ABUSE TRACKER

NORTH CAROLINA
Associated Press

BY MITCH WEISS AND HOLBROOK MOHR
ASSOCIATED PRESS

RUTHERFORDTON, N.C. (AP) — More than four years after Matthew Fenner said he was beaten by members of his North Carolina church for being gay, the fate of one of his ministers is in the hands of a jury.

Brooke Covington, a longtime minister at Word of Faith Fellowship in Spindale, North Carolina, is accused of leading the 2013 beating to expel Fenner’s “homosexual demons.”

Fenner said he was punched, choked and screamed at for two hours in the sanctuary in January 2013.

The jury deliberated for about an hour Monday and will resume deliberating Tuesday.

Prosecutor Garland Byers said Fenner was held against his will and attacked. Defense lawyer David Teddy said Fenner requested the form of prayer.

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NORTH CAROLINA
NBC News

RUTHERFORDTON, N.C. — The lawyer for a North Carolina minister accused of orchestrating the beating of a gay congregant said Monday that he might not call any defense witnesses.

Brooke Covington, 58, a longtime minister at Word of Faith Fellowship in Spindale, North Carolina, is accused of leading the 2013 beating of former member Matthew Fenner to expel his “homosexual demons.”

After the state called its last witness, defense attorney David Teddy told the judge that he did not plan to call any witnesses. But under questioning from the judge, Covington said she needed to discuss with Teddy during a lunch break whether she wanted to testify on her own behalf.

Covington, who pleaded not guilty, is the first of five church members to face trial in the case. Each defendant will be tried separately.

Fenner, 23, said he was leaving a prayer service Jan. 27, 2013, when nearly two dozen people surrounded him in the sanctuary. He said they slapped, punched, choked and blasted him — a church practice that involves intense screaming — for two hours as they tried to expel his “homosexual demons.”

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CALIFORNIA
Christian News Network

An Orange County jury Monday awarded $2 million for past and future damages to the granddaughter of a founder of the Trinity Broadcasting Network, finding that her grandmother acted “outrageously” to allegations that the plaintiff was molested when she was 13 by a TBN employee.
Jan Crouch died in May of 2016.

Carra Crouch will only collect $900,000 of the verdict because jurors, who deliberated for about 7 1/2 hours over three days, found that Trinity Christian Center, the Santa Ana-based nonprofit that runs the evangelical Christian broadcasting giant, is responsible for 45 percent of the damages.

Crouch’s father was not held liable and 35 percent was assigned to her mother, Tawny.

Though Carra Crouch had sought $6 million in damages, her attorney, David Keesling, said they are “completely satisfied with their (jurors’) judgment.”

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CALIFORNIA
The Orange County Register

By KELLY PUENTE | kpuente@scng.com | Orange County Register
PUBLISHED: June 5, 2017

SANTA ANA — An Orange County jury on Monday, June 5 awarded $2 million in damages to the granddaughter of late televangelist Jan Crouch, finding that the minister acted outrageously when she blamed and berated her 13-year-old granddaughter after the girl told her she had been sexually assaulted by a church employee.

The jury deliberated for nearly eight hours before determining that Jan Crouch, who co-founded the Trinity Broadcasting Network empire with her late husband, Paul, caused her granddaughter Carra Crouch, now 24, years of emotional pain and suffering.

The judgment was $1 million for past emotional damage, and $1 million for future pain and suffering.

Did TBN ministers Paul, Jan Crouch cover up 13-year-old granddaughter’s rape allegation?
On the hook for $900,000 is the Trinity Christian Center of Santa Ana, the nonprofit that runs TBN, because jurors found the late Jan Crouch 45 percent responsible for causing Carra Crouch’s emotional distress.

Carra Crouch’s mother was assigned 35 percent, but she wasn’t even a defendant so she doesn’t have to pay. The remaining 20 percent was attached to the alleged rapist, who also was not a defendant and was never arrested.

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CALIFORNIA
MyNewsLA

POSTED BY LIZ SPEAR ON JUNE 5, 2017

An Orange County jury Monday awarded $2 million for past and future damages to the granddaughter of a founder of the Trinity Broadcasting Network, finding that her grandmother acted “outrageously” to allegations that the plaintiff was molested when she was 13 by a TBN employee.

Carra Crouch will only collect $900,000 of the verdict because jurors, who deliberated for about 7 1/2 hours over three days, found that Trinity Christian Center, the Santa Ana-based nonprofit that runs the evangelical Christian broadcasting giant, is responsible for 45 percent of the damages.

Crouch’s father was not held liable and 35 percent was assigned to her mother, Tawny.

Though Carra Crouch had sought $6 million in damages, her attorney, David Keesling, said they are “completely satisfied with their (jurors’) judgment.”

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IRELAND
Irish Post

By Erica Doyle Higgins

A SPECIALIST team will be brought in to perform DNA analysis on the remains found in the mass grave at the Mother and Baby Home in Tuam.

The bodies of 796 young children and babies were found in 2012 on the old grounds of the Bon Secours Mother and Baby home in Tuam, Co. Galway.

The home was run by the Bon Secours Sisters on behalf of Galway County Council from 1925 to 1961. To date, three excavations have taken place on the site but no exhumations have been performed.

Minister for Children and Youth Affairs Katherine Zappone made the announcement of the appointment in Dáil Éireann.

“While the Commission has concluded its excavations in Tuam, it has not yet reached any formal conclusions about the burials,” she said.

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IRELAND
Galway Advertiser

BY KERNAN ANDREWS

Issues arising from an investigation at the former mother and baby home in Tuam, which found “significant” quantities of human remains in structures designed to contain sewage, will be the subject of a public meeting in Galway this week.

Sinn Féin vice president Mary Lou McDonald will speak at the meeting, entitled In Searching For Truth, in the Clayton Hotel, Ballybrit, this Thursday [June 8] at 8pm. Survivors and their supporters, elected representatives, local authority, and State agency officials have been invited to attend.

The meeting will outline what the current state of play is in regards to issues around the interim Report of the Commission for Investigation; the Government response; and difficulties being experienced accessing information and records from local authorities and state agencies.

“This scandal has affected so many families in the west of Ireland and the State apparatus is frustrating the efforts of those people to find the truth about what happened to them, their loved ones, and why,” said SF senator Trevor Ó Clochartaigh, who will chair the meeting. “We need to help them find the truth. It is extremely important the public educate themselves in relation to the huge injustices that happened, and are still happening, to those who suffered in the mother and baby homes and this meeting will be an opportunity for the general public and others to show their support in a practical way.”

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AUSTRALIA
Catholic Outlook

Catholic Professional Standards Limited Announces Appointment of Chief Executive Officer

The Board of Catholic Professional Standards Limited (CPS) today announced the appointment of Ms Sheree Limbrick as the inaugural Chief Executive Officer of the Company.

Ms Limbrick has a wealth of experience in stakeholder engagement and management, strategic planning and policy development, as well as more than 10 years experience in executive leadership in social services.

Ms Limbrick has most recently worked with CatholicCare Melbourne as Deputy Chief Executive Officer and prior to that as Director of Operations. Previously managing Statewide Programs for Berry Street, a service provider for vulnerable children and families across Victoria, Ms Limbrick established support services for Forgotten Australians.

In welcoming Ms Limbrick’s appointment, the Chair of CPS, Geoff Giudice AO, said: ‘CPS has a unique role in the history of the Church in Australia and carrying out that role will not be without challenges. The Board is confident that we have a CEO who will provide outstanding leadership in meeting those challenges and achieving the company’s objectives’.

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AUSTRIA
Crux

John L. Allen Jr. June 6, 2017
EDITOR

Twenty years ago, Catholicism in Austria was in crisis, with bitter internal divisions exacerbating the toll of centuries of intense secularization. Today things seem far calmer, and, despite it all, the Church in Austria still retains a unique capacity to bring diverse people together and put them into serious conversation about things that matter.

VIENNA/LEIBNITZ, Austria – Two decades ago, no spot on the Catholic map was more battle-scarred, more apparently up for grabs, than Austria, where the Church seemed on the brink of either falling apart or being reborn as something fundamentally different.

In 1995, frustration with a sexual abuse scandal around Cardinal Hans Hermann Gröer of Vienna exploded into the formation of a KirchenVolksBewegung – a “People’s Movement of the Church.” Within weeks, organizers had gathered three-quarters of a million signatures on a petition demanding five reforms, including the ordination of married men, women deacons, local selection of bishops, expanded roles for laity, and more compassionate treatment of divorcees and homosexuals.

It inspired a similar uprising in Germany known as Wir Sind Kirche, “We Are Church,” that became a global liberal Catholic reform brand.

The movement climaxed with a “Dialogue for Austria” in 1998, held in Salzburg. It amounted to a national parliament of Austrian Catholics, and bishops pledged to carry whatever recommendations came out of it to Rome. It was three days of high drama, with intense floor debates among abbots and pastors, lay theologians and bishops, social justice activists and Catholic politicians. When the time came to vote, it was a resounding win for the reform positions.

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CANADA
The Globe and Mail

ANDRÉ PICARD
The Globe and Mail
Published Tuesday, Jun. 06, 2017

At St. Andrew’s Presbyterian Church, just across the street from the Supreme Court of Canada, there is a small display paying tribute to Dr. Peter Henderson Bryce, an underappreciated legend of Canadian public health.

In 1907, when he was chief medical officer for the federal government, Dr. Bryce penned the Report on the Indian Schools of Manitoba and the Northwest Territories, a scathing critique of residential schools.

He found, for example, that one in four students died within a year of enrolment, and the death rate was a staggering 48 per cent after three years.

Almost all the deaths were because of tuberculosis, a disease that spreads readily in schools’ crowded classrooms and dormitories, especially because the children were malnourished and sickly.

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CONNECTICUT
NBC Connecticut

A Roman Catholic Diocese in Connecticut has settled lawsuits by five men who alleged they were sexually abused by four priests when they were boys in the 1970s and 1980s.

Terms of the settlements were not disclosed. Court documents show the Roman Catholic Diocese of Bridgeport and the five men reached agreements in mediation. Two lawsuits were withdrawn Monday, and the others were dropped in March and April.

Lawyers in the case and diocese officials did not immediately return messages seeking comment Monday.

The Connecticut Post reports the five lawsuits were the last remaining of more than three dozen brought against the diocese by a Bridgeport law firm since the early 1990s. The cases involved sexual abuse allegations against 29 priests and resulted in more than $20 million in settlements.

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UNITED STATES
Huffington Post

Ryan White, Contributor
Director and Producer. Creator of ‘The Keepers’ on Netflix

Since the film’s release, I’ve heard from abuse survivors around the world who just want the chance to be heard.

06/05/2017

Note: This post contains details regarding sexual abuse.

I flew to Baltimore in the late summer of 2014. The intent was to meet a mystery woman – up until then, known for decades only as “Jane Doe” – whom my mom had recently discovered was a family friend. They had grown up in the same working class, Catholic neighborhood of Baltimore. As I understood it from my mom, Jane Doe had a seemingly unbelievable story from her past.

Jane Doe was habitually abused by the head priest, Father Maskell, at her Catholic high school in the late 1960’s. She confided in a young nun at the school named Sister Cathy who was trying to do something to stop the abuse. Then, in a scene seemingly ripped out of a horror film, Jane Doe was taken by Father Maskell to see Sister Cathy’s body in a field and told, “See what happens when you say bad things about people?”

For all the silencing she’d suffered throughout her life, if she wanted to finally tell her story in-depth, I wanted to be her partner in unburying these secrets.

Jane Doe, it turns out, is Jean Wehner. I had never met Jean before our first five-hour conversation at her dining room table, and I was admittedly skeptical when I arrived. But I left that conversation nauseated, exhausted, and enthralled ― in the hallway before we even got to the elevator, my producer and I said to each other, “We have to do this.” Jean was a credible person with a completely incredible experience. She was raw and brutally honest and uncensored; I was captivated by her. For all the silencing she’d suffered throughout her life, if she wanted to finally tell her story in-depth, I wanted to be her partner in unburying these secrets.

