ABUSE TRACKER

[Includes link to brief trailer with clips of statements by survivors David Schappelle, David Lorenz, and Eva Dittrich.]

Survivors, Advocates Join Legal Team Before September 10th Arguments

Summary

The consortium of Greater Baltimore law firms comprised of civil rights litigators from Jenner Law, Grant & Eisenhofer, and Baird Mandalas Brockstedt & Federico will hold a comprehensive litigation update-news conference on September 5th prior to the upcoming (September 10th) Maryland Supreme Court arguments on the constitutionality of the Child Victims Act of 2023 (CVA). Joined by several survivors-plaintiffs, advocates and the team will review the history of the legislation, and litigation (in state and federal courts), and the devastating impacts on generations of childhood sexual abuse survivors. They will also present the inaugural screening of “Survivors Stories: At the Crossroads of Justice,” a video featuring several leaders in the fight…

View Cache

A Slovakian priest who’s spent the last twenty years in Italy has announced that he’s leaving the priesthood in order to marry a woman with whom he said he’s “madly” in love, and with whom he’s expecting a child who’s been diagnosed with a serious heart condition.

The decision, which was announced Sunday by Bishop Marco Brunetti of the northern Italian diocese of Alba, who praised the “great transparency and sense of responsibility” of 44-year-old Father Tomas Hlavaty, who will now be formally removed from the priesthood and returned to the lay state.

The case has renewed debate over priestly celibacy, in part because, by all accounts, Hlavaty was a popular pastor whose departure has been publicly lamented by Catholics in the six small towns he served, including the mayor of one of those communities.

In an interview with La Repubblica, Italy’s most widely read daily newspaper, Hlavaty described the circumstances…

View Cache

Any journalist who’s ever worked a beat cultivates as many contacts as possible, but usually there’s that one source you rely on more than others – the figure whose intelligence, integrity and reputation mean that when the chips are down, it’s the voice you always want front and center.

For the first fifteen years or so of my career covering the Vatican, for me that go-to figure, especially on anything involving Catholic theology, was Jesuit Father Gerald O’Collins, who became not just a valued source but a good friend.

His Aug. 22 death at the age of 93, therefore, left me profoundly sad. More than that, it leaves the entire Catholic Church impoverished, at a time when his sanity, balance, and lack of rancor will be especially missed.

I first met O’Collins in the mid-1990s, when he was already two decades into his 33-year run on the theology faculty of…

View Cache

Father Frank D. Almade had just a smidge of the maverick about him.

A thought leader and pastor in the Catholic Church, he was focused less on giving sermons and more on taking up the mantle for the vulnerable, the hungry and for the alleged victims of sexual abuse by members of the Catholic clergy.

Since his ordination in 1978, Father Almade was best known for his social ministering, as a co-founder of the Jubilee Soup Kitchen in Pittsburgh’s Hill District, author of “Just Wages for Church Employees,” a book borne of his Ph.D. thesis, and as a board member at Catholic Charities for more than 35 years.

He had, as Pittsburgh Bishop David Zubik put it, “a unique ability to see things as they truly were.”

Before his retirement last summer, Father Almade served in many parishes over the years, overseeing mergers in places like St. John Fisher in…

View Cache

Many dioceses have failed to follow Jakarta archdiocese in implementing a protocol to protect vulnerable people

Catholic women activists want Pope Francis to address sexual violence within the Church during his four-day visit to Indonesia, where many dioceses have not implemented steps to deal with such crimes.

Pope Francis’ arrival in Indonesia on Sept. 3 should “strengthen the Church’s resolve on protecting women and children,” said Theresia Iswarini, a Catholic activist and the commissioner of the state-run National Commission on Anti-Violence Against Women.

During his pontificate, Francis initiated several policies to prevent sexual violence in the Church. However, many dioceses in Indonesia have failed to implement them, Iswarini noted during a discussion on “Voices of Catholic Women Activists Ahead of Pope Francis’ Arrival” on Aug. 30.

“They [dioceses] must immediately draft and implement protocols to boost the protection of women and children from sexual violence,” Iswarini demanded.

…

View Cache

Arnoldus Yansen thought for certain he was going to become a Catholic priest, just like his older brother, cousin and uncle.

