properties as a treasure for our future generations.”

CRUPA has members from the Catholic Church, the Church of North…

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Disgraced Catholic priest Alex Crow has married a young woman he met at McGill-Toolen Catholic High School and flew to Italy with, according to a public record that WKRG News 5 has obtained.

Alexander Matthew Carter Crow, 30, has married the 18-year-old Mobile woman, according to an Alabama Marriage Certificate from the Judge of Probate’s office. (WKRG News 5 has decided not to include his wife’s name in our reporting.)

Crow and the woman signed the notarized marriage certificate on Nov. 17, 2023, and the probate court received it on Monday, according to the document.

The marriage license seems to counter Crow’s own words about his intentions.

When Crow and his then-girlfriend left the country, he wrote a letter to the Archdiocese of Mobile saying he would never return to America.

In July, the Archdiocese of Mobile, the church’s regional administrative division, formally punished Crow for that action along…

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A simmering dispute between the chairman of the German bishops’ conference and his Polish counterpart heated up dramatically Sunday.

Poland’s Rzeczpospolita newspaper published Nov. 26 what it said was the full text of a letter from Bishop Georg Bätzing and Archbishop Stanisław Gądecki.

In the Nov. 21 letter, Bätzing sharply criticized Gądecki for writing a letter to the pope about Germany’s contentious “synodal way” without consulting him, describing it as “very unsynodal and unfraternal behavior.”

Who are these two Church leaders? Why are they at odds? Does it really matter? And what’s likely to happen next? 

The Pillar takes a look.

Who are they?

Bätzing, the 62-year-old Bishop of Limburg, has served as chairman of Germany’s mighty bishops’ conference since March 2020, when he was elected to a six-year term.

Gądecki, the 74-year-old Archbishop of Poznań, is due to finish his second five-year term as president of Poland’s bishops’ conference in spring 2024.

…

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As more than 200 delegates participating in the first-ever synod for the Australian Diocese of Parramatta filed out of their opening Mass, they were discreetly given flyers by those questioning both the meeting and the bishop who had called it.

Since his installation as the head of the diocese in the western suburbs of Sydney in 2016, Bishop Vincent Long has ruffled more than a few feathers for his support of LGBTQ Catholics, his advocacy in support of the country’s recent referendum on Indigenous representation, and his own personal testimony of being a victim of clergy sexual abuse.

For taking those stances, Long is unapologetic.

“I try to follow Pope Francis’ lead by focusing on pastoral priorities such as a church that is more inclusive, participatory, open to the gifts of all members, especially women,” he told NCR on Nov. 8. “More…

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[Video report]

The first in a three-part series looking into the Diocese of Buffalo’s recent offer to settle hundreds of childhood sexual abuse cases. Some devout Catholics are concerned about a lack of transparency with the Diocese’s bankruptcy process, where the offer first appeared.

This is the first installment of a three-part series looking into the Diocese of Buffalo’s recent offer to settle hundreds of childhood sexual abuse cases, how some devout Catholics responded to the news, and what the future might look like once the bankruptcy case in completed.

The Diocese of Buffalo sent shock waves through the Catholic community last month, when it offered $100 million to settle hundreds of childhood sexual abuse cases.

The offer, which is exclusive of any insurance proceeds, would “need to be funded by monetary contributions sourced from across our Catholic community, including from the Diocese, parishes, and other affiliated Catholic…

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• Survivors receive immediate cash payout under ‘best and final’ offer
• Filing details procedures for approval of record $200 million settlement
• Funds from insurance proceeds to fund additional substantial payouts to survivors

The Diocese of Rockville Centre (www.drvc.org) (the “Diocese”) filed its Amended Plan and Disclosure Statement today, offering a total of $200 million in compensation as its best and final proposal for settling with survivors of abuse. This First Amended Plan is the best, most efficient and most effective means to immediately begin compensating all eligible survivors equitably while allowing the Diocese to emerge from bankruptcy and continue its charitable mission. 

The Diocese filed this Plan, which includes a record setting settlement offer in the amount of $200 million from the Diocese, parishes, and related parties to compensate survivors and bring this case to a fair and final resolution. The Diocese agrees with Bankruptcy Court Judge Martin Glenn, who is overseeing the case, that survivors have waited…

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A play that opens Thursday at CitySpace in Easthampton, Massachusetts, tells the story of a man who was abused by a priest when he was a boy.

“Unreconciled” is based on the experience of western Massachusetts actor and playwright Jay Sefton, who co-wrote it with another survivor, Mark Basquill. James Barry directs the play.

Sefton and others said the priest allegedly abused boys who played the part of Jesus in school plays.

Sefton has been practicing his performance working out on a treadmill and while walking around town. But about two weeks before the show, he was “running lines,” as it’s called, with his friend Yago Colás in Sefton’s dining room.

“I thought, to try to just get it into the body, today,” Sefton said. “We just start at the beginning and then if I missed words, maybe just mark them. If I miss chunks, we’ll stop.”

“I’ll pause you,”…

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Since the Adult Survivors Act was passed, more than 3,000 civil suits have been filed, some aimed at politicians and others at institutions including hospitals and jails.

In the year since a one-time window opened in New York State allowing people to file sex-abuse lawsuits even after the statute of limitations had expired, more than 3,000 civil suits have been filed.

Before the deadline on Thanksgiving, a flurry of attention-grabbing suits were filed against politicians — like former Gov. Andrew Cuomo and Eric Adams, the mayor of New York — and celebrities, like Sean Combs, the producer and music mogul, who had just settled a separate suit filed in Federal District Court in Manhattan accusing him of rape.

But hundreds of people have also — collectively and separately — sued institutions, including the state’s prisons, jails and prominent hospitals, for abuses they said were systematically ignored and hidden for decades. At least…

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In what was one of Europe’s most religious countries, mass attendance has dropped severely, Irish priests find themselves working far past retirement age, and only a small number of apprentices are committing themselves to the church.

In Ireland, where religion has played such a big place in its past, for better or for worse, fewer and fewer people are attending mass on Sunday, and even less are willing to commit themselves to the sanctified life of a priest.

This, among other reasons, is leading these men of God to work well past retirement age while still trying to cover the work of churches all over the country.

According to a survey conducted by the Association of Catholic Priests (ACP) last year, 15% of priests are over 75 and still working, over 25% are aged between 60–75, and just 2.5% of serving Catholic priests in Ireland, meanwhile, are under 40.

“What we…

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While Catholicism may be universal, as a sociological matter the Vatican definitely isn’t. Although its personnel may come from all over the world, its internal culture, psychology and business models are all quintessentially Italian.

Until a pope takes up the suggestion of newly minted Coadjutor Archbishop Christopher Coyne of Hartford, Ct., and moves the Vatican out of Rome, Italian realities therefore will continue to exercise a disproportionate impact on shaping the outlook and perceived priorities of Vatican officials.

That point comes to mind amid what organizers are describing as a budding “revolution” in Italy around the issue of violence against women, driven by national outrage over the brutal murder of a 22-year-old young woman named Giulia Cecchettin by her ex-boyfriend. Her gruesome death, which has dominated the Italian media for a fortnight, represents merely the latest instance of what Italians are now calling an epidemic of femicide.

According to data…

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Lawsuits provide alternative recourse, but can retraumatize victims

When John Cody decided to sue his former Ottawa high school teacher and the institutions that allegedly failed to stop his sexual abuse, the 60-year-old braced himself to face his perpetrator again.

But the treatment he said he received during mediation was worse.

At one point, Cody, diagnosed with a terminal illness, recalled the mediator relaying a haunting message from the opposing side that implied he wouldn’t live long enough to see a resolution.

“This was the most traumatizing thing I’ve ever experienced,” Cody told CBC in a recent interview from his Montreal apartment. “This was inhumane treatment, and I can’t level any reasonable or logical explanation.”