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MARYLAND
ABC 2

[with video]

Kate Mills

The Netflix series “The Keepers” suggests that Bishop Malooly might have participated in a cover-up related to Father A. Joseph Maskell’s alleged abuse of his students in the 1960s. Bishop Malooly worked various roes with the Baltimore Archdiocese beginning in 1984, until his appointment as the Ninth Bishop of Wilmington in 2008.

Bishop Malooly released a statement Monday, claiming he wanted to clarify the insinuations made in “The Keepers.”

He said he was not aware of the accusations of sexual abuse until 1992 while he was serving as Chancellor and Vicar General. When additional allegations came forth in 1994, Maskell was permanently removed.

Bishop Malooly confirmed that he did meet with Dr. Charles Franz at his Catonsville dental office, as depicted in “The Keepers.” However, the bishop says “at no time did I offer Dr. Franz a boat.” He continues his statement, “Charles Franz states that his mother made some kind of a report about Maskell to unidentified Archdiocesan authorities in 1967. I am not aware of any such report. I was a college student in 1967. As far as I know, there is no record of any report by Mrs. Franz in Archdiocesan files.”

Here is the full statement released by Bishop Malooly:

“In the spirit of truth, I would like to make some clarifications regarding some of the claims and insinuations that were made in ‘The Keepers.’ My intention is to set the record straight, and in no way do I wish to minimize the pain and suffering caused by the abuse perpetrated by Joseph Maskell, or any other priest.

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MARYLAND
The Baltimore Sun

Alison Knezevich
The Baltimore Sun

Public health officials in Ireland say they are reviewing the work history of the Catholic priest profiled in the Netflix series “The Keepers,” who was employed as a psychologist in that country after leaving Baltimore amid sexual abuse allegations.

The priest, A. Joseph Maskell, worked in Wexford for about seven months in 1995 as a temporary clinical psychologist for an Irish public health board, according to the national health agency there. He later worked in private practice in Ireland between 1995 and 1998, church officials in Ireland say.

He died in 2001 at St. Joseph Medical Center in Towson.

The Health Service Executive, the agency that runs public health services in Ireland, said in a statement that it has begun a process to “review services delivered and regarding any concerns” about Maskell’s employment with the public South Eastern Health Board.

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CANADA
America

Dean Dettloff
June 05, 2017

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said he urged Pope Francis to formally apologize for the Catholic Church’s role in mistreatment of Canada’s indigenous communities, making the request during his meeting with the pope on May 29. Though a formal papal apology has not yet been issued, Mr. Trudeau’s request comes after a variety of attempts on the part of Catholics in Canada and the Vatican to address the legacy of residential schools, where indigenous children who had been removed from their communities were subjected to heavy-handed assimilation efforts and, in many cases, sexual, physical and emotional abuse. While the schools were financed by the government, most were administered by churches; they were founded in the late 19th century and began to shut down in the 1970s.

Several religious communities and Catholic organizations, including the Jesuits, have issued their own apologies and statements of reconciliation. While the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops has expressed solidarity with indigenous people in Canada, it has not issued a direct apology.

On its website, the conference highlights apologies made by particular Catholic communities but says each “diocese and religious community is legally responsible for its own actions. The Catholic Church as a whole was not associated with the Residential Schools, nor was the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops.”

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NEW YORK
Village Voice

New York State Republicans, Boy Scouts, and the Catholic Church

by LAUREN EVANS

JUNE 5, 2017

When Ana Wagner was nine years old, she was sexually abused by her father’s best friend, starting a pattern that would repeat for the next three years. It’s been two decades, but she still has trouble talking about it.

“I was a very nerdy little nine-year-old,” she told the Voice, exhaling shakily. “And puny. I was the shortest in my school for my grade.” Twenty years went by before Wagner summoned the strength to report her abuser to police, marching into a precinct house to file a report. But by then it was too late.

At that point, Wagner was thirty-two. As it stands, New York State law gives victims only until the age of twenty-three — five years after their eighteenth birthday — to either bring criminal charges or file a suit. While most other states gradually pushed back their statutes of limitations, New York never did, making its policies among the most restrictive in the country.

A typical sex offender molests an average of 117 children in his or her lifetime, according to a study funded by the National Institute of Mental Health. The idea that Wagner’s abuser is still out there, hurting other children, haunts her every day. “That guilt, I live with it, because I’m just one,” she said. “So there’s, like, 116 other people. Maybe I could have prevented 100.”

Wagner is a forceful proponent of the Child Victims Act, a bill first proposed in 2006 that she and many others are desperately hoping will pass the state’s legislature before its session ends on June 21.

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NEW YORK
CNY Central

by Justine Marschner

A California man is suing the Syracuse Catholic Diocese and a former priest for $25 million, claiming that he was sexually abused nearly 30 years ago, according to the criminal complaint.

The lawsuit was filed on Friday, June 2nd in Connecticut by Matthew Strzepek who alleges former priest, Felix Colosimo, molested him from 1987 through 1990 when he was only 12-15 years old.

The paperwork obtained by CNYCentral claims that the abuse began when Strzepek attended a conference in New York City with Colosimo and other Catholic priests and spent the night in Connecticut.

During the trip in the fall of 1987, Strzepek was only 12-years-old and claims he was anally and orally raped by Colosimo. In addition, the lawsuit alleges that Colosimo also performed oral sex on Strzepek.

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MARYLAND
Huffington Post

Sarah Ensor, Contributor
Essayist at write2sarah.com

Note: This post contains details regarding sexual abuse.

In the late Cathy Cesnik’s English class at Archbishop Keough High School, my mother and her friend giggled uncontrollably at the cackling of the Three Witches, or the Wayward Sisters, in the recording of “MacBeth.” Sister Cathy (who at that time went by Sister Joanita) devised a punishment to fit the crime: each time the recording approached the cackling, she lowered the volume on the record player and required the girls to perform the cackling themselves. She was the kind of teacher who created with her students memories that last a lifetime.

Tragically, Cesnik’s life was cut short when she was murdered in 1969, as previously reported in HuffPost’s original story: “Buried in Baltimore: The Mysterious Murder of a Nun Who Knew Too Much.”

Just before Netflix released Ryan White’s stunning seven-part documentary series, “The Keepers,” which details allegations of abuse by priests (and police officers) and the unsolved murders of Cesnik and Joyce Malecki, the Archdiocese of Baltimore began a public relations campaign aimed to protect diocesan coffers, minimize the experiences of the many victims of abuse and the families of slain women, and deflect responsibility for the crimes.

When the late Father Joseph Maskell, then the guidance counselor at Archbishop Keough High School, called my mother, who was 15, to his office for counseling, he used guilt, shame, and hypnosis to abuse her. He told her French kissing was a mortal sin. He plied her for details of her dates with her boyfriend. And when he thought he had properly groomed her, he hypnotized her and assaulted her.

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CONNECTICUT
Stamford Advocate

By Daniel Tepfer Updated Monday, June 5, 2017

BRIDGEPORT – The Roman Catholic Diocese has agreed to pay settlements to five men who claimed in lawsuits they were sexually abused as children by four priests in the 1970s and 80s.
The amount of the settlements was not disclosed but the law firm that represented the five men had been seeking several million dollars.

“These pedophile priests used religion to gain access and trust. Our clients came forward to try to prevent this type of abuse from occurring again and to hold the Diocese responsible.” said Jason Tremont, whose law firm, Tremont Sheldon Robinson Mahoney, represents the plaintiffs.

The five lawsuits were the last of more than three dozen that were brought by the law firm against the diocese since the early 1990s claiming sexual abuse by a total of 29 priests resulting in more than $20 million in settlements.

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UNITED KINGDOM
Devon Live

By Paul_Greaves | Posted: June 05, 2017

A former Mormon bishop has gone on trial accused of sexually abusing two girls in Devon.

Stewart Allsford, 66, was a representative of the Church of the Latter-day Saints, or Mormons, at the time of the alleged abuse in the 1990s.

He admits indecently assaulting one of the girls when she 14 but denies five other charges of sex abuse. On the first day of his trial at Exeter Crown Court the jury heard from the alleged victim, now an adult, who said she had tried to hide what had happened from other people as she felt she was somehow to blame.

The offences only came to light when her boyfriend found her childhood diaries and discovered a page describing the defendant’s alleged attempts to kiss and touch her. She thought she had destroyed all the evidence because she did not want anyone to know.

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BELGIQUE
RTBF

[Judgment of a Swiss priest suspected of pedophilia has been discreetly transferred to Belgium.]

Histoire interpellante: un prêtre suisse déjà soupçonné de pédophilie dans son pays a été transféré en Belgique par sa fraternité. L’une de ses missions était pourtant de surveiller un dortoir dans une école. L’homme est désormais devant la justice belge et sa congrégation admet enfin que ce dossier a été mal géré.

L’abbé venait le soir dans le dortoir

Aujourd’hui, l’homme est accusé d’atteinte à la pudeur avec violences et menaces sur trois garçons de moins de 16 ans. En première instance, le prêtre de 39 ans a été acquitté. Le prévenu nie les faits. Mais, le Parquet a fait appel.

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FRANCE
BFM TV

[France: Catholic school in Cher has been closed for suspicions of mistreatment and sexual assault.]

Une école catholique du Cher hors contrat accueillant une centaine d’enfants du CE1 à la terminale a été fermée vendredi soir pour des soupçons de mauvais traitements et d’abus sexuels.

Fin des cours pour les élèves. Une école catholique traditionaliste de Presly, un village du Cher entre Orléans et Bourges, a été fermée vendredi par arrêté préfectoral “sur le fondement de la protection de l’enfance”. Une enquête judiciaire a été ouverte en raison de soupçons de maltraitance d’élèves et d’agressions sexuelles.

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RUSSIA
RAPSI

MOSCOW, June 5 (RAPSI, Mikhail Telekhov) – The Priozersk City Court in the Leningrad Region has set June 13 as a date for the preliminary hearing in the case against Russian priest Gleb Grozovsky, who stands charged with sexual abuse of children, the court’s spokesperson Svetlana Krasikova told RAPSI on Monday.

A prosecutor’s motion to extend Grozovsky’s detention will be considered on the same day, according to the court’s representative.

According to investigators, Grozovsky committed several crimes against minors in 2011 and 2013.

In 2013, he fled to Israel and applied for citizenship. However, his application was dismissed.

In April 2014, Grozovsky was put on the international wanted list. Israeli police arrested him in September. In January 2015, a court in Jerusalem ruled that the priest should be extradited to Russia pursuant to the European Convention on Extradition. The ruling was appealed but rejected. In April 2016, the Justice Minister signed an order on Grozovsky’s extradition.

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MARYLAND
Baltimore Post-Examiner

BY BILL HUGHES · JUNE 5, 2017

Notice to the Archdiocese of Baltimore (AOB): Three high ranking Penn State College officials were sentenced to jail, on June 2, 2017, for not reporting the child abuse allegations against scumbag Jerry Sandusky. This is a final warning to those who enable child predators to perpetrate their crimes. No more cover-ups! Now, to that end, let’s re-open a window to the past:

Joyce Malecki, age 20, was working in an office of a liquor distributor. On November 11, 1969. She went shopping in the Glen Burnie area and was abducted. Her body was found two days later in a creek located on the U.S. Army’s Fort Meade military base.

That salient fact makes her murder a Federal case! It gives jurisdiction to the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Baltimore. The FBI is the investigatory arm of that office.

Unfortunately, little has been done by the Feds in this matter. In the case of Malecki, her hands were tied behind her back, her throat was slashed and she was strangled. Her murder remains unsolved.