He attended St. Peter Major Seminary, a bastion of priestly vocations located in the middle of a jungle on Flores, a predominantly Catholic island in Muslim-majority Indonesia. Known familiarly as Ritapiret Seminary, St. Peter Major has produced 13 bishops, more than 580 diocesan priests and 23 deacons in nearly 70 years of existence.

But Yansen won’t be among them. He tried to shake off what he thought were last-minute jitters before entering the priesthood. Instead, Yansen took off his clerical robes for good and joined the hundreds of prospective priests who resign or fail to take up Catholic vocations every year in Indonesia.

“I felt like I didn’t fit in anymore and that I would be able to do more if I left,” said Yansen, 26, who is now…

View Cache

… and it’s about more than Paige Patterson

The Texas Supreme Court erroneously released a massive trove of “highly confidential” documents that were filed in a sexual abuse case against Paige Patterson and Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary.

The documents—some 10,000 pages that had been filed under seal—were visible on the court’s website for about three days, after which the court took steps to remove them from public view. I have not seen the actual documents, but have reviewed Baptist News Global’s stunning reporting on them.

Included in the documents were the psychiatric records of the alleged sexual assault survivor, a former seminary student who uses the pseudonym of Jane Roe, along with police reports of her alleged assaults, sealed testimony, and confidential communications implicating dozens of individuals with a relationship to the case.

Obviously, this was an egregious mistake on the court’s part. As someone who, decades ago, worked as an attorney…

View Cache

A Canadian bishop is facing a Vatican-ordered probe, on charges that he failed to act when informed about an allegation of sexual assault against once-popular media personality Fr. Thomas Rosica. 

Sources say that in March, a priest who was allegedly assaulted by Rosica filed a complaint charging that when he informed Bishop Ronald Fabbro that Rosica had sexually assaulted him, the bishop was unwilling to listen, and did not apparently address the allegations, or forward them to Rosica’s religious superior.

The complaint was filed through a system devised by Canada’s bishops to receive reports of sexual abuse or cover-up by bishops. The system was launched after Pope Francis promulgated in 2019 Vos estis lux mundi, a set of procedures designed to investigate allegations of episcopal sexual abuse or negligence in bishops’ duties regarding abuse.

The complaint was forwarded to the Archdiocese of Toronto, and according to sources close to the case,…

View Cache

Gateway Church in North Texas has reportedly lost nearly 20 percent of its weekend services attendance since founding pastor Robert Morris resigned two months ago amid accusations of sexually abusing a child.

The nondenominational megachurch based in the Dallas Fort-Worth suburb of Southlake on Wednesday told CNN’s Nicole Chavez that between 17 percent and 19 percent of its weekend services at nine locations in Texas and two others in Missouri and Wyoming. That means roughly 20,000 of the congregation’s 100,000 attendees stopped going to Sunday services.

Gateway critics shared the story on social media and accused the church of low-balling the estimate of lost attendees, and suggesting it might be closer to 30 percent. Fort Worth Star-Telegram’s Mac Engel this month reported the church has experienced an exodus of roughly half of its congregation in Southlake. Gateway…

View Cache

VATICAN CITY (AP) — If any evidence were needed to underscore that Pope Francis’ upcoming trip to Asia and Oceania is the longest, farthest and most challenging of his pontificate, it’s that he’s bringing along his secretaries to help him navigate the four-country program while keeping up with work back home.

Francis will clock 32,814 kilometers (20,390 miles) by air during his Sept. 2-13 visit to Indonesia, Papua New Guinea, East Timor and Singapore, far surpassing any of his previous 44 foreign trips and notching one of the longest papal trips ever, both in terms of days on the road and distances traveled.

That’s no small feat for a pope who turns 88 in December, uses a wheelchair, lost part of a lung to a respiratory infection as a young man and had to cancel his last foreign trip at the last minute (to Dubai in November to participate in the U.N….

View Cache

A former senior Jesuit brother at prestigious Sydney Catholic school St Ignatius’ College Riverview has been jailed for the historical abuse of a student.

Laurence Leonard was found guilty in June of two counts of indecent assault against a 12-year-old pupil in 1974. He was aged 30 at the time.

The 80-year-old was last week sentenced to nine months’ prison with a three-month non-parole period, with Judge Ian Bourke condemning the “extremely serious breach of that trust and a grave abuse of his position of authority”.