Cody is one of several abuse survivors across Canada who describe feeling revictimized through the civil process. 

Their stories provide a rare glimpse into what can happen in civil litigation involving large institutions such as school boards,…

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As Thanksgiving Day ended, so did a one-year window allowing adult survivors of alleged sexual abuse to file lawsuits seeking monetary damages, regardless of when the abuse occurred.

The Adult Survivors Act, passed by Albany lawmakers in 2022, has spurred thousands of lawsuits, a majority of which alleged sexual abuse had been committed by male prison or jail guards against female inmates. There were a number of lawsuits, including in Erie County, alleging that abuse had been committed by Catholic priests. And there were lawsuits against high-profile figures, including a recent legal summons alleging that New York City Mayor Eric Adams committed sexual assault against a woman in 1993. Adams denied the allegation and said he could not recall ever meeting the accuser.

On Wednesday, a former aide filed a lawsuit against ex-Gov. Andrew Cuomo, his former counsel, and New York State, in…

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At the height of the HIV/AIDS epidemic, when up to 12 million people were infected across sub-Saharan Africa, Nyumbani Children’s Home offered a refuge to Kenya’s dying children. Later, the institute, run by a Catholic charity, fought for the first batches of retroviral drugs for its sick toddlers.

Contributions poured in from American politicians, media personalities and celebrities. Former vice president Mike Pence praised the nun who ran it by name on World Aids Day in 2018 and hosted her at the White House. Congressional tours were frequent.

But behind the smiles and promotional tours, the privately funded orphanage allegedly concealed terrible secrets. In previously unreported claims, six former residents told The Washington Post there were multiple incidents of rape and other abuses of children by volunteers, caregivers and even other children. The U.S. Agency for International Development’s own previous investigation, following a whistleblower’s complaint, found abuse claims at the…

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The Apostolic Administrator of the Diocese of Dromore, Archbishop Eamon Martin has written a letter to the people of the Diocese apologising unreservedly for the hurt and damage caused to victims and survivors of abuse by “any priest or church representative acting under its authority” and detailing steps the Diocese is taking to meet its financial and other responsibilities.

The Archbishop has announced that the Diocese plans to sell lands they own at Armagh Road, Newry to finance their liabilities.

Explaining the move Archbishop Martin said “It is vitally important that the Diocese has the necessary human and financial resources going forward for safeguarding best practice and for responding, via counselling, support and just compensation and redress to those who have been abused. I also wish to ensure that the Diocese of Dromore contributes its share to supporting the national safeguarding structures which ensure that our standards remain up to date. 

…

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• Group seeks investigation of insurer resistance to cover suits
• Chubb says it doesn’t owe coverage for diocese negligence

A child sex abuse survivors advocacy group wants New York’s financial regulator to investigate insurer Chubb Ltd. for allegedly not complying with its mandate to cooperate with the state’s Child Victims Act.

The Coalition for Just and Compassionate Compensation asked the New York State Department of Financial Services to probe Chubb and its policies over what the group said is the insurer’s resistance to cover damages related to the CVA. The request, made in a letter Friday, comes as Chubb subsidiaries battle the Archdiocese of New York in state court over the extent of their coverage obligations with respect to abuse claims.

“It is a cynical but tried and true practice of some in the insurance industry to delay, deny, and defend,” the letter said. “Chubb knows that every month that is spent in…

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The future criminal court of the Swiss Catholic Church will be set up next year to try cases of sexual abuse.

The Bishop of Basel, Felix Gmür, announced this on Friday, responding in particular to the Lucerne Synod, which is blocking part of its financial contributions.

When cases of sexual abuse within the Catholic Church result in a judgment by a Swiss criminal court, the ecclesiastical tribunal must take over, explained Bishop Gmür, President of the Swiss Bishops’ Conference, to the media. This tribunal must be made up of specialists who are familiar with ecclesiastical law, without necessarily being Catholics.

Expanding the pool of judges

Until now, criminal cases within the Swiss Catholic Church have been dealt with solely by a court attached to one or other bishopric. The creation of a court bringing together all the country’s dioceses means that a larger pool of specialists, such as judges, will…

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The Pope has so far taken no disciplinary action, in stark contrast to his swift removal of a conservative bishop in the U.S.

Pope Francis has responded to concerns over the ultra-progressive German Synodal Way, a series of conferences including Bishops and lay people seeking to ‘modernise’ Church doctrine and organisation in the wake of sexual abuse scandals, which earlier this year called for a number of major changes to the Catholic Church, including blessing gay couples and scrapping priestly celibacy. 

Although the Synodal Way has no authority to change Church doctrine under Catholic Canon Law, its declarations have been heavily criticised for going against Church tradition and doctrine.  

The head of the Catholic Church responded to a letter written by Dr. Katharina Westerhorstmann, professor of theology at Franciscan University of Steubenville, Dr. Marianne Schlosser, professor of theology at the University of Vienna, Dr. Hanna-Barbara Gerl-Falkovitz, professor emeritus of philosophy…

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Pope Francis has added 11 new members to the Vatican office that focuses on the lay apostolate and family life, with two married couples and four figures affiliated with ecclesial movements highlighting the selections. 

The Vatican announced the pope’s picks to the Dicastery for the Laity, Family, and Life on Nov. 25.

New members include the Taiwanese couple Joseph Teyu Chou, a professor of finance, and Clare Jiayann Yeh, the founder and director of the local bishops’ Marriage and Family Pastoral Center.

Another married couple picked for the dicastery comes from France — Benoit and Véronique Rabourdin. The two are the international managers of the Amour and Vérité marriage and family ministry, an initiative of the Emmanuel Community, a French-founded public association of the faithful.

The French and Taiwanese couples join a Polish couple already serving as members of the dicastery for a total of three sets of spouses among…

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Switzerland’s canton of Valais has launched a preliminary investigation into potential crimes related to sexual abuse within the Roman Catholic Church, dating back to the mid-20th century. This probe comes in the wake of a report from a pilot project examining the church’s history of sexual abuse. General Prosecutor and cantonal police officers visited the Abbey of St Maurice as part of this investigation.

Potential Crimes and Church’s Cooperation

During the visit, the Abbey’s archivist provided voluntary access to the archives and a canon was interviewed. The Abbey of St Maurice issued a statement expressing their intent to clarify all cases of abuse, pledging to cooperate closely with the authorities for the sake of transparency. The Abbey has also requested the appointment of an Apostolic Delegate from Rome to take charge.

Church-Wide Efforts Amid Scandal

Highlighting broader church efforts, the Roman Catholic Church in Switzerland is contemplating the establishment of a Swiss-wide…

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Spain’s Catholic Church said on Friday it would compensate victims of sexual abuse even in cases that have not been concluded because the offending priest has died, representing a shift from its previous position.

In cases where there is no sentence, “we will also pay if the perpetrator is deceased or if there is a civil statute of limitations,” Francisco Garcia Magan, secretary general of the Spanish Bishops’ Conference, told a press conference.

“It will have to be examined on a case-by-case basis. And if that moral conclusion is reached, then there will be that moral reparation,” Garcia Magan added after announcing that Spanish bishops had unanimously approved an “integral plan” to compensate victims.

The Church had until now refused to compensate victims in cases where the abuser had died, a frequent occurrence.

It is grappling with a scandal following a landmark media investigation in 2021 that unearthed widespread abuse…

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The Secretary General and spokesman of the Spanish Episcopal Conference, Msgr. Francisco César García Magán has been in charge of communicating to the media the results of the 123rd Plenary Assembly of the Spanish Bishops, which took place in Madrid from November 20 to 24. 

The management and development of the various investigations into sexual abuse committed in the Church has focused part of the reflections and work of the Spanish bishops during these days.

In this field, both a letter to the People of God in Spain, on this topic, approved unanimously, and the approval of a work process to structure and develop a plan for the integral reparation of victims of abuse, are framed in this field.

