ABUSE TRACKER

VATICAN CITY
Reuters

September 24, 2020

By Philip Pullella

A powerful Vatican cardinal caught up in a real estate scandal resigned suddenly on Thursday and gave up his right to take part in an eventual conclave to elect a pope, in one of the most mysterious episodes to hit the Holy See in years.

A brief statement, issued unusually in the evening, said that Pope Francis had accepted the resignation of Cardinal Giovanni Angelo Becciu, head of the department that decides who will be the saints of the Roman Catholic Church.

But perhaps more significantly, the statement said the Becciu, 72, had “given up the rights associated with being a cardinal”.

The one-line statement gave no details but the most important right of Roman Catholic cardinals under 80, as is Becciu, is to take part in a conclave to elect a new pope after the current pope dies or resigns.

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GERMANY
Catholic News Agency

September 25, 2020

Germany’s Catholic bishops agreed this week to a uniform system for compensation payments to abuse survivors.

Bishop Georg Bätzing, president of the German bishops’ conference, announced the agreement Sept. 24 at the end of the bishops’ plenary meeting in Fulda, central Germany.

Under the new system, survivors of abuse by Church workers will be entitled to a one-off payment of up to 50,000 euros ($58,000) — a sum based on current court rulings.

Previously German dioceses had determined payments individually.

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GERMANY
Deutsche Welle

September 24, 2020

The Conference of German Catholic bishops has announced plans to compensate abuse victims up to €50,000 each. Much more than the previous average payout, but much less than survivors had hoped for.

Fall meeting of the German Bishops’ Conference (Arne Dedert/dpa/picture-alliance)
A statement by the Conference of German Catholic Bishops revealed new plans on Thursday to pay survivors of abuse at the hands of Catholic priests compensation of up to €50,000 ($58,000).

The compensation consists of a one-off payment for each affected individual as determined by an independent decision-making body, the chair of the Bishops’ Conference, Georg Bätzing, announced in the central German city of Fulda.

Victims will also be able to request that costs for individual or couples therapy be paid for by the Church.

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GERMANY
UPI

September 24, 2020

ByClyde Hughes

A conference of German Catholic bishops introduced a new model on Thursday to pay survivors of abuse within the church, which could pay each more than $50,000.

The German Bishops Conference announced the creation of an independent committee to investigate complaints of sexual abuse by priests and other clergy. The panel would also determine compensation.

Conference Chair Georg Batzing detailed the new model Thursday at a meeting in Fulda.

Under the change, survivors are eligible for a onetime payment of up to $58,000. Victims will also be able to request that the church pay for therapy.

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UNITED STATES
The Tower (newspaper of Catholic University)

September 24, 2020

By Margaret Adams

The Archdiocese of New Orleans filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection on Friday, May 1, 2020. This allows the Archdiocese to continue employing workers while the court oversees “the restructuring and implementation of a plan to repay the creditors,” according to 4WWL New Orleans.

In an effort to hold the Archdiocese of New Orleans accountable for filing the bankruptcy in bad faith and hiding information regarding their sexual assault lawsuits, the Official Committee of Unsecured Creditors was formed. The Committee was formed on May 20 under the U.S. Trustee Program in an attempt to “dismiss the Archdiocese’s bankruptcy case completely, a move that would help pending abuse claims move forward,” said 4WWL. The Committee elected James Adams as the Chair of the Committee by a unanimous vote. The creditors in the Archdiocese of New Orleans’ bankruptcy case consist mostly of survivors of sexual assault by priests or other employees of the archdiocese.

“I believe that this path will allow victims of clergy abuse to resolve their claims in a fair and timely manner,” said Archbishop of New Orleans, Gregory Aymond, in a newsletter to the archdiocese. “My daily prayer is that this independent process brings about healing for those who have been harmed as a result of abuse by members of the clergy. The healing of victims and survivors is most important to me and to the church.”

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UNITED KINGDOM
Sky News

September 24, 2020

By Jason Farrell

Victims groups believe they are being silenced and say the inquiry is hearing too much from institutions.

A top lawyer speaking on behalf of victims has led an extraordinary intervention into an inquiry on historical child sexual abuse, saying “we speak with one voice”.

Four days into the latest hearing of the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse (IICSA), the review team has been told “it is simply not good enough”.

Victims groups believe they are being silenced and the evidence is being skewed towards the institutions that failed to protect them.

The latest strand of the IICSA is looking at child sexual exploitation by organised networks in England and Wales.

But this morning the hearing gave time for a joint statement from victims groups who accused the inquiry of “a profound imbalance in the evidence”, saying a large number of institutions had been heard but very few victims to challenge their narrative.

“You are not hearing from a single one of those who at a national level represent and work with victims and survivors,” said Caoilfhionn Gallagher QC, speaking on behalf of victims. “Why are we hearing from one side and not the other?”

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VATICAN CITY
Vatican News

September 25, 2020

Teresa Kettelkamp, a member of the Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors, says, “The Catholic Church is being a leader in the world in protecting children and providing assistance to victims.”

The Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors (PCPM) held its 14th Ordinary Plenary Assembly from 16-18 September.

During the meeting, which took place partly in person and partly online, members assessed the projects the Commission has been working on over the course of the past year.

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NEW JERSEY
NorthJersey.com

September 24, 2020

By Abbott Koloff and Deena Yellin

Archbishop John J. Myers, who was known for taking strong and sometimes controversial stands during the 15 years that he led the Newark Archdiocese, died on Thursday at the age of 79, months after moving to an Illinois senior facility because of poor health.

Myers said when he retired four years ago that he was proud to leave behind two “thriving institutions,” Seton Hall University and Catholic Charities, and for having ordained almost 200 priests during his time in Newark.

He also built a legacy of speaking his mind about issues that were important to him, like his opposition to abortion and same-sex marriage.

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PEORIA (IL)
Peoria Journal Star

September24, 2020

By Nick Vlahos

A former spiritual leader of Peoria-area Catholics died Thursday morning.

Archbishop John J. Myers was surrounded by family when he died in a care facility in Ottawa, according to a statement from Catholic Diocese of Peoria Bishop Daniel Jenky. Myers was 79.

Myers served as Peoria bishop from 1990 until 2001, when he became archbishop in Newark, N.J.

In 2016, Myers retired from his Newark post.

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[Note from BishopAccountability.org: Today is the third anniversary of the death of Barbara Blaine, founder of SNAP and of the global movement for accountability in the Catholic Church. She is still deeply missed. Re-posted below is her New York Times‘ obituary in its entirety. See also obituaries for Barbara in the Toledo Blade and National Catholic Reporter, a remembrance by BA’s Anne Barrett Doyle, Celia Viggo Wexler’s call to make her a saint, and this stunning tribute by Peter Isely.]

THE NEW YORK TIMES
September 25, 2017

By Laurie Goodstein

Barbara Blaine, who was sexually abused by a Roman Catholic priest as a teenager and went on to found the nation’s most potent advocacy group for abuse survivors, died on Sunday in St. George, Utah. She was 61.

The cause was a sudden tear in a blood vessel in her heart, which she sustained on Sept. 18 after going hiking on a vacation, her husband, Howard Rubin, said. She lived in Chicago.

Ms. Blaine, a lawyer with a degree in theology, served for nearly 30 years as president of the group she founded, the Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests, known as SNAP. She stepped down this year and had recently started a new international organization to hold the Vatican and church officials overseas accountable for covering up abuse cases.

Ms. Blaine was an ardent Catholic who spent her years after college serving and living with homeless people in a Catholic Worker house in Chicago, part of a social justice movement for the poor founded by the activist Dorothy Day. Ms. Blaine applied that same activist sensibility to creating a new movement to fight for abuse survivors.

“She was relentless in the cause of justice, and in that sense she’s a true disciple of Dorothy Day,” said Jason Berry, who was among the first journalists to break news of the abuse scandal. “I think the damage she did to the hierarchy and its credibility was enormous, because she kept demanding that they be truthful.”

Ms. Blaine’s life changed after she read Mr. Berry’s articles in 1985 in the newspaper The National Catholic Reporter about a serial pedophile priest in Louisiana. She, too, had been molested for years as a teenager in Toledo, Ohio, by a priest who she said had convinced her that she was an “evil temptress.”

Mr. Berry’s articles helped her realize, she later told him, that the priest’s actions had been a crime and that she was not at fault. After Ms. Blaine confronted the priest, the Rev. Chet Warren, and his superiors, the church agreed to pay for therapy for her, but the priest was allowed to remain in ministry for years.

She started SNAP in 1988 as a support group, finding fellow victims through an ad placed in The National Catholic Reporter. Some of the early meetings were at the Catholic Worker house in Chicago, but there were also gatherings in San Francisco, St. Louis and other cities.

“We had the idea this would be necessary only for a couple of years,” said David Clohessy, an abuse survivor who soon joined Ms. Blaine as a leader of the organization. “Honestly, we thought there were maybe only 200 people like us across the country.”

Before long, the mission broadened to include advocacy. Members would stick fliers on the windshields of cars parked at a church during Mass warning that an abusive priest was inside. Victims stood outside cathedrals and even on St. Peter’s Square at the Vatican holding photographs of themselves as children when they were first molested.

Ms. Blaine told her story to the local news media in Toledo, and her abuser was removed from ministry after more of his victims came forward. She received a settlement from the church.

“She wasn’t trying to change the world; she was trying to heal herself,” said Barbara Dorris, the managing director of the Survivors Network and an early participant in the group. “She was trying to work within the church, but Barbara couldn’t because the systems failed her and her perpetrator was still out there. She felt, like every victim feels, that there’s this responsibility to speak up before what happened to you happens to someone else.”

In 2002, after a vast cover-up of abusive priests in Boston was revealed by The Boston Globe, and after similar accounts emerged across the country, the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops asked Ms. Blaine and Mr. Clohessy to address them at a pivotal meeting in Dallas. American bishops eventually adopted a zero-tolerance policy and pledged to remove priests credibly accused of abuse.

But since then SNAP has often accused bishops of failing to keep these promises, and the group continues to be seen by the church as an adversarial force.

Archbishop Wilton Gregory of Atlanta, who was president of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops at the height of the scandal in 2002, recalled on Monday that he had first met Ms. Blaine when he was an auxiliary bishop in Chicago. He had helped her obtain a closed church to use as a Catholic Worker house.

“She was a woman of faith; may God be merciful to her,” Archbishop Gregory said.

Besides her husband, Ms. Blaine is survived by her stepsons, Brett and Joshua Rubin; two step-grandsons; three brothers; and four sisters, one of them her twin.

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NEW YORK (NY)
The Gothamist

September 23, 2020

By Sydney Pereira

A former reverend at a Manhattan Presbyterian church is accused of sending inappropriate photos and asking for oral sex from a female pastor who he helped get a job, according to a new lawsuit filed this week. When the pastor, Reverend Grace Nzameyo Maa, filed a complaint to church officials with the Presbytery of New York City, a group of dozens of churches in the five boroughs, the church and reverend iced her out of working as a pastor in the city, according to the court papers filed Tuesday.

Nzameyo, a New Jersey resident and former Manhattan pastor, is accusing the Presbytery of New York City of retaliating against her for coming forward about being sexually harassed by her boss, Reverend Charles Atkins, Jr., according to a lawsuit filed in Manhattan supreme court this week. Shortly after Nzameyo accepted a formal part-time position as a pastor at the Presbytery’s French Evangelical Church in Chelsea, Atkins allegedly began expecting sexual favors in return for helping her get the job, the lawsuit says.

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NEWFOUNDLAND AND LABRADOR (CANADA)
The Canadian Press via the Toronto Star

September 23, 2020

The archdiocese of St. John’s will ask the Supreme Court of Canada to overturn a decision that declared the city’s Roman Catholic Episcopal Corporation liable for sexual abuse at the Mount Cashel orphanage in the 1950s.

The archdiocese says in a release that its lawyers today petitioned for leave to appeal the July decision from the Newfoundland and Labrador Court of Appeal.

