ABUSE TRACKER

ITALIA
Rete L’Abuso

[PALERMO. Trial begins Wednesday of Father Salvatore Ring Cappuccini , known as a healer and exorcist, and an army officer, Colonel Salvatore Muratore, one of the most active leaders of the Renewal in the community Holy Spirit of Palermo. They are charged with sexual assault.]

PALERMO. Comincerà mercoledì prossimo, davanti alla seconda sezione del Tribunale di Palermo, il processo a padre dei Cappuccini Salvatore Anello, conosciuto come guaritore ed esorcista, e un ufficiale dell’esercito, il colonnello Salvatore Muratore, uno degli animatori più attivi della comunità del Rinnovamento nello Spirito Santo di Palermo.

I due, arrestati a ottobre scorso, sono accusati di violenza sessuale. Il sacerdote, che faceva anche da cappellano all’ospedale Civico, è accusato in particolare di aver palpeggiato due donne e tre minorenni che si erano rivolte a lui per essere aiutate. Fra riti e benedizioni avrebbe commesso violenze. Poi, il racconto di una vittima ha infranto il muro dell’omertà.
Secondo la ricostruzione del sostituto procuratore Giorgia Righi e del procuratore aggiunto Salvatore De Luca, il carabiniere avrebbe invece approfittato di quattro donne e di una minorenne che si trovavano in uno stato di fragilità psicologica. “Io faccio preghiere di guarigione”, avrebbe detto. Le violenze sarebbero avvenute nelle abitazioni delle vittime.

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NEW YORK
New York Times

By GINIA BELLAFANTE MAY 11, 2017

Beginning in 1997, and then for the next 13 years, Ama Dwimoh ran the Crimes Against Children Bureau in the Brooklyn district attorney’s office, observing a theater of atrocities. Early in her tenure, Ms. Dwimoh told me recently, she handled a case involving a young man who had been sexually molested by his family’s landlord for a decade, starting when he was 5.

The abuse had come to her attention through a photo developer, who had contacted the police when he noticed unseemly images in a roll of film brought in for processing. With a picture of someone who appeared to be the victim of various predations in hand, law enforcers went in search of the boy. When they found him and knocked on his door, Ms. Dwimoh recalled, he appeared to feel he was being outed; he got sick and vomited. He knew that what had happened to him was wrong, but he had also experienced his abuser in less monstrous moments. How was the child, or even the young adult he would become, to make sense of all this, of such horrors entwined with the semblance of affection?

A search of the perpetrator’s home revealed a trove of old photographs of many other children, indicating he had been a pedophile for years. Ms. Dwimoh, who is running to become the Brooklyn district attorney, realized that if the police had never knocked, it was unclear whether the boy would have come forward soon, or ever, and if he hadn’t, how many more children would have been imperiled?

Under New York State statute as it is currently written, someone sexually exploited as a child, with rare exceptions, has only until the age of 23 to bring criminal or civil proceedings against an abuser. This is in spite of the fact that the mental-health professions, as well as the news — witness the recent accounts of abuse at Choate Rosemary Hall, the Connecticut boarding school, or at the Horace Mann School in the Bronx, that transpired decades ago — repeatedly tell us that it can take many agonizing years, often signified by anxiety, depression, addiction and other destabilizing conditions, for victims to understand what had happened to them and come forward.

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AUSTRALIA
Moree Champion

Tom McIlroy
14 May 2017

Survivors of abuse in Australian children’s homes and orphanages have called for a new national strategy to secure the release of their own historic personal records held by churches and charities.

As the landmark royal commission into institutional child sexual abuse prepares to hand its report to the federal government by Christmas, a national summit has discussed how to give a voice to adults whose lives have been impacted by failings of record keeping and archiving systems in institutions around the country.

Care Leavers Australasia Network chief executive Leonie Sheedy said many survivors, including those who have given evidence to the royal commission process, have spent years trying to track down records about their time in institutional care.

Even current record keeping processes could be important in instances of historic abuse.

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MARYLAND
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

BRIAN O’NEILL
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
boneill@post-gazette.com
MAY 14, 2017

Catherine Cesnik was the valedictorian of her Catholic high school class in Lawrenceville in 1960, where she’d also been the May Queen and the president of the senior class and student council.

Nine years later, Sister Cathy was brutally murdered in Baltimore. Nearly 48 years have passed and the killer has yet to be named, but Baltimore County Police haven’t given up.

The body of a priest was exhumed in February in hopes of finding DNA evidence that could be linked to an item found near the body.

The murder and possibility of a decades-long coverup are the subject of a Netflix documentary, “The Keepers,” set to begin streaming May 19 in seven one-hour episodes. It’s filled with the testimony of the students of Sister Cathy, who taught English at Archbishop Keough High, an all-girls Catholic school in Baltimore.

Many of them believe that Father John Maskell, the priest whose body was exhumed, was either the killer or an accomplice. He was the school chaplain and guidance counselor, and several of these women say he sexually molested them. At least three women say uniformed police officers also participated in the abuse; Maskell was also the Baltimore County police chaplain and the brother of a police officer.

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PENNSYLVANIA
Lancaster Online

MEAGEN FINNERTY | Website Producer

An Amish bishop in Dauphin County is facing charges after being accused of failing to report two cases of alleged sexual abuse of children.

Christ M. Stoltfus, 69, is charged with two misdemeanor counts of failure to report, according to court documents.

Clergymen are legally required to report suspected child abuse.

A church member told Stoltfus, of Elizabethville, about two cases both involving Daniel Ray Fisher, 44, that occurred in 2011. Stoltfus reportedly told state police that he’d been told the abuse “wasn’t really that bad.”

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UNITED STATES/IRELAND
The Sunday Times (UK)

Pavel Barter
May 14 2017
The Sunday Times

A priest who fled the United States to live in Co Wexford during the 1990s following child abuse and murder allegations is the subject of a new Netflix documentary.

Fr Joseph Maskell is the subject of The Keepers, a documentary series released this week, in which it is alleged he killed a nun in Baltimore in the 1960s.

Baltimore county police recently exhumed the priest’s body in the US as part of an investigation into the killing of Sr Catherine Ann Cesnik.

It is understood Maskell, whose father was from Limerick, travelled to Wexford in 1994 after two women — Jean Wehner and Teresa Lancaster, known at the time as Jane Doe and Jane Roe — filed a $40m (€36.5m) civil lawsuit against him, ­alleging child abuse at Keough High School in Baltimore, where he had served as chaplain from 1967 to 1975.

“There was an attempted arrest,” said Tom Nugent, a former reporter for The Baltimore Sun.

“A policeman in the sex crimes unit went in the front door. Maskell went out the back door, got in a car, raced to the airport, and went to Ireland.”

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AUSTRALIA
The Courier

Melissa Cunningham and Beau Donelly
14 May 2017

UPDATE

Ballarat’s Cardinal George Pell has hit back at media outlets which have aired allegations against him prior to the release of a new book.

The new claims of sexual abuse against Cardinal Pell during his time as Melbourne’s Archbishop in the 1990’s have been made in a soon-to-be released book by ABC journalist Louise Milligan.

The excerpts published in Fairfax newspapers on Saturday, will maximise publicity for the book, to be released next week, but Cardinal Pell’s office has accused the outlets and publisher Melbourne University Publishing of interfering in the proper course of justice.

The statement issued late on Saturday, said the Cardinal would not seek to interfere in the course of justice by responding to the allegations other than to restate “any allegations of child abuse made against him were completely false”.

His office said there had been no further updates from the Victorian Office of Public Prosecutions or Victoria Police in regard to investigations over incidents alleged to have occurred at Eureka Pool in 1970’s and which have been underway since at least February 2016.

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NEW JERSEY
The Jersey Journal

By Patrick Villanova | The Jersey Journal

The long-delayed sentencing of a North Bergen pastor convicted of child molestation has been adjourned until this summer.

Gregorio Martinez, who in 2015 was found guilty of sexually assaulting a teenage boy and left the country before being sentenced for his crime, was set to learn his fate this morning. However, the Hudson County Prosecutor’s Office said the sentencing has been postponed until July 7.

In February 2015, Martinez was convicted of touching a 13-year-old’s genital area and kissing him on the lips inside a minivan in 2012. Martinez, who was out on bail during his trial, remained a free man until his sentencing but was nowhere to be found when that day came.

NJ Advance Media tracked Martinez to Nicaragua in early 2016 and he was arrested in neighboring Honduras in late August. He was swiftly transferred to a detention facility in Miami and fought extradition to New Jersey, but was returned to Hudson County in December.

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America

Gerard O’Connell
May 13, 2017

“I never judge someone without listening to him,” Pope Francis said tonight when asked about the policies of U.S. president Donald J. Trump that are diametrically opposed to his own views on the questions of building walls, welcoming immigrants and tackling climate change, and what he expects from the meeting with Mr. Trump on May 24.

In a press conference that lasted more than 30 minutes on the return from Fatima to Rome, a relaxed Pope Francis responded to all 10 questions presented to him, including one relating to the resignation of abuse-survivor Marie Collins from the Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors, and others relating to Medjugorie, Fatima and the future of the dialogue with the Lutherans. …

Speaking about Marie Collins’s resignation from the papal commission, Francis began by praising her as “a good woman, a brave woman” who had “explained everything” to him. He said she had “made accusations which have some reason” because “there are many cases” and there is “a delay in dealing [with them].” He explained that some of the problems have to do with “legislation” at the diocesan level, but much progress has been made there. Another problem is that “there are few people” in the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith to deal with the outstanding cases—around 2,000. “We need more people,” the pope said, and two or three have already been added. He said that the head of the section for discipline has been changed and replaced by “a good, efficient, fine person,” Father John Joseph Kennedy.

He said another problem is that bishops sometimes send dossiers on abuse cases to the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith that are incomplete and have to be sent back to be properly done. He revealed that the possibility of having continental tribunals (such as in Latin America) to enable the local churches to deal with abuse cases in a more effective way.

Furthermore, he said, there are situations where an accused priest lodges an appeal after a negative judgment has been made against him. Francis said he has a right to such an appeal and to have a lawyer to assist him; to ensure that accused priests are given fair trials. Francis said, he has set up a second tribunal to hear the appeals. He explained that this second tribunal is separate from the ones that first judged accused priests and said that he has appointed as its president Archbishop Charles Scicluna, whom he described “an indisputable authority in combatting abuse.”

Reports have circulated in the media and other circles in recent months claiming that Pope Francis is “soft” toward some priest who have been judged guilty of sexual abuse by competent church tribunals. Some have alleged that he reversed judgments against such priests. Francis tonight left no doubt on this important question, emphasizing, “I have never signed a pardon.”

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Breaking News (Ireland)

The Vatican has a 2,000-case backlog in processing clerical sex abuse cases, and criticism of the slow pace is justified, Pope Francis has said.

But he said Saturday that more staff were being added and insisted the Vatican is “on the right path”.

Francis was making his first comments about the criticism levelled at the Vatican’s handling of sex abuse cases by Marie Collins, an Irish abuse survivor who resigned from Francis’ sex abuse advisory commission in March.

Ms Collins quit because of what she said was the “unacceptable” level of resistance within the Vatican to implementing the group’s proposals to better care for victims and protect children from priests who rape and molest them.

Speaking to reporters while flying home from a trip to Portugal, Francis called Ms Collins “a great woman” and said she was “a bit right” to complain about the slow pace in processing cases.