Letter to the people of God for the abuses 

The Plenary Assembly has given the green light to a letter addressed to all the faithful in which the problem of sexual…

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The Michigan Attorney General’s office announced earlier this month that after five years since the investigation into sexual abuse within the Catholic Church began, the office has wrapped up all active cases against clergy members with many incidents dating back decades.

Victims of sexual abuse and/or assault in need of additional resources should contact 855-VOICES4.

A total of 11 Catholic priests were charged in the statewide investigation. Back in 2018, the Department of Attorney General executed search warrants for all of Michigan’s dioceses, reporting that they seized 220 boxes of documents and more than 3.5 million digital documents.  

“Our team continues to work day and night to bring an end to an era of abuse that has hidden in plain sight for far too long and provide justice to those who have suffered years of unimaginable trauma,” Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel said in a statement this…

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New abuse allegations have been filed against New York Mayor Eric Adams and entertainer Bill Cosby, among a string of others, before the Friday deadline.

As its name indicates, New York’s Adult Survivors Act allows adults who survived sexual abuse in the state a one-year “lookback window” to file claims that would otherwise be too late to file due to statutes of limitations.

New York Gov. Kathy Hochul (D) signed the measure on May 24, 2022. It went into effect six months later and is set to expire Friday.

As a result, a flurry of new accusations have been made public as people hurry to file before the deadline.

Already the law has been used to sue entertainers such as Russell Brand and Marilyn Manson and disgraced movie producer Harvey Weinstein. Writer E. Jean Carroll was View Cache

How can the Roman Catholic Church in Canada renew its image in spite of a inevitable and decisive declination to obscurity?

Nuns, nothing but the purity of virginal self-sacrifice for their Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, unburdened by the allegations ubiquitous over decades about the priest class within the Roman Catholic Church — until now.

The Roman Catholic Church has been facing profound sexual scandals by those deemed the intellectual and ceremonial protectors of the Faith, the priest class. Unfortunately, as we’re seeing, there’s tremendous publicity about this intellectual and ceremonial status, and then the reality, unfortunately. I wouldn’t claim to be a moral exemplar or, necessarily, want to be one. It’s disingenuous. I, like most of you, am just a Canadian citizen with concerns.

It is important, however, to point to systems of power, often unquestioned, and wealth and ask critical questions or simply speak the truth for an accuracy in…

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WARNING: This story contains details about sexual assault against minors and suicidal ideation.

A sentencing hearing began today for a former Ottawa high school teacher and basketball coach that was found guilty of multiple sex crimes(opens in a new tab) against young students.

The crimes include sexual assault and sexual exploitation, all involving minors.

WARNING: This story contains details about sexual assault against minors and suicidal ideation.

A sentencing hearing began today for a former Ottawa high school teacher and basketball coach that was found guilty of multiple sex crimes(opens in a new tab) against young students.

The crimes include sexual assault and sexual exploitation, all involving minors.

The case involves four former students with the crimes spanning over a period of seven years, up until 2021.

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Crown Attorney argues for five years in prison for Rick Despatie, but his defence lawyer asks instead for one-year conditional sentence. A judge will decide next year.

Rick Despatie had everyone fooled at St. Matthew Catholic High School — except for his students.

The disgraced math teacher’s sex crimes went unchecked for seven years at the Orléans school until some brave young women came forward.Article content

Despatie, now 60, was found guilty in September of sexual assault, sexual interference and criminal harassment involving four former students, aged 12 and 13 at the time. All of this went on at the school, in math class or what the teacher called “private detentions.”

In a moving impact statement at a sentencing hearing on Friday, one victim said her life was so shattered that she was suicidal. But the young woman, still struggling with fear, anger and anxiety years later, summoned the courage…

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The Adult Survivors Act temporarily expanded the statute of limitations, but lawyers say a year is not enough

New York’s year-long “look-back” window on sexual assault closed last night after a flurry of last-minute claims against high-profile figures including the singer Axl Rose, the actor Jamie Foxx and the mayor of New York City, Eric Adams.

Some of the alleged incidents date back decades, in claims that would otherwise have fallen outside the statute of limitations.

The New York state law, which allowed adult sexual abuse survivors to sue their abusers beyond the statute of limitations for the course of one year, saw approximately 2,500 claims. It closed at midnight on Thursday.

It grabbed headlines immediately when the writer E Jean Carroll restated a rape and defamation claim against Donald Trump mere minutes after the look-back window opened.

Late on Wednesday night, a summons against Adams alleged “sexual assault, battery and employment discrimination”…

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Edward English was given a 10-year prison sentence for abusing boys at Newfoundland’s Mount Cashel Orphanage.

Vancouver police this week questioned a former Christian Brother sentenced to 10 years for abusing boys at a Newfoundland orphanage, sources tell Glacier Media.

It was more than 30 years ago that Canadians were horrified to hear tales of physical and sexual abuse of boys by the Christian Brothers order operating Newfoundland and Labrador’s Mount Cashel Orphanage. An RCMP investigation into alleged child abuse at Mount Cashel began in 1975.

• ‘High-risk’ B.C. child sex offender was repeatedly released
• Child sex offender Hopley returns to court Dec. 8

Edward English was one of those Christian Brothers.

In 1991, he was handed a 10-year prison sentence.

This week, English was taken to a New Brunswick RCMP detachment for questioning for five hours, said a reliable source to whom Glacier Media has granted anonymity.

The source said the questioning regarded…

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No charges filed at court yet, English declines comment

Edward English, who was once sentenced to 10 years in prison for abusing boys at the Mount Cashel Orphanage in St. John’s, has been arrested once again.

CBC News has learned English was arrested Wednesday at his home outside Moncton, N.B., by members of the Vancouver Police Department, with RCMP New Brunswick acting as an “assisting agency,” according to that police force’s media relations officer.

English was arrested in connection with allegations of sexual abuse involving two students at Vancouver College — a Catholic boys’ private school — in the 1980s, according to a source with knowledge of the investigation. English was not in custody when reached by CBC News on Thursday morning.

“I have no comment on that,” he said repeatedly.

Charges have yet to be laid at the provincial courthouse in Vancouver. A clerk told CBC News it can take several…

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Lawyers for Italian Cardinal Angelo Becciu, the principal defendant in the Vatican’s “trial of the century,” on Wednesday accused the prosecutor of attempting to “monstrify” the cardinal, in part by relying on a “Bermuda’s triangle” of witnesses which “didn’t cause airplanes to disappear, but the truth.”

Attorney Fabio Viglione made the assertions during closing arguments in the long-running trial against ten defendants, including Becciu, which is current heading towards verdicts expected in mid-December.

“There was a desire to ‘monstrify’ the cardinal, [but] the ambitious structure developed by the prosecution found no confirmation,” Viglione told the three-judge panel overseeing the case.

“All the evidence denied the prosecution’s theses, thanks to extravagant forms of reconstructions of facts. We arrive here calmly, with an active assessment of the cardinal’s innocence,” he said, requesting that Becciu be acquitted.

Although most of the defendants in the trial are charged exclusively for their roles in the controversial…

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The payout is in a lawsuit regarding the Rev. Richard McGrath, an Augustinian priest who ran Providence Catholic High School — and took the Fifth when asked about child pornography.

If Robert Krankvich could ask a question of the Rev. Richard McGrath, the Catholic priest who Krankvich says raped him when he was a student at Providence Catholic High School in New Lenox in the 1990s, it would be: “Why? Why me?”

The Augustinian Catholic religious order that McGrath belongs to and the school it runs that’s owned by the Diocese of Joliet has reached a $2 million settlement on the eve of a trial over a lawsuit Krankvich filed, lawyers confirmed.

Church officials admitted no wrongdoing in agreeing to the payout to end the civil case.

But records reviewed by the Chicago Sun-Times and interviews by the newspaper show there were warning signs about McGrath.