Geoff Budden, the victims’ lawyer, had said the Appeal Court ruling meant the archdiocese would have to pay about $2 million to four lead plaintiffs in the case.

Budden said today’s decision to appeal was expected, although his clients would rather be getting their settlements.

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INDIA
Global Sisters Report via NCR

September 24, 2020

By Saji Thomas

THIRUVALLA, INDIA — On the morning of May 7, Divya P. John, a 21-year-old novice with the Basilian Sisters near here, attended class as usual, a church spokesman says. But an hour later, around noon, her body was found in a well at the convent. Rescuers retrieved the body and bypassed a nearby public hospital to transport it to a diocesan hospital farther away.

A subsequent autopsy found the cause of death to be drowning, but no time of death was given. Church officials did not seek a police crime scene investigation into the mystery of how she died, labeling the tragedy a probable suicide.

John’s untimely death is the latest in close to 20 others since 1987 involving novices and sisters serving in Catholic communities in Kerala state in southern India.

The most notable was the murder of Sister Abhaya, whose body was found in 1992 at the bottom of her convent’s well in Kottayam. Originally dismissed as a suicide, that case took a turn in 2008 after a criminal investigation deemed her death was a murder. Now, almost three decades after Abhaya’s death, a priest and nun charged with her murder are undergoing a trial that only began in August 2019.

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(NEW DELHI) INDIA
National Catholic Reporter

September 18, 2020

By Jose Kavi

Several Catholic groups in India have expressed relief after the Vatican removed its controversial envoy from the country.

Pope Francis Aug. 29 suddenly transferred Archbishop Giambattista Diquattro, apostolic nuncio to India and Nepal, to Brazil amid accusations of inaction against allegedly corrupt bishops.

“I saw the nuncio’s transfer as a small moral victory, not something to gloat about, but more a sense of relief,” chhotebhai, coordinator of the Indian Catholic Forum and former president of the All India Catholic Union, the largest lay association in the country, told NCR.

Chhotebhai welcomed the transfer as a “good riddance,” a sentiment shared by Virginia Saldanha, a laywoman theologian, and Melwyn Fernandes of the Association of the Concerned Catholics, who had tried to contact the nuncio. Their experience has made them question the relevance of an envoy of a religious state to a secular country like India.

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ROME (ITALY)
Crux

September 24, 2020

By Elise Ann Allen

Peruvian theologian Rocio Figueroa says little is being done to target the spiritual abuse that allowed the clerical sex scandals to happen and is urging the Catholic Church to rethink its power structure and concept of leadership.

“Whenever there has been sexual abuse in the Church, you could see that there was first a spiritual abuse,” said Figueroa, who is among the speakers addressing a Sept. 21-Oct. 2 online course on abuse prevention in formation settings.

The course, organized by the Pontifical University of Mexico’s Center for the Protection of Minors, will feature a slew of professionals and experts in the field of child protection among its speakers and professors.

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Crux

September 24, 2020

By Inés San Martín

SANTA FE, Argentina – Chilean abuse survivors allege that the government is using the COVID-19 pandemic to delay having to deal with South American country’s clerical abuse scandal.

“The emails of the [Chilean ecclesiastical] Survivors Network are on fire seeing the situation of the allegations in the prosecutor’s office,” said Eneas Espinoza, a survivor from the Marist Brothers who is still waiting for justice. “The expectation grows and there’s much concern over the possibility of the pandemic being the truck of dirt that the Catholic Church needs to cover up its crimes.”

“If the Chilean State doesn’t do its job, we’ll move forward towards international courts. We need a State that guarantees human rights, not one that is a passive accomplice of crimes,” he told El Mostrador.

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PHOENIX (AZ)
3TV/CBS 5

September 23, 2020

By Spencer Blake

A priest who used to teach at Brophy is named in a lawsuit regarding possible sex abuse allegations in the 1980s.

There is yet another allegation of sexual abuse by a Catholic priest in Phoenix. On Monday, a lawsuit filed in Maricopa County is going after both Brophy College Preparatory and the Roman Catholic Diocese of Phoenix for allowing a priest to abuse a student in the 1980s sexually.

From 1980 to 1987, Father James Sinnerud worked as a teacher and a coach at Brophy. The lawsuit claims he left the plaintiff “John RK Doe” with “emotional distress, embarrassment, loss of self-esteem, disgrace, humiliation, anger, rage, frustration, loss of enjoyment of life, loss of consortium, loss of love and affection, sexual dysfunction, past and future medical expenses for psychological treatment, therapy, and counseling.”

“For [those who haven’t suffered abuse], that’s many years ago. But for the adult survivor, this is still an everyday part of their life,” said Robert Pastor, the plaintiff’s attorney.

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SALT LAKE CITY (UT)
KUTV

September 23, 2020

By Jeremy Harris

Federal authorities arrested a South Jordan man who is accused of producing child pornography and sexually abusing a 4-year-old child at a church.

Thomas Michael Wallin, 21, was booked into the Salt Lake County Jail on three charges of felony sexual exploitation of a minor, and one count of aggravated sexual abuse of a child, a first-degree felony.

According to an arrest affidavit, investigators from the Department of Homeland Security received information that Wallin was producing and distributing child pornography from his home in South Jordan.

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UNITED STATES
McClatchy News Service via Fort Worth Star & Telegram

September 23, 2020

By Summer Lin

A Utah man is accused of filming himself sexually abusing a young child at a Mormon church, police said.

It all started when the Department of Homeland Security received information that Thomas Michael Wallin, 21, of South Jordan was allegedly making and distributing child pornography, 2KUTV reported.

Police say Wallin admitted that he sexually abused a 4-year-old boy in December 2019 at the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, according to the station. Wallin is accused of filming himself abusing the child, 2KUTV reported.

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UNITED STATES
Religion News Service via Word and Way (blog)

By Adele M. Banks

September 23, 2020

In his first meeting as leader of the Southern Baptist Convention Executive Committee, Rolland Slade called on other committee members on Tuesday (Sept. 22) to be responsible “to shepherd and to protect” survivors of church sex abuse. Slade, senior pastor of Meridian Baptist Church in El Cajon, California, announced that the issue is “personal” for him because his wife is a survivor.

“For the last 40 years of my life, I have been in touch with a survivor of sexual abuse in the church,” he said to the 70 people attending the virtual meeting. “In fact, we’ve been married 39 years. So when I say it’s personal, it’s personal. And I encourage you to listen. You don’t have to solve it but you need to listen and share with them how much you care and what has happened to them is not what God would have happen in the church.”

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SPOKANE (WA)
Gonzaga (University) News Service

September 22, 2020

https://www.gonzaga.edu/news-events/stories/2020/9/22/gonzaga-scholars-awarded-grant-to-host-conference-on-sexual-abuse-crisis-in-the-catholic-church

Gonzaga University has been awarded a $40,000 grant to host a four-day research conference in spring 2022 as part of a new interdisciplinary initiative entitled “Taking Responsibility.” The initiative, made possible by a new nearly $1 million grant to Fordham University in New York City, aims to address the crisis in the Catholic Church related to sexual abuse by priests.

It has been more than 19 months since the Society of Jesus in the United States publicly disclosed the names of its members who were credibly accused of sexually abusing minors.

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KENTUCKY
WHOP, 98.7 FM

September 23, 2020

A resolution could be coming soon in the case of a man accused of sexually abusing a juvenile female on a church bus on Easter Sunday last year.

Attorney Sands Chewning represents Tyler Frances and told Judge John Atkins Wednesday morning that he’s working on speaking to some witnesses after discussions with the Commonwealth’s Attorney’s office and he’s hopeful to resolve the case by a court date next month.

Judge Atkins scheduled another pre-trial conference for October 14.

Investigation by Hopkinsville police led to the first-degree sexual abuse charge after the alleged victim said Frances ripped off her underwear and inappropriately touched her while both were riding the church bus. Frances was not an employee or affiliated with the church and has pled not guilty in the case.

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NEWFOUNDLAND (CANADA)
CBC News

September 23, 2020

By Ryan Cooke

Precedent could put church on the hook for millions, threatening future operations

The Archdiocese of St. John’s is looking to the Supreme Court of Canada to examine a landmark ruling that puts the Catholic Church on the hook for millions in sexual abuse lawsuits.

The ruling involves Mount Cashel Orphanage in St. John’s, where over the course of decades boys suffered immense sexual and physical abuse at the hands of the Christian Brothers of Ireland.

The Brothers were not employees of the archdiocese, but in July Newfoundland and Labrador Court of Appeal ruled the church created space for them to abuse children and get away with it, and therefore was liable to pay out damages owed by the now-defunct Christian Brothers organization.

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NEW YORK
Binghamton Press & Sun-Bulletin

September 23, 2020

By Anthony Borrelli

https://www.pressconnects.com/story/news/public-safety/2020/09/23/ny-child-victims-act-seton-coach-vincent-dutkowski-abuse-lawsuits-poughkeepsie-sex-offender/5802269002/

A now-deceased basketball coach accused of sexually abusing a student when he worked at the former Seton Catholic High School in Endicott during the 1970s faces similar allegations from his past employment at a Catholic school in Poughkeepsie.

Four lawsuits filed since December in the state Supreme Court of New York County accuse Vincent Dutkowski of sexually abusing students at Our Lady of Lourdes High School during the early to mid-1960s.

Dutkowski, who was a registered sex offender living in Florida before he died in 2012 at 83, did not face criminal charges related to accusations in the New York lawsuits — they were filed under provisions of the state’s Child Victims Act. He became a sex offender after being convicted in South Carolina in 2005 of criminal sexual conduct with a minor, according to records.

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INDIA
Global Sisters Report via NCR

September 17, 2020

By Saji Thomas

KOTTAYAM, INDIA — A Catholic nun, who two years ago accused Bishop Franco Mulakkal of Jalandhar of rape, started giving her testimony Wednesday in a district court in the southwestern Indian state of Kerala.

Her testimony will continue Thursday before the nun faces cross-examination by the defense lawyer.

Amid heavy rains, the closed door session in the District and Sessions Court in Kottayam lasted from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m.

Before the trial started, court officials closed all doors and windows and put up pink window curtains to keep the proceedings away from public view.

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UNITED STATES
The Worthy Adversary (blog)

September 23, 2020

By Joelle Casteix

What if the cornerstone of our conventional wisdom about the victims of the Catholic Church and clergy sex abuse crisis was wrong?

What if, in a statistically viable sample of survivors of abuse in the Catholic Church, 50% of respondents were female? What if you also knew that this result is almost statically impossible to achieve with the conventional wisdom, which says that boys outnumber girls four to one?

Would that change how you, the church, advocacy groups, and the general public respond to the crisis?

The results of my Survivors Insight Survey are in. You can read the white paper here.

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WEST VIRGINIA
The Charleston Gazette-Mail

September 22, 2020

By Lacie Pierson

https://www.wvgazettemail.com/news/legal_affairs/wv-court-considers-whether-the-first-amendment-protects-diocese-from-consumer-protection-laws/article_f46fc5d6-d3c1-571b-905e-e9e9cb1abf40.html

The West Virginia Supreme Court is considering whether it’s a violation of the First Amendment for Attorney General Patrick Morrisey to pursue a case against the Diocese of Wheeling-Charleston under the state’s Consumer Credit and Protection Act.

During about an hour’s worth of arguments in Charleston on Tuesday, the justices asked attorneys whether it was possible for the attorney general to hold the diocese accountable for potential violations of the consumer law in a way that didn’t impede its faith doctrine or church governance.

The arguments stem from a case filed in Ohio County Circuit Court in March 2019.

Morrisey filed the suit claiming that the diocese knowingly employed priests who had been credibly accused of sexual abuse, at Catholic schools and a camp owned and managed by the diocese. The diocese, Morrisey alleges, did not perform adequate background checks for the priests before hiring them, according to the lawsuit.

The diocese failed to disclose such issues in its advertising, according to the lawsuit

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PHOENIX (AZ)
Phoenix New Times

September 22,2020

By Erasmus Baxter

A Jesuit priest who taught at Brophy College Preparatory for seven years in the 1980s and coached the boy’s football team is the latest Phoenix-area Catholic priest to be accused of sexual abuse.