According to a summary of facts outlined in NSW District Court documents, Leonard called the boy over to him while he was playing on the basketball courts during lunch or recess at the lower north shore school.

He said he would tuck his shirt in for him but then proceeded to assault the boy twice, causing him to feel “shocked and frozen”.

Once the…

View Cache

The Jehovah’s Witnesses must pay $48,000 in court costs to the Crown for a string of failed cases brought against the Royal Commission of Inquiry into Abuse in Care.

The Christian Congregation of Jehovah’s Witnesses Australasia sought a judicial review in 2023 in a bid to get out of being part of the inquiry.

The legal action was launched after three years of legal wrangling with the inquiry behind the scenes to avoid its scrutiny.

The bid was declined and the faith appealed the decision, but in April the Court of Appeal dismissed its argument.

The church has agreed to pay $32,321 in court costs to the Crown for the high court judicial review and $13,212 for the claim made to the Court of Appeal, according to Crown Law documents released to RNZ under the Official Information Act.

The faith has since applied for leave to appeal to the Supreme Court,…

View Cache

Sugarcane weaves together the history of St. Joseph’s Mission residential school in Williams Lake with the story of NoiseCat’s own family.

Sugarcane

When: Aug 23-27, 30, and Sept. 1

Where: VIFF Centre, 1181 Seymour St., Vancouver

Tickets & info: viff.org

A new made-in-B.C. documentary that The New York Times is calling a “must-see film about a terribly difficult subject” isn’t getting as wide a reception at home as it is in the U.S.

“In Canada, it seems like the cultural gatekeepers are tired of the residential school story and history,” said Julian Brave NoiseCat, co-director of the doc, Sugarcane.

“As much as our film can be a proxy for any of these sentiments, we’ve seen more engagement and excitement about our film in the U.S. It’s weird, but it goes back to why the discovery of potential unmarked graves in Canada was covered in the U.S. — it was…

View Cache

(OSV News) — A high-profile priest at the center of a Canadian sexual abuse lawsuit and his religious order have told the court that the plaintiff — a young priest at the time of the alleged abuse — should have his case first heard by the church, not the state.

A March 1 filing with the Ontario Superior Court of Justice — the documents for which OSV News has obtained — also alleges that Basilian Father Thomas Rosica, a Vatican media expert, founder of a prominent Canadian national Catholic television network and organizer of the 2002 Toronto World Youth Day, used his “positions of priest, teacher and guidance counselor” to “exert total control over … prey upon … and sexually abuse” a young Canadian priest for several months in 2000.

“It’s in the legal hands and I cannot comment,” Father Rosica told OSV News Aug. 30 when asked about the…

View Cache

Grieving clergy deserve grace, but even the grieving need to respect the dangers of spiritual power.

(RNS) — The new movie “Between the Temples,” billed as a black comedy, gets the comedy right — there are plenty of laughs along the way — while the “black” part comes with the movie’s examination of the completely destabilizing nature of grief. “Between the Temples” follows the supposed resurrection of Ben, a cantor at a synagogue in upstate New York, whose wife died a year before. After visiting a congregant who has had a stroke, Ben is asked whether he ever feels like his brain is having a heart attack, and he responds, “All the time.”

Under the spell of grief, Ben abandons his duties at the bimah, makes awkward small talk with the women his two moms set him up on dates with, falls down while running drunkenly and gets into fights in…

View Cache

Jail records show Vail bonded out of Metro Jail in July. His jury trial is set for October 28.

MOBILE, Ala. (WALA) – Court records show a jury trial has been set for Bradrick Vail, a Mobile-area pastor charged with rape, sodomy and sexual abuse.

In June, Vail pleaded not guilty to those charges.

Court documents show Vail was in court on Tuesday for a status hearing. Vail’s request to reset his jury trial to October 28 was granted.

In the meantime, jail records show Vail was released from Metro Jail on July 9 on a $445,000 bond. In May, police say an extensive sexual assault investigation showed Vail’s alleged victims were in Mobile and Prichard.

Investigators say several victims came forward and that Vail allegedly contacted some of them through a church in Mobile.

On Saturday, FOX10 News rode out to Vail’s…

View Cache

A youth pastor in North Carolina was charged with 30 counts of sexual battery after a “months-long” investigation involving teenagers, police said.