The diocese — the arm…

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According to a report by the Telegraph, a UK court has ordered the Vatican to turn over confidential texts and emails between Italian Cardinal Pietro Parolin and Venezuelan Archbishop Edgar Peña Parra, the top two officials in the Secretariat of State, despite claims from a Vatican official that doing so would constitute a “grave sin.”

The ruling came in a lawsuit filed in the UK by Italian-born financier Raffaele Mincione, one of ten defendants charged with various forms of embezzlement, fraud and misrepresentation in the Vatican’s long-running “trial of the century,” currently set for a verdict in mid-December.

Mincione, who does much of his business in the UK, originally filed suit against the Vatican’s Secretariat of State before the Court of Appeal for England and Wales in June 2020, alleging damage to his reputation as a result of the Vatican prosecution. The UK court originally held that the case should be…

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Lawsuits filed under New York State’s Adult Survivors Act allege sexual contact by eight Catholic priests and two religious brothers in Western New York.

Those accused are Fr. Lawrence Connors, Fr. Donald J. Joyce, Fr. Paul Keeling, Fr. Joseph S. Rogliano, Fr. Arthur Smith, Fr. James A. Spielman, Fr. Kennth Ward, Fr. William White, Br. Augustine Towey and Br. Richard Prange. The dates of alleged sexual misconduct range from 1964 to 2010.

The suits were made possible by the year-long suspension of the legal time limit to sue over sexual assaults against adults in New York. The lookback window will close Thursday.

Of the accused, Keeling and Rogliano are living.

Keeling, a Barnabite priest, is removed from ministry and sentenced to a life of prayer and penance. The lawsuit naming Keeling claims that in 1989, Keeling approached a man praying at Our Lady of Fatima and offered to counsel him….

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Alan Placa has for years faced accusations of sexual abuse — even as he maintained a close professional and personal relationship with Giuliani

A former New York Catholic priest and the longtime close friend of ex-mayor Rudy Giuliani is facing a new sex abuse lawsuit from a man who says he was drugged and raped on Fire Island by the once powerful clergyman.

The civil suit, filed in Albany on Nov. 16, alleged Monsignor Alan Placa molested the plaintiff when he was a teenager from 1975 until 1977. Placa was first accused of sex abuse in 2002.

The accuser, who filed the lawsuit anonymously as “John Doe,” met Placa at St. Pius X, a preparatory school on Long Island, New York, which was part of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Rockville Centre, the complaint states.

Placa, who was teaching at the school, abused the teen first at the school in January…

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Safe environment coordinators (SECs) and Virtus facilitators are on the front lines of protecting children and vulnerable adults.

“And we recognize that both of those roles, oftentimes, are very difficult and sometimes underappreciated,” said Jenifer Valenti, director of the archdiocesan office for protection and care (OPC).

“So, it’s really important to us that they know how much we appreciate their excellent work,” she added. “And hopefully, they recognize what an important part of the prevention efforts they are responsible for.

“Because it really, in almost every way, starts with those two functions.”

As they arrived inside the parish hall at St. Joseph Church in Shawnee on Nov. 9, SECs and facilitators from around the archdiocese were greeted with a red carpet and a round of cheers.

It was the second SEC and facilitator appreciation day and the first with a theme: Rolling out the red carpet for our stars.

The…

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The Catholic Church maintains a hardline attitude that “prolongs the pain” of clergy abuse victims despite developing policies to change their ways, according to prominent survivor advocates.

The behaviour of the Church has been in the spotlight in the wake of a landmark jury verdict against it on 10 November 2023.

A case before the Victorian Supreme Court saw a former alter boy awarded a record $3.3 million payout from the Wagga Diocese, which was found to have failed to protect him for the abuse he suffered at the hands of paedophile priest Vincent Kiss.

In a follow-up hearing, legal representatives for the Wagga Diocese mounted arguments to reduce the victim’s compensation payout.

Kim Price, partner at Arnold Thomas & Becker, the law firm that represented the victim, was critical of how the church conducted itself.

“This case went to trial largely because the Church refused to acknowledge…

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[Politico’s New York Playbook]

Harvey Weinstein. Bill Cosby. Donald Trump. Sean Combs.

Lawsuits accusing high-powered men of sexual misconduct were the marquee cases during the one-year window created by the state’s Adult Survivors Act.

But the legislation expiring Thursday did more than target big names: It helped people of all walks find justice, its sponsors say.

“We are changing a dynamic, the antiquated way we view statutes of limitations, and we’ve gained new knowledge through the Child Victims Act and also the #MeToo movement about how women – for the most part, women – were silenced, harassed, intimidated,” Assemblymember Linda Rosenthal told Playbook.

Both Rosenthal and state Sen. Brad Hoylman-Sigal said they hope to extend the measure that has allowed for the filing of civil lawsuits regardless of when the alleged abuse took place.

In its final weeks, the act was used to sue Cosby for allegations including battery, assault and false…

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The window to file cases under the Adult Survivors Act closes Thursday after giving survivors of sexual assault a year to sue their alleged abusers.

The look-back window gave survivors a chance to file cases regardless of when the alleged abuse occurred, opening up the possibility of holding abusers accountable after the statute of limitations on such cases had already passed.

Anna Kull, an attorney who has filed more than 600 claims under the Adult Survivors Act, said Tuesday she was still getting calls from people interested in filing claims.

“I’m a big supporter of the windows, but I think they’re too short,” Kull said. “I don’t think we should be placing a limit on the time because there’s no limit on someone’s trauma.”

Thousands of claims filed

More than 2,600 cases had been filed as of this month, though delays in reporting suggest that number will increase.

Six hundred…

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Both lawmakers who sponsored the Adult Survivors Act, or the law that created a one-year period for adult survivors of past sexual assault to file a case against their abuser, say they support extending the lookback period an additional year next session. 

Sponsors Sen. Brad Hoylman-Sigal and Assemblywoman Linda Rosenthal, both Manhattan Democrats, say they’ll also explore a permanent change to New York’s statute of limitations for sexual assault. 

“I think it’s something we should certainly consider,” Hoylman-Sigal said.

The senator says he’s in early talks with other lawmakers about extending the Adult Survivors Act when they return to Albany in January. Attorneys expect a flurry of cases to be filed under the Adult Survivors Act before Friday’s deadline, adding to more than 2,500 cases so far.

The measure allows survivors of sexual assault to file a civil suit against a person or institution for past sexual abuse that happened after the…

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While reading about the recent 71st Red Mass at the St. Louis Cathedral in Louisiana, I noticed six of the seven Louisiana Supreme Court Justices standing in the first pew, which struck me as inappropriate, or as my parochial Latin class taught me, improprius, or improper. And then there was this, “The Louisiana Supreme Court Justices and I attend Red Mass for the divine blessing of wisdom, understanding, counsel, and discernment in decision-making relative to the administration of laws and justice for those we serve,” said Louisiana Supreme Court Chief Justice John L. Weimer.

A blessing in “decision-making.”

Unless they punt the issue again, these six justices will soon deliberate on the constitutionality of legislation passed by the Louisiana legislature in 2021. That legislation seeks to remedy the very worst type of injustice – claims by victims of child sexual abuse. And, most notably here, legislation that Archbishop Gregory Aymond—the person before whom…

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Ah, Pope Francis. There he goes again, stealing headlines over the weekend with statements that have taken us all a bit aback. This time, he voiced support for a Sicilian bishop accused of covering up sexual abuse. This news hit us like a punch to the gut and left us rummaging for answers. This account comes from The Pillar, a Catholic news source that’s been dishing the dirt on what goes behind the holy doors. Tragically, this isn’t the first incident of such nature, and, believe me, it’s a big deal.