“Marie Collins was right on that point. But we are on the right path, as there were 2,000 cases backlogged,” he said.

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National Catholic Reporter

Joshua J. McElwee | May. 13, 2017

ABOARD THE PAPAL FLIGHT FROM PORTUGAL Pope Francis has said he will focus in his upcoming meeting with U.S. President Donald Trump on finding even little openings where the two might have common interests and can work together.

In a half-hour press conference aboard the papal flight from Portugal Saturday, May 13, the pontiff also praised clergy abuse survivor Marie Collins. He said Collins, who resigned from the papal sexual abuse commission in March, was “right” in critiquing Vatican officials’ resistance in fighting abuse. …

Marie Collins ‘right’ and ‘capable’

On clergy abuse, the pope was asked about Marie Collins’ resignation from the Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors. Collins, a survivor of abuse, left the group in March due to frustration with Vatican officials’ reluctance to cooperate with its work to protect children.

Francis said he has spoken to Collins and she was “right” in the frustration she expressed at the time of her resignation.

“Marie Collins has explained things to me very well,” said the pontiff. “She is a capable woman who wants to work.”

“She is a bit right,” the pope continued. “There are many cases in which we are behind.”

But Francis also praised steps the global church has taken in recent years to protect children. He cited the fact that most dioceses around the world now have policies in place about how to treat priests accused of abuse, calling that “great progress.”

The pontiff suggested that the Vatican could decentralize some of its authority to judge priests accused of abuse by creating regional or continental tribunals, saying implementing such an idea is “in the planning stages.”

Francis also said he respects all decisions made by Vatican tribunals about priests accused of abuse and has never issued a pardon for a priest found guilty, known in Italian as issuing a letter of grazia.

“I have never signed a grazia,” the pontiff said bluntly.

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Associated Press

BY NICOLE WINFIELD
ASSOCIATED PRESS

ABOARD THE PAPAL PLANE (AP) — Pope Francis acknowledged Saturday that the Vatican has a 2,000-case backlog in processing clerical sex abuse cases and says criticism of the slow pace was justified. But he says more staff are being added and insists the Vatican is “on the right path.”

Francis was making his first comments about the criticism leveled at the Vatican’s handling of sex abuse cases by Marie Collins, an Irish abuse survivor who resigned from Francis’ sex abuse advisory commission in March. Collins quit because of what she said was the “unacceptable” level of resistance within the Vatican to implementing the group’s proposals to better care for victims and protect children from priests who rape and molest them.

Speaking to reporters while flying home Saturday from a trip to Portugal, Francis called Collins “a great woman” and said she was “a bit right” to complain about the slow pace in processing cases.

“Marie Collins was right on that point. But we are on the right path, as there were 2,000 cases backlogged,” he said.

Francis didn’t respond to the other issues raised by Collins, including the refusal of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith – which handles abuse cases – to create a tribunal to judge bishops who covered up for pedophile priests. Instead, he focused on explaining why cases can take so long to process.

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CRUX

Inés San Martín May 13, 2017
VATICAN CORRESPONDENT

ope Francis on Saturday praised an abuse survivor who quit his own reform commission citing Vatican resistance, saying she was “right on some issues,” but also defended the Church’s record in recovering from the abuse scandals. He also talked about his looming May 24 meeting with Donald Trump, the traditionalist Society of St. Pius X, and Medjugorje.

ABOARD THE PAPAL PLANE – Pope Francis on Saturday said a former member of his reform commission on sex abuse who quit citing Vatican resistance “was right on some issues,” and that when he meets President Donald Trump on May 24, he’ll be looking to find doors that “aren’t closed” to cooperation between the Vatican and the White House. …

Clerical sexual abuse and the Collins resignation

English-speaking journalists also asked Pope Francis about the recent decision by Irish lay woman Marie Collins, a survivor of clerical sexual abuse herself, to resign from the Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors which he instituted at the beginning of his papacy.
When she announced her resignation, Collins said in various interviews that resistance within the Roman Curia, meaning the Vatican’s governing body, drove her decision.

“Marie Collins explained the situation to me, I spoke with her. She’s a great woman,” the pope said, adding that she’ll continue to work with the Vatican in the formation of priests in the fight against the clerical sexual abuse.

“She’s right on some things,” he acknowledged, saying “there are too many delayed cases … backed up here,” referring to the Vatican.

He added, however, that several steps have been taken to advance the Church’s promise of fighting clerical sexual abuse.

Among the things the pope said still need attention is the shortage of personnel capable of dealing with these cases, so both the Vatican’s Secretary of State, Italian Cardinal Pietro Parolin, and the chief of the doctrinal office, which handles abuse cases, German Cardinal Gerhard Muller, are looking for more people.

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GUAM
The Guam Daily Post

Gaynor D. Daleno | The Guam Daily Post

Claims from victims of decades-old sex abuse at the hands of former Guam priests have recently been resolved, but the outcome, including whether money was paid, and how much money was paid, won’t become publicly known.

Mike Caspino, director of the Hope and Healing program, which was recently established at the request of the Archdiocese of Agana, said victims in the recently resolved claims reached out to the nonprofit directly and are not represented by lawyers.

Additional victims are in the process of getting their claims resolved through Hope and Healing, he said.

Caspino said the victims who have resolved their cases don’t want their identities or the details of the resolution known to the public.

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IRELAND
Irish Times

Colm Keena

The Department of Education is considering a proposal from the Christian Brothers concerning the transfer of lands worth approximately €100 million which, the department said, resembles a proposal first made by it in 2013.

Following contacts between the two sides over recent weeks, Minister for Education Richard Bruton received a letter from the Brothers in which they made an offer “very similar to the proposal originally made by former minister Ruairí Quinn”, a spokeswoman said.

Mr Quinn’s proposal was made in 2013 and would have seen approximately 200 acres, mostly playing fields associated with schools, being transferred to the Edmund Rice Schools Trust but with a proviso that half of any future sales proceeds would go to the State.

A spokeswoman for the Minister said that in March he had expressed “frustration and disappointment at the lack of progress by the religious congregations in meeting the costs of compensating victims of residential institutional child abuse.

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ARGENTINA
La Izquierda Diario

[Bishop Buenanueva recognizes that the church protects abusive priests.]

El Obispo de San Francisco y presidente de la comisión de Ministerios de la Conferencia Episcopal Argentina, Sergio Osvaldo Buenanueva, realizó declaraciones a Télam, a raíz de las innumerables denuncias de abusos que vienen saliendo a la luz, contra la Iglesia Católica.

“La Iglesia no debe proteger al cura abusador, ese fue uno de nuestros grandes errores. Lo peor que nos pasó como institución es que perdimos la sensibilidad por tutelar el buen nombre o la reputación de la Iglesia”, confesó el Obispo.

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ARGENTINA
La Izquierda Diario

Los abogados Sergio Salinas y Oscar Barrera, representantes de niños y niñas víctimas de abuso en el Instituto Provolo de Mendoza, denunciaron que las autoridades eclesiásticas, a través de su abogado Héctor Cuervo, accedieron a uno de los cuerpos de la causa.

De esta manera, el arzobispo accedió a la trascripción de las declaraciones testimoniales de 11 denunciantes, la de un testigo de identidad reservada, tres informes del Cuerpo Médico Forense y las imputaciones contra los 5 detenidos que había hasta ese momento (la monja Kumiko, la sexta detenida en la causa, se entregó a la justicia hace pocas semanas luego de haber estado un mes prófuga). Los abogados querellantes denunciaron que la decisión del fiscal de permitir el acceso a la causa a la Iglesia atenta contra tratados internacionales, en especial las convenciones internacionales sobre los Derechos del Niño y de las Personas con Discapacidad.

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ARGENTINA
Infobae

[includes a list of accused priests]

[The cases of denunciations against members of the Catholic Church were known from the scandal of Father Julio César Grassi in 2002.]

Abusos, silencio, protección. Este entramado se repite en muchos de los 62 casos denunciados en la Argentina desde 2002, luego de que estallara el escándalo del padre Julio César Grassi.

Una investigación de la Agencia Télam –de las periodistas Lucía Toninello y Mariana García–, deja al descubierto que la denuncia contra Grassi no es un hecho aislado: desde entonces cuatro nuevas denuncias se sumaron por año y sólo tres casos fueron sancionados con la máxima pena prevista por el derecho canónico: la expulsión del sacerdocio.

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ARGENTINA
El Dia

[A priest is recorded on a hidden camera as saying that priests accused to abusing students at a Provolo school for the deaf in Italy were transferred to Argentina.]

El video corresponde a una cámara oculta que un periodista italiano le hizo a un cura del instituto Próvolo de Verona acusado de abusos contra alumnos de esa institución, haciéndose pasar por un ex interno. Y aunque está desde febrero subido a YouTube, sólo en las últimas horas se difundió provocando una gran conmoción, ya que en él, el entrevistado reconoce que al menos diez sacerdotes abusaban de los menores en el instituto y que, cuando eran descubiertos, inmediatamente se los trasladaba a la Argentina.

El contenido del video se conoce en momentos en que se investigan abusos cometidos en las sedes argentinas del Instituto Próvolo. En el marco de esa investigación ya suman seis los detenidos: a la monja japonesa Kumiko Kosaka imputada del delito de abuso sexual gravemente ultrajante cometido contra un menor se suman los sacerdotes Horacio Corbacho, de 55 años; el italiano Nicolás Corradi (82), quien tenía acusaciones similares en Verona, Italia, en los años 80 y fue trasladado a Mendoza; el monaguillo Jorge Bordón (55); el ex empleado del instituto, José Luis Ojeda (41), quien también es sordo, y el jardinero Armando Gómez (46).

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ARGENTINA
89.9 FM

[Of 62 priests reported for sexual abuse in Argentina, 4 are Salteños.]

12/05/2017. Entre Los casos de denuncias contra integrantes de la Iglesia católica que se conocieron a partir del escándalo del padre Julio César Grassi en 2002.

“Donde sobreabundó el pecado, sobreabunda la gracia de Dios”, les respondió monseñor Edgardo Gabriel Storni, arzobispo de Santa Fe, a los angustiados padres de un adolescente quien confesó entre lágrimas que había sido abusado por el cura Luis Brizzio durante un encuentro de jóvenes de la Acción Católica en el pueblo de Gálvez.

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AUSTRALIA
Sydney Morning Herald

Louise Milligan

Broadly speaking, my aim in introducing the Melbourne Response was to make it easier for victims to achieve justice, and to seek financial compensation and counselling, without needing to establish legal liability. I believe that it was the first scheme of its kind implemented anywhere in the world to respond to victims of child sexual abuse. I was, and remain, proud of its establishment and the assistance it has provided to victims since 1996. Statement of Cardinal George Pell, August 2014

It was 1996 and the media was going after the issue percolating child abuse crisis in a big way. The victims were becoming emboldened. It was becoming a dominant narrative: terrible PR for a Church whose mass attendance numbers were already in freefall. It was also potentially costly in terms of compensation payouts. And it was unclear just how many priests Pell as archbishop might lose to criminal prosecutions, but suffice to say they were falling over like dominoes.