In a lawsuit filed today, an anonymous alum now living in California alleges that Reverend James A. Sinnerud, S.J. engaged in sexual contact with him without his consent and when he was a minor incapable of giving consent. The lawsuit does not specify the nature or time frame of the alleged misconduct, but Sinnerud would have been been in his late 40s when he taught at Brophy.

The lawsuit alleges that Brophy, the western U.S. Jesuits chapter, and the Phoenix Roman Catholic diocese were negligent in protecting the plaintiff from Sinnerud and either knew or should have known about his abuse. It cites longstanding evidence of the Church’s efforts to conceal an epidemic of child sex abuse by clergy, including a 2003 confession by the Phoenix bishop that he had moved priests around to conceal their misdeeds.

Sinnerud was one of 38 clergy members named by the Omaha, Nebraska, archdiocese as credibly accused of sexual abuse in 2018 following a probe from that state’s attorney general. It is unclear when the incident from that allegation occurred, but the Catholic school he was working for in 2018 said it occurred before he began work at the school in 1987 after leaving Brophy. Before arriving at Brophy, Sinnerud taught at Jesuit high schools in Seattle and Portland, according to research by the law firms filing the suit.

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ARIZONA
KVOA-TV

September 22, 2020

A child abuse lawsuit has been filed against Brophy College Preparatory School and the Diocese of Phoenix.

The suit, filed by a man named John R. K. Doe, alleges Father James Sinnerud abused him while he was a student at the all-male prep school in Phoenix.

The Jesuit teacher and coach taught at the school in the 1980s.

In 2018 Sinnerud was removed from another Jesuit prep school in Omaha, Nebraska after being accused of sexual abuse.

The lawsuit was filed under the Arizona Child Victims Act. The law, which went into effect last year, extends the time for sexual abuse victims to sue predators and the institutions which protected them.

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UNITED STATES
Catholic News Service via Crux

September 23, 2020

By Barb Umberger

The coronavirus pandemic has disrupted lives in many ways — from schools to workplaces, sports to socializing.

It also has impacted the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis’s efforts to assist victim-survivors of clergy sexual abuse.

Since starting in June 2019 as the archdiocese’s outreach coordinator for restorative justice and abuse prevention, Paula Kaempffer has developed a list of healing events, presentations on restorative justice, listening sessions and other opportunities available through the Office of Ministerial Standards and Safe Environment.

And last September, she started an in-person support group to help victim-survivors of sexual abuse. It met monthly for about 90 minutes in a Twin Cities-area local library. In-person attendance had been sparse, Kaempffer said, but those who participated valued the experience.

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CALIFORNIA
Christian Leader

September 10, 2020

By Connie Faber

Former Bakersfield pastor, local church named as defendants

A female member of a Mennonite Brethren congregation in Bakersfield, California, has filed a lawsuit alleging sexual misconduct on the part of a former pastor and counselor.

The woman, who is not named, filed a complaint July 22, 2020, in Kern County Superior Court requesting a jury trial and financial damages. The defendants are listed as The Bridge Bible Church (BBC), former pastor Eric Simpson and 50 unnamed individual and entities.

The complaint alleges that the misconduct began when the plaintiff and her husband sought counseling for family and marital issues through BBC and met with Simpson every other week from August 2016 to May 2017. It is alleged that Simpson insisted on talking about sex and began making sexually inappropriate comments in texts and conversations after services. The complaint states that due to personal losses the plaintiff began one-on-one therapy sessions with Simpson in the summer of 2018, which is when the alleged sexual abuse began

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FLORIDA
Palm Beach Post

September 22, 2020

By Jane Musgrave

The parents of an 11-year-old girl have sued All Saints Catholic School in Jupiter, its principal and the Diocese of Palm Beach over allegations that a boy inappropriately touched her.

A sixth-grade student at All Saints Catholic School was charged with battery and lewd and lascivious molestation after an 11-year-old classmate accused him of groping her, according to a Jupiter police report.

The allegations last week spawned a civil lawsuit against the school, its principal and the Diocese of Palm Beach.

In the lawsuit that was filed in Palm Beach County Circuit Court, an attorney representing the girl and her parents accused school officials and the diocese of protecting the boy because he is the son of wealthy donors.

The heavily redacted report that police provided to The Palm Beach Post on Tuesday confirmed many of the claims made by attorney Michael Dolce, who is representing the girl and her parents.

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BUFFALO (NY)
Buffalo News

September 22, 2020

By Jay Tokasz

Child Victims Act lawsuits filed over the past year have accused 173 Catholic priests in Western New York of sexually abusing children.

More than 30 of those priests were accused publicly for the first time only in recent weeks, including one cleric who has continued to run a South Buffalo parish despite being linked to abuse in a July lawsuit.

The Rev. Donald J. Lutz said he wasn’t aware of the lawsuit when The Buffalo News contacted him last week. Lutz is pastor of Our Lady of Perpetual Help, a small parish on O’Connell Avenue in the Old First Ward neighborhood of the city.

Attorneys Steve Boyd and Jeffrey Anderson filed a lawsuit July 30 in State Supreme Court on behalf of an anonymous plaintiff accusing Lutz of engaging in “unpermitted sexual contact” with the plaintiff from 1975 to 1976. The plaintiff was 13 to 14 at the time and attended St. Leo the Great Church, according to court papers.

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WHEELING (WV)
WTOV-TV

September 21, 2020

The Diocese of Wheeling-Charleston issued a statement responding to a civil lawsuit by a former Parkersburg Catholic High School Principal. John Gobolewski alleges retaliation for reporting abuse.

The diocese said the former principal’s contract was not renewed and no issues were raised in discussions. The diocese said it won in court a motion to compel arbitration of the non-renewal of the contract.

Further, the diocese said its sexual abuse review board did not find credible abuse claims.

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PARKERSBURG (WV)
Parkersburg News and Sentinel

September 22, 2020

By Tyler Bennett

The Diocese of Wheeling-Charleston released a statement Monday regarding the civil suit filed by former Parkersburg Catholic High School Principal John Golebiewski, stating the claims against the pastor were not credible.

In the statement released by the Diocese’s spokesperson Tim Bishop, it states the Superintendent of Catholic Schools Mary Ann Deschaine and Father John Rice, designated pastor of Parkersburg Catholic, determined it was in the best interest of the school to have new leadership.

It also states that there were no issues between Rice and Golebiewski in discussions.

The allegations involving Rice were promptly investigated, reviewed by the Diocesan Sexual Abuse Review Board and were determined not to be credible abuse claims, the statement said.

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PARKERSBURG (WV)
WTAP-TV

September 21, 2020

By Todd Baucher

Says claims against chaplain “not credible”

The Wheeling-Charleston Catholic Diocese has responded to a complaint filed by the former principal at Parkersburg Catholic High School.

The legal filing claims his contract was not renewed last spring, after he raised allegations of misconduct by the school’s chaplain and its football coach. The latter’s contract was not renewed after last season.

The full text of the diocese’s statement reads:

“This civil suit arises from an employment dispute with a former principal whose contract was not renewed. The Superintendent of Schools, Mary Ann Deschaine, and the designated pastor of the school, Fr. John Rice, determined it was in the best interest of the school to have new leadership. No issues with Fr. Rice were raised in the discussions with the former principal. The recent news story was prompted by the Court’s granting the Diocese’s motion to compel arbitration of the non-renewal of the contract pursuant to the terms of the contract. The allegations alleged involving Fr. Rice were promptly investigated, reviewed by the Diocesan Sexual Abuse Review Board and determined not to be credible abuse claims.”

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NORTHERN IRELAND
Portadown Times

September 21, 2020

A man allegedly targeted by a paedophile priest is to sue the Pope, it emerged today.

Lawyers for Co Armagh man Barry McCourt confirmed he is taking High Court action amid claims the Catholic Church covered up abuse perpetrated by the late Fr Malachy Finegan.

The test case was described as an attempt to gain justice for other victims.

Finegan taught and worked at St Colman’s College in Newry from 1967 to 1987, spending the last decade as the school’s president.

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UNITED STATES
Catholic League (blog)

September 21, 2020

This is Bill Donohue’s reply to Peter Schweizer

In August, conservative author Peter Schweizer alleged that when Kamala Harris was the San Francisco District Attorney she failed to pursue allegations of sexual abuse by priests in the San Francisco Archdiocese. He says she did so because she was beholden to Catholic donors to her 2003 campaign; she took over that post in 2004. He also claims she destroyed Church documents.

The accusations that Schweizer made are based on his chapter on Harris in his recent book, Profiles in Corruption. I accessed the sources he cited in the book and matched them up with what he said to the media. As it turns out, there are important inconsistencies and omissions. Most important, what he says about the Church’s response to law enforcement lacks context, providing the reader with a skewed account.

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NEW ORLEANS (LA)
NOLA. com (The Times-Picayune | New Orleans Advocate)

September 21, 2020

By Ramon Antonio Vargas

Both men have previously pleaded no contest to unrelated molestation allegations, but these are first public accusations from work at De La Salle

A former principal of De La Salle High and a subordinate are accused of sexually molesting one of the Uptown school’s students in the 1980s, according to a new lawsuit filed last month.

While the Aug. 7 lawsuit appears to mark the first time ex-principal Richard Langenstein and Robert Gandara face public abuse accusations stemming from their service at the 71-year-old school on St. Charles Avenue, each has previously pleaded no contest to charges of child molestation for unrelated conduct in St. Tammany Parish.

Neither Gandara nor Langenstein, who died in 2003, were clergymen, so they are not on the Archdiocese of New Orleans’ list of more than 60 priests and deacons who are considered credibly accused of child sexual abuse. The archdiocese also does not run De La Salle, which is operated by the Catholic Christian Brothers order’s regional chapter.

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PARRAMATTA (AUSTRALIA)
Catholic Outlook

September 22, 2020

As the Diocese of Parramatta prepares for the first meeting of its Safeguarding Council in October, it echoes the sentiments of the presidents of Catholic Religious Australia and the Australian Catholic Bishops Conference who have thanked an advisory group that has helped the Church progress matters related to safeguarding and child protection.

In letters sent earlier this month, Implementation Advisory Group (IAG) chair Jack de Groot informed Br Peter Carroll FMS and Archbishop Mark Coleridge that the group had concluded its work, with Mr de Groot noting “the many blessings that will result in taking forward the important and essential work of leading the Church in Australia”.

Br Peter said: “As the Church continues its emphasis on child protection and safeguarding after the conclusion of the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse, the IAG provided important expert input to assist the Church in responding to the Commission’s many recommendations.

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UNITED STATES
Catholic News Service via UCA News

September 22, 2020

By Dennis Sadowski

Stress can last for months or years with triggers that can bring back memories of the trauma

New job in hand, Jim Richter was adjusting well to life in Minneapolis several months after leaving his hometown of Chicago.

He was enjoying his fellowship at the University of Minnesota Medical Center despite the long hours and he was coming to realize his move was a good one.

Sexually abused as a teenager by a South Side Chicago Catholic priest who had similarly assaulted other young men, Richter wasn’t expecting to hear more about the clergy abuse scandal in Minnesota.

Then news broke about Archbishop John C. Nienstedt of St. Paul and Minneapolis, who eventually resigned in 2015 over accusations he had mishandled allegations of abuse against an archdiocesan priest. Criminal charges were initially filed against the archdiocese over this, but were later dropped. Archbishop Nienstedt also faced allegations he had engaged in sexual misconduct with adults as a priest and as a bishop, claims he denied.

Richter said he felt he had been “assaulted” again when listening to news reports on the radio as he drove to work. The reports, he said, triggered a recurrence of post-traumatic stress disorder, known as PTSD.

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AUSTRALIA
Wellington Times

September 22, 2020

By Father Brendan Lee

I DON’T always get to see letters written about me to editors or online, and maybe that’s a good thing.

However, one particular letter to the editor earlier this month from a local politician which I did read gave me reason to pause.

He had just finished reading The Altar Boys by ABC journalist Suzanne Smith, a book on the abuse of children in the diocese of Maitland and the cover-up by the church.