The Problem with Pope Francis’ Remarks

Let’s dive in a bit, alright? So, Pope Francis’ comments were quite brief, yet potent enough to undercut the endeavors of the church hierarchy to claim ‘we’ve changed’ our ways when dealing with felonies like child sex crimes and cover-ups. The Pope casually mentioned, “Bishop Rosario Gisana of Piazza Armerina…

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State records show that a suspended Alabama priest recently married the 18-year-old woman he fled to Italy with this summer, and an archbishop said Wednesday that he expects the Vatican to pursue the man’s official dismissal from the priesthood.

A marriage certificate filed Monday in Mobile County shows that Alex Crow, a 30-year-old Catholic priest in south Alabama, married the 18-year-old. Crow left the country in late July with the teen who is a recent graduate of McGill-Toolen High School. Crow was not an employee at the school but sometimes visited theology classes there, news outlets reported. The marriage certificate indicates the woman turned 18 in June.

Archbishop Thomas J. Rodi announced in July that he had suspended Crow and forbidden him from acting, dressing, or presenting himself as a priest. Rodi later said he saw no way for Crow to return to the priesthood.

“The recent…

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Alexander Crow, 30, married 18-year-old high school graduate on Friday, according to license filed in Mobile county, Alabama

A Roman Catholic priest in Alabama who was investigated by law enforcement after fleeing to Europe with a recent high school graduate he met through his ministry legally married her after he returned to the US with her, a document provided to the Guardian showed.

According to a marriage license filed in Mobile county, Alabama, Alexander Crow, 30, married the 18-year-old former McGill-Toolen Catholic high school student on Friday.

In late July, Crow – an expert in the theological study of demons and exorcism – had his clerical duties removed by the Catholic archdiocese of Mobile, after going to Italy with the teen and indicating he would never return to the US.

The archdiocese told him he “abandoned his assignment” and was accused of behavior “totally unbecoming of a priest”.

Though the archdiocese…

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Lawyers for a once-powerful cardinal accused Vatican prosecutors of being “prisoner to their completely shattered theory” on Wednesday in the latest round of closing arguments of a trial that has raised fundamental questions about the rule of law in the city state.

Despite attempts to demonize Cardinal Angelo Becciu, the two-year trial hasn’t proved any of the prosecutors’ allegations of embezzlement, abuse of office or witness tampering against him, said attorneys Maria Concetta Marzo and Fabio Viglione.

“The cardinal is innocent,” they said in a statement. “Thanks to the hearings, we were able to ascertain that none of the accusations had any foundation and that prosecutors were prisoner to their completely shattered theory.”

Becciu is on trial along with nine others in a sprawling case that is focused on the Vatican’s 350 million-euro investment in a London property but also includes two other tangents. Prosecutors…

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A 53-year-old man is suing the Archdiocese of Denver and two former Catholic priests, alleging he suffered extensive sexual abuse while attending Notre Dame Catholic Parish in Denver throughout the late 1970s and ’80s, but repressed those memories for decades.

The Colorado Supreme Court struck down a law earlier this year that created a window during which child sexual abuse survivors could file lawsuits over decades-old abuse allegations. But attorneys representing Michael Stano argue their case is an exception because Stano only recently remembered the repressed sexual abuse.

“It’s certainly rare,” attorney Charles Mendez said of the legal strategy in an interview with The Denver Post on Tuesday. “It’s been argued before both in Colorado and other states, but it is rare. The repression is a trauma response to what happens to you because it gets locked in an area of your brain.”

Stano filed the lawsuit Friday in Denver District…

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The International House of Prayer Kansas City (IHOPKC) accepted a man into its internship in 2012 who admitted on his application that he had engaged in “inappropriate touch” with a 16-year-old in his youth ministry. That’s according to a 2019 investigative report by Godly Response to Abuse in the Christian Environment (GRACE), which was recently leaked for the first time to that 16-year-old, who’s now 52, and then sent to The Roys Report (TRR).

The report claimed that IHOPKC has a culture of failing to “prioritize the wounded” and needs to investigate alleged incidents of sexual abuse by “other individuals associated with IHOP” that surfaced during GRACE’s investigation.

“(P)rioritizing the wounded means that institutional leaders engage in immediate, healthy, and transparent communications to encourage, pursue and care for those who are wounded and hurting,” the report states. “These issues must be addressed and GRACE recommends that…

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The founder of a far-right, unofficial Catholic media group has resigned for an unspecified violation of the organization’s morality clause, the group said in a statement Tuesday.

Michael Voris stepped down as president of St. Michael’s Media and Church Militant, a Michigan-based enterprise established to address what Voris’ official biography calls “the serious erosion of the Catholic faith in the last 50 years.”

“Michael Voris has been asked to resign for breaching the Church Militant morality clause,” the organization said in its statement. “The board has accepted his resignation.” More details were not provided, and the board said it “has chosen not to disclose Michael’s private matters to the public” but asked for prayers for him as he is “focusing on his personal health.”

Voris declined to specify what happened in a repetitive, nearly 14-minute video statement on X, formerly Twitter.

“There are things I have to go away and…

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Hundreds of thousands of children are raped and sexually abused every day around the world. In the Philippines and many countries like Spain, Portugal, the United States, Australia, Ireland, the UK, Germany, Switzerland and Australia, the recent history of sexual abuse of children has been widespread in the church and society. In 2015, Unicef conducted a major study involving 4,000 Filipino children to determine the extent of sexual violence against children in the Philippines and discovered that in every five children, three of them reported having been sexually abused. It occurs in every conceivable place, in the home by parents and relatives, in the school by teachers and older students, in the church by priests and laymen, in orphanages and shelters by staff, in the streets, and above all, in sex bars, brothels and hotels. In fact, it occurs in any secluded place by anyone.

There is a greater awareness…

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An advocacy group decried Ohio lawmakers and the state’s attorney general after a priest who formerly served in Findlay was sentenced to life in federal court Friday for sexually abusing young boys and adults.

Father Michael J. Zacharias wasn’t brought to justice in state court because the state isn’t serious about protecting families, Claudia Vercellotti and David Clohessy wrote in a recent op-ed.

“Ohio legislators continue to cave to lobbyists for the bishops and the insurance industry by refusing to eliminate or extend Ohio’s archaic, predator-friendly statute of limitations,” the two leaders with the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, or SNAP, wrote.

Busted

Zacharias, at the time the pastor of St. Michael’s parish in Findlay, was arrested by the FBI in 2020 on multiple charges of sex crimes, including human trafficking. He allegedly “manipulated and coerced drug-addicted boys and men into sex” and made a “confession video”…

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One of the most notorious predator priests in northwest Ohio has just been given a stiff sentence for his sex crimes by a federal judge after this case came to the attention of the FB, in an unrelated investigation.`

On Friday, Judge Jack Zouhary sent Fr. Michael J. Zacharias to a federal prison for a long time.

The priest, formerly the pastor of St. Michael’s parish in Findlay, was arrested by the FBI in 2020 on multiple charges of sexual crimes, including human trafficking.

He allegedly “manipulated and coerced drug-addicted boys and men into sex” and made a “confession video” in which he performed oral sex on a then-adult victim.

Zacharias admits to first meeting one of his victims when he was an aspiring Seminarian and the boy was a sixth-grader at St. Catherine’s in Toledo.

According to bishopaccountability.org, a second young man told the FBI he met Zacharias as…

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For a year, a special New York law has cleared the way for a wave of headline-grabbing lawsuits against famous men accused of sexual misconduct, including former President Donald Trump, hip hop mogul Sean “Diddy” Combs and the comedian and actor Russell Brand.

But when the Adult Survivors Act expires after Thanksgiving, it also will have led to a multitude of legal claims by women who say they were sexually abused while serving time in the New York’s prisons and jails.

More than 2,500 lawsuits have been filed so far under the law, which created a year-long suspension of the usual time limit to sue over an alleged sexual assault.