Malecki was a resident of Landsdowne, in Baltimore County. She attended St. Clement Roman Catholic Church, the same church where the degenerate Father Joseph Maskell, now deceased, was an assistant pastor (1966-68.) The record shows that Malecki attended a religious retreat during that period with Maskell in charge of the (gasp) “spiritual” program.

The AOB knew Maskell had sexually abused an altar boy at St. Clement. In the late 60s, the boy’s mother had reported it directly to them. Its shameful reaction: Move the predator to Archbishop Keough High School, where he would continue his unholy reign of terror over the innocents.

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PENNSYLVANIA
Standard Speaker

BY BOB KALINOWSKI / PUBLISHED: JUNE 5, 2017

KINGSTON — When a fill-in priest opened Mass on Sunday at the Church of St. Ignatius Loyola, parishioner Denise Tomasura didn’t think anything was wrong.

Then, at the end of Mass, an unexpected bombshell was announced: the parish priest, the Rev. John Chmil, resigned amid an investigation into misused church funds.

“Personally, I am seconds from crying. I loved father,” Tomasura, 53, said Sunday afternoon. “If I said who would be the last person on earth, it would be Father Chmil. If you thought about God on earth, he would be the perfect person. I am shocked. We drove all the way home in silence.”

Tomasura said she’s hoping the issue was the result of a mistake, but a statement from the Diocese of Scranton said Chmil knowingly misused parish funds and admitted it to diocese officials. The diocese said about $130,000 in parish funds were misspent.

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PENNSYLVANIA
Press & Sun Bulletin

AP

Pennsylvania church officials say a parish priest has resigned after an alleged misuse of church funds.

The Diocese of Scranton says Rev. John Chmil at the Church of St. Ignatius Loyola in Kingston has resigned after telling church leaders he misused money. The diocese says about $130,000 was misspent.

Chmil told church officials he misused the funds last month, but he says they were used for charitable purposes.

The Luzerne County District Attorney’s office says they were asked to investigate the case.

Chmil’s resignation was announced at the end of Mass this Sunday. Officials say St. Ignatius’ former pastor, Rev. John Polednak, is serving as the temporary administrator of the church.

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GUAM
Pacific News Center

Written by Janela Carrera

Archbishop Michael Byrnes could not disclose which property is being sold.

Guam – Coadjutor Archbishop Michael Byrnes has revealed that the Archdiocese of Agana is in the process of selling off one of its assets to be able to fund Hope and Healing Guam.

The archdiocese began this effort earlier this year when they hired a third party to establish Hope and Healing Guam which is a non profit created to provide counseling and compensation to victims of clergy abuse. The organization was launched with $1 million in seed money but the amount is clearly not enough to cover as dozens and dozens of victims and survivors have called into the hotline within the first week of its launch.

Archbishop Byrnes says a list was formulated of church assets that could potentially be sold.

“Nothing’s been added to the list but we are, we’re actually in process of selling one set of the assets right now. It’s in process so I really can’t elaborate further on that … we gotta wait for the process to finish,” noted Byrnes.

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GUAM
The Guam Daily Post

Mindy Aguon | For The Guam Daily Post

A corporate disclosure statement filed by the Archbishop of Agana indicating it is a sole corporation is “misleading and inconsistent” with public records that show the relationship between the archdiocese and the Vatican, according to attorney David Lujan. He contends there is ample grounds on which to find diversity jurisdiction in dozens of child sex abuse cases filed against the church.

Lujan filed an objection to the church’s corporate disclosure statement that declared the Archbishop of Agana has no parent corporation and no publicly traded corporation currently owns 10 percent or more of its stock.

The disclosure statement was filed as the church seeks the dismissal of dozens of child sex abuse lawsuits on the grounds that the federal court lacks diversity jurisdiction and the law that was passed allowing victims of child sexual abuse to file suit years later is “inorganic.”

The attorney represents multiple victims in child sex abuse cases against former Guam priests.

‘Under the thumb of the Holy See’

Lujan maintains the corporate disclosure statement fails to properly represent the true nature of the relationship between the Archbishop of Agana and the Vatican. He contends that although the Archbishop of Agana is formally designated as a sole corporation, “it is in fact clearly subordinate to the Holy See and under its ultimate authority.”

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GUAM
Pacific Daily News

This week marks a year since Archbishop Anthony Apuron was removed from the island, and a year since protesters have been demonstrating in front of the cathedral-basilica, demanding that he be defrocked.

When Apuron left the island, he had been accused of molesting Roy Quintanilla, Sonny Quinata and an unnamed cousin of John Toves. Later that day, Walter Denton would come forward, and accuser Roland Sondia spoke out the following week.

A year ago, the church on Guam was in a state of disarray. The group Concerned Catholics of Guam had been declared a “prohibited society.” Ownership of the seminary was in doubt. There was conflict between followers of the Neocatechumenal Way and traditional Catholics.

Although many of Apuron’s actions have been reversed, accusations about sex abuse against children have become much more troubling. If allegations that have been made over the last year are true, dozens of children were molested by people in positions of power over the course of decades. One of those accused, retired priest Louis Brouillard, admitted to molesting boys. In an affidavit signed last year, he said he had confessed his actions to church leaders.

In addition to Apuron and Brouillard, Tomas Camacho, the retired bishop of the Diocese of Chalan Kanoa, is accused, as is Apuron’s predecessor, Archbishop Felixberto Flores and others.

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GUAM
Pacific News Center

Written by Donna De Jesus

More victims are coming forward and filing child sex abuse lawsuits against the church.

Guam – There are now well over 70 recorded lawsuits filed against the Archdiocese of Agana: through attorneys Kevin Fowler, Anthony Perez, and David Lujan, who represents 61 victims to this point. Since the beginning of the month, there have been six new filings.

These latest victims are represented by Atty. David Lujan. Plaintiff E.V. tells an all too familiar tale in his complaint, saying that abuse from Louis Brouillard began in the early 1970s when E.V. was a teen. Like other victims before him, E.V. states that Brouillard would use the pretext of serving for an early morning mass to get E.V. to spend nights at the Malojloj parish rectory, and would molest him there. Brouillard reportedly rewarded boys by taking them to restaurants. As a scoutmaster, Brouillard took E.V. and other boys swimming and camping, where he would grope the boys during weekly outings.

S.M.T. accuses more than just Brouillard in his complaint. His story regarding Brouillard is similar to E.V.’s, having taken place at the Mangilao parish instead. But S.M.T. goes on to name others as his abusers. In the early 1970s, S.M.T. was about 10 years old when he says Mangilao priest Juan Camacho abused him. He mentions in his complaint an incident in which Camacho was too drunk to drop altar boys home, so they slept over at the rectory. S.M.T. adds that Camacho would have him and the other altar boys watch Camacho have sex with his girlfriend. Another abuser he names is Edward Pereira, who was a Boy Scout leader in the late 60s and early 70s. S.M.T. alleges that Pereira would have older Boy Scouts bring S.M.T. to his tent, where he would molest him. He’s also accused of lining up S.M.T. and other boy scouts and touching them inappropriately, and would reward them by giving them Boy Scout pins or badges.

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NEW YORK
New York Daily News

BY
KENNETH LOVETT
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS
Monday, June 5, 2017

ALBANY — The head of a group of breakaway state Senate Democrats has introduced a compromise bill he hopes can lead to passage this year of a Child Victims Act in New York.

Sen. Jeffrey Klein (D-Bronx) said his version of the bill would “give every person victimized by a sexual predator their day in both civil and criminal court.”

Recognizing the biggest roadblock to the passage of a bill has long been the push to create a one-year window to review old cases that can no longer be brought under current law, Klein’s bill would create a Child Victims Commission to examine, evaluate and make binding recommendations on time-barred civil claims within a one-year window to determine if they could move forward.

If a majority of the commission finds in favor of a survivor, that person can then file a civil lawsuit for damages within a year window.

The panel would consist of five members — at least one of whom must be a former district attorney or assistant DA and at least one other a defense attorney. The five members would be appointed by the state’s chief judge.

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CANADA/AUSTRALIA
The Australian

EAN HIGGINS, GEOFFREY LUCK
The Australian
June 5, 2017

A Catholic order of brothers in Quebec, Canada, has alleged that it was the victim of fraud and an ­attempted $66 million extortion at the hands of a Queensland convicted murderer and insurance scammer who mounted sexual abuse claims against Anglican Church Grammar School in Brisbane and a private international school in Japan.

Conrad Lord, a Montreal lawyer who acts for the Quebec ­chapter of the Brothers of Christian Instruction, known as the Mennaisians, was recently in ­Australia trying to encourage the Queensland Parole Board and other law enforcement authorities to investigate an extraordinary ­expedition that David Grant ­Mathiesen made to Tokyo three years ago while he was still on ­parole.

Mr Lord is expected to file a formal complaint to Queensland police alleging that Mathiesen ­engaged in “harassment using a computer”.

In 2014, Mathiesen sought and obtained apologies from the brothers, who were teachers and administrators at St Mary’s International School in Tokyo, which were meant to settle his claims.

However, he then demanded $66m in compensation and threat­ened to report them to the Japanese police.

Contacted at the weekend, ­Mathiesen, who lives in Brisbane where he and his wife own several up-market properties, maintained his claims that he had been sexually abused at St Mary’s when he was 11 years old and at the Brisbane school about 18 months later, and denied he had engaged in fraud or extortion.

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IRELAND
The Times (UK)

Sean O’Driscoll, Ireland Reporter
June 5 2017
The Times

An American priest and psychologist at the centre of suspected murder scandal was hired as a child psychologist in Ireland after a series of sexual abuse cases, the former chief executive of the southeastern health board has said.

John Cooney said that Joseph Maskell, the subject of the Netflix documentary The Keepers, almost certainly counselled child sexual abuse victims. Mr Cooney said he believed that Maskell may have been hired without a job interview because he had adequate qualifications and experience and because the health board was chronically short of child psychologists to deal with the huge growth in sexual abuse cases that came to light in the 1990s.

“Children were referred to him for counselling,” Mr Cooney told The Times. “He wouldn’t have much access to adult patients when he was working for us, it was mainly the child welfare service.”

Maskell, he said, dealt with “a range of issues that affect young children”, adding: “It could include interrelationship problems, bullying or any indication of child abuse. Sexual abuse would be obvious cases for referral.”

Mr Cooney said that he read about Maskell in the papers recently and “a lot of memories came back to me”. He said that the funding to hire an extra child psychologist to work for the southeastern health board became available following the Kilkenny incest scandal in 1993, when a man in the health board’s catchment area was convicted of the sexual and physical abuse of his daughter for 16 years.

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UNITED STATES
Bustle

By CAITLIN FLYNN

Nearly five decades after Sister Cathy Cesnik’s tragic murder in Baltimore, the unsolved case is receiving the national attention it deserves. But Netflix’s new docuseries The Keepers simultaneously places an extremely strong focus on the allegations of sexual abuse at Archbishop Keough High School, where Sister Cathy was a beloved English teacher. The series presents a theory that Sister Cathy’s murder was linked to her attempts to help the teenage girls who confided in her about the alleged abuse they suffered at the hands of Father Joseph Maskell, the school’s chaplain. (The Baltimore Sun reported that Maskell denied the accusations until his death in 2001, and he was never charged with any crime.) Keough has recently received a flurry of attention due to the series — but its doors will close for good very soon. However, the reason for Keough High School’s closing is unrelated to The Keepers and its content.

The school, which was renamed Seton Keough High School when Archbishop Keough and Seton High School (another all-girls Catholic School) merged in 1988, is closing for fairly common reasons. In October 2016, CBS Baltimore reported that, due to low enrollment and aging buildings, Keough will be forced to close its doors when then 2017 school year ends. Two other Baltimore-area Catholic schools, John Paul Regional and St. Thomas Aquinas, are closing for the same reason.