Detectives arrested James R. Murphey, a former church employee, at a home in High Point around 7:30 a.m. Thursday, Aug. 29, according to a news release from the city’s police department.

Throughout the investigation, which began in January, the High Point Police Department’s Special Victims Unit identified several individuals between the ages of 16 and 19 who were allegedly assaulted in 2023, police said.

Murphey, 44, who goes by his middle name Robert, was working at Oak View Baptist Church in High Point during this time, Chris Martin, the church’s safety director, told McClatchy News.

Murphey was a youth pastor at the church for almost 24 years, Martin said.

“He was in charge of all youth activities,” he said. “Bible Study on Wednesday night, youth…

View Cache

Nearly five years after the General Assembly passed landmark legislation allowing lawsuits for decades-old child sex abuse claims, North Carolina’s Supreme Court is set to consider challenges that have left hundreds of plaintiffs in legal limbo.

Dusty McKinney will be watching the scheduled Sept. 18 Supreme Court hearings, which will determine whether he and hundreds of others can sue people they accuse of abusing them and their employers.

McKinney and two other East Gaston High wrestlers filed a lawsuit against the Gaston County Board of Education. The board had received numerous complaints about wrestling coach Garry Scott Goins’ physical and sexual abuse, but dismissed them after minimal investigation, leaving other children vulnerable to his unsupervised access to them in the 1990s and 2000s, the lawsuit says.

McKinney reporting the abuse resulted in Goins being convicted in criminal court in 2014 of 17 related charges and sentenced to 34 years…

View Cache

Juneau’s Echo Ranch Bible Camp is among the places where a California man allegedly abused boys over the span of decades. Now, the people who say they were victims of Bradley Earl Reger are trying to hold the institutions where they say the abuse took place accountable. 

Reger was affiliated with Juneau’s Echo Ranch Bible camp for about 30 years. In the 1970s, the California resident volunteered as a nurse there. He also brought minors on trips to the camp from his home in California as recently as the early 2000s. Multiple men have accused Reger of abuse at the camp, under the guise of medical care.

Reger was already criminally indicted on federal sexual abuse charges last year. But a recent lawsuit, which names Echo Ranch’s owner, Avant Ministries, targets the organizations where he volunteered.

California resident Zack Winfrey, the lead plaintiff in the recent suit, attended Reger’s home church…

View Cache

U.S. Attorney Trini E. Ross announced today that Nathan L. Rogers, 40, of East Aurora, NY, who was convicted of attempted receipt of child pornography, was sentenced to serve 84 months in prison by Senior U.S. District Judge William M. Skretny.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Paul E. Bonanno, who handled the case, stated that in July 2019, at Darien Lake Park in Genesee County, NY, Rogers, a church youth pastor, set up iPhones in his camper to surreptitiously record, for the purposes of his own sexual gratification, nude images of a minor victim. Shortly after setting up the phones, Rogers invited the minor victim to change out of her bathing suit in his camper. She agreed and, as she changed, the iPhones recorded nude images. After changing, the minor victim noticed the phones recording her, she attempted to delete the videos, and then reported the incident to authorities. Responding law enforcement…

View Cache

A 61-year-old pastor at a Throop Avenue church has been charged with sexually assaulting a child.

Roby D. Cruz-Hernandez, of the Somerset section of Franklin, a pastor at Iglesia Pentecostal El Mesias, was arrested at his home and charged with sexual assault, a second-degree crime, and endangering the welfare of a child, a third-degree crime, Middlesex County Prosecutor Yolanda Ciccone and New Brunswick Police Chief Vincent Sabo announced.

On Aug. 28 Middlesex County Prosecutor’s Office Detective Daniela Castro, who works in the Special Victims Unit, and New Brunswick Detective William Coleman began investigating allegations a juvenile had been sexually assaulted by Cruz-Hernandez, according to the prosecutor’s office.

The pastor was arrested following the investigation.

Anyone with information about the case is asked to contact Detective Castro at 732-745-3652 or Detective Coleman at 732-745-5222.

View Cache

In April, the Rev. Chris Marchand, an Anglican priest in Peoria, Illinois, launched “Wall of Silence,” a podcast about church abuse and cover-up in the Anglican Church in North America.