Some of those lawsuits have targeted employers, or institutions such as hospitals, accused of failing to do enough to stop abuse by doctors or other workers. The large majority, though, have been filed against the state, New York City and…

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A French bishop has been charged with the attempted rape of an adult man that allegedly took place more than a decade ago. 

Bishop Georges Colomb of La Rochelle and Saintes was reportedly charged on Friday with the 2013 attempted rape of an adult man. In a statement published on Monday, the French bishops’ conference said it had “learned of the indictment of [Colomb]” and his “placement under judicial control.”

“This indictment concerns facts that [Colomb] disputes,” the bishops said. “They would have occurred in 2013 as part of the Foreign Missions of Paris, of which Georges Colomb was then the superior.”

“By reaffirming its confidence in justice, the bishops’ conference expresses its concern for the person concerned and recalls the presumption of innocence to which Bishop Georges Colomb is legitimately entitled,” the statement said.

“To those who will be disturbed or injured by this information, especially within…

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A former Catholic priest stationed in Gatlinburg was found not guilty of sexual battery by a Sevier County jury Nov. 16.

Nearly two years after he was indicted, a jury found the Rev. Antony Devassey Punnackal, formerly of St. Mary’s Catholic Church, not guilty of allegations he groped a woman while he counseled her after the father of her infant died.

“My client is a terrific human being and we are glad to finally be able to show the world that he’s innocent of these accusations,” Punnackal’s attorney Travis McCarter wrote to Knox News in a text.

The woman, who is Honduran and does not speak fluent English, is seeking asylum in the United States. She alleged that while meeting with 61-year-old Punnackal for grief counseling, the priest pantomimed and made reference to her breasts. From there, he “fondled her breasts and buttocks.”

Punnackal admitted in a…

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SEVIERVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — A jury has found a Catholic priest in Tennessee not guilty of sexual battery against a woman who was a church member.

Jurors handed down the verdict late last week in the case against Father Antony Punnackal, who was suspended from his role as pastor of St. Mary’s Catholic Church in Gatlinburg after being indicted in January 2022 on two counts of sexual battery.

The charges centered on allegations from February 2020 regarding Punnackal’s actions toward the parishioner. A lawsuit by the woman remains active.

Punnackal has denied any allegations of assault. His attorney Travis McCarter told news outlets in a statement that the priest is a “terrific human being and we are glad to finally be able to show the world that he’s innocent of these accusations.”

An attorney for the woman pointed to her lawsuit, adding in a statement that “a…

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Sex abuse survivors say they fear hundreds of claims filed could be at risk of unraveling.

Although legislation was passed offering a window giving survivors more time to sue, they say the clock is ticking for the Louisiana Supreme Court to rule if the legislation is constitutional.Advertisement

“I was an altar boy,” Mike B. said. “Deacon George Brignac abused me in many different ways in many different places, anywhere between 50 to 80 different instances. For years, I couldn’t walk into a church without having an anxiety attack.”

Mike B. said he received a large settlement from the Archdiocese before they went bankrupt.

Mike B. says it’s not enough to pay for therapy for the rest of his life or the pain of being abused as a child. He never got his day in court. George Brignac, who was arrested for rape, died in 2020, leaving a dark and deep hole.

…

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PARIS (AP) — A French bishop has been given a preliminary charge of attempting to rape an adult man a decade ago, the Paris prosecutor’s office said Monday. It is the latest of a growing number of accusations of sexual abuse by clergy in France.

The Bishops’ Conference of France said the accused bishop, Georges Colomb, contests the charge and deserves the presumption of innocence. He has asked the Vatican to step aside from his duties as bishop of La Rochelle and Saintes in western France to prepare his defense.

French investigative website Mediapart reported that senior figures in the Catholic Church were aware of the accusations for years.

The allegations didn’t reach prosecutors until May of this year. That’s when lawyers for the Archdiocese of Paris and a Catholic group called the Foreign Missions of Paris, shortened to MEP in French, submitted a report of…

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A former pupil has received an apology and a substantial settlement from a private school after it accepted he was sexually abused by one of their priests.

KentOnline can reveal Sutton Valence School in Maidstone, which charges parents thousands of pounds per term, has settled a legal case with a man who alleged he was raped and assaulted when he was a young teenager.

Reverend David Barnes was a chaplain at the school in North Street when the allegations are said to have taken place during his time there in the 1980s.

He died in 2012, aged 75, after working as an assistant curate of Crayford, RAF chaplain and assistant curate of Minster on Sheppey.

The revelation comes just over a year after chemistry teacher Mohammed Afzal, 67, was jailed for three years for sexually assaulting a girl at the school in 1993.

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The Catholic Church and all its members must end silence about clerical sexual abuse and ensure cases are no longer covered up, Pope Francis said, adding it is “non-negotiable.”

Meeting Nov. 18 with Italian diocesan and regional representatives of safeguarding programs and listening centers, the pope said it also is essential to “pursue the ascertainment of the truth and the restoration of justice in the ecclesial community, including in those cases where certain behaviors are not considered crimes by the law of the state, but are under canon law.”

Cardinal Matteo Zuppi of Bologna, president of the Italian bishops’ conference, presented Pope Francis with the conference’s second annual report on safeguarding, covering the year 2022.

While 81 percent of calls to the listening centers were to seek information, the rest were to report cases of abuse to church authorities, said the report, compiled by researchers at the Piacenza campus of…

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Today’s sentencing of Michael Zacharias in federal court marks another step towards justice for all of those harmed by his actions. As I expressed in my May 12, 2023 statement following his conviction, “The acts of which Rev. Michael Zacharias has been found guilty are reprehensible, morally deplorable, and manifestly contrary to the dignity due to each human person and the dignity of the priesthood.”

At the conclusion of the federal trial and the conviction of Zacharias, the diocese, in accord with Canon (Church) Law, had requested the imposition of the penalty of direct dismissal of the clerical state (returning him to the lay state), transmitting the case to the Holy See who alone has the authority to make a final determination concerning his status as a priest in the Church. We are awaiting the response.

With this sentencing, and as we await a decision from the Holy See, it is…

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An Ohio priest was sentenced to life in prison Friday after he was convicted of grooming three boys and taking advantage of their opioid addictions to force them into commercial sex, according to the U.S. Justice Department.

In May, a federal jury in Toledo found the Rev. Michael Zacharias, a Roman Catholic clergy member, guilty of five counts of sex trafficking in allegations that spanned 15 years, from July 2005 to August 2020. Prosecutors said he abused his role as a teacher and priest at a Toledo parish school to groom the three boys into adulthood, force them into sex and enable their addictions to pain medications and heroin later in life.

“Michael Zacharias used his position as a trusted spiritual leader and role model for young boys and their families to exploit them in the most insidious ways, coercing his victims from childhood and beyond to engage in…

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The Roman Catholic Diocese of Portland places the safety and protection of children as a highest priority. Initiatives have been in place for decades to ensure a safe environment for youth and vulnerable adults within parishes, schools, and institutions across the state of Maine. Rigorous trainings, comprehensive employee background checks, and safe environment programming like Protecting God’s Children and Circle of Grace have proven effective through a variety of regularly conducted independent audits. There has not been a substantiated new allegation of sexual abuse of a minor by a cleric in Maine since 1993.

The diocese’s opposition to the 2021 retroactive change in the statute of limitations law, and the appeal to the Law Court, in no way reflects a desire to minimize the devastating effects of past sexual abuse by Church representatives. Before the law was changed, there were already no limitations on any claims after 1988. The diocese is committed…

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A 32-year-old mother gets four life terms in prison for sexually abusing her 6-year-old son and 1-year-old girl for profit

A court in the Philippines has sentenced a 32-year-old mother to four life terms in prison for exploiting her six-year-old son and one-year-old girl for profit in one of the strongest penalties against online sexual abuse of children.

The conviction is another “testament to the government’s relentless effort” in ending trafficking and online sexual abuse of children, said regional prosecutor Janet Grace Dalisay-Fabrero.