Melbourne had more paedophile priests than any other place in the country. And most of them operated during George Pell’s time in Victoria as priest or bishop. The Cardinal is proud of his record in being the first Australian bishop to respond to the child abuse crisis. He consistently cites it when he is being scrutinised in the media and points out that he was probably the first in the world, let alone here in Australia, to boldly go where no other bishop had dared to tread.

In 2016, he said: “When I became Archbishop, I turned the situation right around so that the Melbourne Response procedures were light years ahead of all this obfuscation and prevarication and deception.”

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AUSTRALIA
The Courier

Beau Donelly
14 May 2017

Senior figures in the Catholic Church have accused Cardinal George Pell of hijacking the national compensation scheme for clergy sex abuse victims by swooping in at the last minute to announce his own initiative.

Cardinal Pell, one of the most powerful men in the Vatican, launched the Melbourne Response in 1996 when he was Archbishop of Melbourne.

The controversial scheme was set up as an alternative to civil litigation, with victims of paedophile priests given access to counselling and compensation. Cardinal Pell has long said he was the first bishop to develop a program responding to the scourge of child sex abuse in the church.

But accounts from officials present at an Australian Catholic Bishops Conference shortly after Cardinal Pell announced his scheme have challenged his decades-old account, and strongly suggest he undermined the church’s plan to present a unified front in dealing with the crisis.

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AUSTRALIA
Herald Sun

Andrew Bolt, Herald Sun
May 12, 2017

So many allegations against Cardinal George Pell have been dropped and disproved, and police are still unable after a year to prosecute Pell over shaky claims aired on the ABC.

But now one of the ABC reporters responsible for that report tries again:

A soon-to-be-released book about Cardinal Pell contains detailed claims that he sexually abused two choirboys at St Patrick’s Cathedral in Melbourne in the late 1990s….

The boys, who were both students at St Kevin’s College in Toorak and sung in the choir at St Patrick’s Cathedral in East Melbourne, were allegedly abused in a back room of the church.

Of course, I don’t know whether the allegations are true or false.

But the timing of the alleged abuse – which Pell denies – is very odd. Is it really likely that Pell, having been under fiercely hostile scrutiny by the media over his conservatism and his attempts to clean out pedophiles in his church and compensate victims, would then risk everything by abusing boys himself?

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AUSTRALIA
Sydney Morning Herald

Melissa Cunningham

Cardinal George Pell flew from Rome to London as explosive new details of alleged child sex abuse were levelled against Australia’s most senior Catholic.

Lawyers for Cardinal Pell last night strongly denied the allegations and said they were false, “unjustifiable, scandalous, deliberate and calculated to cause the most shocking damage imaginable to Cardinal Pell”.

The legal letter also claimed the publication of the book’s allegations were a “deliberate attempt to influence the public opinion in a manner that would make it impossible for our client to receive a fair hearing in court should he be charged”.

A soon-to-be-released book, Cardinal: The Rise and Fall of George Pell, by ABC reporter Louise Milligan, contains detailed claims that he sexually abused two choirboys at St Patrick’s Cathedral in Melbourne in the late 1990s.

The alleged abuse is said to have occurred after the introduction of the Melbourne Response, the compensation scheme for victims of clerical sexual abuse that Cardinal Pell established in 1996 after breaking ranks with the rest of Australia’s bishops who had been working on a national scheme called Towards Healing.

A separate statement last night from his Rome office, in response to a request for comment on the allegations, accused the book’s publisher, Melbourne University Press, and media organisations including Fairfax Media of “interfering with the course of justice”.

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UNITED KINGDOM
The Herald

By Carl_Eve | Posted: May 12, 2017

A wide-ranging inquiry into the sexual abuse of children in the South West needs victims and survivors to come forward and tell of their experiences.

A number of organisations attended a workshop earlier this week where staff from the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse (IICSA) urged them to reach out to their clients and urge them to take park in the inquiry’s Truth Project.

Groups like the Devon Rape Crisis and Sexual Abuse Services, Intercom Trust and North Devon Against Domestic Abuse were asked to help inform survivors who stories and experiences will hopefully inform recommendations to government in an effort to improve upon past failures by the authorities.

David Poole, head of the South West Inquiry office said the meeting included more than a dozen different organisations where they discussed how to work together to encourage victims and survivors to speak out and have their voices heard.

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MAINE
Portland Press Herald

BY EDWARD D. MURPHY
STAFF WRITER

The founder of a Haitian orphanage is appealing a court ruling that affirmed a decision to toss out his defamation suit against a Freeport man.

Michael Geilenfeld, the orphanage founder, had sued Paul Kendrick over an email campaign that began in 2011 in which Kendrick accused Geilenfeld of sexually abusing boys in his care. Later, Kendrick expanded his campaign to include Hearts with Haiti, a North Carolina charity that raised funds for the orphanage.

Geilenfeld won his suit in 2015 and a federal jury awarded $14.5 million in damages, roughly split between the charity and Geilenfeld. But last summer, a federal judge in Maine threw out the case and the award, determining that Geilenfeld hadn’t lived in the U.S. for years and therefore lacked standing to bring the suit in an American court.

Geilenfeld, a native of Iowa, has been living in Haiti and, more recently, the Dominican Republic, for decades.

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IRELAND
Irish Times

Colm Keena

The Department of Education is considering a proposal from the Christian Brothers concerning the transfer of lands worth approximately €100 million which, the department said, resembles a proposal first made by it in 2013.

Following contacts between the two sides over recent weeks, Minister for Education Richard Bruton received a letter from the Brothers in which they made an offer “very similar to the proposal originally made by former minister Ruairí Quinn”, a spokeswoman said.

Mr Quinn’s proposal was made in 2013 and would have seen approximately 200 acres, mostly playing fields associated with schools, being transferred to the Edmund Rice Schools Trust but with a proviso that half of any future sales proceeds would go to the State.

A spokeswoman for the Minister said that in March he had expressed “frustration and disappointment at the lack of progress by the religious congregations in meeting the costs of compensating victims of residential institutional child abuse.

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CONNECTICUT
Patch

By Rich Scinto (Patch Staff) – May 12, 2017

NEW HAVEN, CT — Prominent city Rabbi Daniel Greer took the Fifth Amendment multiple times in a civil trial after he was accused of sexually molesting a former student on multiple occasions.

Greer denied having sex with plaintiff Eli Mirlis on a parcel of land in Hamden, the only time during testimony he flat out denied a sex abuse allegation, according to the New Haven Independent.

Greer, leader of Yeshiva of New Haven, Inc. and The Gan School, Inc., was sued by a former student in federal court. Mirlis alleged in a lawsuit that Greer sexually assaulted him beginning in 2002 when he was 15-years-old.

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SCOTLAND
STV

A retired priest is to stand trial accused of historical sex abuse.

Francis Moore faced the allegations during a hearing at the High Court in Glasgow on Friday.

One boy is said to have been attacked at a primary school in North Ayrshire while a second was allegedly abused at a leisure centre.

It is claimed a third boy was a victim at Irvine beach in North Ayrshire.

The offences allegedly occurred between 1977 and 1981. The trio were aged between five to 13 at the time.

Moore is further accused of indecently assaulting a student priest and a separate breach of the peace allegation between 1995 and 1996.

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MARYLAND
The Baltimore Sun

Alison Knezevich
The Baltimore Sun

Donna Von Den Bosch climbed to the attic of her home so she could watch the footage alone.

The images flashed on her computer screen: the police car, the churches, the priests.

Her heart raced.

“I’m 60,” she told herself, again and again. “I’m not 15 anymore.”

Von Den Bosch was watching the trailer of the upcoming Netflix documentary “The Keepers.” The seven-part series focuses on sexual abuse in the 1960s and ’70s at Archbishop Keough High School and the unsolved 1969 disappearance and death of Sister Catherine Ann Cesnik, an English teacher at the Catholic school in Southwest Baltimore.

Von Den Bosch, who has received a settlement from the Archdiocese of Baltimore for abuse she suffered at Keough, is featured in the series. She is among the many across the region who are bracing for its release Friday.

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MARYLAND
The Baltimore Sun

Alison Knezevich
The Baltimore Sun

The president of Seton Keough High School in southwest Baltimore wrote to parents this week about the upcoming Netflix series “The Keepers,” which focuses on sexual abuse and the unsolved killing of a nun who taught there decades ago.

The documentary series tells the story of Sister Catherine Ann Cesnik, a teacher at Archbishop Keough High School in the 1960s. She was found slain, but no arrests were ever made. The series explores the theory of whether Cesnik, 26, may have been killed because she knew about sexual abuse allegedly committed by the Rev. A. Joseph Maskell, then a school chaplain and counselor.

Archbishop Keough and Seton high schools merged in 1988.

“We expect that the contents of this series will include adult themes and graphic descriptions, so we wanted to provide you with this information and suggest that you talk with your daughter about this series and consider watching it with her if she is going to watch it,” school President Donna Bridickas wrote in the email sent to parents Thursday.

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AUSTRALIA
Daily Mail

By Bryant Hevesi For Daily Mail Australia

An explosive new book by an investigative journalist has detailed sexual abuse allegations against Cardinal George Pell, Australia’s most prominent Catholic.

Cardinal: The Rise and Fall of George Pell was written by ABC Four Corners and 7.30 reporter Louise Milligan and is set to hit book shelves on Monday.

In the book, Ms Milligan reveals new details surrounding accusations Cardinal Pell, 75, sexually abused a choirboy, The Age reported.

The alleged abuse was said to have taken place in the back room of Melbourne’s St Patrick’s Cathedral in the late 1990s, with the choirboy then asking to leave the choir, the book alleges.
Cardinal Pell has strenuously denied abuse allegations levelled against him.

There is no suggestion Cardinal Pell is guilty of any allegations of child sex abuse, only that they have been investigated by police.

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AUSTRALIA
Starts at 60

A new book makes some explosive allegations about Cardinal George Pell, Australia’s highest-ranking Catholic official.

Cardinal: The Rise And Fall of George Pell, written by well-regarded ABC journalise Louise Milligan, claims that Pell sexually abused two choirboys in the late 1990s.

Fairfax News reports that the book contains detailed claims that the abuse occurred at St Patrick’s Cathedral in Melbourne, it alleges, after Pell established the church’s compensation scheme for sexual abuse victims in 1996. The boys were in the choice and abused in a back room at the church, Fairfax said, citing the book.

The book also alleges that Pell, who has been criticised last year for his refusal to return to Australia to give further evidence to the Royal Commission into child sexual abuse within the Catholic church, knew about the activities of paedophile priests earlier than he claims to have known. At the time, Pell cited illness for his inability to travel from Rome in Italy to Australia for the hearings.

The book, due to be released next week, doesn’t suggest that Pell is guilty of the allegations. He has always denied any allegations of abuse, which started emerging as early as 2002.

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NEW YORK
Newsday

Updated May 12, 2017

By Joye Brown joye.brown@newsday.com

Early on, in his decade and a half as Suffolk’s district attorney, Thomas Spota earned a reputation as a reformer, and at one point, as Long Island’s most aggressive fighter of public corruption. But with his low-key — and not unexpected — announcement to staff Friday that he would not seek a fifth term, Spota will leave that office under a cloud.

“I will end the constant controversies and political vendettas that for years characterized the district attorney’s office,” Spota said during his 2002 swearing-in, after winning a decisive victory over opponent James M. Catterson Jr.