In a letter dated Oct. 26, 2016, the chancellor and superintendent of Baltimore Catholic schools addressed the community:

Among the most difficult decisions we must make is the closure of Seton Keough High School at the conclusion of the current school year. The facility that houses Seton Keough opened in 1965 and can accommodate 1,200 students. This year, 186 girls attend the high school. With 47 seniors scheduled to graduate at the end of the current school year and a steady decline in overall enrollment at the school over the past several years, the school simply cannot continue operating with so few students.

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UNITED STATES
Bustle

By CAITLIN FLYNN

Netflix’s new docuseries The Keepers is arguably both the most important and the most painful TV show of 2017. It addresses myriad issues that haven’t received nearly enough attention — and one of them is the Catholic Church’s response when allegations of abuse arise. When Jean Wehner (then known as Jane Doe) came forward to accuse Father Maskell of abuse in 1992, he was working at Holy Cross parish in Baltimore. Immediately after the allegations came to light, the Archdiocese sent Maskell to the Institute of Living in Hartford, Connecticut. (The Baltimore Sun reported that Maskell denied the accusations until his death in 2001.)

As explained on The Keepers, the psychiatric hospital had a unit that specialized in treating clergy. Dr. Leslie Lothstein, the psychologist who headed up the unit, claimed on the series that he was frequently given vague reasons for why priests were sent to him for treatment. He cited one example in which he allegedly was told that a priest was suffering from depression — but the priest himself allegedly confided in Lothstein that he’d been sent to the Institute of Living because he’d had sex with a teenager. As Lothstein claimed in The Keepers, he made clear to the Archdiocese that he would only treat priests if their complete history was made available to him. “I never got another referral,” he claimed.

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GUAM
Pacific News Center

Written by Janela Carrera

Archbishop Felixberto Flores is accused of exposing his private parts to a catholic school student.

Guam – It’s taken dozens and dozens of sex abuse lawsuits to be filed and, much to the shock of the catholic community, among those to be named as an alleged child molester is Guam’s beloved Archbishop Felixberto Flores, the first Chamorro archbishop of Guam.

With the late Archbishop Flores now named, this marks the third bishop with Guam ties to be accused of sexual abuse. The first was Archbishop Anthony Apuron who’s facing a canonical trial in Rome and then there’s retired Saipan Bishop Emeritus Tomas Camacho who once served on Guam as a priest.

This latest lawsuit against Archbishop Flores was filed by a 62-year-old man with the initials A.J.R. He says it happened at the old Agana Cathedral when he was 11 years old. A.J.R. says he had just come from using the restroom at the old cathedral when Flores instructed him to follow him to the rectory. While inside, A.J.R. claims Flores pulled up his robe and exposed his private parts to him then tried to pull A.J.R. closer to him. However, the 11-year-old kicked Flores in his groin and ran away.

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AUSTRALIA
ABC News

By Annah Fromberg

Tasmanian victims of child sexual abuse in institutional settings will die before they receive redress, authorities have been warned.

A national redress scheme, which was recommended by the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse, is expected to be up and running next year, but the Tasmanian Government has not set aside any money.

Tasmanian victim Tony Rayner said it was important for the Government to take action.

Mr Rayner gave evidence to the commission and also urged others to come forward.

“There are so many victims who are in their 70s and 80s; there are so many like me who are in their late 60s,” he said.

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IRELAND
Irish Times\i

Jun 2, 2017

Paul Cullen

St John of God has been part of the landscape of Irish health since the 1880s, and today provides a diverse range of services, from adult mental-health services in Dún Laoghaire/Rathdown and child mental-health services in south Dublin/Wicklow to special schools and learning disability services in various locations. Many of the services it runs are provided on contract for the HSE, but it also operates a long-established private psychiatric hospital in Dublin.

The order is an international Catholic organisation with its headquarters in Rome and more than 300 hospitals and centres in 53 countries. Ireland was originally part of the order’s West European Province, which also includes Britain and Malawi.

In Ireland, St John of God’s services are grouped into a number of limited companies reporting to group chief executive John Pepper, who has been on sick leave since last year.

The charity’s HSE-funded activities are co-ordinated by St John of God community services, which supports 7,000 adults and children daily.

In recent years, St John of God intellectual disability services have come under scrutiny in a series of critical Hiqa reports. Parts of a centre in Co Kildare were closed over welfare concerns after officials found more than 100 incidents had occurred between inspections.

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IRELAND
Irish Times

Jun 2, 2017

Martin Wall

On Saturday, June 25th last year a representative of the St John of God organisation contacted the Health Service Executive out of the blue with a bombshell revelation. An internal whistleblower had given details to a Sunday newspaper of a secret €1.6 million payment made to a number of its senior managers three years previously.

The newspaper had approached the St John of God organisation the previous day about the payments and a story was expected to be published imminently.

There was shock and outrage at the top level of the HSE, the Department of Health and the Department of Public Expenditure about the payments about which they had never been previously notified.

Three years after a scandal over top-up payments for senior executives had rocked the voluntary State-funded health sector, and after extensive efforts by the HSE, Department of Health and Department of Public Expenditure to clean up this whole area with explicit new pay rules and new arrangements to police compliance, a new controversy over unauthorised payments was brewing.

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Jun 2, 2017
Paul Cullen
 
The St John of God organisation made €1.85 million in undisclosed payments to senior managers after being instructed by the Vatican to deal with outstanding liabilities, according to a confidential HSE audit of the charity.

“The Vatican wanted to be sure that no liability transferred to the new organisation” after St John of God restructured itself in 2012, with direct accountability to the Holy See, the audit says. The charity provides a range of services from mental health to learning disability, many on contract from the HSE.

The audit uncovered secret payments totalling €6.24 million to senior lay executives. This includes a defined benefit pension scheme which transferred €3.586 million to four senior managers and unapproved increases in their salaries amounting to €277,152.

Private salary payments

The investigation uncovered undeclared private salary payments to 14 senior staff totalling €528,755 as well as a further 139 cases where the charity was not in compliance with public pay policy.

The audit says St John of God has not complied with public pay policy for over 30 years, despite relying on over €130 million a year in State funding. Since at least 1986, “other entities” within the charity have been supplementing the salary of senior executives, whose pay costs are funded by the Exchequer.

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IRELAND
The Journal

NETFLIX’S NEW TRUE crime documentary The Keepers is sparking fresh interest in a 48-year-old murder case.

The seven-part series opens with the story of 26-year-old Sister Cathy Cesnik, a beloved nun and teacher at the all-girls Archbishop Keough High School in Baltimore, Maryland.

Sister Cathy went missing on 7 November 1969 and nearly two months later her body was found.

To this day, her murder remains unsolved.

The series looks into suggestions that Sister Cathy was murdered because she threatened to reveal cases of sexual abuse occurring at Keough.

The Keepers doesn’t solve Sister Cathy’s death and it doesn’t definitively link the main suspect, the school’s chaplain and abuser Father Joseph Maskell, to the murder.

However, it delves into the long-term effects that the sexual abuse had on the graduates of Keough, along with revealing an alleged paedophile ring involving the school’s priests and a section of the police force in Baltimore.

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UNITED STATES
World-Herald

By Michael O’Connor / World-Herald staff writer

Her hands trembled as she held the letter.

“Hello,” the note began. “I apologize for sending this to your office — it’s the only address I found.”

Her body shook as she read the next words in a message she’d awaited for decades and wondered if she’d ever receive: “I’m the person you were looking for.”

Kathleen Chafin cried at her desk on that April day two years ago. As co-workers came to her side, she assured them she brimmed with joy, not sadness.

There already had been too much anguish in her life. Kathleen is 67 today, but she was just a teenager back when the heartbreak began.

Kathleen never held her baby boy, never saw him, never had a photo. But that wasn’t the toughest part.

The hardest for Kathleen — the part that pounded her heart — was never knowing what happened to him.

As a college freshman in 1968 she became pregnant, and her parish priest counseled her and her boyfriend against marriage. Later, she says, another priest coerced her to give up her baby for adoption.

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GUAM
The Guam Daily Post

Coadjutor Archbishop Michael Byrnes issued a statement yesterday expressing sadness about the latest allegations of sex abuse filed in court, and the addition of Guam’s beloved first Chamorro bishop as one of the accused.

“As the shepherd of our Catholic Church on Guam, I acknowledge the six latest persons to come forward filing allegations of sexual abuse by our clergy and others,” Byrnes said in a written statement. “With deep sadness, I also acknowledge that the newest lawsuits related to child abuse now include an allegation against the late Archbishop Felixberto C. Flores, who I know is deeply loved by many here on Guam.”

Above all else, all of us at the Archdiocese of Agana extend our prayers to these newest individuals, known by the initials of A.J.R., E.T., S.M.T., E.V., S.D.E. and R.Q., Byrnes added.

“I continue to ask our faithful to pray for all victims of abuse,” he stated. “They have suffered tremendous pain that no others can truly know.”

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AUSTRALIA
Newcastle Herald

SAM RIGNEY
1 Jun 2017

FORMER St Pius X, Adamstown maths teacher, Ted Hall, has been committed to stand trial on 32 sexual and indecent assault offences dating back to the 1970s.

Edward Smith Hall, 66, known as Ted Hall to St Pius students, appeared in Newcastle Local Court via audio visual link from Wagga Wagga Local Court charged with 40 offences against 11 St Pius students between 1973 and 1986.

The Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions formally withdrew eight counts and Mr Hall, who was represented by solicitor Drew Hamilton, pleaded not guilty to the remaining 32 charges.

The matter was adjourned to Newcastle District Court on June 29 to set a trial date.

Mr Hall, who now lives in the Riverina region, is accused of nine counts of sexual assault (category 4), 20 counts of indecent assault on a male, two counts of sexual assault (category 3) person under the age of 16 years and attempted buggery, court documents state.

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SOUTH CAROLINA
New York Daily News

BY
JESSICA SCHLADEBECK
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS
Saturday, June 3, 2017

One of the five people charged with trying to beat “homosexual demons” out of a fellow church member incriminated herself on the stand and admitted to throwing out the first blow in the attack.

Despite her attorney’s objections, Sarah Anderson, 30, testified that she told other leaders at Word of Faith Fellowship that Matthew Fenner had experienced “some kind of sexual sin or thought.”

She claimed Minister Brooke Covington, who is standing trial for kidnapping and assault, confronted the 23-year-old about his homosexual thoughts and that she started pushing Fenner’s chest, screaming “Open your heart!”

That’s when Anderson said she slapped Fenner in the face, with about 30 other members of the church joining in — beating, screaming at and choking the man for hours. Even after he admitted to having homosexual thoughts in a dream, the assault continued.

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GUAM
Pacific Daily News

Haidee V Eugenio, heugenio@guampdn.com June 4, 2017

The Holy See or the Roman Catholic Church could be named defendant in dozens of Guam clergy sex abuse lawsuits if the Archdiocese of Agana continues its objections to federal court jurisdiction on these matters, attorney David Lujan said.

Lujan said the Holy See’s degree of control and influence over the Archdiocese of Agana exceeds that of a parent corporation.

“Plaintiffs maintain that defendants’ continued objections to federal subject matter jurisdiction will unnecessarily expand and complicate this litigation,” Lujan said in a filing submitted by the June 2 deadline to prove federal court diversity jurisdiction over clergy sex abuse cases.

Lujan represents 44 plaintiffs who are now asking the U.S. District Court of Guam to conduct a hearing with oral argument to address jurisdiction matters.

“In view of the unique relationship between the Holy See and defendant Archdiocese, plaintiffs recommend that the parties stipulate to federal jurisdiction to avoid unnecessary proceedings aimed at establishing the true nature of the relationship between them,” Lujan said.

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GUAM
Pacific Daily News

Haidee V Eugenio, heugenio@guampdn.com June 4, 2017

The Vatican has all the evidence to defrock Archbishop Anthony S. Apuron, according to Catholics who continued their weekly picket on Sunday, nearly a year since Pope Francis suspended Apuron on June 6, 2016 over multiple allegations of rape and sex abuse of minors.