In light of my recent article “More than ever we need to ask RUOK?”, this politician accused me of hypocrisy, given that I’m the same person who has said I would rather go to prison than break the seal of the confessional.

It’s true, I am a hypocrite. I ask others to take their lives and faith seriously, then find my myself more interested in sharing gags than the gospel.

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NORTHERN IRELAND
Belfast Telegraph

September 22,2020

By Alan Erwin

A man allegedly targeted by a paedophile priest is to sue the Pope, it has emerged.

Lawyers for Co Armagh man Barry McCourt confirmed he is taking High Court action amid claims the Catholic Church covered up abuse perpetrated by the late Fr Malachy Finnegan.

The test case was described as an attempt to gain justice for other victims.

Finnegan taught and worked at St Colman’s College, Newry, from 1967 to 1987, spending the last decade as the school’s president. He later served as a parish priest in Clonduff, Co Down.

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VATICAN CITY
Catholic News Service

September 21, 2020

By Carol Glatz

Given the COVID-19 pandemic, members of the Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors met online and, for those who could, in Rome for their plenary assembly Sept. 16-18.

“It was business as usual,” Jesuit Fr. Hans Zollner, a commission member, told Catholic News Service Sept. 18. The meetings, held twice a year, give the 17 members a chance to listen to each working group’s progress report and to lay the groundwork for future action.

Everyone was in attendance, he said, including U.S. Cardinal Sean P. O’Malley of Boston, commission president, who took part online.

With members on each continent, Zollner added, the challenge was finding meeting times to accommodate people in vastly different time zones; that meant signing in after midnight for one member on the Polynesian archipelago of Tonga and being up before 6 a.m. for members in the Americas.

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PENNSYLVANIA
Bucks County Courier Times

September 18, 2020

By Christopher Dornblaser

A former pastor of a church in Horsham will spend the rest of his life in prison after being sentenced Thursday in federal court for sexually abusing an infant and a young girl under 10, according to federal authorities.

The U.S. Attorney’s Office said in a news release that Jerry Zweitzig, 71, who was a pastor at Horsham Bible Church during the time of the abuse, was sentenced to 200 years in prison.

Zweitzig, of Hatboro, pleaded in May in the two cases involving the sexual abuse of children.

The former pastor filmed himself sexually exploiting a young girl over a period of years, according to the release. Additionally, authorities said Zweitzig had a collection of more than 10,000 images of child pornography on hard drives found in his home.

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NEW ZEALAND
The Spinoff

September 20, 2020

By Isaac Davison

Charges have been laid over historic offending at Dilworth, but former students say it could be just the beginning, writes the NZ Herald’s Isaac Davison in this Herald Premium article.

Two years ago, a former Dilworth School student approached the school with a warning.

The old boy – a victim of alleged abuse at Dilworth – told the school it should prepare for serious allegations to emerge, several sources told the Weekend Herald.

“They were basically told to get their house in order,” said one source, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

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NEW ZEALAND
Radio New Zealand

September 21, 2020

By Andrew McRae

An interim report from the Abuse in Care Royal Commission would accelerate help for victims, a lawyer representing abuse survivors says.

The commission, which resumes public hearings in Auckland today, is investigating abuse in state and faith-based care between 1950 and 1999.

In November 2019 the Royal Commission held contextual hearings which gave the background of concerns leading up to its establishment and what people hoped could be achieved.

Over the next two weeks it will hear evidence from survivors who have sought redress for abuse suffered in state care and from others who have dealt with government agencies on behalf of claimants.

The state redress public hearings were to have been held in April but were delayed because of the Covid-19 lockdown.

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CANADA
The Canadian Press

September 20, 2020

By Colin Perkel

Underlying fight relates to request by former St. Anne’s survivors to have cases reopened

A bitterly fought legal battle between survivors of a brutal residential school and the federal government is slated for an appeal hearing this week over whether the case should now be moved to British Columbia from Ontario.

The underlying fight relates to a request by three survivors of St. Anne’s in Fort Albany, Ont., to have their compensation cases reopened. They argue their claims were settled before Ottawa turned over thousands of relevant documents generated by a police investigation into child abuse at the school.

They also maintain the federal government is still in breach of disclosure orders made by a judge in 2014 and 2015.

The government wants the underlying case and appeal thrown out. It argues, among other things, that a 2006 agreement that ended a class action over abuse inflicted on Indigenous students forced to attend Indian residential schools bars claimants from having their compensation hearings reopened.

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NEW YORK (NY)
The New York Times

By James B. Stewart and Michael Cooper

September 20, 2020

The terms of the settlement between the renowned conductor and the company he shaped have not been previously disclosed.

Last summer, Peter Gelb, the general manager of the Metropolitan Opera, convened the executive committee of the company’s board to announce the end of one of the highest-profile, messiest feuds in the Met’s nearly 140-year history. A bitter court battle had concluded between the company and the conductor James Levine, who had shaped the Met’s artistic identity for more than four decades before his career was engulfed by allegations of sexual improprieties.

Mr. Gelb told the committee that the resolution was advantageous to the Met. But the settlement, whose terms have not been publicly disclosed until now, called for the company and its insurer to pay Mr. Levine $3.5 million, according to two people familiar with its terms.

The Met had fired Mr. Levine in 2018 after an internal investigation uncovered what the company called credible evidence of “sexually abusive and harassing conduct toward vulnerable artists in the early stages of their careers.” Rather than going quietly, Mr. Levine sued the company for breach of contract and defamation, seeking at least $5.8 million. The Met countersued, revealing lurid details of its investigation and claiming that Mr. Levine’s misconduct had violated his duties. It sought roughly the same amount.

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NORTHERN IRELAND
The Irish News

September 21, 2020

By Connla Young

https://www.irishnews.com/news/northernirelandnews/2020/09/21/news/victim-of-malachy-finegan-to-launch-legal-action-against-pope-and-catholic-authorities-in-ireland-2072636/

A victim of Malachy Finegan is to launch legal action against Pope Francis and Catholic Church authorities in Ireland.

The priest has been accused of sexual abuse across Co Down, including at St Colman’s College in Newry where he taught from 1967 and was president for a decade.

At least 12 young boys are thought to have been sexually abused while he was at St Colman’s, while many more were physically abused.

Finegan, who died in 2002, was also a parish priest of Clonduff in Hilltown in Co Down, where it is alleged he carried out further serious sexual abuse.

Concerns have also been raised that he may have been an RUC informer.

It emerged last year that the Public Prosecution Service had decided not to prosecute in eight cases following a police investigation linked to the activities of the former cleric.

The Irish News has now learned that one of his victims is to launch legal action against the Diocese of Dromore, the Archdiocese of Armagh, the Bishop of Rome and the Holy See, arising out of allegations of abuse.

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CANADA
Times of Malta

September 21, 2020

Toronto Archdiocese points out case does not involve ‘illegal behaviour’

A Gozitan priest has been removed from his parish in Canada over “inappropriate behaviour”, the Archdiocese of Toronto has confirmed.

Fr Joseph Grima, of Blessed Frederic Ozanam Parish in Markham, was found to have been involved in “boundary violation and behaviour inconsistent with the vows of a Catholic priest”.

No details have been divulged about his situation but the Toronto Archdiocese said he had not done anything illegal.

The decision was announced on August 22 but was only reported several weeks later.

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NEW ZEALAND
Stuff.co.nz

September 21, 2020

By Edward Gay

A survivor of child abuse in state care says he believes a housemaster who abused him was allowed to “quietly slip away” and reoffend.

Survivors are giving evidence to the Royal Commission of inquiry into abuse in care about their struggles to get redress.

Keith Wiffin was made a ward of the state at the age of 11, following the death of his father.

“My mother signed the document thinking that I’d be cared and nurtured for. The complete opposite happened,” he told the commission in Auckland on Monday.

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NIGERIA
Vanguard

September 20, 2020

A Catholic cleric, Rev. Fr. Kale Francis, has advised parents to always pay attention to their male children as most of them are being sexually abused by friends and relatives.

Francis, the Parish Priest at St. Peter and Paul Catholic Church, Nyanya, Abuja, gave the advice during the Holy Mass on Sunday when more than 180 candidates received their first holy communion. According to him, more attention is being focused on only female children without knowing that most male children suffer the same abuse.

“Most of our male children are being sexually assaulted by their neighbours, friends, and relatives which most times go unnoticed,” he said.

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VERMONT
VTdigger.com

September 20, 2020

By Anne Galloway

Sep 20 2020, 4:10 PM

Growing up on the family farm in North Walpole, New Hampshire, Carolyn Blake Bradshaw lived on candy, scavenged apples and sandwiches from teachers. She remembers the constant, gnawing hunger.

Her mother put her into foster care, and by the time she reached the age of 10, she had lived in five different homes. At one point, Bradshaw was sent to the Weeks School, a reform school for children in Vergennes, even though she doesn’t recall having done anything wrong, except to have been born into a family with no means.

It wasn’t until she was sent to the New England Kurn Hattin Homes for Children that she ate three square meals a day.

But it was also there at the residential girls school in Saxtons River that for the first time, Bradshaw says, she was routinely abused.

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UNITED STATES
National Catholic Reporter

September 19, 2020

By Christopher White

As U.S. Catholics await the release of the Vatican’s report on former Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, who was laicized by Pope Francis for serial sexual abuse, a new podcast chronicles the scourge of clergy abuse that has plagued the Catholic Church for more than seven decades.

“Crisis,” released on Sept. 9, is produced by The Catholic Project, an initiative of the Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C.

Among the more than three dozen individuals interviewed for the series — which includes firsthand testimonials from abuse survivors, priests, bishops, lawyers and accountability advocates — is Tom Roberts, longtime editor for NCR.

Roberts recounts how NCR was the first news outlet to dare to report on clergy abuse in the Catholic press, dating back to the 1980s. Now, more than 30 years later, the 2018 revelations about McCarrick, former archbishop of Washington, D.C., and the release of a Pennsylvania grand jury report that chronicled seven decades of abuse of more than 1,000 victims at the hands of 300 priests ushered in a new wave of Catholics repulsed by decades of cover-up, says Roberts.

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NEW ORLEANS (LA)
WRNO Radio, 99.5

September 18, 2020

A federal bankruptcy judge has set a March 1 deadline for alleged victims of sexual abuse by Roman Catholic clergy to make claims against the Archdiocese of New Orleans.

On Thursday, Judge Meredith Grabill ruled that anyone alleging they were abused before the archdiocese filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy on May 1 must come forward in the next five months or lose the right to seek money via the judicial system.

Church attorneys initially asked Grabill to set a September 29 bar date but the seven-member creditors’ committee, which includes six purported victims of clergy abuse, turned that date down.

The bar date comes as more than 60 clergymen in the Archdiocese of New Orleans have been faced with credible claims of child sexual molestation.

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BUFFALO (NY)
Buffalo Survivors Group

September 17, 2020

By Gary Astridge, Kevin Koscielniak, Chris Szuflita, Michael Whalen, and Angelo Ervolina,

We are the five founding members of the Buffalo Survivors Group, all Survivors of sexual abuse by the hands of clergy and religious in the Diocese of Buffalo, New York.

As you know, the Diocese of Buffalo has filed for bankruptcy because of the numerous lawsuits filed against them. This legal process has now become a battle between lawyers, the ones who will reap massive financial compensation.

As Survivors, we know that no matter what financial restitution we may receive, it will be miniscule in comparison to what is rightfully deserved. Because of our legal system, money is the compensation for lives ruined and we will never be made whole by this process. It appears that the root cause is not being properly addressed and corrected, and many perpetrators are essentially going unpunished.

From the time the apostolic administrator, Edward Scharfenberger, came to Buffalo, he stated on numerous occasions his willingness to meet with any Survivor and offered the opportunity to see the files of our offenders. To this date, even with our reaching out to him, he has never personally followed through to contact any of us, making his words as a representative of the Catholic Church ring hollow. As Survivors, we are forced to relive our past experiences of sexual
abuse and being ignored retraumatizes us.