During the campaign, Spota claimed that Catterson had abused the district attorney’s office by pursuing vindictive, politically motivated prosecutions. “I envision an office that’s going to be guided not by politics but by principles,” Spota promised.

And, indeed, the new district attorney started off with a bang — impaneling grand juries to delve into allegations of child sexual abuse by Roman Catholic priests and, later, allegations of political corruption. Spota investigated allegations of Medicaid fraud and at one point subpoenaed hundreds of thousands of documents to dig into allegations of fiscal improprieties in Suffolk school districts.

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NEW YORK
Newsday

Updated May 12, 2017

By Paul LaRocco paul.larocco@newsday.com

* 1971-1982: Serves as an assistant district attorney for Suffolk County. Includes stint as chief of homicide bureau, where he prosecuted high-profile cases, including the murder of 13-year-old John Pius in Smithtown. That case featured teenage witness and later Spota protégé James Burke, who would go on to work as Spota’s chief investigator before becoming Suffolk police’s chief of department in 2012.

* 1982-2001: Works in private practice. Gains political prominence representing county law enforcement unions.

* 2001: Switches party affiliation from Republican to Democrat to run for Suffolk district attorney against longtime Republican DA James Catterson. After bruising campaign, Spota wins by a large margin.

* 2003: Releases grand jury report on sexual abuse by 58 priests in the Diocese of Rockville Centre dating back decades. Wins national attention for issuing one of the first such reports in the country.

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NEW YORK
DNA Info

By Jeanmarie Evelly | May 12, 2017
@jeanmarieevelly

LONG ISLAND CITY — In the state of New York, victims of childhood sexual abuse have only until their 23rd birthdays to seek justice against their abusers — though the effects of abuse often last much longer, survivors say.

“I can tell you this is a lifelong problem,” said Shaun Dougherty, 47, a Queens restaurant owner who was molested by a priest and teacher at his Pennsylvania Catholic school starting at the age of 10.

“I’ve met 81-year-olds that cry at the drop of a hat, because they remember,” he said. “I have heard the most horrific acts done to children that you can imagine, and 78-year-old people recalling it like it happened this morning.”

Dougherty, who now runs Crescent Grill, a successful farm-to-table eatery in Long Island City, is among a group of abuse survivors fighting to change New York’s statute of limitations for sex crimes committed against children.

He and other advocates are pushing for passage of the Child Victims Act, urging lawmakers to vote on the bill — which has been languishing in the State Senate’s judiciary committee since January — before the current legislative session ends this spring.

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MARYLAND
The Baltimore Sun

David Zurawik
The Baltimore Sun

It is hard to imagine a true-crime docu-series that has more winning story elements than “The Keepers.”

More elements than Netflix’s “Making a Murderer,” HBO’s “The Jinx” or even the “Serial” podcast that dealt with young love, death and a Muslim man who is still in a Maryland prison for a crime he might not have committed.

The seven-part production that arrives Friday on Netflix features a decades-old unsolved murder involving a beloved 26-year-old Baltimore nun, Sister Catherine Cesnik, who went shopping at a local mall on a Friday night in 1969 and never returned to her apartment.

Alongside that core narrative is the allegation of a horrifying sexual abuse ring that preyed upon high school girls at the school where the nun taught. And at the center of the ring is a priest who served as guidance counselor, a clergyman whom survivors describe as a monster, the Rev. A. Joseph Maskell.

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SOUTH CAROLINA
The Post and Courier

By Gregory Yee gyee@postandcourier.com

After nearly a decade, legal wrangling continues over a $12 million settlement paid to victims who were sexually abused by Catholic priests in the Charleston area more than 30 years ago.

A lawsuit on behalf of one of the victims, identified only as John Doe 10, was filed in September 2010, according to court documents. The plaintiff was molested at his church school and parish beginning in 1983 according to the suit.

“The priest involved, Frederick Hopwood, had an extensive history of molesting children that covered the decades before 1983,” the documents said.

Hopwood pleaded guilty on March 21, 1994, to one count of a lewd act upon a minor. As part of his plea agreement, the 9th Circuit Solicitor’s Office gave Hopwood statewide immunity from further prosecution.

The case is scheduled to move forward on Monday and stems from fallout over the settlement.

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CALIFORNIA
ABC 30

By Nathalie Granda

LOS BANOS, Calif. (KFSN) — Robert Gamel’s appearance in court was brief Friday, but during that time he pleaded not guilty after being found with child porn again.

“The allegations do include possession of illicit material again in that new complaint as well,” prosecuting attorney Travis Colby told the court.

Gamel was arrested back in April for violating his probation. He faces a charge of possession of child pornography with a prior conviction. He was a priest at St. Joseph’s Catholic Church in Los Banos.

Gamel was arrested for having images of an underage parishioner in 2014 and then sentenced for the crime last year in March. According to the report from the probation department, officers found a single large envelope with three images of a young male fully nude.

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SOUTH AFRICA
eNCA

PORT ELIZABETH – A Nigerian pastor charged with human trafficking and sexual assault was found to have been living in South Africa “illegally” after it was discovered that at least one of his permits were “issued fraudulently”, it emerged in the Port Elizabeth Magistrate’s Court on Friday.

Testifying in the pastor’s bail application, senior immigration officer, Ivan Klaasen, said that he had also discovered that the pastor had six passports, and not four as the the court was previously told.

Klaasen said that he had conducted investigations on the department’s movement control system which picked up that the pastor had travelled in and out of South Africa three times during the year 2000 without a relevant visa.

“He was issued with a temporary residence not a visa, as per the regulations a Nigerian national must be in possession of a visa, so there is a contravention of the Act here. He was not allowed to enter South Africa without a visa, he was issued a single entry only and came into South Africa without a relevant visa,” said Klaasen adding that he had no idea how this could happen at various ports of entry.

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CONNECTICUT
New Haven Independent

by CHRISTOPHER PEAK | May 12, 2017

Hartford — Speaking publicly for the first time about sexual abuse allegations that have ripped apart the Orthodox Jewish community he built in New Haven, Rabbi Daniel Greer denied under oath ever having counseled a teenaged yeshiva student named Eliyahu Mirlis about spiritual matters, let alone having repeatedly assaulted him.

Then, under further questioning, Greer refused to say whether he took Mirlis to motels overnight, showed him porn, plied him with alcohol, molested him in the bedroom where he sleeps with his wife and fondled him at several other rental properties he controls throughout the Edgewood neighborhood.

“Did you force Eli Mirlis to have sex with you when he was a child?” Antonio Ponvert, Mirlis’s attorney, questioned after Greer took the stand here Thursday in a civil lawsuit here in U.S. District Court.

“I advise Mr. Greer to invoke his privilege” — the Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination — David Grudberg, one of the rabbi’s three defense attorneys, interrupted.

“I invoke the right to privilege,” Greer said. Ponvert moved on to the next allegation.

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AUSTRALIA
The Guardian (UK)

David Marr
Friday 12 May 2017

New allegations of child abuse are being levelled against Cardinal George Pell, the Vatican’s financial chief and the most senior figure in the Australian Catholic church.

Fairfax Media has reported claims contained in a new book, Cardinal: The Rise and Fall of George Pell, that he sexually abused two choirboys at St Patrick’s cathedral after becoming archbishop of Melbourne in the 1990s.

The author Louise Milligan first flagged these claims on the ABC’s 7.30 Report in July last year. But according to Fairfax Milligan’s book, to be released on Monday, contains details of the accusations that have not been made public before.

After the 7.30 Report Pell accused the ABC of conducting a “scandalous smear campaign.”

The boys, students at St Kevin’s College, sang in the cathedral choir and were allegedly abused by the archbishop in a room somewhere in the precincts of the cathedral. They left the choir and the school shortly afterwards.

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PENNSYLVANIA
PennLive

By Joe Elias | jelias@pennlive.com

An Amish bishop in Dauphin County has been charged with failing to report two cases of child sexual abuse.

Christ M. Stoltzfus, 69, of Roller Road in Mifflin Township, told investigators that he was informed that one of the incidents “wasn’t really that bad” during an interview in February, according to state police.

State police said that under the law clergymen are required to inform law enforcement about cases of child sexual abuse.

In January, a member of Stoltzfus’ church told troopers he informed the bishop of the cases of child sexual abuse that occurred in 2011.

Both cases involved Daniel Ray Fisher, 44, of Weaver Road in Mifflin Township, records state.

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AUSTRALIA
ABC News

By Sue Peacock

Thousands of photographs captured on a smartphone are at the centre of a new exhibition in Ballarat documenting one child abuse survivor’s path to healing.

Peter Blenkiron’s photographs are on show at the Art Gallery of Ballarat alongside video diaries and a documentary film about his story of abuse at the hands of Christian Brothers.

Blenkiron is seeking healing from the debilitating legacy of abuse that was inflicted on him as an 11-year-old by a St Patrick’s College Christian Brother.

He says he wants the exhibition to inspire hope in other abuse survivors.

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AUSTRALIA
The Weekend Australian

AMANDA GEARING
The Australian
May 13, 2017

The story of the Queensland girl whose fight for justice sparked a revolution in child protection in Australia — and brought down a governor-general — will be ­released in cinemas next week.

Don’t Tell is based on the book by Stephen Roche, the lawyer who represented Lyndal, a 22-year-old who brought action in 2001 against the Anglican Church over sexual assaults at the prestigious Toowoomba Preparatory School. Lyndal had been a 12-year-old boarder at the time of the abuse in 1990.

It was a landmark case, securing a record $815,000 in damages and exposing a cover-up by the Anglican Church that was found to have involved the alleged abuse of at least 20 girls by predatory housemaster Kevin Guy. The scandal eventually ensnared the then governor-general, Peter Hollingworth, who had been the Anglican archbishop of Brisbane at the time of the abuse.

It was the Toowomba case that first prompted calls for a royal commission into child sex abuse in institutions, finally ordered by Julia Gillard as prime minister in 2012.

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LOUISIANA
The Times-Picayune

By Ken Daley, NOLA.com | The Times-Picayune

Kenneth “Kenny” Klein, the New Orleans Wiccan priest and folk singer convicted last month on 20 counts of child pornography charges, was sentenced Friday (May 12) to serve 20 years in prison.

Criminal District Judge Byron C. Williams imposed the sentence after first denying Klein’s motion for a new trial. The judge said he had never before received so many letters both in support of and opposed to leniency for a defendant before a sentencing decision.

“Your partner talks about your kindness and others say you don’t pose a threat to society,” Williams said. “But just as many have negative things to say about you, calling you an objectionable human being, and a lot of people contend you are a monster.

“Healing and redemption are available to you right now, but will have to begin in the custody of the Department of Corrections. The unsuspecting victims of juvenile pornography also must be able to heal.”

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AUSTRALIA
The Australian

May 13, 2017

VICTORIA LAURIE
Reporter Perth

This week, the deep silence that has hung for 50 years over Western Australia’s now-crumbling and derelict missions ended in two short police statements.

The WA child abuse squad announced it had charged two men with a string of sex offences dating back to their duties, as Catholic priest and former teacher respectively, at the isolated Wandering Mission. The charges include rape and indecent assault of several girls aged between eight and 15.

A day later, another media release: a second teacher was charged with sexually abusing five girls aged nine to 13 across a period that began when he was at Wandering Mission in 1959 and continued until 2003.