Two months later — at his bishop’s request — the podcast was abruptly suspended. “Yes, the Wall of Silence is being silenced,” Marchand wrote on Twitter.

The news came at a busy time for the denomination, which in June elected its next archbishop and voted on changes to its abuse protocols. For years, the young denomination has faced controversy for perceived shortcomings in its protocols on safeguarding for congregations and clergy and lay leader misconduct.

On Wednesday (Aug. 28), Marchand’s podcast resumed with a 13-minute episode explaining the project’s sudden return, without being able to fully explain where the calls to stop the podcast were coming from.

Though his bishop, Alberto Morales of the Diocese of Quincy, hasn’t granted him permission to resume…

View Cache

Local authorities have apprehended a 27-year-old priest in connection with the alleged sexual assault of a 13-year-old boy.

According to Assistant Commissioner Wan Azlan Wan Mamat, Chief of the Subang Jaya District Police, the arrest was made following a report filed by the victim on 12 August at approximately 10:09 PM.

The suspect was taken into custody the following day at a restaurant in Puchong.

“The complainant, a 13-year-old boy, alleged that he experienced physical and sexual harassment by the suspect in a room within a church located in Bandar Bukit Puchong,” stated AC Wan Azlan in an official release.

The case is currently being investigated under Section 14(a) of the Sexual Offences Against Children Act 2017.

The suspect has been remanded for four days, until 17 August, to assist with further investigations.

AC Wan Azlan has urged members of the public with any relevant information to contact the Subang…

View Cache

Chris Reed, CEO and president of the prophetic ministry MorningStar, resigned Tuesday, telling The Roys Report (TRR) it was because he’s “standing on the side of victims,” who are suing the ministry. But Wednesday, after TRR confronted him with allegations he pursued a woman sexually in 2021, Reed admitted sending the woman “terrible” sexual texts and kissing her.

Reed still maintains he resigned because of the lawsuit filed August 7 against MorningStar, alleging that the ministry mishandled child sex abuse by a former volunteer leader, Erickson Lee. The alleged abuse occurred before Reed became MorningStar CEO. And Reed said he doesn’t want to be “the face of” a ministry engaged in a legal battle.

However, in the wake of the resignation, TRR learned of the allegations of sexual misconduct in 2021 and was able to contact the woman involved. At the time of the misconduct, Reed, who’s married and has six children, was the…

View Cache

A progressive nun, she used a welcome address before Pope John Paul II in 1979 to call for equality in the ranks of the Roman Catholic Church.

Sister Theresa Kane, a Roman Catholic nun who called on her fellow sisters to push for ordination, and who led by example when, while introducing Pope John Paul II during his 1979 visit to the United States, she publicly challenged him to let women serve as priests, died on Aug. 22 in Watchung, N.J. She was 87.

A representative of her order, the Sisters of Mercy of the Americas, confirmed her death, at a hospice facility, adding that she had been in failing health.

As the president of both the Sisters of Mercy of the Americas and the Leadership Conference of Women Religious, an umbrella group representing American nuns, Sister Theresa was chosen to give a welcome address for Pope John Paul II…

View Cache

A group of Enna citizens, many of them practising Catholics, organised a silent protest in response to the Piazza Armerina diocese’s handling of the case of priest Giuseppe Rugolo, convicted of aggravated sexual assault on minors. The demonstration took place inside two churches in Enna, San Giuseppe and the sanctuary of Valverde, during celebrations officiated by two prelates involved in the affair, and outside the Piazza Armerina cathedral.

Faithful leave the church during the service

Giuseppe Rugolo, a priest of the diocese of Piazza Armerina, was sentenced to four and a half years in prison for aggravated sexual violence against minors. According to the grounds for the sentence, the diocese allegedly covered up the abuse, causing a wave of indignation among the faithful. The protesters, many of whom were present to attend mass, chose a particularly symbolic way of protest. When the priests arrived at the churches of St Joseph and…

View Cache

When a New Mexico bankruptcy judge ruled against a clergy sex abuse claimant earlier this summer in her legal dispute with the Archdiocese of Santa Fe, he may have issued more than a routine legal opinion and order.