For many of us, our souls were tom out as children and our worlds went dark. Ever since, we have been going through life as the walking dead. Do you have any idea what that is like, Your Holiness?

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WELLINGTON (NEW ZEALAND)
Radio New Zealand

September 20, 2020

By David Cohen

Opinion – Nearly three years have grumbled by since the government first signed off on the Abuse in Care Royal Commission. What on earth have they been up to?

Announcing the inquiry shortly after assuming her premiership, Jacinda Ardern said it would be a historic opportunity for the nation to “confront our history and make sure we don’t make the same mistakes again”.

A little noticed omission in the fine print appears to have been that rather a lot of this historical confrontation would take place behind closed doors.

At the same time, what relatively little has gone on in the public domain since the commission finally got going late last year hasn’t always enhanced its brief to quantify the abuse that took place in many of the old state-run institutions and their faith-based counterparts.

Defections. Bickering over terms of reference. Allegations of poor management. The surprise resignation of the inaugural chair, Sir Anand Satyanand, who stepped down from the role late last year for the chancellorship of the University of Waikato.

As might be expected for any initiative in which a number of advisors have had longer rap sheets than resumes, there has been the odd controversy over the commission’s choice of advisors.

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BUFFALO (NY)
Spectrum News

September 18, 2020

A group of clergy sexual abuse survivors is ready to take its mission directly to the Vatican.

The “Buffalo Survivors Group” just sent a letter to Pope Francis asking for a meeting to talk about the problem that’s plaguing the catholic church, in the Buffalo area, and around the world.

In the letter, the group says the diocese’s apostolic administrator, Bishop Edward Scharfenberger, has said he is willing to meet with any survivor of clergy sexual abuse and even offered to show survivors the files on offenders. However, the group says Scharfenberger has never followed through on any requests for meetings. It also says this forces survivors to relive their past experiences and re-traumatizes them.

The group says it hopes if the pope agrees to a meeting, it would cast a positive light on the church and give renewed hope to people who’ve suffered.

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BUFFALO (NY)
Buffalo News

September 18, 2020

By Dan Herbeck

The Buffalo Catholic Diocese will soon begin making decisions on consolidation plans for its current 161 parishes and 34 schools in Western New York, Bishop Edward B. Scharfenberger told The Buffalo News on Thursday.

The first of those decisions could come “within months, if not weeks” after diocese officials reach out to Catholics throughout the diocese, the bishop said.

While not disclosing any specifics, Scharfenberger said some of the diocese’s churches and schools are likely to be consolidated to save money.

“I don’t want anyone to fear that specific churches have been earmarked, or that any decisions have been made already,” the bishop said. “But there will be some sacrifices. That is inevitable.

“Do three or four parishes that are right next to each other all have to have a 9 o’clock Mass every Sunday morning? It could be that, because of economic realities, some church buildings will have to be deactivated.”

The bishop added that he favors the “consolidation” of some parishes and schools, as opposed to “elimination.”

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SYDNEY (NEW SOUTH WALES, AUSTRALIA)
ABC

September 19, 2020

By Emily Olson

Misty Griffin really wants you to know her story.

She has written a book. She’s collaborated with podcasts. She’s pitched to television producers, spoken with filmmakers and sent “more than 100 emails” to US journalists.

She has politely, quietly, diligently reached out to me at least 29 times since our first email, to see if and when I could publish this piece.

But it’s not just about telling her story. What Misty wants most of all is for you to never hear a story like hers again.

*
The trouble is, Misty’s story is not an easy one to tell.

For starters, the story begins in a slice of misunderstood space known as America’s Amish country.

The Amish are one of America’s most insular communities
The Amish, like most religions, associate piety with surrendering to a set of rules.

Unlike most religions, the rules are so at odds with modern ideals that the community is famously insular, even exempt from some US laws.

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SPRINGFIELD (MO)
Springfield News-Leader

September 16, 2020

By Gregory J. Holman

Two men from rural Seymour pleaded guilty last week to charges stemming from accusations that they had sex with a young female relative.

As part of a plea agreement, the two men, who are brothers from an Amish family, will not go to prison, according to online court records and reporting by the Webster County Citizen.

The brothers, 22-year-old Aaron C.M. Schwartz and 18-year-old Petie C.M. Schwartz, pleaded guilty to two felony counts of third-degree child molestation. Each received prison sentences totaling 15 years, which were suspended.

According to the local newspaper report published Wednesday morning, Webster County Prosecutor Ben Berkstresser said the victim — a minor who was in her very early teens when the crimes occurred — had a baby in recent weeks fathered by one of her assailants, who included two other unnamed brothers who are minors.

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FERNDALE (MI)
Church Militant

September 17, 2020

By Christine Niles

Fr. Lastiri stole $60,000, solicited sex on gay websites

Fresno, Calif. – A California bishop has quietly reinstated a priest with a decades-long track record of active homosexuality, which includes embezzling parish funds. Evidence also shows the priest may have possessed child porn.

Bishop Joseph Brennan of the Fresno diocese issued a letter Wednesday announcing he is reinstating Fr. Michael Lastiri: “After much prayer and reflection, I have restored faculties to Fr. Jean-Michael Lastiri for pastoral and priestly ministry here in the Diocese of Fresno effective today, September 16, 2020.”

The bishop clarified that his ministry will be limited only to assignments approved by the bishop and the local pastor, also hinting that all restrictions could eventually be lifted if Lastiri continues “to exhibit the same future conscientiousness and commitment to his overall wellbeing … .”

Lastiri has been a priest for more than 30 years, and was former director of worship for the diocese. Most of those years were spent as an active homosexual — including a relationship with a convicted pedophile in the 1990s.

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LONDON (ENGLAND)
The Guardian

September 16, 2020

By Charlotte Graham-McLay

A seventh man has appeared in court over alleged offences going back decades at Dilworth school in Auckland

Wellington, New Zealand – Alleged sexual abuse at a boys’ boarding school in Auckland that reportedly spanned decades, has prompted the court appearance of a seventh man and generated more than 50 calls and emails to the police after officers appealed for more victims to come forward.

The allegations about the abuse of boys at Dilworth – a private school in an affluent area of New Zealand’s largest city – emerged at the same time as a long-running independent inquiry into abuse in state and faith-based care seeks to uncover how prevalent the problem has been in the country.

Police have identified 17 victims so far, and have charged men aged in their 60s and 70s with various sexual offences and the supply of drugs, over abuse that they say happened between the 1970s and the early 2000s.

Police said in a statement a 60-year-old man, who had previously been connected to the school, appeared in court in Auckland on Tuesday charged in relation to sexual violation, attempted sexual violation, indecency and indecent assault. It followed the court appearances of six other men a day earlier.

All have name suppression. The initial complaint about the alleged abuse was made in 2019, said Detective Senior Sergeant Geoff Baber, in a statement.

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TORONTO (ONTARIO, CANADA)
CTV News

September 15, 2020

By Omar Sachedina and Ben Cousins

[Includes video interviews with Sylvestre survivors Irene Deschenes and Joanne Morrison.]

A woman who was sexually abused by a priest as a child has taken her decades-long legal fight with the Roman Catholic Church to its front steps as she urges the London, Ont. diocese to drop its Supreme Court appeal against her.

Irene Deschenes was abused by Father Charles Sylvestre for two agonizing years that began when she was just 10 years old, at St. Ursula Catholic School in Chatham, Ont.

Deschenes said Sylvestre was friendly at first, taking her and other children for bowling outings and to the beach, but things turned sinister quickly.

“I remember a nice, caring man that was friendly, funny,” Deschenes told CTV News. “Now in hindsight, I see that was all grooming.”

In 2006 and decades after the abuse, Sylvestre pleaded guilty to sexually abusing 47 children in parishes across southern Ontario. He died in prison a year later.

Deschenes settled with the church for $66,000 after lawyer’s fees, but later found out the church knew about allegations concerning Sylvestre’s conduct for almost a decade prior to Deschenes’ abuse, without divulging this information to her.

Police reports dating back to 1962 had alleged that Sylvestre assaulted three young girls. The documents show the young girls — one of them 11 years old — alleged Sylvestre touched them inappropriately and exposed himself to them.

As a result, Deschenes is trying to reopen her case.

“Their failure to act on the statements back then is what allowed Irene to be abused in the first place,” said Deschenes’ lawyer Loretta Merritt.

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MUMBAI (INDIA)
Times of India

September 20, 2020

Coimbatore – A 60-year-old temple priest was detained on Saturday for sexually assaulting a 17-year-old girl near Periyanaickenpalayam in the west zone police limits, from where 296 cases under the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (Pocso) Act, 2012 have been reported until September 17 this year.

According to a police officer, the girl, a Class XII student of a private school, was alone at her house on Friday evening when the priest visited her residence and sexually assaulted her. “As he was leaving the minor girl’s house, her younger brother, who had gone out to play with friends, noticed him and altered his father. The girl’s parents later inquired with her and she revealed them what happened,” the officer said.

The girl’s father subsequently lodged a complaint against the priest with the Periyanaickenpalayam police on Saturday.

A team of police picked up the priest for interrogation on the day. He was later booked under various sections of Pocso Act. Further investigation is on.

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PARKERSBURG (WV)
Parkersburg News and Sentinel

September 18, 2020

By Tyler Bennett

In a lawsuit filed in Wood County, the former principal at Parkersburg Catholic High School is claiming he was wrongfully terminated for reporting complaints against a priest to the Diocese of Wheeling-Charleston and for firing the football coach.

John Golebiewski, represented by The Employment Law Center in Parkersburg, is suing the Diocese for wrongful termination earlier this year. The lawsuit claims he was terminated after reporting complaints of inappropriate contact to the Diocese involving Parkersburg Catholic High School Chaplain Father John Rice and for firing head football coach Lance Binegar.

“(Golebiewski’s) attempts to report wrongdoing by his subordinates to defendant Diocese was the substantial and motivating factor for defendant’s decision to place (Golebiewski) on leave and ultimately defendant’s refusal to renew his contract,” the lawsuit said. “Defendants worked together to place plaintiff on leave and to breach plaintiff’s employment contract in retaliation for his proper reports of wrongdoing toward the children under his care.

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WESTMINSTER (MD)
Carroll County Times

September 18, 2020

By Frank Batavick

I am a child of the 1960s. I was a high school freshman when the new decade clicked over. I remember Dick Clark’s “American Bandstand” that created a common soundtrack for a rising youth culture and popularized dance crazes and hair fashions.

In high school at Friday night dances I twisted and strolled, Bristol Stomped, and dreamily swayed to “Can’t Help Falling in Love” by Elvis Presley and “Unchained Melody” by the Righteous Brothers.

*

I graduated from college in 1967 and in the blink of an eye found myself in olive drab at Ft. Dix, New Jersey, shorn of my Beatles haircut and clutching orders for Vietnam. The Army canceled these when Martin Luther King was assassinated, and the cities erupted in rage and fire. I was put on riot control in Washington, D.C.

*

In a 2011 investigation commissioned by Catholic bishops, they blamed sexual abuse by priests on the 1960s and ’70s because of the era’s “drug use and crime, as well as social changes, such as an increase in premarital sex and divorce.” I’m not buying it.

I am a coreligionist of Barr’s and a proud product of 16 years of Catholic education but blaming the ’60s for all of today’s ills is misguided. I’d wager the clergy’s sexual abuse has been going on since the fourth century monastery movement, if not before. The urges and impulses of human nature have not changed over the millennia, and abuse thrives in closed, protected societies. In January we learned of patterns of abuse in the Amish community, following an exposé in “Cosmopolitan.”

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WEST PALM BEACH (FL)
WPTV

September 17, 2020

By Peter Burke

[Includes copy of the lawsuit.]

School administration favored alleged abuser over 11-year-old girl because of family’s donor status, suit says

A lawsuit has been filed against All Saints Catholic School and the Diocese of Palm Beach, alleging that the school failed to protect an 11-year-old girl from repeated sexual abuse by another student in an unsupervised classroom on campus.