Although a court will have to determine guilt or innocence, three old men — retired priest Allan Mithen, 78, teachers Michael Moran, 82, and Keith Chesson, 83, all non-Aboriginal — face charges dating back more than 50 years. This hints at the stifling silence that has long enveloped 50 or more Aboriginal missions and children’s homes that once oper­ated across the state.

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AUSTRALIA
The Canberra Times

New allegations of alleged conspiracies, cover-ups and broken lives have emerged, with questions about what Pell knew about paedophilia in the Catholic Church before he become Archbishop of Melbourne.

Louise Milligan

When the Most Reverend George Pell was still Auxiliary Bishop of Melbourne, he had the passing acquaintance of a priest in his region called Father Noel Brady. Brady is now parish priest at Resurrection Kings Park, a thriving western suburbs community where he ministers to a distinctly multicultural group of worshippers. He is an understated man and he blanches from any colourful descriptors of Pell or indeed of Pell’s motives. Brady says he prefers to stick to the facts. And the facts he alleges fly in the face of everything Pell now says about what he knew about paedophilia and how he handled it in the Catholic Church before becoming Archbishop of Melbourne in 1996.

Brady was ordained a priest in 1992 and his first parish, where he worked as assistant priest, was St Mary’s, Dandenong, in Melbourne’s outer south-east. Dandenong was in the southern region for which Pell was responsible for ministering as auxiliary bishop. Brady was appointed to St Mary’s on July 8, 1992, and that date is significant, he tells me. About four months after Brady arrived at the parish, he says a young couple who were parishioners came to see him after Mass.

They were extremely concerned about the husband’s brother, who lived a bit further out in Narre Warren. The young man was a victim of Father Kevin O’Donnell and Brady went to see him. “I will never forget walking around the property with [him] and the telling of his story reducing us both to tears,” Brady later wrote.

O’Donnell was by then a retired priest who was still living in a house on Church property in Dandenong. “It was awkward to say the least,” says Brady of the living arrangement – particularly since O’Donnell was good friends with Brady’s superior, the parish priest. In a 1989 confirmation ceremony video at Sacred Heart in south-west Melbourne’s Oakleigh, where O’Donnell was ministering at the time, Pell praised O’Donnell and another priest “for all the work they are doing here”.

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AUSTRALIA
The Age

Beau Donelly

Explosive claims of child sex abuse have been levelled against Australia’s highest-ranking Catholic official, Cardinal George Pell.

A soon-to-be-released book about Cardinal Pell contains detailed claims that he sexually abused two choirboys at St Patrick’s Cathedral in Melbourne in the late 1990s.

The book, Cardinal: The Rise And Fall of George Pell, also contains new information about the child abuse cover-up within the church, including allegations that he knew about paedophile priests earlier than he claimed.

It is written by ABC journalist Louise Milligan, who revealed historic sex abuse allegations against Cardinal Pell in a 2016 report for the 7.30 program.

Earlier this year, Milligan and her colleague Andy Burns won the Melbourne Press Club’s Gold Quill for their report.

Milligan interviewed two men, Lyndon Monument and Damian Dignan, who claimed they were sexually assaulted by Cardinal Pell, then a priest, at Ballarat’s Eureka Pool in the late 1970’s.

Police confirmed earlier this year that a brief of evidence against Cardinal Pell had been returned to the Office of Public Prosecutions for consideration.

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INDIA
India.com

By Zeeshan Shaikh | Updated: May 12, 2017

Thrissur, May 12: A Pastor who was once attached with the Salvation Army Church at Peechi, in Thrissur has been given life sentence until death by a POCSO court after he was found guilty of raping a 13-year-old girl. The judgement was given today by session court judge Nickson M Joseph, as the court found Pastor Sanal K James (35) guilty of sexually abusing a minor girl on several occasions at his official residence from 2013 to 2015. According to a report, the victim belonged to a poor Dalit family who lived near the Salvation Army Church.

According to Deccan Chronicle, Pastor Sanal K James had also sexually abused another minor girl during the same period for which he was sentenced to 40 years’ imprisonment by the same court a few months ago.

The Pastor was slapped with charges under both POCSO and Indian Penal Code. The child sexual abuse was reported after the victim revealed her ordeal to her teacher who alerted the Childline. After the case came on the public domain the issue was first brought before the Child Welfare Committee, which later informed that the police after which a case was filed against Pastor James. The pastor was then arrested after the medical report found the girl was raped several times.

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GUAM
The Guam Daily Post

Mindy Aguon |For The Guam Daily Post May 12, 2017

A swimming outing to Agana Springs in 1960 will forever haunt a man who was 9 years old at the time, according to documents filed in court yesterday.

P.W., whose initials are being used to protect his identity, filed a lawsuit in the District Court of Guam yesterday against the Archdiocese of Agana, the Boy Scouts of America and Louis Brouillard, a former priest and Boy Scout Master on Guam.

The complaint states P.W. met Brouillard during weekly outings with the Mangilao parish and Boy Scouts, but he was not an altar boy or Boy Scout.

He alleges Brouillard would routinely drive around the village of Mangilao to pick up boys at their homes to take them swimming.

On one occasion, Brouillard allegedly picked up P.W. from his home and took him to Agana Springs to swim.

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ISRAEL
Israel Blogger

By Zev M. Shandalov
May 12, 2017

I recently posted an article in which I made a suggestion about how, perhaps, the residents of Bet Shemesh can come together to try to resolve the ongoing religious conflicts and violence in their community. I wrote this as a total outsider, but with the intention of trying to voice an opinion of a potential way to move forward. While many were very complimentary about the ideas, there were some who felt I was blaming the victim; preaching only to the choir; putting the burden on the Dati LeUmi community, etc.

I hear all of the arguments on both sides.

First, let me say that I, in no way, believe that I have THE answers. I simply sit in utter frustration, watching from the sidelines, as Jews act in ways that are similar to the pre-Churban days. It is frustrating to no end to KNOW that there are good people out there, who are trying to right this immeasurable wrong of Jews taking to the street to attack other Jews, and they are met with deafening silence.

In yet an earlier post, I wrote about the potential tragic results of leaders NOT publicly condemning these acts of violence–and that was BEFORE a woman was recently sent to the hospital after being attacked.

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AUSTRALIA
Newcastle Herald

Megan Neil
12 May 2017

NEWCASTLE’S Anglican diocese maintains it will pay proper compensation to child abuse victims despite needing to find almost $1 million after underestimating its redress obligations.

The diocese has already paid almost $5 million in compensation to people sexually abused as children by Anglican clergy and lay people. It had budgeted for $1.5 million in redress for 2017 and 2018.

But Bishop Peter Stuart says the estimates for redress funding for 2017 and 2018 may be too low and many of the claims relate to events not covered by insurance, or where the insurer has refused to pay due to the failure of diocesan processes.

The projected funding shortfall for 2018 is nearly $950,000, he said.

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GUAM
KUAM

May 12, 2017

By Krystal Paco

He’s 66 years old now, but when he was nine or ten years old P.W. alleges he was molested by a Mangilao priest. That priest was Fr. Louis Brouillard. Although the latest victim says he was not an altar boy nor a boy scout, he was invited to go along on a swimming outing. P.W. alleges on his first trip he along with the other boys was told to swim naked, as did the priest. They were taken back to the rectory where Fr. Brouillard then took nude pictures of the children. P.W. marks the 63rd person to come forward alleging childhood clergy sex abuse perpetrated by priests in Guam.

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GUAM
Pacific News Center

Written by Donna De Jesus

A total of five lawsuits were filed this week against the church.

Guam – After five recent child sex abuse filings in recent weeks, there are now 65 lawsuits against the Archdiocese of Agana.

Three out of the five alleged victims, using their initials E.T., J.S., and R.B.R., claimed that former priest and Boy Scout master, Louis Brouillard, abused them in the late 1970s when they were altar boys at the Barrigada Parish as well as boy scouts in the Barrigada troop. All three allege that Brouillard would grope them when he would make them swim naked. They claim he would also sexually abuse them in the church rectory. R.B.R.’s complaint states that Brouillard reassured him by saying “It’s okay. All of the other boys do it,” before forcing him to perform various sex acts.

The latest to file, P.W., claims Brouillard abused him in the early 60s when Brouillard was a priest at the Mangilao parish. P.W. was not an altar boy or a boy scout, but the complaint states that the former priest allowed him to hang out at the parish. P.W. claims that Brouillard would line the boys up in front of a mirror and take nude photos of them.

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PHILADELPHIA (PA)
WHYY

05/09/2017

The List tells the hidden story of one of the worst criminal cover-ups in America’s history. The victims, hundreds of children whose lives were destroyed. The perpetrators, Catholic clergy protected by their church.

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IRELAND
Irish Independent

Eilish O’Regan
May 12 2017

The response of banks to loans linked to St Vincent’s Hospital campus in Dublin is believed to be key to defusing the row over ownership of the new National Maternity Hospital.

Health Minister Simon Harris and his officials met with members of the St Vincent’s Healthcare Group yesterday to discuss securing a lease which would allow the State to own the €300m maternity hospital to be built on the campus.

The revelation that the Order of the Sisters of Charity, which controls the group, will own the hospital caused a public outcry. This is despite the insistence that an agreement between the existing National Maternity Hospital in Holles Street and St Vincent’s guarantees its independence.

The new effort by the State to gain ownership is complicated by the fact that the banks have fixed and floating charges on the entire campus.

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ISRAEL
Haaretz

The practice was simple: If you don’t speak about sexual violence, it doesn’t exist. Then these three started a Haredi awareness revolution

Nati Tucker May 11, 2017

Jerusalem in late 2015 was a place marked by fear. It was mainly fear of lone wolf terrorists with knives, but Avigail Karlinsky thought it time to explain something to men: Maybe they weren’t used to constantly being alert, warily looking left and right for attackers, but women were. “I hereby tell you that a woman walking in the street alone at night walks just like that,” the 28-year-old Karlinsky, who is ultra-Orthodox, wrote on Facebook. “Every woman knows what I’m talking about. There isn’t a single one who doesn’t.”

Publishing a post like that in October 2015 was highly unusual in the Haredi community. Sexual violence isn’t a topic for conversation, certainly not something to be spoken about out loud. It turned out she had touched a very sore nerve.

“I wasn’t prepared for what happened after I posted that,” says Karlinsky, who belongs to the non-Hasidic (Lithuanian) ultra-Orthodox community. “I had entered a vacuum so immense in the Haredi community that everybody who had anything to say about sexual harassment, a personal story or somebody near them – everybody came to me. Dreadful stories started to pour in. I was inundated. It affected me physically. For two weeks I was just sick. I couldn’t stand on my feet.”

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UNITED STATES
Jewish Community Watch

Posted on May 11, 2017
Written By Meyer Seewald

It’s been almost six years since I found myself in tears, sitting on a floor as a victim of childhood sexual abuse described to me in detail how, at 14 years old, Mendel Tevel performed oral sex on him. Tevel was seen by many as a beloved, caring, and charming “mashpia” (spiritual guidance counselor) within the Chabad community of Crown heights Brooklyn and beyond. I remember this conversation as if it happened yesterday. It would be one of many sleepless nights to come which I experienced during my years of confronting childhood sexual abuse within the Orthodox Jewish community.