“Now that all evidence is in Rome, we want to see Apuron defrocked so that we can have healing in the church and healing also for victims of Apuron and other priests,” Laity Forward Movement President Lou Klitzkie said as she held a sign in front of Dulce Nombre de Maria Cathedral-Basilica in Hagatna that read, “Apuron Out.”

The Archdiocese of Agana is not only dealing with Apuron’s canonical trial, but is also a defendant in 74 clergy sex abuse lawsuits and three other childhood sexual abuse complaints filed thus far in local and federal courts.

The first picket calling for Apuron’s removal as Guam archbishop and laicization was held on June 12 last year, Klitzkie said. Apuron, who is turning 72 on Nov. 1, has been Guam archbishop since May 1986.

“Everyone’s saying a decision will be out by June, I don’t know for sure but I hope it’s going to be soon. The Vatican has more than enough evidence,” said Doris Concepcion, mother of a now deceased former altar boy who was allegedly raped by Apuron more than once at a church rectory in the 1970s.

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AUSTRALIA
Gatton Star

Adam Lusher | 4th Jun 2017

A PAEDOPHILE brainwashed a former Amish couple into regarding him as a prophet and ‘gifting’ him their six young daughters as child wives, a court heard.

Lee Kaplan, 52, convinced Savilla and Daniel Stoltzfus that his relationships with their six daughters were the will of God, who contacted him in his dreams, the court was told.

The first daughter to be “gifted” to Kaplan, it was claimed, was given as a future wife when she was nine years old.

Her older sister testified that she too was molested by Kaplan, the abuse allegedly starting when she was ten and leading to her becoming pregnant by him aged 14 in 2013.

Ms Stoltzfus, 43, also went to live with the accused, Bucks County Court in Pennsylvania heard, and allegedly ended up complaining to her husband that Kaplan had stopped having sex with her, preferring intercourse with her daughters.

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MEXICO
Mexico News Daily

A senior official of the Catholic Church in Mexico announced his resignation yesterday, the same day that a former priest filed accusations that Cardinal Norberto Rivera had concealed 15 cases of pedophilia by priests.

Rivera presented his resignation as Primate Archbishop of Mexico to church authorities, complying with regulations that require prelates to retire upon reaching the age of 75.

Rivera will turn 75 next Tuesday, said a spokesman of the Archdiocese of Mexico.

The accusation that Rivera covered up multiple cases of child sex abuse committed by priests throughout the country was filed before the federal Attorney General’s office (PGR) by Alberto Athié Gallo, a priest who resigned in 2000 over what he saw as the systematic concealment of pedophilia in the church.

Accompanied by alleged victims of pedophile priests, Athié told a press conference that Rivera reported cases of sexual abuse of minors to Catholic authorities in the Vatican, but bypassed authorities in Mexico.

Athié recalled that last December Rivera declared he had never protected a pedophile and cited at least 15 cases in the Archdiocese of México of priests who had been tried and sentenced.

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AUSTRALIA
Newcastle Herald

Joanne McCarthy
4 Jun 2017

THE Blue Knot Foundation has paid tribute to Anthony Foster – who championed the Newcastle Herald’s campaign for a child abuse royal commission – on the eve of his state funeral in Melbourne on Wednesday.

The head of the foundation for child abuse survivors, Dr Cathy Kezelman, said Mr Foster’s sudden death on May 27, aged 64, had devastated all who came to know him and wife Chrissie, as “steadfast and forthright champions for justice, truth and integrity”.

“Not often in life do you meet human beings who truly inspire,” Dr Kezelman said on Sunday.

“Anthony Foster was one such person.”

Mr and Mrs Foster first challenged the Catholic Church in the 1990s after the devastating discovery that two of their three daughters, Emma and Katie, had been sexually assaulted by a notorious Catholic priest when they were aged 5 and 6.

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NEW YORK
New York Daily News

BY
KENNETH LOVETT
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS
Saturday, June 3, 2017

ALBANY — The organization representing the state’s Catholic bishops says it supports doing away entirely with the legal time-frames to bring criminal charges in sexual abuse cases.

Dennis Poust, a spokesman for the state Catholic Conference headed by Timothy Cardinal Dolan, told the Daily News on Friday that his organization continues to oppose a one-year window to revive old cases, but supports doing away entirely with the statute of limitations pertaining to criminal sex abuse cases.

Poust went even further on Twitter on Saturday, accusing the Assembly Democrats of protecting predators with its new bill unveiled Friday and expected to pass the chamber later this week.

The Assembly bill would increase the current statute of limitations in criminal sex abuse cases by five years — meaning a felony case could only be brought up until a victims’ 28th birthday. For misdemeanors, cases would be allowed until a survivor’s 25th birthday.

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FRANCE
RTL

[A Catholic school suspected of assaulting students, a mother testifies.]

Jean-Baptiste Bourgeon
avec Clémence Bauduin et AFP
PUBLIÉ LE 03/06/2017

“Guillaume a fini par dire au bout d’un an et demi que l’abbé le battait à coups de poing et de tabouret”. Une enquête judiciaire a été ouverte vendredi 2 juin à l’encontre de L’Angélus, école catholique hors contrat située dans le Cher, à Presly, en raison de soupçons de maltraitance d’élèves et d’agressions sexuelles. Anne* est la mère de Guillaume*, un ancien pensionnaire de cet établissement qui accueille 109 élèves du primaire au lycée. Elle prend la parole pour évoquer le mal-être de son fils, battu selon ses dires par son directeur, l’abbé Régis Spinoza.

Il “arrivait” à Guillaume “d’avoir des bleus”, selon sa maman, qui mettait alors ces ecchymoses sur le compte du sport. “Il est passionné de rugby et il est hyper sportif donc quand il rentre d’un match il peut avoir des coups de crampon, une arcade sourcilière un peu bleue, une oreille en chou-fleur… Lui disait toujours ‘oui oui c’est à l’entraînement de rugby'”, raconte Anne.

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FRANCE
20 Minutes

20 Minutes avec AFP
Publié le 03.06.2017

Des soupçons de maltraitance d’élèves et d’agressions sexuelles dans une école catholique hors contrat du Cher. C’est le procureur de la République de Bourges qui en a fait l’annonce vendredi lors d’une conférence de presse. Et d’annoncer l’ouverture d’une enquête judiciaire.

L’école « L’Angelus », qui accueille 109 élèves, a été fermée par arrêté préfectoral jusqu’aux vacances d’été, « sur le fondement de la protection de l’enfance, au regard de l’enquête judiciaire en cours », a annoncé la préfecture vendredi soir.

Une vaste opération de gendarmerie a été lancée vendredi matin pour mener la perquisition dans les locaux de l’école, située à Presly (Cher). Une soixantaine d’enfants ont également été auditionnés.

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FRANCE
RFI

French prosecutors temporarily have closed down a traditionalist Catholic school and launched an investigation into allegations of child abuse, some possibly of a sexual nature.

Gendarmes raided the Angelus school in a village in central France on Friday, closing it until the end of the next school holidays.

About 60 of the 109 pupils were interviewed about allegations of physical abuse and corporal punishment and “suspicions of offences of a sexual nature”, according to public prosecutor Joël Garrigue.

There are also suspicions of illegal work and fraud, he said, adding that the school’s director, Abbé Régis Spinoza, was detained to ensure that he would be present during the raid.

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NEW YORK
Observer-Dispatch

By GREG MASON / gmason@uticaod.com

A former Utica-area priest and the Syracuse Catholic Diocese each are facing a $25 million lawsuit from a man who claims the priest sexually abused him as a child.

The lawsuit, filed Friday in federal court in Connecticut by California man Matthew Strzepak, accuses former priest Felix Colosimo of molesting Strzepak from 1987 to 1990. Strzepak was between 12 to 15 years old when the acts were committed, according to the lawsuit.

Colosimo’s served in the past at St. Peter’s Church in North Utica, St. Leo’s Church in Holland Patent, St. Anthony of Padua Church in East Utica and Our Lady of the Rosary in New Hartford. Now age 78, Colosimo said he retired as a priest at Our Lady of the Rosary three years ago for reasons unrelated to the abuse allegations, according to a Syracuse.com report.

Colosimo could not be immediately reached for comment Saturday.

Strzepak told Syracuse.com that the abuse began in 1978 or 1979 when he was 4 years old, but New York state’s statute of limitations expired for those claims.

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IRELAND
IrishCentral

Frances Mulraney @FrancesMulraney June 03, 2017

Irish Minister for Children and Youth Affairs Katherine Zappone announced that experts have been employed to assess the possibility of exhuming bodies buried at the Tuam Mother and Baby Home to identify the remains of the hundreds of babies believed to be buried there.

In an op-ed with the Irish Examiner, Zappone wrote that she felt there is a “real possibility” that the identities of these children could be discovered but that the process is “very complicated.”As such, forensic archaeologist Niamh McCullough has been appointed to lead a team of international experts to investigate the best possible next step in dealing with the Tuam babies scandal.

Thanks to the tireless work of local historian Catherine Corless, it was revealed in 2014 that the Tuam Mother and Baby home and the order of nuns in control of it maintained a practice of burying the babies who died in their care in mass graves with the revelation earlier this year that there may be as many as 800 children buried on the Tuam grounds. The children are believed to have died in the home and been buried here by nuns between 1925 and 1961.

These babies were the children of the mothers regarded as “fallen women”, those who had fallen pregnant out of wedlock or as a result of rape or incest, and were committed to the homes run nationwide by religious orders around the country.

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ITALIA
Rete L’Abuso

[The prosecutor asks 10 years in prison for Don Pascal, former pastor of Mandas and Villamar: Under indictment for four sexual assaults on minors.]

Il pm chiede 10 anni di carcere per Don Pascal, ex parroco di Mandas e Villamar: sotto accusa per quattro violenze sessuali su minori.

Dieci anni di carcere per l’ex parroco di Mandas Don Pascal, accusato di abusi sui minori: questa la richiesta avanzata dal pm Liliana Ledda, che sollecita al Gup la condanna del sacerdote. Quattro le violenze sessuali che sarebbero state commesse dal prete, prima a Mandas e poi a Villamar. La difesa rivendica però il fatto che don Pascal sia semi infermo di mente, dunque non condannabile. Ma secondo il pm, gli episodi di violenza sui minori sarebbero avvenuti prima che sorgesse questo problema.

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IRELAND
Irish Examiner

Saturday, June 03, 2017

By Conall Ó Fátharta
Irish Examiner Reporter

Campaigners have called on the Government to start excavations at other mother and baby home sites after Children’s Minister Katherine Zappone said she is in favour of such a move.

The delay in moving the excavations to other sites has baffled campaigners given that ample evidence of large numbers of infant deaths having occurred in other institutions has been in State hands since 2011.

The Irish Examiner has previously revealed that the McAleese inquiry, the HSE, and two government departments were aware of the “disturbing” issue of infant deaths at Tuam as early as 2012.

The full details of almost 800 children who died in two of the country’s largest mother and baby homes — Bessborough, Cork City, and Castlepollard, Co Westmeath — were also given to the HSE by a religious order in 2011.

In a joint statement, the Adoption Rights Alliance and Justice For Magdalenes Research (JFMR) stressed that “Tuam is not an isolated case” and that it was aware of more than 180 institutions, agencies, and individuals involved with Ireland’s unmarried mothers and their children.

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INDIA
The News Minute

TNM Staff
Saturday, June 03, 2017

Kottiyoor priest Robin Vadakkumchery, accused of raping and impregnating a minor girl, has approached the High Court seeking bail.

The Catholic priest’s justification for seeking bail is that his custody was not required any more as police had completed investigation in the case and has filed the final report, Times of India reports.

Robin Vadakkumchery was arrested on February 28 while he was trying to escape to Canada.

The arrest came three weeks after the girl’s delivery. She gave birth to the child on February 7 in Kannur. The child, a boy, was reportedly sent to an adoption centre run by nuns.