The lawsuit, filed Thursday in Palm Beach County circuit court, also names principal Jill Broz, claiming that she not only failed to protect the student, but engaged in a campaign of victim shaming that caused the child severe emotional distress.

According to the lawsuit, the girl “was subjected to sexual abuse on multiple occasions in a classroom at All Saints Catholic School” that took place “when classes were left unattended by the teacher assigned to the classroom and while no other adults were present to monitor for, intervene in and dissuade such abuse from occurring.”

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PALM BEACH (FL)
Palm Beach Post

September 17, 2020

By Jane Musgrave

Attorney sues Diocese of Palm Beach and All Saints Catholic School in Jupiter over alleged abuse against 11-year-old girl.

An attorney who is a survivor of childhood sexual abuse and now represents other victims is accusing the Catholic Diocese of Palm Beach and a school in Jupiter of protecting the son of wealthy donors from molestation allegations.

In a lawsuit filed Thursday in Palm Beach County Circuit Court, attorney Michael Dolce said the principal of All Saints Catholic School punished an 11-year-old girl — who claimed a classmate fondled her — instead of investigating her allegations.

Principal Jill Broz was “motivated out of a desire to extend undue favor to the Abusive Peer because his parents are long-time and repeated substantial financial donors to the school itself and several charities connected to the Diocese of Palm Beach,” Dolce wrote in the lawsuit.

The girl’s allegations, which prompted a Jupiter police investigation, were never addressed by Broz or others at the small K-8 school on Indian Creek Parkway, Dolce said.

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PARIS (FRANCE)
La Croix

September 18, 2020

By Robert Mickens

[See also the CDF document.]

Irish Redemptorist Tony Flannery says he’s been given the change to recant

Vatican City – One of world’s most influential cardinals recently admitted that he is “open” to the idea of ordaining women to the Catholic priesthood.

“I am not saying that women have to become priests; I just don’t know. But I’m open to it,” said Cardinal Jean-Claude Hollerich SJ in an interview published September 13 on the website of KNA, the German Catholic news agency.

Hollerich is a high-profile cardinal with international stature due to his position as president of the Commission of the Episcopal Conferences of the European Union (COMECE). He’s also archbishop of his native Luxembourg.

So his views matter.

But just a few days after he commented on women priests, Tony Flannery – the Irish Redemptorist who was suspended from priestly ministry in 2012, primarily for his support of women’s ordination – revealed that the Vatican had sent him a series of doctrinal proposals in July (via his superior general) to which he would have to “submit” as a first step towards “a gradual readmission” to public ministry.

One wonders if the men at the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF) are going to press Pope Francis to have Cardinal Hollerich recant and force him to sign a fidelity oath similar to the one placed before Father Flannery.

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WASHINGTON (DC)
Catholic News Service/USCCB via Crux

September 18, 2020

By Michael Kelly

Dublin – A well-known Irish priest who has been in a dispute with the Vatican for several years over his controversial views has rejected a plan from the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith that would have restored him to public ministry.

Redemptorist Father Tony Flannery has been forbidden to exercise public ministry since 2012 after he was censured for saying that he no longer believed that “the priesthood as we currently have it in the Church originated with Jesus” or that he designated “a special group of his followers as priests.”

Flannery said he believes his priestly ministry has ended.

The priest revealed on his website Sept. 16 that he had been asked by the Vatican in July to affirm church teaching on a number of areas, including the inadmissibility of women for ordination, homosexuality, same-sex relationships and gender theory.

He said he refused.

Flannery’s announcement came after an intervention by Redemptorist Superior General Father Michael Brehl, who wrote to the doctrinal congregation in February asking if he could permit Flannery, 73, to return to public ministry.

According to documents published on Flannery’s website, the Vatican congregation responded that he “should not return to public ministry prior to submitting a signed statement regarding his positions on homosexuality, civil unions between persons of the same sex, and the admission of women to the priesthood.”

The letter from the Vatican said that “the Irish Provincial should ask Father Flannery to give his assent to the statement by providing his signature in each of the places indicated (enclosure).” The letter referred to separate statements asserting church teaching in each relevant area with space for Flannery to sign his name.

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BUFFALO (NY)
WKBW

September 18, 2020

By: Eileen Buckley

“I’m ready to be ordained a priest,” declared Chris Emminger, deacon.

Deacon Emminger of the Town of Tonawanda and Deacon Denning Achidi of Cameroon in Central Africa will be ordained into the Catholic Diocese of Buffalo, Saturday.

Bishop Edward Scharfenberger, Apostolic Administrator the Diocese of Buffalo, will preside over the service, conferring the holy orders of the priesthood upon the two deacons at 9:30 a.m. at St. Joseph Cathedral in downtown Buffalo.
.
The number of priests in America is on the decline. In fact, one in six Catholic priests now come from other countries.

In the Buffalo Diocese, eight priests were ordained in 2019. Only two will be ordained in Buffalo Saturday.

*
I asked Emminger, with all the adversity against the catholic church from the sex abuse scandal — why he would still want to be a priest?

“During my seven years of formation I kept having to answer that question — why do I want to be a priest? — Essentially the answer has always stayed the same — because I love the church. I’ve had wonderful priest in my life,” answered Emminger. “Why do I want to be a priest? I think our culture and our society needs to know the love of God in their life and I hope to be that vehicle for them.”

Emminger says he will try to overcome the troubles in the Catholic Church by working to help build relationships and listening to others.

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WASHINGTON (DC)
Catholic News Service/USCCB via Crux

September 18, 2020

Cologne, Germany – Cologne Cardinal Rainer Maria Woelki warned that the Synodal Path reform project could lead to a “German national church.”

“The worst outcome would be if the Synodal Path leads to a schism … with the universal church,” Woelki told Germany’s Catholic News Agency, KNA. “That would be the worst thing if something like a German national church were to be created here.”

KNA reported that Woelki also praised the most recent discussions within the Synodal Path, held in five regional conferences due to the coronavirus pandemic. Smaller groups of participants permitted a better exchange of arguments than would have been possible in the originally planned Synodal Assembly, Woelki said.

The Catholic Church in Germany launched the Synodal Path in 2019. Scheduled to run for two years, it is debating the issues of power, sexual morality, priestly existence and the role of women in the church. The aim is to restore trust lost in the clergy abuse scandal.

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PARKERSBURG (WV)
Associated Press via San Francisco Chronicle

September 18, 2020

A former principal at a West Virginia Catholic high school has filed a wrongful termination lawsuit against a diocese, alleging he was let go for reporting complaints of inappropriate contact involving a priest and for firing a football coach.

Former Parkersburg Catholic High School administrator John Golebiewski recently filed the lawsuit against the Diocese of Wheeling-Charleston in Wood County, the Parkersburg News and Sentinel reported Friday.

The lawsuit alleged that the diocese placed Golebiewski on leave and breached his employment contract “in retaliation for his proper reports of wrongdoing toward the children under his care,” and to prevent an investigation into allegations of child abuse.

Golebiewski filed three misconduct reports with the diocese alleging Father John Rice inappropriately touched students over a yearlong period, beginning in 2018, according to the lawsuit.

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PASIG CITY (MANILA, PHILIPPINES)
The Rappler

September 18, 2020

By Vicente Rafael

‘Duterte’s obscenities feel subversive, but subversion in this context is in the service of an autocratic end, where laughter produces an intimacy between ruler and ruled’

Perhaps the most revealing instance of Duterte’s power of storytelling consists of his tale of being sexually abused at the age of 14 by an American Jesuit priest during confession. He often returns to this story as a way of casting aspersions at the Catholic Church that had been critical of his human rights abuses. Folded into this story, however, is another: his sexual abuse of their household help (which he later confesses was fabricated).

Here what we see is a double confession — Duterte to the priest and to the audience — and a double assault: the priest’s on Duterte and Duterte’s on the maid. The two acts of violation turn out to be intimately related whereby the priest’s assault of Duterte becomes a means for the latter’s domination of his audience. He has frequently told these stories on various occasions, usually in a mix of Taglish, Bisaya, and English. Below is my translation of a composite version:

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PINELLAS PARK (FL)
Legal Examiner – Saunders and Walker Attorney Blog

September 17, 2020

By Joseph H. Saunders

Chief Judge Carl L. Bucki of the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in the Western District of New York ruled Friday that the bar date for abuse victims to submit claims should be the same day that the extended Child Victims Act expires – Aug. 14, 2021.

In making the ruling, Judge Bucki took into consideration the fluid situation involving sexual abuse claims against the beleaguered Diocese. No one knows how many claims will eventually be filed against the Diocese of Buffalo. What is known is that it takes survivors a period of time to make the decision to come forward and file a claim after having suffered in silence for years and sometimes decades.

Bucki also ruled against a request by the diocese to push the bankruptcy proceedings into mediated settlement talks.

Bucki said in his written ruling that such negotiations among the diocese, its insurers and its creditors would be premature because the diocese doesn’t know the full nature and extent of the abuse claims being brought against it and has yet to fully investigate and document historical insurance policies that were in place and might provide coverage on the claims.

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NEW YORK (NY)
New York Times

September 17, 2020

By Nicole Hong and Benjamin Weiser

Prosecutors are relying on a theory that Ghislaine Maxwell slowly broke down the resistance of teenage girls to sexual abuse at the hands of Jeffrey Epstein.

Annie Farmer was 16 years old when she arrived at Jeffrey Epstein’s ranch in New Mexico in 1996 to attend a program for high school students, only to learn that she was the sole participant.

There she met Mr. Epstein’s companion, Ghislaine Maxwell, who seemed friendly and asked about her classmates and her family. Ms. Maxwell and Mr. Epstein took her shopping and lavished her with gifts, like beauty products and new cowboy boots, according to a lawsuit Ms. Farmer filed last year.

The seemingly innocuous behavior was in fact part of a process to “groom” Ms. Farmer for sexual activity, the authorities now say. Ms. Maxwell began pressuring Ms. Farmer to give Mr. Epstein a foot massage, according to the lawsuit, and the encounters escalated — until Ms. Farmer says she eventually woke up one day to find Mr. Epstein entering her room, climbing into her bed and pressing his body against hers.

Now, with Ms. Maxwell facing allegations that she helped Mr. Epstein recruit and ultimately abuse girls as young as 14, the concept of grooming is at the heart of the criminal case against her. References to grooming appear nine times in the 18-page indictment against Ms. Maxwell.

Grooming has long been part of cases involving underage victims, but the concept has become increasingly important in the #MeToo era, as prosecutors have become more willing to file sex-crime charges in cases where people are coerced into sexual relationships without physical force.

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VANCOUVER (BRITISH COLUMBIA, CANADA)
B.C. Catholic – Archdiocese of Vancouver

September 15, 2020

By James Borkowski

Two years ago, I received a forwarded voicemail from a local priest. The message had been left by a man who was extremely angry about clergy abuse and the apparent cover-up by the Church around the world. Since the man left no contact info, there was not much we could do.

A week later, one of our priests forwarded a similar message, but this one contained helpful information and an opportunity. The caller mentioned that two of his classmates from a local all-boys high school had committed suicide as a result of abuse.

The high school he referred to was my old school, and in this message the caller left a phone number. I called him back.

He immediately told me that either I was a pedophile or was covering for them. I offered a third option, detailing the work we have been doing in the archdiocese to bring about necessary change in the local Church. We worked through a fairly tense exchange and, to his credit, he agreed to meet in person to continue the discussion.

On a late afternoon at a local pub, we tentatively walked up to each other and took in the reality of how strange it was for each of us to meet someone with disparate views. We were each concerned that the other might have ulterior motives. We were also both convinced that the other would have no interest in thoughtful conversation and an openness to ideas. Thankfully, we were both wrong.

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NEW ORLEANS (LA)
WWL 4 CBS

September 17, 2020

By David Hammer

Non-abuse claimants, such as vendors that have business with the archdiocese, have until Nov. 30, 2020, to file their claims.

A federal bankruptcy judge set a deadline of March 1, 2021, for victims of sex abuse by Catholic clergy to file compensation claims against the Archdiocese of New Orleans.