At the time he told me of the matter, this victim was not ready to press charges. I started doing research on Tevel and found out that he was a staff member at a school and camp in upstate New York. After months of investigation that included hundreds of hours taking phone calls, ten separate people alleged to me that they were victims of Mendel Tevel. The acts theydescribed Tevel forcing them to be a part of where some of the most depraved and terrifying accounts of sexual torture I have ever heard. These included, but are not limited to, whipping them with hangers until they bled, and leaving one victim tied up naked and left on the floor. (Click here to read more stories in the Jewish Journal.)

Shortly after Jewish Community Watch warned the Los Angeles Jewish community of the danger he posed to their children, several people contacted us with stories of how tevel tried groom their children for potential sexual abuse. Instead of taking action, the JEM Community Center, which is owned and operated by the Illulian family – and the family that Tevel married into – continued to support Mendel Tevel and provide him with unfettered access to children at the JEM center.

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UNITED STATES
SOME PEOPLE LIVE MORE IN 20 YEARS…

MAY 11, 2017
ASHER LOVY

Apparently, the Moetzes Gedolei Yisrael of Israel have called for a “Day of Tefilos” to raise awareness about the spiritual problems technology posed by technology. As a community, we’ve become accustomed to these mass displays of piety, and international calls for prayer in hopes of inspiring a generation, and perhaps some divine assistance, to rid itself from the potential stumbling blocks in the way of spiritual purity, and connection to God. From asifos against the Internet in Citi Field, to international days of prayer, the Charedi world is awash in the mass organization of truly astounding feats of community organizing. One imagines that this kind of response could only be triggered by something perceived as an existential thread to the international charedi community. That is, after all, how they perceive modern technologies like smartphones and the ubiquity of the Internet: as an evil ploy of the Evil Inclination, whose only interest is in making sinning easier than its ever been before.

But what of the other existential threats that plague our communities? What of the rampant sexual abuse that is enabled by polices like those of Agudath Israel of America, which enable abuse and protect abusers, by mandating that victims of abuse and their families go to rabbis rather than law enforcement when they are abused? Surely this is as much an existential crisis as any other. Surely, with the number of people who eventually leave Orthodoxy, going “off the derech,” as a result of abuse they’ve suffered at the hands of a seemingly indifferent community, something must be done!

Apparently not.

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AUSTRALIA
Australian Jewish News

VICTORIA Police is working with Bialik College to identify students who may have been photographed by a former teacher who has been charged with making child pornography.

The media studies teacher, a 52-year-old man from Noble Park, worked at Bialik until 2015. He then moved to Mount Scopus, where he worked until he was suspended last week.

In an exclusive interview with The AJN this week, Bialik principal Jeremy Stowe-Lindner and Mount Scopus principal Rabbi James Kennard explained what happened and how they dealt with the issue.

Stowe-Lindner said that the teacher left a hard drive at Bialik when he left the school.

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UNITED KINGDOM
The Jewish News

BY FRANCINE WOLFISZ May 11, 2017

My life is not what it was. I had a comfortable job, a serene life, I was involved communally. Things were going very well. Then this happened and it changed my world.”

Three decades may have passed, but Manny Waks, now 41, admits not a day goes by without acknowledging the sexual abuse he suffered as a child.

Raised in a strictly-Orthodox Jewish home in Melbourne, the second oldest of 17 children was betrayed by two men trusted by his family.

For years, Waks resisted telling anyone, but in 2011 he went public about his experiences in an attempt to bring his abusers to justice.

That testimony was more explosive than he imagined: it became the catalyst for an Orthodox sex abuse scandal that rocked Australia and resulted in the conviction of several men for sexually abusing boys during the 1980s and 1990s.

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MINNESOTA
Star Tribune

By Staff and wire reports MAY 11, 2017

An overwhelming majority of victims of clergy sex abuse in the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis favor a compensation plan submitted by a creditors’ committee, attorneys representing the victims said Thursday.

According to the attorneys, 406 people who have been victims of abuse in the archdiocese, which filed for bankruptcy protection in 2015, recently voted on competing compensation plans. U.S. Bankruptcy Court Judge Robert Kressel ruled late last year that the proposals would be voted on by victims, but the final decision on what plan prevails remains up to the court.

Of those voting, 94 percent favored a plan submitted by an abuse survivors’ committee over one submitted by the archdiocese, according to victims’ attorney Jeff Anderson.

The plan from the archdiocese includes a fund of more than $155 million for abuse victims who filed claims in bankruptcy court. Most of that money would come from insurance payments. The survivors’ committee plan calls for the archdiocese to increase its contributions to the victims’ fund to at least $80 million.

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AUSTRALIA
WA Today

Brendan Foster

A former member of the Jehovah Witness congregation will appear in court next week after he was charged with sexually assaulting four boys.

The charges stem from ongoing investigations linked to the Royal Commission into institutional child sexual offences.

Police allege between 1993 to 2013, the 44-year-old man sexually assaulted four boys aged between 14 and 16 at the time of the offences.

The alleged abuse is said to have occurred in Chidlow and Mundaring and during the period in question the man was an active member of the Mundaring Jehovah Witness congregation.

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AUSTRALIA
PerthNow

AAP, PerthNow
May 11, 2017

A PERTH man has been charged with sexually abusing four teenage boys over a 20 year period while he was a Jehovah’s Witness.

Police say the man abused the boys between 1993 and 2013 when they were aged between 14 and 16.

The 44-year-old faces numerous charges, including four counts of indecent assault, and will appear at Midland Magistrates Court on May 23.

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MINNESOTA
Pioneer Press

By TAD VEZNER | tvezner@pioneerpress.com | Pioneer Press
May 11, 2017

A group of sexual abuse survivors engaged in bankruptcy court mediation with the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis has overwhelmingly rejected the archdiocese’s proposed bankruptcy reorganization plan, which includes how much it should pay victims.

The archdiocese and a group of survivors — the largest class of the archdiocese’s “creditors” in the bankruptcy court — have submitted opposing plans over how much the archdiocese should offer survivors for abuse that occurred at the hands its clergy.

U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Robert Kressel ruled in December to allow both plans to move forward to a vote by all creditors.

On Thursday, 94 percent of the survivor group — comprising over 400 members — voted that they preferred their plan over the archdiocese’s.

Kressel could still rule in favor of the archdiocese plan over that vote.

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UNITED KINGDOM
Care Appointments

Written by Helen William

The independent inquiry into child sex abuse in England and Wales is looking at “tens of thousands of pages” of information about any potential failures to protect children in the care of the Nottinghamshire Councils alone, its counsel said.

The scale of the task of officials currently trawling through information, including material from councils, police, the Crown Prosecution Service and the Health Department, “cannot be underestimated”, Inquiry counsel Patrick Sadd said.

He told a preliminary hearing of the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse (IICSA): “To date this investigation has received tens of thousands of pages of which a large proportion have already been reviewed in some form.

“This means that we are considering the contents, deciding upon their relevance and using them to inform our decisions about the approach that the investigation will take going forward.”

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AUSTRALIA
The Guardian (UK)

Melissa Davey
@MelissaLDavey
Friday 12 May 2017

The Anglican church of Newcastle has told its members it may sell some of its assets to meet redress payments for victims and survivors of child sexual abuse.

In a background briefing document sent to the church’s members before a Synod meeting on 27 May, the bishop Peter Stuart said the Synod must renew its commitment to facing abuse within the church.

“We fully support the establishment of a best practice Commonwealth Redress Scheme for abuse survivors and will do all that we can to enable the Diocese to exercise the option to ‘opt in’ into the scheme,” the document, seen by Guardian Australia, says.

“We welcome the fact that the scheme will be independent of the Church and will assist survivors access the support and counselling they seek.”

The Synod meeting will occur one week after the retiring bishop Greg Thompson delivers his final service in Newcastle. Thompson had announced that he would stand down in May, citing the unrelenting abuse he received for helping the child sexual abuse royal commission gather information. He also told his own story of abuse, and faced subsequent harassment from members of his own church for doing so.

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JAMAICA
St. Lucia News

JAMAICA OBSERVER – Embattled pastor of the Bunker’s Hill New Testament Church of God in Trelawny, Presley Smith, who has been charged with a sexual offence against a minor, was granted bail in the sum of $450,000 when he appeared in the Falmouth Parish Court yesterday.

He is scheduled to return to court on June 22 when the matter will again be mentioned.

As part of his bail condition, the 27-year-old pastor, who is a native of Kingston, is to report to the Constant Spring Police Station three days per week (Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays) between the hours of 6:00am and 7:00pm.

He is also to surrender his travel documents, have no communication with the complainant, and not to visit the parish of Trelawny unless he is attending court in that parish.

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INDIA
The News Minute

Both the girls were raped repeatedly but were scared to reveal the deeds of a ‘man of god.’

TNM Staff

Friday, May 12, 2017

A serial child rapist in Kerala was sentenced to life imprisonment until death by a special court in Thrissur on Friday. Pastor Sanil K James, already serving a 40-year sentence for raping a minor girl, was convicted for a second time. Sanil was found guilty of raping a 13-year-old girl multiple times since 2013.

The Sessions court judge Nixon M Joseph, sentenced the 36-year-old pastor under the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (POCSO) Act.

Public Prosecutor Pious Mathew told TNM, “This sentence should be a deterrent to others, there should be no leniency. The man did this heinous crime on two girls, and misused his position. He should never be allowed to ever abuse a girl.”

Sanil reportedly raped the minor thrice over the years. The first time was in 2013, after the Christmas Carols were sung at the Church. The second time was in 2014, where the pastor raped the minor at her residence. The third time was at his residence.

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MINNESOTA
KSTP

A group of over 400 clergy abuse victims rejected a reorganization plan submitted by the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis in the archdiocese’s bankruptcy case, according to a release from the law firm Stinson Leonard Street.

The archdiocese originally filed a reorganization plan in May of 2016. The sexual abuse survivors submitted their plan in August of 2016, after the court denied a request from the Creditor’s Committee that the archdiocese’s assets be consolidated.

Both parties amended their plan in November.

In December, U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Robert Kressel allowed both plans to be moved to a vote.

According to the release, the plan submitted by the creditor’s committee received 94 percent of the votes. According to a release from Jeff Anderson & Associates, 406 of the 447 people eligible to vote participated.

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MINNESOTA
Catholic Philly

By Maria Wiering • Catholic News Service • Posted May 11, 2017

ST. PAUL, Minn. (CNS) — Bishop Michael J. Hoeppner of Crookston “categorically denies that he in any way forced, coerced or encouraged” a candidate for the permanent diaconate not to report his claim of sexual abuse against a priest of the diocese, the Diocese of Crookston stated May 9.

The diocese issued the statement in response to a lawsuit filed that day against the bishop and the diocese.

At a news conference held at attorney Jeff Anderson’s St. Paul office, the plaintiff, Ron Vasek, said he told Bishop Hoeppner about the abuse, which he said he suffered as a teenager, while he was considering becoming a permanent deacon for the diocese in 2009 or 2010. He said the bishop told him that he couldn’t tell anyone, including his wife, because it would damage the reputation of the accused priest, Msgr. Roger Grundhaus, who had held leadership positions in the diocese.

According to the Diocese of Crookston, the abuse allegation was reported to law enforcement in 2011. According to Anderson, Msgr. Grundhaus’ name was not included on a list of priests accused of abuse that the diocese released in 2014.

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UNITED KINGDOM
Church Times

by Hattie Williams

Posted: 12 May 2017

A PRESSURE group that campaigns for mandatory reporting of suspected or known child abuse in the UK has criticised the Church of England for prioritising its reputation over the protection of children.