The priest had first tried to implicate the girl’s father as the accused in the case whereas the girl’s parents kept her in the dark about the childbirth. They told her that she was operated on for appendicitis.

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NEW YORK
New York Daily News

BY
KENNETH LOVETT
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS
Saturday, June 3, 2017

ALBANY — The state Assembly Friday introduced a reworked bill designed to make it easier for child sex abuse survivors to seek justice as adults — and it’s expected to pass as soon as next week.

The bill goes slightly further than a previous version that had been criticized by abuse survivors, who now support it.

Bill sponsor Assemblywoman Linda Rosenthal (D-Manhattan) said the plan is to move the bill through committee starting Tuesday and then have a full floor vote later in the week.

“It’s the culmination of years of work on this issue — and 2017, it’s high-time we get it done,” Rosenthal said.

The Assembly previously passed versions of the Child Victims Act four times — but none since 2008.

Rosenthal called child sex abuse “an epidemic.”

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CANADA
Winnipeg Free Press

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has opened the door. Now it’s up to Pope Francis to enter.

During a 42-minute private audience last Monday, Mr. Trudeau invited the Pope to issue a historic papal apology for the role the Roman Catholic Church played in the abuse of children in residential schools.

The prime minister also invited the Pope to visit Canada, which is where, it’s to be hoped, any apology would be delivered.

Following the meeting, the Vatican issued a statement saying the Pope will consider the requests, but did not mention a possible papal apology or when the Pope might visit Canada.

The time for considering is over. It’s time for Pope Francis to deliver a forthright apology to indigenous survivors for the sexual, mental and physical abuse they suffered at church-run schools.

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CANADA
CBC News

By Jaela Bernstien, CBC News Posted: Jun 03, 2017

In a tucked-away office at Montreal’s Concordia University, a video conference connects two groups of survivors separated by an ocean but linked by their so-called “illegitimate” births — Quebec’s Duplessis Orphans and the survivors of Ireland’s Mother and Baby Homes.

One by one, they introduce themselves, starting with their names and where they were born: Mount Providence orphanage in Montreal, Saint Patrick’s Home in Dublin, Baie-Saint-Paul orphanage in Quebec.

Communication is slow and halting; the Quebecers speak French, the Irish, English. Some never learned to read or write.

But when survivors hear the familiar story — even in a foreign language — they nod along.

On both sides of the ocean, children born to women out of wedlock were abandoned to institutions run by the Catholic Church, in many cases falsely labelled as mentally deficient and abused sexually and physically for years.

“When you [are] a bastard … [it’s like] being born into a garbage can,” says Quebecer Louis-Joseph Hébert, or Nestor, as he prefers to be called.

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MEW MEXICO
The New Mexican

By Phaedra Haywood | The New Mexican

A woman in her 30s is suing Temple Baptist Church of Santa Fe, saying that as a child she was molested by two teachers at a school run by the church in the 1990s.

After years of abuse, the woman’s complaint says, she married and had children with one of her abusers — whom she says was the grandson of church leaders — and didn’t realize until she had a “triggering event” in 2015 that what had been done to her was wrong and illegal.

“The perpetrators were both uncertified male teachers who had been raised in the culture of the Temple Baptist Church and School,” according to her complaint filed last month in District Court.

“The second perpetrator teacher essentially ‘dated’ Plaintiff as a 12-15 year old child, and groomed her to participate in his sexual abuse of her in those years as part of a ‘relationship’ and ‘God’s will.’ ”
As a child, the complaint says, the woman “did not comprehend that the tickling, grabbing, rubbing, massaging and penetrating of her private parts by adult male teachers was ‘sexual abuse,’ nor the harms it would be causing.”

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SOUTH AFRICA
Dispatch Live

By Mbali Tanana – June 3, 2017

A popular Eastern Cape “prophet”, who hosts pop-up services at several public areas, has come under scrutiny by the Hawks following serious allegations from some of the women from his congregation.

The flamboyant “prophet” Mndayi Njengele, believed to be 44 years old, has a following in Cape Town, Keiskammahoek, King William’s Town, East London, Port Elizabeth, Mthatha and his hometown, Dutywa. He stands accused of taking advantage of scores of women in his church, with some going as far as making allegations of sexual abuse against him.

The women – who had organised themselves into a WhatsApp group, of about 20 – became desperate after they were allegedly turned away from a police station where they went to lay a charge against Njengele, who leads the “Wound of Christ: Nxeba lika Yesu” church.

In a moment of desperation, they approached former PSL referee and well-known community activist Ace Ncobo to intervene. In an e-mail to Ncobo – with an attachment of the claims against Mndayi – one of the women wrote: “We are +-50 victims, the police laughed when three of us went to open a case in Dutywa. Please help”.

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NEW YORK
The Buffalo News

By Alan Pergament
Published Fri, Jun 2, 2017

I have a beef with Netflix. The streaming service is premiering too many interesting programs too close to each other.

I suppose the one positive development from the lousy May weather was it forced me inside to binge on even some Netflix programs I had no intention of watching.

During the hit-and-miss weather on the extended Memorial Day weekend, I began watching the true crime documentary series “The Keepers” about the 1969 murder of a beloved Baltimore nun.

The series had me at hello when it quickly introduced a retired Baltimore journalist, Tom Nugent, who is as big a pack rat as I am. He was up in his cluttered attic, roaming through all his stories about the murder of Sister Cathy Cesnik.

I had to laugh a little in recognition because I recently cleaned up my office and discovered some of my papers from my college journalism classes in 1969.

That was the last laugh I had in a series that played out like a horror story.

I watched with my fiancé, a graduate of a local Catholic high school and the proud niece of a Sister of Mercy.

We were both horrified as two 60-something citizen journalists, Gemma Hoskins and Abbie Schaub, led an investigation into the death of their high school teacher. These amateur Jessica Fletcher’s uncovered sexual abuse by a priest of multiple high school girls that was covered up by the Baltimore diocese with the possible help of law enforcement authorities and politicians.

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CANADA
Blackburn News

BY PAUL PEDRO
JUNE 2, 2017

A retired Chatham priest is being sued for sexual assault.

Three Chatham women, now in their 60s, have filed a civil lawsuit against James Blonde alleging sexual abuse in 1971 and 1972 while he was a priest at Blessed Sacrament Church in Chatham.

Lawyer Rob Talach, who represents the women, alleges touching and hugging by Blonde escalated into sexual abuse.

“Back rubs that go beyond back rubs, activities that you would not expect a priest to be engaged in but in the third woman’s case, it definitely crossed the line and proceeded and showed what happens if you didn’t stop it and it proceeded to some very clear sexual abuse,” claims Talach.

Talach, of London law firm Beckett Personal Injury Lawyers, says the women are seeking $3-million each for pain and suffering, impact on their education and employment, and ongoing counselling.

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UNITED STATES
Pax Culturati

June 2, 2017 by Kate O’Hare

I’ve finished Netflix’s “The Keepers,” and I have thoughts and questions. Bear with me.

If you haven’t seen the whole series, stop reading now and come back when you have. I’m going to make spoilery comments, and I’m going to reference things I’m not going to explain. You’ve been warned.

Some statements up front:

* I’m no conspiracy theorist, but I don’t deny they sometimes exist.
* Two things can be true at once.
* Neither victims or perpetrators should be taken at their word.
* All human institutions, large and small, suffer from corruption, foolishness, arrogance and cowardice.
* What a storyteller leaves out is as least as important (if not more so) than what’s put in.
* If men are to be held accountable, women must be as well.
* Women make great detectives.

Let’s deal with these one at a time.

Conspiracy Theories

There are cover-ups in the world (just ask Richard Nixon), and they’re usually worse than the crime (again, ask Richard Nixon). In the case of the sexual abuse of children, the crime wins.

Even in the face of something this heinous, though, the human ability to disbelieve the obvious, and an institution’s default response to protect itself, kick into overdrive.

You can explain aspects of the Church’s inability to deal with abusive priests, and you can even understand some of it, but it’s still horrific. Any honest Catholic feels sick to his or her stomach hearing about it. And, no one cares that the Church has largely cleaned up its act and now goes to great lengths to vet priests and protect children, that the accusations are decades old, or that abuse continues rampant in public and private schools, non-Catholic religious institutions, sports teams, the Boy Scouts, Penn State, the Los Angeles Unified School District, and so on. That doesn’t matter, and perhaps it shouldn’t.

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UNITED KINGDOM
Metro

Kate Leaver
Saturday 3 Jun 2017

If only the world had more people like Abbie Schaub and Gemma Hoskins.
These two retirees from Baltimore, USA, are the unspoken heroes of the Netflix true crimes series, The Keepers.

If you’ve seen it, you know what I’m talking about here – they’re crime-fighting goddesses who basically got to their 60s and said, ‘The police ain’t gonna solve this crime? We’ll take it from here, boys; we have Microsoft Word and a library card’.

Here’s how Schaub and Hoskins became the fastidious sleuths they are today.

Their beloved English teacher, Sister Cathy Cesnik, went missing in 1969.

She got into her car, drove to a shopping mall, bought her sister an engagement present, and simply never returned.

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MARYLAND
WBAL

[with video]

Lisa Robinson

BALTIMORE —
The Netflix documentary series “The Keepers” focuses on a murder mystery and years of molestation at a Baltimore high school.

The series has helped to bring more victims to light. “The Keepers” is giving people the courage to speak up after suffering in silence. People who once thought they were the only one now know they are not alone.

“The Keepers” focuses on the unsolved death of popular Archbishop Keough High School teacher Sister Cathy Cesnick. She was found dead in a Landsowne dump in 1970, months after she disappeared.

The Netflix series talks to women who say two school priests, Jospeh Maskell and Neil Magnus, abused them. They said Cesnik disappeared as she was close to discovering who was responsible for the abuse.

Joanne Suder is an attorney representing the Keough students who allegedly were abused by the two men. She said 12 more Keough victims have reached out to her since the series hit the air, and they tell a similar story.

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IRELAND
Irish Times

Paul Cullen

The depiction of the Sisters of Charity during the recent controversy over the transfer of the National Maternity Hospital to St Vincent’s hospital was akin to elder abuse, according to one of the order’s best-known members.

Sr Stanislaus Kennedy said she was shocked and surprised by the scale of the controversy over St Vincent’s and the criticisms levelled at her order. “It shook me, it really did.”

During the controversy, very little thought was given to the background of the Sisters of Charity and the work its members had done over the years, she said.

She said her order had been depicted as “a power-grabbing congregation” and “a group of old ladies who didn’t know what they were doing”

“A lot of the stuff that came out in the media about us was very hurtful. There was a lot of misunderstanding and misrepresentation. It was very distasteful.”

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SOUTH CAROLINA
Associated Press

RUTHERFORDTON, N.C. (AP) — The Latest on the trial of a North Carolina minister who is accused of assaulting and kidnapping a gay church member (all times local):

5:40 p.m.

One of five people charged with beating a fellow church member to expel what they called “homosexual demons” says church leaders asked everyone at the attack to tell investigators that nothing happened.

Sarah Anderson testified Friday for prosecutors in the trial of Word of Faith Fellowship minister Brooke Covington.

Anderson says church leaders including two state prosecutors at the time met with the roughly 30 people present when Matthew Fenner was beaten in January 2013. She says then-assistant district attorneys Frank Webster and Chris Back told them to tell authorities that nothing happened.

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SOUTH CAROLINA
Fox 57

CHARLESTON, SC (WCIV) — Officials with the Charleston Police Department have confirmed a New York priest accused of sexually assaulting two boys at St. Patrick Catholic Church in Charleston turned himself in to authorities this week.

Father Freddy Washington, 53, was arrested by Charleston police and booked into the Al Cannon Detention Center on Thursday. He’s charged with two counts of criminal sexual conduct with a minor, and one count of committing lewd acts on a child under 14.

Washington was not an ordained minister at the time, according both to police and a statement provided Thursday by the Diocese of Charleston.