The deadline, known as a “bar date,” comes 10 months after the archdiocese filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection on May 1. A bar date is a standard part of any bankruptcy, but setting this one has been controversial and contentious.

Federal Bankruptcy Judge Meredith Grabill ended a 5-hour marathon court hearing held via teleconference Thursday by setting the March 1 bar date, saying she decided to “split the baby” between the Jan. 29 and March 31 deadlines requested by the archdiocese and a the creditors, respectively.

Non-abuse claimants, such as vendors that have business with the archdiocese, have until Nov. 30, 2020, to file their claims.

The church and its creditors have argued angrily about setting a bar date for months. The archdiocese says it has every interest in paying all legitimate claims, but creditors claim the church can’t be trusted. They say the Archdiocese of New Orleans has plenty of money and filed for bankruptcy in “bad faith” to keep further evidence of abuse from coming out in court.

The archdiocese had about three dozen sex abuse cases moved from state to federal court so they would be stopped pending the bankruptcy. That meant Archbishop Greg Aymond didn’t have to testify under oath in a deposition that was already scheduled for later in May.

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LOWELL (MA)
The Lowell Sun

September 18, 2020

By Cliff Clark
.
Nearly two decades after the disclosure of widespread sexual abuse by priests in the Archdiocese of Boston that exposed a long history of that reprehensible behavior, victims of those unspeakable acts are still receiving some measure of closure and compensation.

Earlier this week, the Boston Herald reported the latest settlements of child sexual-abuse claims against three former Massachusetts priests.

Boston attorney Mitchell Garabedian, who’s successfully represented many of these sex-abuse victims over the years, said a settlement was reached with the Archdiocese of Boston earlier this year in cases involving former priests Sylvio Ruest, John Salvucci and. T. Raymond Sullivan.

Decades ago they were assigned to churches in Bellingham, Billerica and Dracut, respectively.

*
And no amount of money — relatively modest sums in these cases — can heal the emotional scars these victims have been forced to endure throughout their entire lives.

Thankfully for these and other victims, they’ve had a champion in Mitch Garabedian. The Methuen native has seemingly dedicated his legal career to rooting out these sexual predators and making the organization that previously enabled this behavior to pay for their depraved acts.

Though these cases pale to the notoriety given his efforts to help imprison high-profile pedophile priests like Paul Shanley and John Geoghan for their despicable acts, we should all be thankful that Garabedian still brings that same sense of righteous outrage to every sexual-abuse case he takes.

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EVANSVILLE (IN)
Courier & Press

September 18, 2020

By Jon Webb

Even back then, the details were hazy.

On Sept. 10, 2018, the Diocese of Evansville issued a statement saying it was putting Father David Fleck on leave after he was accused of sexual misconduct.

Scraps of information emerged over the next few weeks.

A public records request from The Vincennes Sun-Commercial and 14 News unearthed a letter the diocese wrote to Knox County prosecutors saying Fleck had been accused of “soliciting” two males while teaching at Vincennes Rivet High School in the 1980s. A third was allegedly solicited in a separate incident. According to the letter, the accuser wasn’t one of the purported victims.

That’s still all we know.

This month marks two years since the accusations became public. The diocese has released no further details, no criminal charges have been filed and Fleck remains barred from public ministry. The diocese’s directory says he’s on “administrative leave.”

Fleck has denied the charges against him. The 71-year-old worked in several positions throughout the diocese, including at Mater Dei High School.

As it does with any sexual misconduct accusation against clergy, the church reported the allegation to civil authorities and launched an internal investigation through its Diocesan Review Board – a group of priests, diocese employees and volunteers who sometimes hire private investigators to carry out investigations.

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LONDON (ENGLAND)
The Guardian

September 17, 2020

By Christopher Knaus

Exclusive: Brother Geoffrey ‘Coman’ Sykes’ name will be removed from a school building and scholarship program after campaigners say ‘he is not a role model’

A group of prominent Catholic schools are expected to remove the name of a brother accused of sexual abuse from a school building and scholarship program after campaigners warned he was “clearly not someone who should be honoured”.

The two Sydney Marist schools say they were never told of the allegations against Brother Geoffrey “Coman” Sykes, despite the Marist Brothers Catholic order having substantiated a complaint against him three years earlier.

Sykes worked at Marist schools across New South Wales and the Australian Capital Territory, including Parramatta Marist and Marist College Canberra, for decades and was honoured by senior colleagues as an “amazing man and a wonderful Marist” after his death in 2013.

A new book by investigative journalist Suzanne Smith contains allegations that Sykes abused Glen Walsh, an aspiring brother. It says the abuse occurred on an almost nightly basis at a retreat in the NSW southern highlands. When Walsh was 18, he was allegedly abused more than 100 times.

Walsh left the order, became a parish priest, and made allegations about Sykes to Marist in 1997, which the order found to be unsubstantiated.

In 2017, Marist Brothers conducted a review of its initial investigation. Marist says the review found Walsh’s allegations against Sykes were substantiated.

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NEW YORK (NY)
Religion News Service

September 16, 2020

By Claire Giangravé

Catania, Italy – The sexual abuse trial of Piero Alfio Capuana, the lay leader of the 5,000-member Catholic Culture and Environment Association, began in this small Sicilian city on Tuesday (Sept. 15), three years after the abuse allegedly took place.

Capuana, 75, known as “the Archangel” by acolytes, is accused of delegating his associates to select and organize his targets, some as young as 11 years old. The alleged victims told Religion News Service that they would be called to a back room at the Cenacle, as the association’s headquarters is known, after ceremonies in which Capuana would purportedly speak on behalf of the Holy Spirit. Behind closed doors, the young girls said, they would be instructed to bathe him and perform sexual acts.

Three of his closest associates, known as the “12 Disciples,” are also charged, accused of organizing and facilitating the abuse.

Even after accusations that their leader was sexually abusing girls first emerged, few members believed them. When parents watched Capuana kiss their underage daughters on the lips or request solo dances with them, most were not concerned.

Members of the association, still loyal to Capuana, hissed and smirked at the accusers and their families in the courtroom. The large structure, made in the austere style of the fascist dictator Mussolini, dwarfed the small frames of the girls, but even behind their masks their eyes spoke determination. Above the entrance to the courtroom a relief of King Solomon peers down at passersby, his sword drawn to spill the blood of the innocent before the two competing mothers of the famous story.

“The law is the same for everyone” is written in large letters behind the judges, while a black cross looms over the attendants.

While the trial is taking place in Catania, a small city under the shadow of the volcano Etna, it has highlighted the Catholic Church’s lack of oversight over lay Catholic movements, particularly the actions of their often charismatic leaders.

Founded 50 years ago by the Rev. Stefano Cavalli, a “spiritual son” of the revered Franciscan friar and saint Padre Pio, the association was little regulated by the local Diocese of Acireale. For years, according to the government’s detention order against Capuana, Acireale’s bishops dismissed accusations of abuse and attended ceremonies and events at the Cenacle, a word that in church circles refers to the room where Jesus and his Apostles met for the Last Supper.

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COLUMBIA (SC)
The State

September 16, 2020

Bu Noah Feit

A Catholic priest who formerly worked in Columbia was cleared to return to the ministry after charges of sexual abuse involving a minor were dropped.

Prosecutors dropped all criminal charges against Father Javier Heredia in February, according to Maria Aselage, spokeswoman for the Roman Catholic Diocese of Charleston. York County court records show the charge, criminal sexual conduct with minor — commit/attempt lewd act, was disposed on Feb. 3.

In September, the diocese’s Sexual Abuse Advisory Board concluded the allegation against the priest was not credible, Aselage said in a news release issued earlier this month.

The board said the accusation against Heredia was unfounded based on information from the criminal investigation, as well as the results of a second investigation by outside private investigators, according to the release.

Now Heredia is awaiting his new assignment with the diocese.

“We welcome Father Heredia back to ministry,” the diocese said in a statement, reported by the Catholic Miscellany.

In July 2018, Heredia was arrested after he was accused of inappropriate contact outside the clothing of a girl while in a public wave pool, according to the release. The child was under 16 years old, court records show.

The church did not disclose the girl’s age, specify where the incident took place or say whether it took place during a church function.

Heredia adamantly denied the accusation, according to the release.

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SPRINGFIELD (MA)
Springfield Republican via Mass Live

September 16, 2020

By Anne-Gerard Flynn

Boston – Mitchell Garabedian, whose law firm has obtained countless clergy sexual abuse settlements or arbitration awards on behalf of clients, has made public the names of three priests contained in a recent settlement with the Archdiocese of Boston.

The three names were posted on the firm’s website.

“Survivors want me to post the names of their perpetrators as part of the healing process,” said Garabedian in reference to the list he posts related to monetary awards in which the accused may maintain their innocence as such compensation is not an admission of guilt.

Survivors and their advocates have long called for more transparency and comprehensive from the church on clergy accused of sexual abuse, with some law firms publishing lists of accused clergy related to settlements. Some dioceses publish some data when allegations are found credible. In Massachusetts, Worcester and Fall River have no such listing, while Springfield and Boston do.

The Boston archdiocese does list the names of priests who have been sentenced or sanctioned on such charges either as the result of criminal or church proceedings, as well as those living archdiocesan clergy with such publicized cases not yet resolved.

It does not list deceased clergy who have not been publicly accused and had no church proceedings conducted or completed on sexual allegations against them even when the archdiocese gives compensation in a case involving such allegations made after their death.

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LONDON (ENGLAND)
The Tablet

September 15, 2020

By Christa Pongratz-Lippitt

The Bavarian diocese of Eichstätt is trying to find out whether “certain homosexual activities” that allegedly took place in the Vatican between 2000 and 2006 were criminal, according to a report in the German Tagespost newspaper.

Entitled Abuse Scandal in the Apostolic Palace? the article states that a secular investigation in Ingolstadt has been examining the case for one and a half years, but a legal procedure has not yet been opened.

The first hearing of a canonical investigation began in Eichstätt on Monday 7 September according to the Tagespost. It concerns allegations made in February 2019 against a priest and prelate of the Eichstätt diocese who was then in a senior position in the Vatican Secretariat of State. The allegations were made by a subordinate priest in the same section of the Secretariat accusing the current Eichstätt priest, who was then his supervisor in Rome, of coercing him to have sex in the Apostolic Palace.

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TORONTO (ONTARIO, CANADA)
CTV News

September 15, 2020

By Bryan Bicknell

London, Ont. – Those taking part in a vigil outside St. Peter’s Basilica in downtown London on Tuesday called on the Catholic Diocese of London to drop its appeal in a decades-long legal battle with a sexual abuse survivor.

“The way that the church is treating me now through litigation is so traumatizing, and it’s much more traumatizing than the actual abuse,” said sexual abuse survivor Irene Deschenes.

Deschenes reached a settlement in 2000 for sexual abuse she suffered as a child in the early 1970s at the hands of the late Father Charles Sylvestre.

Information later came to light that the diocese had received police statements in 1962, alleging the priest had assaulted three girls.

Ontario’s highest court then granted Deschenes the right to sue the church a second time.

“When we settled, they told us they didn’t know about Sylvestre’s proclivities,” said Deschenes. “I had a gut feeling that they must have known because he had been doing it for a long time. But based on that information I did settle with the Catholic church.”

Those taking part in the vigil each took a turn standing in silence for one hour at the walkway to the church. It was a quiet appeal to the church to do what they believe is the right thing.

The action got the attention of passerby Dan Warren, who said the church needs to stop fighting victims of sexual abuse.

“If somebody is protesting a church, like that kind of says something – that something is wrong. And I’m not saying the people in this church specifically. But still, they should take a stand against the people above them. That’s what the problem has always been with them.”

The diocese declined a request from CTV News to comment on the vigil.

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JAKARTA (INDONESIA)
Jakarta Post

September 16, 2020

By Margareth S. Aritonang

The Philippines-based Catholic religious order the Blessed Sacrament Missionaries of Charity (BSMC) was largely unknown to the Indonesian public until one of its members, Lukas Lucky Ngalngola, calling himself Brother Angelo and later Geovanny, put the congregation on the map, and for all the wrong reasons.