The group, Mandate Now, is supporting an ongoing government consultation, Reporting and Acting on Child Abuse, which was tabled by Baroness Walmsley in 2014 as an amendment to the Serious Crimes Act 2015.

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MINNESOTA
Minnesota Public Radio

Martin Moylan May 11, 2017

In a landslide vote, sex abuse survivors have rejected a reorganization and compensation plan from the bankrupt Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis.

The church was offering at least $155 million. But 94 percent of abuse victims voting endorsed a competing plan that they expect would treat them more justly and extract much more money from the church and its insurers.

“The vote speaks volumes to the unity and perseverance of victims and survivors,” said James Keenan, an abuse survivor and chair of the creditors’ committee. “We’re going to stand together and see this thing through to the end. And we’re going to do this thing right.

The creditors’ committee believes there could be more than $1 billion available from insurers. But insurers would no doubt fight claims tenaciously. They can, for instance, argue they can’t be on the hook for abuse that the church knew about but failed to stop.

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MINNESOTA
KAAL

A group of over 400 clergy abuse victims rejected a reorganization plan submitted by the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis in the archdiocese’s bankruptcy case, according to a release from the law firm Stinson Leonard Street.

The archdiocese originally filed a reorganization plan in May of 2016. The sexual abuse survivors submitted their plan in August of 2016, after the court denied a request from the Creditor’s Committee that the archdiocese’s assets be consolidated.

Both parties amended their plan in November.

According to the release, the plan submitted by the creditor’s committee received 94 percent of the votes. According to a release from Jeff Anderson & Associates, 406 of the 447 people eligible to vote participated.

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MINNESOTA
Fox 9

By: Rose Heaphy
POSTED:MAY 11 2017

MINNEAPOLIS (KMSP) – The sexual abuse survivors have voted for a plan in the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis bankruptcy case.

In December 2016, a U.S. Bankruptcy Court Judge decided the survivors would vote on the two proposed reorganization plans.

The Archdiocese submitted one plan and the Creditors’ Committee submitted the other. Last May, the Archdiocese filed its plan, which called for a total of $155 million in payments to abuse survivors and other creditors – with $65 million coming from the Archdiocese and the rest from insurance.

Attorneys representing the survivors believed the Archdiocese was attempting to conceal its assets. The survivors and the Creditors’ Committee submitted their plan, which states the Archdiocese would provide $80 million and more to be received from insurance in payments to survivors.

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MINNESOTA
Jeff Anderson and Associates

Archdiocese Ballot Report Tabulation

(Minneapolis, MN) – In December 2016, United States Bankruptcy Court Judge Robert J. Kressel ruled that two proposed reorganization plans would move forward to a vote in the Archdiocese of Saint Paul & Minneapolis bankruptcy case. One plan was submitted by the Archdiocese and one plan was submitted by the Creditors’ Committee.

Of the 447 people eligible to vote, 406 people participated in the voting process. The plan submitted by the Creditors’ Committee received 94% of survivors’ votes and 93% of the survivors who participated voted to reject the plan proposed by the Archdiocese.

“We applaud all the courageous survivors who have come forward to speak their truth. Your voices have been heard,” said Attorney Jeff Anderson.

This is the first time in a Diocesan or Religious Order bankruptcy that two competing plans went to vote. The plan filed by the Creditors’ committee in August of 2016 was the first of its kind filed by sexual abuse survivors in a bankruptcy proceeding.

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MINNESOTA
Star Tribune

Associated Press MAY 11, 2017

ST. PAUL, Minn. — An overwhelming majority of victims of clergy sex abuse in the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis favor a compensation plan submitted by a creditors’ committee.

Attorneys representing the victims say 406 people voted on competing compensation plans. Of those voting, 94 percent favored a plan by the survivors’ committee over one submitted by the archdiocese, which filed for bankruptcy protection in 2015.

Archbishop Bernard Hebda says the balloting does not necessarily dictate the final plan.

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AUSTRALIA
ABC News

By Katheryn Magann and Giselle Wakatama

Newcastle’s Anglican Diocese says it may have to sell church assets to make up a $1 million shortfall in the amount due to be paid to survivors of abuse this financial year.

Bishop Peter Stuart said despite the significant deficit, everyone entitled to compensation would receive it.

The Royal Commission into Institutional Responses into Child Sexual Abuse has led to the diocese already making 27 payments totalling almost $5 million.

The royal commission’s probe into alleged abuse and cover-ups within the Newcastle Anglican diocese was damning.

The average payment made to survivors of abuse so far has been about $183,000.

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KENTUCKY
WAVE

[with video]

By Kayla Vanover, Reporter

BRANDENBURG, KY (WAVE) – A Louisville priest convicted of sex abuse dating back to the 1970s could now be facing life in prison. His attorney abruptly left court before entering a plea deal on more charges.

Father Joseph Hemmerle was director and camp counselor for Camp Tall Trees in Meade County for 30 years. In November, Hemmerle was acquitted on one charge of engaging in a sexual act but was found guilty on a count of inappropriate touching.

In February, he was sentenced to seven years in prison after the court found him guilty of molesting Michael Norris. The incident is believed to have happened 43 years ago while Norris was attending the summer camp. Norris said he got a bad case of poison ivy and Hemmerle told him he could help. Norris visited Hemmerle’s cabin where he said he was abused.

Now, Hemmerle is involved in a similar sex abuse case. This time, he’s charged with two counts of sex abuse with a victim under 12 years old, and five counts of sodomy with a victim under 12 years old. If found guilty on all charges, Hemmerle could spend the rest of his life in prison.

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KENTUCKY
WHAS

[with video]

Shay McAlister, WHAS May 11, 2017

MEADE CO., Ky. (WHAS11) — A local priest convicted of sexually abusing children is heading to trial on additional charges. Father Joseph Hemmerle is a Louisville native and former Trinity High School teacher.

He was accused of abusing a 10-year old boy in the 1970s and convicted of the crimes in 2016. In court Thursday, his attorney denied a plea agreement on his behalf, agreeing to go to trial.

Inside a packed courtroom at the Meade County Courthouse, Prosecutor Leilani K.M. Martin was ready to sign off on a deal she called “forgiving and lenient.”

“We spent weeks hammering out a plea agreement and it was a very faithful plea agreement. The victim agreed to it because he is a practicing, practices his faith,” Martin said.

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KENTUCKY
WDRB

May 11, 2017

By Gil Corsey

LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WDRB) — He’s both a convicted pedophile and a priest, and on Thursday Father Joseph Hemmerle was set to confess to molesting a second young boy.

“We spent weeks hammering out a plea agreement,” said Special Prosecutor Leilani Martin. “It was signed.”

It’s why Martin was stunned by the reversal in Meade County Circuit Court.

“Out of the blue, defense attorney David Lambertus decided not to go through with it — suddenly announced he was going to trial instead — and it was sort of a shock,” Martin said. “He announced it in the courtroom without his client present and just turned around and left.”

The attorney also refused to answer any questions from WDRB News outside the courthouse. The deal he turned down offered two years to serve for sex abuse and sodomy but no new prison time as Hemmerle’s already behind bars. He’s serving a 10-year sentence for child sex abuse charges dating back to the 1970s when he served at Camp Tall Trees.

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CANADA
Winnipeg Free Press

By: Alexandra Paul
Posted: 05/11/2017

A former Anglican minister and boy scouts leader convicted in dozens of sex abuse cases against young indigenous boys is now the focus of a proposed class-action lawsuit seeking more than $100 million.

The suit alleges Ralph Rowe abused hundreds of boys in northwestern Ontario and Manitoba First Nations where he worked in the 1970s and ’80s.

Despite dozens of criminal convictions, Rowe served only about five years in prison, the result of a deal Rowe’s legal counsel arranged with the Crown in return for guilty pleas in nearly 40 cases against him.

The 43-page suit was filed in the Ontario Supreme Court in Thunder Bay Thursday. Until it is formally certified by the courts it remains a proposed class-action suit and no statements of defence have been filed.

It seeks $110 million in damages.

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CANADA
CBC News

By Jody Porter, CBC News Posted: May 11, 2017

A former priest convicted of 75 sex crimes is facing a multi-million dollar lawsuit along with his employer, the Anglican Church’s Synod of the Diocese of Keewatin and Scouts Canada with whom he volunteered.

Ralph Rowe flew his own plane into remote First Nations in northwestern Ontario in the 1970s and 80s. First Nations leaders and mental health professionals who work in the region estimate as many as 500 people were abused by him. For all his convictions, Rowe served less than five years in jail.

Dozens of men who were victims of Rowe settled previous suits against the Anglican Church and Scouts Canada but lawyer Jonathan Ptak, whose firm launched the class action on Thursday, says this case aims to bring public awareness and policy changes along with the $110 million claim for damages.

“There’s never been a light shone on this horrific and very important story involving rampant sexual abuse of Aboriginal youth in Canada’s north,” Ptak said.

“There have been some individual settlements but there’s never been an opportunity such as this class action where all the victims can come forward, have their stories be told and hopefully we can bring about some real change in the policies and practices in the organizations that employ these people,” he said.

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CANADA
CNW

THUNDER BAY, ON, May 11, 2017 /CNW/ – Koskie Minsky LLP in Toronto, and Watkins Law, P.C., in Thunder Bay, Ontario, have commenced a class action against Ralph Rowe, Scouts Canada and the Anglican Synod of the Diocese of Keewatin on behalf of hundreds of aboriginal youth who allege they were sexually abused by Ralph Rowe, who was a priest in the Anglican Church of Canada and a Scout leader.

The claim seeks $110 million in damages for negligence, breach of fiduciary duty and vicarious liability from Rowe, Scouts Canada and the Synod of the Diocese of Keewatin.

It is estimated that Rowe has abused as many as 500 aboriginal youth in northern Ontario and Manitoba First Nations communities during the 1970s and 1980s.

The Statement of Claim alleges that during this time, Rowe travelled throughout isolated First Nations communities as a priest of the Anglican Church and a Scout leader. In connection with his roles as a priest and Scout leader, Rowe took young aboriginal boys on camping trips and church outings and hosted children’s activities and sleepovers in various cabins and Mission Houses. It was during these activities that Rowe sexually abused boys in his care.

Rowe has already been found guilty of dozens of counts of sexual assaults perpetrated on young aboriginal boys in remote First Nations communities. A July 2007 sentencing decision from Justice E.W. Stach states, “By way of overview I think it fair to say that from 1975 and continuously until the year end in 1987 Ralph Rowe adopted what, in retrospect, is fairly considered as a purposeful, premeditated, formulary and ultimately predatory approach towards the pursuit of his own personal sexual gratification. More dangerously he was well positioned and well armed to do so.”

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GUAM
KUAM

Updated: May 11, 2017

By Krystal Paco

A 62nd plaintiff files suit against the Archdiocese of Agana. 51-year-old “R.B.R.” alleges he was sexually molested by Father Louis Brouillard as a boy scout in the Barrigada troop. Aside from being sexually molested during swimming trips to Lonfit River, R.B.R. details an occasion in which he was with the priest at the rectory and the priest performed oral sex and digital penetration on him.

The priest assured the boy that all the other boys did it.