A spokesperson for the Diocese said Thursday Washington was a member of the Congregation of the Holy Spirit (Spiritans), and was serving as a priest at a parish in the Arch Diocese of New York at a parish in Harlem. A check of that diocese’s website does not list Washington on its current priest roster. His current status with the Arch Diocese of New York is currently unknown by the diocese of Charleston.

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MEXICO
Animal Politico

Los exsacerdotes Alberto Athie y José Barba presentaron una denuncia en la Procuraduría General de la República (PGR) en contra del Cardenal Norberto Rivera por el presunto encubrimiento de 15 sacerdotes pederastas.

Ambos exsacerdotes acudieron este viernes 2 de junio a la sede de la PGR para presentar la denuncia y al salir explicaron que, en diciembre del año pasado, el Cardenal Norberto Rivera reconoció que envió al Vaticano los expedientes de 15 sacerdotes que cometieron pederastia en México.

“Él (el Cardenal Norberto Rivera) dice que abrió un expediente de investigación, que Roma encontró elementos y que el Papa sentenció. (…) No hizo en paralelo ninguna acción para notificar a las autoridades mexicanas”, explicó Athié en un mensaje a medios afuera de la sede de PGR.

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MEXICO
Associated Press

MEXICO CITY (AP) — A former Roman Catholic priest alleges that Mexico City’s archbishop violated the law by not informing authorities outside the church about at least 15 cases of abusive priests.

Alberto Athie says that Cardinal Norberto Rivera first mentioned the cases publicly in December. In defending himself against accusations that he protected abusive priests, Rivera said he had referred at least 15 cases to the Vatican.

Athie filed a complaint on Friday with the Attorney General’s Office, saying that Mexican law required such cases also be reported to law enforcement.

Archdiocese spokesman Hugo Valdemar said the cases Rivera referenced occurred before the law changed in 2013. He says that the archdiocese has notified authorities about three cases since then.

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IRELAND
Irish Times

Simon Carswell

The Health Service Executive is investigating the activities of US priest Joseph Maskell, who fled to Ireland following sex abuse allegations in Baltimore.

Maskell escaped to Co Wexford in 1994 amid claims he had sexually abused students while serving as chaplain at the all-girls Archbishop Keogh High School in Baltimore, Maryland, from 1967 to 1975.

By the time Maskell, whose father was from Limerick, arrived in Ireland, he was ordered not to perform any priestly duties.

The HSE told The Irish Times it had begun reviewing the work of Maskell and “any concerns” arising from his employment as a psychologist in a “psycho-education initiative” by the South Eastern Health Board in Wexford from April 11th, 1995 to November 7th, 1995. He lived in Ireland until 1998.

Maskell is suspected of involvement in the unsolved murder of Sister Catherine Ann Cesnik (26), an English teacher at the Baltimore school who became aware of his abuse.

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NEW YORK
Syracuse.com

By John O’Brien | jobrien@syracuse.com
on June 02, 2017

SYRACUSE, N.Y. — A 41-year-old man sued the Syracuse Catholic Diocese and a retired priest today, claiming the priest repeatedly molested him as a child three decades ago.

The diocese determined the accusations to be credible three years ago, according to the accuser, Matthew Strzepek.

The priest, Felix Colosimo, denied the allegations today. But he wouldn’t say whether the diocese found them to be credible.

“Oh, my gosh — that is so untrue,” Colosimo told Syracuse.com of Strzepek’s accusations. “There’s no proof.”

Strzepek, who lives outside Santa Barbara, Calif., accused Colosimo in the lawsuit of sexually abusing him from 1987 through 1990, when Strzepek was 12 to 15 years old.

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GUAM
The Guam Daily Post

Mindy Aguon | For The Guam Daily Post

A former Cathedral Grade School student has accused the first Chamorro bishop of the Diocese of Agana of sexual abuse, a civil complaint filed in the District Court of Guam yesterday states.

A.J.R., now 62 years old, and using his initials to protect his identity, filed a lawsuit against the Archdiocese of Agana accusing the late Archbishop Felixberto Camacho Flores of sexually molesting and abusing him when he was 11.

A.J.R. was attending Cathedral Grade School and Flores was a priest at the Agana Cathedral in 1966.

Flores played a prominent role in church affairs and was superintendent of Catholic schools in the ’50s, and the victim said students at the school were told to honor and respect nuns and priests and “do whatever” they were told to do.

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CITTA’ DEL VATICANO/MALI
Il Mattino (Italia)

Città del Vaticano C’è un caso in Africa che ha fatto saltare sulla seggiola il Papa. Una inchiesta svizzera chiamata Swissleaks, pubblicata in grande evidenza da Le Monde, ha messo in evidenza l’esistenza di conti milionari sospetti in una banca elvetica, riconducibili al vescovo del Mali, monsignor Jean Zerbo, 73 anni, appena nominato da Papa Bergoglio cardinale nel prossimo concistoro previsto per il 29 giugno. I conti ammonterebbero a un totale di dodici milioni di euro e sembra che siano stati aperti in modo discrezionale.

«Una storia rocambolesca che mescola opacità e incontri riervati tra il clero del mali e i banchieri svizzeri e si sospetta la sottrazione di fondi in un Paese africano dove i cristiani non rappresentano che il 2,4 per cento della popolazione composta da 17 milioni di persone». Le Monde ricostruisce la vicenda nel dettaglio, a cominciare dal ruolo di monsignor Zerbo. Le domande sono incalzanti. «Da dove vengono questi 12 milioni di euro? Appartengono ai fedeli del Mali anche se sono fondi dormienti in una banca svizzera?». Nel 2005, durante alcuni incontri tra i banchieri e Zerbo, viene stabilito che i fondi fossero suddivisi in diversi conti correnti, accordandosi per una remunerazione del 5 per cento. Nel corso degli anni, come viene riportato dal giornale francese, si registrano diverse proteste da parte di alcune organizzazioni di base della Chiesa del Mali per la scarsa opacità nella gestione. Ma nulla accade. Fino alla pubblicazione dell’articolo poiché la conferenza episcopale del Mali, che fino a quel momento aveva rifiutato di commentare le indiscrezioni, ha affidato all’agenzia vaticana Fides un comunicato a sua difesa. «Agiamo in piena trasparenza, al servizio delle opere della Chiesa».

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MALI
Le Monde (France)

Par Anthony Fouchard (contributeur Le Monde Afrique, Bamako)

LE MONDE Le 01.06.2017

La Conférence épiscopale du Mali (CEM) est dans la tourmente après les révélations, mardi 30 mai, d’un présumé détournement de fonds de plus de 7 milliards de francs CFA, soit 12 millions d’euros. Les trois principaux prélats du pays sont mis en cause, notamment Mgr Jean Zerbo, qui doit être créé cardinal par le pape François à la fin du mois de juin.

A Bamako, les préparatifs pour ce voyage au Vatican sont en cours, mais la réunion de mercredi matin à l’archevêché, petite bâtisse orange et blanche au bord du fleuve Niger, ont été perturbés par les révélations, la veille, du Monde Afrique et du site d’information en ligne Le Sahélien, reprises jeudi dans le quotidien malien Les dépêches du Mali. Un exemplaire dudit journal trône d’ailleurs sur la table de réunion, recouvert en partie par un livre religieux, La Liturgie des heures.

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MALI
Le Monde (France)

Par David Dembélé (contributeur Le Monde Afrique, Bamako)

LE MONDE Le 31.05.2017

Tout commence le 25 novembre 2002 à 9 heures du matin au Crédit lyonnais de Monaco. Ce jour-là sont ouverts, en toute discrétion, sept comptes en banque pour la Conférence épiscopale du Mali (CEM). Les documents SwissLeaks révèlent désormais pour ces comptes des codes IBAN propres à la Suisse, commençant par CH, à l’instar du premier : CH18 0868 9050 9118 1503 0.

Ces comptes étaient crédités de 12 millions d’euros (soit 7 milliards de francs CFA) en 2007, dernière date des relevés bancaires issus de la HSBC Private Bank à Genève que se sont procurés en 2014 Le Monde et le Consortium international de journalistes d’investigation (ICIJ).

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MALI
La Croix

The Bishops Conference of Mali has denied information published by the French daily newspaper “Le Monde” purporting to show the existence of seven Swiss bank accounts holding 12 million euros.

Antoine d’Abbundo and Nicolas Senèze (Rome)

Until recently the dossier was under the radar of journalists from the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ), who have been making inquiries on the Swiss Leaks scandal, a vast system of tax evasion promoted by the Swiss subsidiary of the British HSBC bank and which was revealed in 2015.

But now Le Monde published an article on its website on Wednesday, May 31 implicating high-ranking leaders of the Catholic Church in Mali. These include Archbishop Jean Zerbo of Bamako, the 73 year old prelate who was named as a cardinal by Pope Francis on May 21.

The accusations concerning Archbishop Zerbo date back to the period when he was the head of the finance commission of the Bishops Conference of Mali (CEM). It was then chaired by Bishop Jean-Gabriel Diarra, 71, currently bishop of San and who was also named in the Le Monde article.

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RUSSIA
RAPSI

MOSCOW, June 2 (RAPSI) – A criminal case against Russian priest Gleb Grozovsky, who stands charged with sexual abuse of children, has been forwarded to court, the Investigative Committee’s St. Petersburg Directorate announced on its website on Friday.

Investigators have built a sufficient evidence base, the statement reads.

According to investigators, Grozovsky committed several crimes against minors in 2011 and 2013.

In 2013, he fled to Israel and applied for citizenship. However, his application was dismissed.

In April 2014, Grozovsky was put on the international wanted list. Israeli police arrested him in September. In January 2015, a court in Jerusalem ruled that the priest should be extradited to Russia pursuant to the European Convention on Extradition. The ruling was appealed but rejected. In April 2016, the Justice Minister signed an order on Grozovsky’s extradition.

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MESSICO
Rete L’Abuso

[The silence of the Church on pedophilia cases in Mexico.]

Nella regione montuosa nel nord dello stato di Oaxaca, in Messico, il prete Gerardo Silvestre Hernández per anni ha abusato sessualmente di decine di bambini indigeni. “Ci obbligava ad avere rapporti con lui. Ci faceva ubriacare, così non ce ne rendevamo conto”, racconta una delle vittime.

Nonostante le prove presentate da altri sacerdoti e le testimonianze di alcuni minori, le autorità ecclesiastiche messicane e la Santa sede non sono intervenute. Intanto la procura ha aperto un’indagine e il 22 febbraio 2017 Gerardo Silvestre Hernández è stato condannato a sedici anni e sei mesi di prigione per abusi sessuali e corruzione di minorenni. È la prima sentenza di questo tipo contro un sacerdote della chiesa cattolica in Messico.

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IRELAND
Midlands 103

A man born at Manor House in Castlepollard says the Children’s Minister’s ‘obsessive focus’ on Tuam is unfair to survivors of other mother and baby homes.

Paul Redmond has been reacting to Katherine Zappone’s appointment of a forensic archaeologist to examine the possibility of removing children’s remains from the Co. Galway site.

She told the Dáil she hopes to build consensus among survivors about what happens next.

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SCOTLAND
Herald Scotland

More than one in eight children in well-off countries around the world say they have experienced some form of sexual abuse in their lifetime, Scotland’s child abuse inquiry has heard.

Even more – one in five – has been at the receiving end of violence from a parent or caregiver, the inquiry was told.

The hearing heard claims there is a “huge gap” between the cases known about by authorities and what children actually report when they are questioned in a confidential survey.

The evidence emerged on the second day of the public hearing phase of the inquiry in Edinburgh.

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SCOTLAND
The Courier

Michael Alexander
June 2 2017

A stalwart campaigner for victims of historical institutional abuse in Northern Ireland has given her “100% support” to a man who says he was abused whilst in the care of a former residential children’s home in Fife.