Angelo allegedly abused orphanage boys under his care, sexually and physically. While the abuse against the boys who lived at the Kencana Bejana Rohani orphanage that Angelo set up in 2015 in Depok, West Java, was reported to the police in September last year, the crime was revealed to the public only very recently after victims and child protection activists spoke out in the media.

Collective efforts coordinated by the state-sponsored Indonesian Child Protection Commission (KPAI) are being made to prosecute Angelo after a lack of action taken against him brought state institutions in charge of child protection, including the KPAI, as well as the Catholic Church, into the spotlight. He was arrested by the Depok Police in September 2019 but was released three months later as the police failed to complete the dossiers for the prosecutor’s office to bring the case to court.

The Catholic Church, in this particular case Bogor Diocese, had washed its hands of the case, reiterating to the public that Angelo was not a Catholic brother. The diocese holds a letter dated Sept. 19, 2019 to be the basis of their claim. The letter said the BSMC was not a Catholic order and that Angelo should not wear a robe. But Angelo continues to wear the brown robe of a brother and along with other brothers from the BSMC, set up another orphanage after he walked free in December. He has continued these activities without any hindrance, collecting money from individual Catholic donors while Bogor Diocese has turned a blind eye.

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KANSAS CITY (MO)
National Catholic Reporter

September 16, 2020

By Madeleine Davison

James Holzhauer-Chuckas is the senior director of the United Catholic Youth Ministries at four parishes in Evanston, Illinois, and a Benedictine oblate who once thought of becoming a priest. He’s a proud Catholic — the last one “standing” in his family, he told NCR, after his parents and siblings left the church amid the clergy sex abuse crisis and disagreements with the church’s stance on LGBTQ rights.

He’s also a bit of a statistical anomaly — a child of unaffiliated parents who identifies as Catholic. Among today’s teenagers, the trend usually goes in the other direction, according to new research.

A Pew Research Center study released Sept. 10 suggests that most American teens share religious identities and faith practices with their parents, but that teenagers are much less likely than their parents to say religion is very important to them.

For instance, nearly half of all teens say they hold all the same religious beliefs as their parents, and most have gone to religious services with at least one parent. But while 43% of parents said religion is “very important” to them, just 24% of teens said the same.

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KELOWNA (BRITISH COLUMBIA, CANADA)
Castanet

September 16, 2020

By Tereza Verenca

Vernon brothers sexually abused by priest reach settlement with Diocese of Kamloops

An out-of-court settlement has been reached between the Diocese of Kamloops and two Vernon brothers who were sexually abused as teens by a Catholic priest.

The siblings launched separate lawsuits last year. In their notice of civil claims, they allege the now-deceased Father Herbert Bourne carried out the abuse at St. James parish in Vernon in the late 1970s. The court documents, which name Bourne and the Roman Catholic Bishop of the Diocese of Kamloops, a corporate sole as defendants, say the abuse happened at the church, in Bourne’s vehicle and at the boys’ family home.

“Bourne committed such tortious act on the plaintiff when he wrongfully and intentionally sexually, emotionally and mentally abused and traumatized the plaintiff,” the notice of civil claim states.

The brothers endured feelings of shame, low self-esteem, an impaired ability to be intimate, PTSD, depression and anxiety as a result, court documents show.

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DENVER (CO)
Catholic News Agency

September 16, 2020

By Perry West

A new podcast launched this month out of The Catholic University of America seeks to help laity and clergy better understand and address the problem of abuse within the Church.

The podcast, “Crisis: Clergy Abuse in the Catholic Church,” is produced by The Catholic Project, an initiative at CUA aimed at bringing healing and reform to the Church after the sex abuse crisis.

The first of 10 episodes was released September 9. Future episodes will be released weekly.

The podcast is hosted by Karna Lozoya, executive director of strategic communications at CUA, and Stephen White, the director of the Catholic Project. The hosts described the effort as a collaboration between clergy and laity to build up and renew the Church.

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KANSAS CITY (MO)
National Catholic Reporter

September 16, 2020

By Peter Feuerherd

The accuser prefers the traditional Tridentine rite Latin Mass. That way she only sees the celebrant from the back and can pray in peace, she told NCR.

“That’s real separation; it doesn’t feel like the priest interacts with you,” she said.

A few thousand miles away in Sacramento, California, Jeremy Leatherby, the former pastor of Presentation of the Blessed Virgin Mary Parish, excommunicated priest, and the man she accuses of sexual exploitation, is said to be living quietly with his family.

The excommunication was invoked only after Leatherby refused to acknowledge Pope Francis and Bishop Jaime Soto of Sacramento during the Eucharistic Prayer. While suspended, awaiting a church court’s verdict on the alleged sexual violations, Leatherby celebrated Mass in private homes in violation of his bishop’s order. During those liturgies, he proclaimed Pope Benedict XVI as the only living legitimate successor of Peter.

Soto responded in an announcement made public Aug. 7.

“Fr. Jeremy Leatherby has placed himself and others in a state of schism with the Roman Catholic Church. By his words and actions, Fr. Leatherby has incurred a latae sententiae (automatic) excommunication. This means that by his own volition he has separated himself from communion with the Roman Pontiff, Pope Francis, and other members of the Catholic Church,” wrote Soto.

That, according to canon law, took care of the theological dispute.

But on the issue of alleged sexual exploitation, the accuser awaits church justice. Leatherby, in a letter addressed to his former priest colleagues and posted Aug. 8 on the St. Joseph’s Battalion Sacramento blog, said he awaits exoneration.

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SYDNEY (NEW SOUTH WALES, AUSTRALIA)
Catholic Weekly

September 16, 2020

By Marilyn Rodrigues

Both major parties to support law affecting sacrament

A push to force priests to report information on child sexual abuse gained during confession looks likely to continue in Western Australia despite a parliamentary committee’s recommendation that it would be an ineffective measure against abuse.

The recommendation was made in a report by the Standing Committee on Legislation on the Children and Community Services Amendment Bill 2019, which passed the state’s Legislative Assembly in May and will be considered by the upper house.

In its current form, the bill is in line with WA’s Premier Mark McGowan and Minister for Child Protection Simone McGurk’s commitment to require priests to break the sacrament’s absolute confidentiality in known or suspected cases of child sexual abuse.

The five-member WA committee recommended last week that “ministers of religion be excused from criminal responsibility [of mandatory reporting] only when the grounds of their belief is based solely on information disclosed during religious confession.”

But Liberal Opposition Leader Liza Harvey said on 15 September that her party had decided against supporting the recommendation.

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HOUMA (LA)
Houma Daily Courier via Houma Today

September 15, 2020

By Dan Copp

A priest accused of sexual abuse who served in Houma 45 years ago will not be added to the local diocese’s list of “credibly accused” priests, church officials said.

On Aug. 18, Archbishop Gregory P. Aymond added the Rev. Henry Brian Highfill to the Archdiocese of New Orleans’ list of priests with credible accusations of child sexual abuse.

The Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, or SNAP, asked local Bishop Shelton Fabre to also include Highfill on the local list.

Highfill, who now lives in Las Vegas, served at St. Frances de Sales in Houma in 1975, according to New Orleans SNAP leader Kevin Bourgeois. The 78-year-old priest has been accused of abusing children from 1975 to 1981.

Because the Diocese of Houma-Thibodaux was formed two years after Highfill left, Fabre said he decided not to include his name on the list.

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FRAMINGHAM (MA)
MetroWest Daily News

September 15, 2020

By Alison Bosma

https://www.metrowestdailynews.com/news/20200915/former-priest-who-worked-in-bellingham-and-hudson-in-1950s-and-1970s-was-named-in-child-sex-abuse-settlement

Three former priests associated with the Archdiocese of Boston, including one who worked in churches in Hudson and Bellingham, were named in child sexual abuse settlements reached earlier this year.

“Our clients want to know why the supervisors were not properly supervising,” said Boston-based attorney Mitchell Garabedian, who announced the settlements this week, “and why those supervisors have not been held accountable for allowing innocent children to be sexually abused.”

All three are accused of molesting children who were parishioners, on church property, in the late 1950s, and late 1970s. At least two of them are dead, according to documents provided by Garabedian, but all three continued to work under the Archdiocese of Boston after the alleged abuse.

The Rev. Sylvio Ruest was accused of molesting a 13- or 14-year-old boy while assigned to Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary Church in Bellingham between 1957 and 1958. He previously worked in three other Massachusetts churches, including St. Ann’s Church in Salem; St. Louis Church in Lowell; and Christ the King Church in Hudson, according to documents provided by Garbedian.

A spokesperson for the Archdiocese of Boston said the organization makes it a practice not to comment on legal proceedings, but that settlements are included in annual reports, published on the Archdiocese’s website.

“It takes a lot of courage for clergy sexual abuse victims to come forward,” Garabedian said. “In doing so, clergy sexual abuse victims are making the world a safer place for children, and empowering themselves and other victims.”

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JACKSON (MI)
Associated Press via U.S. News and World Report

September 14, 2020

A 66-year-old former Michigan Catholic school teacher sexual abuse allegations stretching back more than four decades.

A former Catholic school teacher in Michigan faces sex abuse allegations stretching back more than four decades.

Charges against Joseph Comperchio are part of the state’s ongoing investigation into clergy abuse, Attorney General Dana Nessel’s office announced Monday.

Comperchio, 66, was arrested Monday in Fort Myers, Florida. He was expected to be arraigned Tuesday in Florida on two counts of first-degree and four counts of second-degree criminal sexual conduct.

Two people have told authorities they were between 9 and 11 years old when abused between 1974 and 1977, Nessel’s office said.

At the time, Comperchio taught drama and music at St. John Catholic School in Jackson, 80 miles (128 kilometers) west of Detroit.

As part of a broader investigation into the Catholic dioceses in Michigan, about 1.5 million paper documents and 3.5 million electronic documents have been seized through search warrants executed in October 2018, Nessel’s office said.

Ten people connected to the Catholic Church have been charged.

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HALIFAX (NOVA SCOTIA, CANADA)
McKiggan Hebert Law Firm

September 14, 2020

[Includes link to class action pleadings.]

McKiggan Hebert Lawyers in Halifax has filed a class action against the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Halifax-Yarmouth on behalf of persons who allege they were sexually abused by priests from the Archdiocese from 1960 to date.

The class action, filed by Douglas Champagne on behalf of other sexual abuse survivors, claims that the Roman Catholic Episcopal Corporation of Halifax-Yarmouth, more commonly known as the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Halifax-Yarmouth, had a decades long policy of secrecy of any allegations of sexual abuse against a priest.

Several priests from the Archdiocese of Halifax-Yarmouth have been criminally convicted of sexually abusing children within the Archdiocese.

Champagne alleges he was sexually abused by Father George Epoch, a notorious sexual abuser, while Epoch was working as a priest at Canadian Martyrs Church in Halifax. Champagne claims that the sexual abuse had lasting and permanent effects on his life.

The lawsuit claims that the Archdiocese sent priests accused of sexual misconduct to Southdown Institute, a treatment facility in Ontario, and then placed the priests back into parishes without any notice or warning to parishioners.

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WASHINGTON (DC)
Catholic News Service

September 14, 2020

By Mark Pattison

A new podcast series, “Crisis,” has debuted, which examines the clergy sexual abuse crisis in the U.S. church.

Produced by the Catholic Project at The Catholic University of America, Washington, its 10 episodes plan to recount the history of the crisis and church leaders’ responses to it.

“Catholic University really found itself in a unique position to offer a response to the sexual abuse crisis,” said Karna Lozoya, executive director of strategic communications in the president’s office at the university, and narrator of “Crisis.”

With its ties to a papally chartered university, “Crisis” examines the responses of popes, including Pope Francis and St. John Paul II. Because of its location in Washington, the archbishop of Washington serves as chancellor of the university and is a member of the board of trustees. The current archbishop is Archbishop Wilton D. Gregory.

A previous Washington archbishop and university chancellor, former Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, was himself accused of sexual misconduct dating back several decades; the allegation resulted in his forced laicization. McCarrick still maintains his innocence.

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