The court decision, dated Oct. 16, was made public on Nov. 15 by the International Justice Mission (IJM), a non-governmental organization that deals with online child abuse in the country.

Live-streaming sex content using children is reported to be prevalent in the Catholic-majority Philippines because of its active underground sex industry, robust remittance infrastructure, inexpensive internet access, and English language proficiency, reports say.

Until November…

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Soon, a federal judge will make one of the first key decisions in the Archdiocese of Baltimore bankruptcy. How much time should survivors have to file a claim of clergy sex abuse?

An earlier deadline would hasten payments to all survivors, but shorten their window to join in the case. A later deadline would delay their payments, but give them more time to reckon with their trauma and make up their minds.

It’s a balancing act for the court, and the archdiocese attorneys have staked out their starting place for negotiations. They propose a claims deadline of Feb. 26.

That’s 150 days after the Archdiocese of Baltimore filed for bankruptcy. And that’s one of the shortest windows ever for claims in a U.S. Catholic Church bankruptcy, according to an analysis by The Baltimore Banner.

The Banner reviewed the 35 other archdiocese and diocese bankruptcies in the U.S. and found 150…

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Should religious leaders be held responsible for disclosing to law enforcement knowledge that church members are committing acts of sexual abuse? On Friday, Arizona Judge Timothy Dickerson answered no.

Dickerson’s end-of-week ruling dismissed a high-profile child sexual abuse lawsuit against the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints on the basis of the state’s clergy-penitent privilege.

Clergy-penitent privilege is a legal privilege that protects information from being disclosed in criminal proceedings, such as in a deposition, if that information was obtained during a confidential conversation between clergy and penitent. This privilege allows those seeking clergy counsel to communicate freely with their religious leaders with the understanding that information shared in a counseling session or other private setting will not be disclosed without their express consent, even if that information contains the confession or discovery of a crime.

This privilege was relevant to Dickerson’s ruling because the case involved the disclosure to multiple…

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Annette Kurschus says she is stepping down ‘to prevent damage to my church’.

The head of the Protestant Church in Germany has resigned amid accusations she turned a blind eye to allegations of sexual assault at a church she pastored in the 1990s.

Annette Kurschus, a senior theologian who led Germany’s largest Protestant federation, said on Monday that she had no knowledge of the alleged abuse at the time but would step down to “prevent damage to my church”.

“At every moment, I acted to the best of my knowledge and my conscience,” Kurschus said at a press conference announcing her resignation. “But public trust in my person has been damaged.”

The 60-year-old theologian has been dogged by media reports that she was informed “in detail” of allegations of sexual abuse against a church colleague in the 1990s and took no action.

The colleague — who…

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I’m a survivor of sex abuse at the hands of a youth pastor. I was a teenager in a broken home. It feels trite to say abuse is traumatic. The fact is it alters a young person’s life for years. 

My own personal journey of healing led to later work as a therapist supporting victims and advocating for additional ways to protect children in religious settings. I’ve also conducted research with an eye toward identifying systems and best practices to deter abuse.

As an adult, I converted to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. While no organization operates perfectly, and there’s always room for improvements, I’ve been impressed by a range of effective systems and practices implemented to protect children in the global church.

This is why I was confused to read a recent Associated Press news report characterizing the church as having “a system” to…

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• DailyMail.com has combed through reams of court documents and spoken to around a dozen church members to expose the true scale of alleged abuse
• Victims claim abuse is ‘rampant’, with the church facing legal action over allegations it consistently hides cases from police to avoid costly lawsuits
• Their stories, which span decades, claim the church has allowed abusers to operate unchallenged, with women and children made to suffer as a result 
• Have you experienced abuse within the Mormon church? Contact miles.dilworth@mailonline.com 

By 

Mormon leaders are ‘covering up’ an ‘epidemic’ of sexual abuse that rivals scandals exposed within the Catholic church, victims have alleged to DailyMail.com.

The Utah-based religion has repeatedly protected perpetrators and punished those who speak out in a bid to protect its reputation ‘at all costs’, it is claimed.

Victims believe abuse is ‘rampant’, with Mormon families said to be suffering ‘extremely high rates of incest’. 

Young girls subjected to horrific…

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In November, America’s Vatican correspondent, Gerard O’Connell, interviewed Cardinal Christophe Pierre, who has served as apostolic nuncio to the United States since 2016. Cardinal Pierre spoke candidly about the challenge of conveying Pope Francis’ message of synodality to the U.S. bishops, saying that they lead a church living through “a change of epoch.” The interview, published on America’s website, elicited spirited reflections from our readers.

Being a faithful Catholic to all of the teachings and blessed by the charismatic renewal in my archdiocese, I can see how the church is at a “change of epoch.” As a mother of seven and grandmother of four, I can see how much the culture has changed. My youngest children are facing a culture much more hostile to the faith than my oldest did—what will my grandchildren face as they get older? And yet, the Holy Spirit keeps me always hopeful for this next generation, and…

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The priest, Michael Zacharias, had enabled the victims’ drug addictions by paying them money in exchange for sexual acts, prosecutors said.

An Ohio priest who coerced three boys into engaging in sexual acts as children and abused their addiction to opioids as teenagers and adults, paying them money that funded their drug habits in exchange for sex, was sentenced to life in prison on Friday, the Justice Department said.

The priest, Michael Zacharias, 56, was found guilty in May of five counts of sex trafficking by a federal jury in Toledo, Ohio, in a case that prosecutors said revealed how a trusted spiritual leader had preyed on childhood piety.

During the two-week trial, prosecutors with the U.S. Attorney’s Office in the Northern District of Ohio described the pernicious actions of Mr. Zacharias, who they said had targeted financially vulnerable boys without fathers or steady lives at home, earning their trust…

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Group wants federal government to take a role in investigating complaints of abuse

A London, Ont., woman who is a survivor of childhood sexual abuse by a Roman Catholic priest is now heading a new organization aimed at delivering speedier justice for victims.

This month, Irene Deschenes helped found Outrage Canada, a national non-religious advocacy group with a mandate to hold the church accountable for sexual abuse by the clergy.

The group proposes the federal government set up a national reporting centre to gather and investigate reports of clergy abuse. Deschenes said the current system re-victimizes people who file abuse allegations with the church.

“Right now, for folks their knee-jerk reaction is to go right to the institution that harmed them,” she said. “Priests and bishops, they’re not trained to investigate crimes.”

Deschenes said the Catholic Church can’t be trusted to investigate itself, and that it has a poor record…

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The longer one looks at what did and did not happen in the Strickland case, the more starkly does it begin to appear that Pope Francis’s main concern was to send a message, pour encourager les autres.

The Catholic world is in an uproar over the ouster of a bishop with an outsized public profile that he acquired mostly through social media.

If you’re Catholic and you pay attention to these things, you’ll probably have guessed that I am talking about Bishop Joseph Strickland, olim of Tyler, Texas, a physically gargantuan diocese cobbled from parts of three other Texan jurisdictions in the mid-1980s with a Catholic head count that is a miniscule fraction of the large general population.

The very short version of a very sad story is that Strickland said or repeated lots of very nasty things about Pope Francis, which…

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QUINCY — As he prepared to sentence Isaiah Mikkelson Friday morning, Judge Tad Brenner took a moment to discuss sexual abuse occurring in church settings.

“That any religious institution does not have policies and procedures and education in place to prevent situations like this from happening is absolutely appalling,” Brenner said. “That is a situation which is beyond my jurisdiction and beyond the jurisdiction of a secular court, but it is something that I feel compelled to say in terms of Mr. Mikkelson.”

Brenner then sentenced Mikkelson, 22, a former youth leader at Hope Lutheran Church in Quincy, to 12 years in the Illinois Department of Corrections. He pled guilty to two counts of aggravated criminal sexual abuse with a person under the age of 18 on Sept. 26.