In an interview with The Courier, Margaret McGuckin, 60, said the “horrendous” years she spent in the notorious Nazareth House orphanage in Belfast meant she “totally understood” what Dave Sharp had been through at the former St Ninian’s School run by the Christian Brothers in Falkland, Fife.

She has also encouraged other Scottish victims of abuse to come forward.

Margaret, and fellow abuse victim Kate Walmsley, originally from Glasgow, travelled to Scotland this week to support Mr Sharp, and other abuse survivors, who held a vigil outside the start of the Scottish child abuse inquiry in Edinburgh.

She represented Savia (Survivors and Victims of Institutional Abuse) which was established following the 2009 publication of the Ryan Report, which uncovered a shocking litany of historic abuse in the Republic of Ireland.

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NEW YORK
New York Daily News

BY
THOMAS TRACY
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS
Friday, June 2, 2017

A sex abuse investigation involving a former Bronx priest has been quietly closed with no charges filed, the Daily News has learned.

Police sources said no criminal charges will be brought against the Rev. Anthony Giuliano, who had been accused of molesting a 15-year-old boy at Holy Rosary Church in Baychester in the 1980s.

“All the leads in the investigation were exhausted,” a police source said. “It was not determined that a crime had taken place.”

Even if detectives found enough evidence to warrant charges, Giuliano couldn’t be prosecuted because of the statute of limitations on child sex abuse cases in New York — meaning the alleged crime committed by the man of the cloth would forever go unpunished.

Victims of child sex abuse have until age 23 to bring a criminal or civil case.

The Daily News launched a campaign last year to pressure officeholders to support the Child Victims Act.

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JAMAICA
The Gleaner

Tamara Bailey

Moravian ministers Reverend Paul Gardner and Reverend Jermaine Gibson, who have been implicated in a series of sex scandals involving a minor, are expected to hear on Monday whether their case will be transferred to Kingston.

The two appeared with their lawyers in the Manchester Parish Court this morning where arguments were presented to Judge Lorna Shelly Williams.

New statements were also presented to Williams, who later requested a few days to conduct her deliberations and arrive at a decision.

Gardner and Gibson’s bails were further extended.

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IRELAND
The Times (UK)

Ellen Coyne
June 2 2017
The Times

An inquiry into mother and baby homes could be extended to more sites, Katherine Zappone has said.

The children and youth affairs minister yesterday announced the international team of experts who will examine the site of the Tuam home where the remains of hundreds of babies were found earlier this year.

An excavation was carried out after Catherine Corliss, a local historian, gathered evidence alleging that 800 babies had been buried in chambers under the home.

Tuam is the only site where an excavation has been planned as part of a commission that is examining 14 mother and baby homes and four county homes, which were similar institutions. Campaigners have called for all religious institutions to be examined and for excavations to be planned at other institutions that may have had similar mass graves to Tuam. Women who had become pregnant outside of marriage lived in the homes run by religious orders.

Ms Zappone said that she was open to the idea of extending the commission’s terms of reference but was deferring making a decision until after the Dáil returned from its summer break.

“While the commission has stated that it is not seeking an extension to its present remit I have indicated that I am open to considering whether broader terms of reference would help to answer some of the questions which have been raised again in public debate. I will consult with stakeholders as part of the scoping review I propose to undertake over the summer months,” Ms Zappone said in the Dáil yesterday.

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IRELAND
Irish Examiner

Friday, June 02, 2017

I am determined that any action must respect the memory and dignity of the deceased children who lived their short lives in this home, writes Katherine Zappone.

JUST three years ago, a brave local historian called Catherine Corless shared her research about the Mother and Baby Home with an astonished and horrified public.

A brave survivor was also willing to tell her story. We all read, watched and listened as the shocking details unfolded of a mass grave in the grounds of the former Mother and Baby Home in Tuam, Co Galway.

Former residents and their loved ones, supporters and campaigners have voiced a collective determination to dispel the secrecy and the shame so unjustly experienced by vulnerable mothers and their children.

I sometimes wonder what will they say on Reeling in the Years about 2017 years from now?

Will it be the year 2017 that the international media descended on Tuam as we once again declared our moral indignation at past deeds? Or will it be the year when we faced up and accept that the State should make amends for the past.

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IRELAND
The Journal

Updated 5.30pm

I AM VERY pleased today, this is a step forward.

Those were the words of Catherine Corless today, the local historian who helped uncover evidence that there were up to 700 children and babies buried in an unmarked grave in Tuam in County Galway.

In March, “significant remains” were found in what appeared to be a sewage container at the site of the former mother and baby home in the Galway town of Tuam.

A Commission of Investigation was quickly established to conduct searches at the site.

Today, Children’s Minister Katherine Zappone announced the appointment of a team of international experts to investigate the burial site at the Tuam mother and baby home.

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IRELAND
Connacht Tribune

A forensic archaeologist has been hired to examine the possibility of removing children’s remains from the site of the Tuam mother and baby home.

Niamh McCullagh will lead an examination of whether it is possible to recover the remains, and whether they can be identified.

It’s not known exactly how many children and babies’ bodies were placed in a former septic tank structure at the former Bon Secours home.

Children’s minister Katherine Zappone says she wants a sensitive and appropriate response to dealing with the remains.

Meanwhile, Sinn Féin Deputy Mary Lou McDonald will visit Galway next week for a public meeting on the mother & baby home scandal.

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IRELAND
Irish Times

Michael O’Regan, Mary Minihan

Minister for Children Katherine Zappone has established an expert group to determine whether there should be a full excavation of the burial site at the Tuam mother and babies home in Galway.

Remains were found during archaeological work initiated last year for the Commission on the Investigation on Mother and Baby Homes.

Ms Zappone told the Dáil on Thursday if there was a consensus about recovering the infant remains and trying to identify them, it should be known if it was possible.

“We have made too many decisions in this country in the dark,” she added. “We are not going to do that again in relation to Tuam.”

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IRELAND
Breaking News

The Children’s Minister says she would like to see if examinations at the sites of other mother and baby homes could be done.

Katherine Zappone announced the appointment of a forensic archaeologist to decide what is possible at the Tuam site in Co Galway.

She told the Dáil she hopes to build consensus among survivors about what should happen next.
She told reporters this evening she is personally in favour of examining other mother and baby homes.

“If there is the possibility for remains of children that are unidentified in other homes, in terms of what I’ve heard and what I feel, yes I would like to see the possibility of work done in that regard,” she said.

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IRELAND
RTE News

Minister for Children Katherine Zappone has appointed a forensic archaeologist to lead a team of experts which will assess the future of the former mother and baby home site in Tuam, Co Galway.

During statements in the Dáil, Ms Zappone said the memory and dignity of the children who lived their short lives in the home needed to be respected.

However, she noted the diversity of views and concerns on what might happen next at the site.

She said if there is consensus regarding the recovery and identification of the remains, an examination was necessary to see how that would be achieved.

Further searches will be carried out at the site, which in a playground adjacent to the site where the remains were discovered last March.

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IRELAND
Irish Times

Seán Dunne

An objection was raised during a planning hearing into the development of the new national maternity hospital in south Dublin by a woman concerned at potential changes to the Catholic ethos on the St Vincent’s Hospital campus, should the project go ahead.

The second and final day of An Bord Pleanála’s public hearing into the HSE’s planning application for the hospital was dominated by concerns over the area not being equipped to deal with the extra traffic the development will bring.

However, Fionnuala Sherwin told the hearing she was opposed to the development due to potential changes to the ethos of St Vincent’s Hospital.

She said she strongly objected to the proposal by the HSE on the grounds that the new hospital “will be performing procedures which are of the vairones of the original Catholic ethos of St Vincent’s Hospital”.

“The new St Vincent’s Hospital Group will be a corporate entity and that will be the start in Ireland of corporate entities whether they be private corporations for profit or greed and in the past the Catholic nuns provided hospitals without that,” Ms Sherwin added. “I respectfully request that An Bord Pleanála refuse permission for the site of this hospital.”

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WASHINGTON
Bellingham Herald

BY CALEB HUTTON
chutton@bhamherald.com

BELLINGHAM
The ex-youth pastor of a Bellingham church grimaced, wept, and struggled to breathe in court Wednesday, as he listened to a teenage girl – standing feet away – describe the lasting harm he caused when he raped her countless times.

Christopher Lee Trent was sentenced to 5 years in prison for sexually abusing the girl, who went to Bellingham Baptist Church on Orleans Street when she was under the age of 16.

Court records describe how he kept the abuse a secret for about 2 years.

Background

Trent, 37, graduated from Heartland Baptist Bible College in Oklahoma, where he met Josh Carter, the future pastor of the Bellingham church. Trent moved across the country with his wife and seven children in June 2013, after Carter asked if he’d be interested in a youth pastor job.

Over the next three years, Trent supervised children at church activities, preached in front of the main congregation at times, and led classes about how adults can prevent child abuse in the church.

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CALIFORNIA
Christian Post

BY STOYAN ZAIMOV , CHRISTIAN POST REPORTER
Jun 1, 2017

A married father-of-six and evangelical pastor from California has reportedly been arrested on several counts of child molestation, leaving his church “utterly heartbroken” at the scandal.

ABC 10 News reported that 43-year-old Matthew Tague, a pastor at North Coast Calvary Chapel in Carlsbad, has been charged with at least 16 counts of lewd and lascivious acts with a minor under the age of 14.

Police are investigating the situation, Lt. Karen Stubkjaer of the San Diego County Sheriff’s Department said, though at the moment there is no indication that there are further victims.

Stubkjaer further noted that the charges are not related to Tague’s position at the church.

“There is a lot of information I’m not prepared to disclose right now about the victim, the relationship, and so forth. It appears this has been going on for about a year,” she said.

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DEUTSCHLAND
Focus

[Abuse in Korntal: 25 new victims reported.]

Nachdem erste Ergebnisse der Aufklärer zu den Missbrauchsvorwürfen gegen die evangelische Brüdergemeinde Korntal (Kreis Ludwigsburg) bekannt geworden sind, haben sich neue Betroffene gemeldet.

Das Netzwerk Betroffenenforum sprach am Donnerstag von 25 neuen Opfern. Sie hätten sich gemeldet, nachdem das Politikmagazin „Report Mainz“ am Dienstag über die Ergebnisse berichtet hatte, wie Sprecher Detlev Zander mitteilte. In der Sendung hatte Benno Hafeneger, zuständig für die wissenschaftliche Aufarbeitung, gesagt, dass es sich bei den Missbrauchsvorwürfen nicht nur um Einzelfälle handle. Das Betroffenenforum, eine von zwei Opfergruppen, fordert nun, ein Kuratorium einzurichten. „Das nimmt ganz neue Dimensionen an“, sagte Zander. Dafür reichten zwei Aufklärer nicht aus.

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ITALIA
Lettera 43

[On June 20, the Constitutional Court will examine the subject of prescription for child offenses related to a case involving Vito Beatrice, a 72-year-old priest under a lawsuit for abuse of authority over a young man who now has 29 Years, but at the time of the alleged facts he was underage.]

Il 20 giugno la Corte si esprimerà sui tempi di prescrizione per i reati di violenza sessuale contro minori. Il Tribunale di Roma ha sollevato il dubbio di legittimità durante un processo a un prete di 72 anni.

Il 20 giugno la Corte Costituzionale esaminerà il tema della prescrizione per i reati di violenza contro i minori in relazione a una vicenda che coinvolge Vito Beatrice, sacerdote 72enne sotto processo per violenza sessuale con abuso d’autorità nei confronti di un giovane che oggi ha 29 anni, ma all’epoca dei fatti contestati era minorenne. Il religioso, prete della congregazione dei Padri Somaschi della chiesa di Sant’Alessio nella zona dell’Aventino, a Roma, è accusato di abusi commessi tra il 1995 e il 2004 su un minore che aveva avuto in affidamento dai genitori per ragioni di educazione e istruzione.

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