R.B.R. was only 11 or 12 years old at the time of the abuse. He quit the Boy Scouts immediately after. The $10 million lawsuit was filed at the District Court of Guam on Thursday by attorney David Lujan.

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GUAM
The Guam Daily Post

Mindy Aguon | For The Guam Daily Post May 11, 2017

A former Boy Scout alleges he was sexually abused during swimming outings and while at the rectory of the San Vicente Ferrer-San Roke church parish in Barrigada when he was 11 years old.

An individual, using the initials “R.B.R.” to protect his identity, filed a civil complaint in the District Court of Guam yesterday alleging he was sexually abused by his former scoutmaster and Barrigada priest Louis Brouillard.

The lawsuit alleges the priest would force the Boy Scouts to swim completely naked during outings at the Lonfit River and would grope and touch their private parts.

R.B.R. said the priest would often reward the boys by taking them out to eat and occasionally they would spend time at the Barrigada rectory.

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CONNECTICUT
New Haven Independent

by CHRISTOPHER PEAK | May 11, 2017

Hartford — A bespectacled, ponytailed man reading the true-crime thriller In Cold Blood in the front row of a federal courtroom here was selected as the eighth and final juror who will decide if prominent New Haven Rabbi Daniel Greer repeatedly sexually abused yeshiva students and if the school shirked its duty to intervene.

The jury selection took place Wednesday in U.S. District Court, a day before the scheduled beginning of Greer’s trial.

Eliyahu Mirlis filed a lawsuit making those charges against Greer in May 2016. (The case landed in federal court, rather than state, because the jurisdiction is split, with Mirlis in New Jersey and Greer in Connecticut.) Mirlis’s complaint alleged that Greer repeatedly raped him for three years, starting in 2002, while he attended the Yeshiva of New Haven, one of two Orthodox Jewish schools that Greer ran within the former Roger Sherman School at 765 Elm St. in New Haven’s Edgewood neighborhood. The civil suit contends that Mirlis has suffered from emotional distress and seeks damages for the injury. In a 218-page pretrial deposition, a second former student, who became the school’s assistant principal, spelled out further, separate allegations of being sexually abused by the rabbi, who denies all the accusations.

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IRELAND
Clare FM

[with audio]

The Bishop of Killaloe says he’s not comfortable with the idea of a maternity hospital being guided by Catholic ethos.

It comes as talks on the ownership of the new national maternity hospital are expected to be substantially completed by the end of the month.

At the weekend, around 2,000 people took to the streets demanding that ownership and control is not given to the Sisters of Charity, thorugh the St. Vincent’s Hospital Group.

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AUSTRALIA
The Australian

RICK MORTON
Social Affairs reporter Melbourne
@SquigglyRick

DAN BOX
Crime reporter Sydney
@DanBox10

The federal government will be forced to set aside $600 million for survivors of child sex abuse in its national redress scheme, 50 per cent more than estimates made by the royal commission into the issue.

The Australian understands the government has run an actuarial analysis on its share of the redress scheme, which it seed-funded with $33m in Tuesday’s budget, and has settled on a figure of about $600m.

The Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse recommended a ­single, national redress scheme valued at $4.3 billion to provide compensation and medical and therapy support to 60,000 victims of abuse.

Federal and state governments would be “funders of last resort” under this model, picking up the pieces where non-government organisations have closed or been bankrupted and, in some cases, funding their own redress where they were responsible.

Their share of the scheme — across all jurisdictions — was estimated by the commission to be $632m but, given the federal government’s portion alone is set to be almost as much, it is likely states will need to chip in more than first thought.

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NEW YORK
Catholic Whistleblowers

The actions of Cardinal Timothy Dolan endorse the value of a ‘lookback window’ in providing some justice to victims / survivors of Catholic clergy sexual abuse of minors.

Indeed, the Archdiocese of New York’s Independent Reconciliation and Compensation Program, imperfect as the program is, appropriately pays out millions of dollars to clergy sexual abuse victims whose claim exceeds the New York State statute of limitations. In short, no matter when the sexual abuse occurred, Cardinal Dolan is willing to financially compensate the victim, and we welcome this reversal of position.

A New York State statutory ‘lookback window’ would serve the same meaningful role in society by allowing the victims / survivors of child sexual abuse to pursue legal recourse against public and private institutions of all sorts regardless when the abuse took place.

Additionally, a ‘lookback window’ enhances the protection of children and young people by identifying perpetrators and warning the public. However, Cardinal Dolan’s program does not identify the perpetrators and, thus, does not warn people about predators in their midst. Of course, he could change the program to make it better by publicizing the names of the abusers, just as he did in 2004 when he was the Archbishop of Milwaukee.

Consequently, Catholic Whistleblowers, a national network of current and former priests, women religious, brothers, deacons, and laypersons who actively support survivors of sexual abuse, strongly encourages New York State Senators and Assemblypersons to enact legislation that reforms the State’s statutes of limitations in both criminal and civil cases of child sexual abuse, a reform that would include a ‘lookback window’ of two years for civil cases.

Members of the Catholic Whistleblowers Steering Committee who submit this message are:
Sr. Sally Butler, OP (Brooklyn, NY); Sr. Claire Smith, OSU (Bronx, NY); Rev. Ronald D. Lemmert (Peekskill, NY); Robert M. Hoatson, Ph.D., (West Orange, NJ); Sr. Maureen Paul Turlish, SNDdeN (New Castle, DE); Rev. Bruce Teague (Sheffield, MA); Rev. Thomas P. Doyle, OP, J.C.D. (Vienna, VA); Rev. James E. Connell, J.C.D. (Milwaukee, WI);

Contact Persons: Sr. Sally Butler, OP (Brooklyn, NY) 718-237-0905 sbuttlerop@yahoo.com
Sr. Claire Smith, OSU (Bronx, NY) 718-885-0893 newskete@gmail.com
Robert M. Hoatson, Ph.D., (West Orange, NJ) 862-368-2800 roberthoatson@gmail.com
Sr. Maureen Paul Turlish, SNDdeN (New Castle, DE) 610-212-2770 maturlishmdsnd@yahoo.com
Rev. James E. Connell, J.C.D. (Milwaukee, WI) 414-940-8054 connell.james951@gmail.com

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AUSTRALIA
Parramatta Sun

Harrison Vesey
@harrisonvesey

11 May 2017

Shane McNamara is a firm believer that even when the odds seem stacked against you, it’s still possible to win with the right team.

A survivor of child sexual abuse, Mr McNamara knows the isolation many male victims feel, as well as the lack of support.

But he also knows that living a good life is possible.

“Everyone deserves a chance to enjoy life. It’s not all doom and gloom. There is a lot of good things in the world, there is a lot of good people,” Mr McNamara said.

He and Craig Hughes-Cashmore are the founders of Survivors and Mates Support Network (SAMSN), Australia’s first national not-for-profit dedicated to adult male survivors and their families.

The two became friends when they were both going through the long process of criminal investigation in 2010. They thought it would be good to have a group to talk to other men about their experiences, but no such group existed – so they started their own.

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SUISSE/FRANKREICH
cath.ch

[Menzingen ZG, 10.5.17 (kath.ch) On 5 May in France, the priest of the Priestly Fraternity of St. Pius X, Christophe Roisnel, was sentenced to 16 years imprisonment in France. The Secretary General of the Pius Brotherhood, based in Menzingen ZG, Christian Thouvenot, told cath.ch that the cases had been first investigated within the community without their seriousness being recognized.]

Menzingen ZG, 10.5.17 (kath.ch) Wegen mehrfacher Vergewaltigung wurde der Priester der Priesterbruderschaft St. Pius X., Christophe Roisnel, am 5. Mai in Frankreich zu 16 Jahren Freiheitsstrafe verurteilt. Der Generalsekretär der Piusbruderschaft mit Sitz in Menzingen ZG, Christian Thouvenot, erklärte gegenüber cath.ch, die Fälle seien innerhalb der Gemeinschaft untersucht worden, ohne dass deren Schwere erkannt worden sei.

Pierre Pistoletti

Die Bruderschaft habe den Fall der Justiz nicht gemeldet, so der Generalsekretär. In Frankreich haben mehrere Zeitungen die Bruderschaft wegen dieser Unterlassung angegriffen. Die in Paris erscheinende Zeitung «La Croix» schrieb: «Diese Affäre unterstreicht das schlechte Management der Bruderschaft im Fall von sexuellem Missbrauch.»

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FRANCE
La Croix

[A Society of St. Pius X abbot was sentenced for rape to 16 years in prison.]

La Croix avec AFP, le 06/05/2017

Le religieux de 43 ans, qui dirigeait un établissement scolaire proche de la Fraternité sacerdotale Saint-Pie X, était accusé de viols sur trois enseignantes

L’abbé Christophe Roisnel, 43 ans, qui comparaissait depuis mardi devant la cour d’assises des Yvelines pour « viols » et « viols avec actes de barbarie » sur trois enseignantes a été condamné à 16 ans de réclusion criminelle.

La cour, qui a reconnu sa culpabilité mais n’a pas retenu les actes de barbarie dont l’accusait l’une de ses victimes, a suivi les réquisitions du ministère public et a assorti cette peine d’une injonction de soins durant six ans, dans le cadre d’un suivi sociojudiciaire. Le religieux sera par ailleurs inscrit au fichier des auteurs d’infractions sexuelles.

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AUSTRALIA
The Record

An initial $33.4 million in this year’s budget to kick-start the setting up of a national redress scheme for survivors of child sexual abuse has been welcomed by the Catholic Church’s Truth Justice and Healing Council.

Francis Sullivan, Council CEO, said the funding is a good start and that the Catholic Church fully supports, and will be part of the new scheme.

“What we now need to see is all state governments and all other institutions where child sexual abuse took place become part of the scheme. The scheme will not work unless the state governments step up,” he said.

“It is now time for the state premiers and the chief ministers to demonstrate that they can lead beyond politics and they can respond to the genuine need of victims.

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IDAHO
Idaho Statesman

BY CYNTHIA SEWELL
csewell@idahostatesman.com

For the second time in his life, Riley Gilroy is turning to the courts to right a wrong.

The first time was when he was 9 years old and his mother, a single parent in Caldwell, thought he needed a male role model.

She asked around for recommended youth programs. Caldwell’s Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints 4th Ward recommended the Boy Scouts — Scouting has been a sanctioned LDS program for nearly 100 years, and the church is Idaho’s largest sponsor of it.

Gilroy and his best friend joined the ward’s Cub Scout den in 1982.

“That’s where I met Jim Schmidt who, over a period of time, proceeded to molest me and other Cub Scouts,” Gilroy said.

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AUSTRALIA
news.com.au

MAY 11, 2017

Megan Neil
Australian Associated Press

Australia’s Catholic bishops have retreated from an archbishop’s push to go to Rome seeking answers on whether the seal of confession can be broken to protect children from sexual abuse.

Adelaide Archbishop Philip Wilson had proposed sending a delegation of Australian bishops to Rome to seek the Pope’s guidance on the confessional seal and other issues raised in the child abuse royal commission.

But the Australian Catholic Bishops Conference’s week-long plenary meeting in Sydney has ended without that commitment.

The nation’s bishops discussed issues raised by the royal commission such as whether the seal of confession effectively protects everything said in the confessional, including if a child reveals they are being abused.

“The discussion was pastoral rather than tactical,” the ACBC said in a statement to AAP on Thursday.

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