“What I see is grooming of these two young ladies went on for a very long period of time,” Brenner said….

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Legal experts say a record $3.3 million payout awarded by a Victorian jury to the victim of a paedophile priest this month could change the way victims of sexual abuse in the church are compensated.

The Supreme Court case was the first time a civil trial against the Catholic Church had been tested before a jury, and the $3.3 million figure was the largest payout of its kind from the church to an abuse survivor.

Four men brought a case against the Diocese of Wagga Wagga in 2022 for abuse perpetrated by convicted paedophile Vincent Kiss.

Three settled out of court on the eve of the recent trial, while TJ, whose real name cannot be used for legal reasons, continued to court in the civil case in Victoria’s Supreme Court, eventually being awarded the life-changing sum.

Lawyer Judy Courtin, who specialises in representing victims of institutional child sexual and physical abuse,…

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Because of his lifetime of progressive activism, Bishop Thomas John Gumbleton, auxiliary bishop emeritus of the Archdiocese of Detroit, is often listed among what might be termed the “advance guard” of interpreting church ideals and goals. A meticulous new study of his life and accomplishments by Frank Fromherz and Suzanne Sattler, I.H.M., No Guilty Bystander,follows a more concise, journalistic explication from 2019 by the America contributor and National Catholic Reporter mainstay Peter Feuerherd.

No Guilty Bystander

by Frank Fromherz, Ph.D. and Suzanne Sattler, I.H.M.

Orbis Books
336p $30

The term “advance guard” is more suitable than avant-garde for the Detroit-born Gumbleton, a down-to-earth, no-frills personality who celebrated his 93rd birthday in January 2023. On subjects from pacifism to capital punishment to inclusive church outreach for gender minorities, Gumbleton may have prefigured current Vatican policy by a generation or more.

We learn early on in the book that Gumbleton has had…

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A French commission examining sexual violence against children called Friday for removing all time limits on the prosecution of people suspected of raping or sexually assaulting minors.

The Independent Commission on Incest and Sexual Violence against Children, which is known by its French acronym CIIVISE, also recommended defining sexual abuse of children as a separate offense under the law when it happens within families.

France’s statute of limitation for sexual crimes against children is 30 years from the time the victim legally becomes an adult at age 18. The commission said in a report issued Friday that removing the time limit is necessary because it can take decades for victims to be able to speak out.

The commission of independent experts was established two years ago after child abuse accusations involving a prominent French political expert unleashed a massive social media campaign in which hundreds of people shared accounts of…

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Father Antony Punnackal was found not guilty on sexual battery charges in the criminal case against him

Father Antony Punnackal was acquitted Thursday of two sexual battery charges, according to District Attorney General Jimmy Dunn.

Punnackal was indicted by a Sevier County Grand Jury in January of 2022 on one count of sexual battery by an authority figure and one count of sexual battery and was found not guilty on those charges Thursday.

In February 2020, the father of anonymous Jane Doe’s youngest child was killed. Her primary language was Spanish so she reached out to a bilingual assistant at St. Mary’s Catholic Church to set up a meeting for emotional support and spiritual guidance.

Punnackal was chosen to meet with Doe even though he did not speak Spanish. On Feb. 17, 2020, Doe went to St. Mary’s to meet with Punnackal. The bilingual assistant led her to a room…

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The International House of Prayer Kansas City (IHOPKC) has just released a report on initial findings, discounting some of the recent clergy sexual abuse allegations made against its founder Mike Bickle. The report also questions the “true objectives” of the “Complaint Group,” which presented the allegations to IHOPKC leadership in October.

This group, comprised of former IHOPKC leaders, published a statement Oct. 28, saying it had become aware of numerous allegations of sexual abuse against Bickle from “credible” women, “spanning several decades.”

However, IHOPKC said in its report that it has identified five of the eight women the group claimed are Bickle’s victims. Three of the women have publicly called the allegations “lies,” the report stated. A fourth has reportedly refused to communicate with IHOPKC’s lawyer. One of the women’s allegations predate IHOPKC’s founding, the report said. And four of the women did not give consent to be…

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Three weeks after the Southern Baptist Convention and three of its entities were discovered to have signed an amicus brief in Kentucky arguing against the rights of sexual abuse survivors seeking justice, nothing has changed on the legal front.

Neither the SBC, the SBC Executive Committee, Southern Baptist Theological Seminary nor Lifeway Christian Resources has renounced the brief, withdrawn from it or apologized for standing against a victim facing her abuser and those who knew of her abuse and did not act.

The one exception is SBC President Bart Barber, who apologized that what he had done upset some friends in the SBC. Southern Seminary President Al Mohler said he simply did what the lawyers told him to do, and Lifeway has said nothing at all for three weeks.

On Thursday, Nov. 16, trustees of the Executive Committee gathered in executive session to discuss the matter and reported no action to reverse or rescind their participation in…

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The Catholic Church in Scotland has criticized the Scottish government’s new guidance on sex education, arguing that the latest proposals threaten the right of Catholic schools to protect their religious ethos.

Following the release of a draft government document called “Guidance on Relationships, Sexual Health, and Parenthood (RSHP) Education,” Scotland’s bishops issued a forthright statement on Nov. 8 in response, highlighting that previous religious protections had been scrubbed out.

“The Bishops’ Conference of Scotland is both disappointed and confused at the decision by the Scottish government to delete all reference to Catholic schools in its ‘Guidance on the Delivery of Relationships, Sexual Health, and Parenthood (RSHP) Education in Scottish Schools’ document,” the bishops said.

“We strongly request the reinsertion of the paragraphs relating to denominational education from the previous iteration of the guidance, which would reflect both the legal protection for schools with a religious character and the previously supportive…

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A Roman Catholic priest received a life sentence Friday for his convictions on five counts related to sex-trafficking charges in the molestation of three boys who prosecutors say he met at an Ohio preschool and coerced to continue sexual activity as adults.

Rev. Michael Zacharias, 56, received concurrent life sentences for counts of sex trafficking a minor and sex trafficking of a minor by force, fraud, or coercion. He received concurrent 20-year sentences for two counts of sex trafficking of an adult by force, fraud, or coercion and one of similarly trafficking a minor.

Prosecutors have said Zacharias “paid the victims to engage in sex acts with him using the victims’ fear of serious harm to compel their compliance.” They also said the three victims were developing serious drug addictions and the priest “waited to propose commercial sex” until they were heavily involved in drug abuse.

Zacharias has maintained his…

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A Catholic religious order has agreed to pay $2.9 million to settle claims of child sexual assault by a Catholic brother and former teacher that allegedly continued occurring after the student brought the claims to the attention of upper administration at Mount Carmel High School.

The settlement with the Order of the Carmelites, filed in September, alleges that Brother Robert Murphy, a former teacher at Mount Carmel High School, sexually assaulted a boy more than a dozen times while he was a student at the school from 1982 to 1986. The settlement claims the student made a school disciplinarian aware of the abuse but that no action was taken against Murphy.

The student met Murphy in the summer of 1982 prior to the start of the school year when Murphy supervised activities sponsored by the school, the settlement says. The suit alleges Murphy “paid an inappropriate amount of attention” to…

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Father Juan Huerta Ibarra flees trial in Venezuela, accused of repeated child sexual abuse by José Leonardo Araujo, who was 13 at the time

Bogotá — The more time passed, the harder it became temper the deep sorrow gnawing at his soul. For almost twenty years, José Leonardo Araujo Araque had kept silent about the sexual abuse he suffered as a child. At times, he could hardly put his own thoughts straight — he felt like a hook was stuck in his throat. He decided to study law, driven by a desire for justice. During his criminal law classes, he would get distracted counting the months he had left to file a complaint before the statute of limitations would expire, then the professor’s voice would jolt him out of his disturbing memories.

At the age of 13, José Leonardo dreamed of becoming a priest. He was in the eighth grade…

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