Judge David Thuma’s decision may now serve as a cautionary warning to attorneys in other church bankruptcies — attorneys for both church entities and abuse claimants — about the challenges of enforcing provisions in reorganization plans and settlement agreements, especially the legal pitfalls posed by ambiguous language in those documents.

“The Court has reviewed the covenants, the confirmed plan, and related documents and has heard oral argument on the dispute,” Thuma explained in his opinion on June 21, which was accompanied by a court order denying a motion by Mela LaJeunesse, an abuse claimant.

LaJeunesse’s motion, filed by attorney Levi Monagle, was centered on a 142-word non-monetary covenant,…

View Cache

[In this 16-minute video of a broadcast on a St. Louis talk radio station, Jamie Allman describes his experience at the headquarters of the Archdiocese of St. Louis, where he worked as communications director during a brief 2004-2005 sabbatical from his career in radio.

Allman describes the internal politics among allies of Cardinal Rigali when now-Cardinal Burke succeeded Rigali as archbishop, and he goes public about two documents relating to Fr. Robert F. Johnston, who was recently named in a lawsuit. When Allman was working at the archdiocese, Johnston had admitted sodomizing a young boy, and Allman discovered that an internal document to which he had access showed that Johnston had worked at many more parishes than the archdiocese had publicly disclosed.

Allman then saw another document in which then-Msgr. Richard F. Stika, now the disgraced former Bishop of Knoxville, had directed that Johnston’s salary be increased from $1,000…

View Cache

Father Thomas Rosica faces a lawsuit alleging sexual assault of a young priest before World Youth Day 2002

A lawsuit launched in March has accused Father Thomas Rosica, the national director of World Youth Day 2002 in Toronto, of sexually assaulting a young priest in the lead-up to the event.

Father Rosica, who served as a communications liaison at the 2019 summit on sexual abuse convened by Pope Francis, maintains the allegations should be handled by a church — not secular — court.

The suit, according to the online news agency The Pillar, which broke the news on Aug. 28, alleges Father Rosica developed a mentoring relationship with the plaintiff, a newly ordained Canadian priest, in the 1990s. The priest was in graduate studies at the time and was invited to assist Father Rosica in preparing for World Youth Day, which drew an estimated 800,000 pilgrims to Toronto in the summer…

View Cache

The Diocese of Hong Kong is taking a significant step towards enhancing child protection mechanisms with the establishment of the Diocesan Safeguarding Minors and Vulnerable Persons Office – St. Goretti’s Centre, set to be operational in 2025.

HONG KONG: This initiative aligns with global Church efforts to fortify safeguards for children and vulnerable individuals, according to Sunday Examiner, the official news service of the Bishop of Hong Kong.

On August 25, the Diocesan Catechetical Centre hosted a training seminar at St. Jude’s parish in North Point, specifically designed for Sunday school teachers and catechists.

The training focused on creating a secure and supportive environment for children and vulnerable members of the community.

Fr. Dominic Lui Chi-man said the initiative adheres to both Hong Kong law and Church regulations to bolster current systems. “We invite you to join us as guardians of the children and the vulnerable,” he added.

The choice of St. Maria…

View Cache

Former Vatican media personality Basilian Father Thomas Rosica has been accused of sexually assaulting a priest in Canada.

Rosica, a member of the Congregation of St. Basi, rose to prominence running media operations during Pope St. John Paul II’s 2002 visit to Canada for World Youth Day 2002.

He later founded Salt+Light Television in 2003 and was appointed a consultor to the Pontifical Council for Social Communication in 2009. He was a Vatican spokesman during the 2013 Papal Conclave that elected Pope Francis and was a Vatican media advisor for the 2008 and 2018 Synods of Bishops.

The news website The Pillar reported a lawsuit filed in March in the Canadian province of Ontario said Rosica developed a mentoring relationship with a newly ordained Canadian priest in the late 1990s, while the priest was in graduate studies.

The story said Rosica also invited the young priest to assist in preparations for the…

View Cache

Catholics in the Southern Italian city of Enna, Sicily, protested the local church’s role in covering up sexual abuse after a court recently ruled that the diocesan bishop sought to protect a priest accused of having abused several minors as a seminarian.

Several local news outlets reported that a group of faithful walked out of a Mass Aug. 22 to protest the local church’s involvement in covering up abuses committed by Father Giuseppe Rugolo.

In a video sent to OSV News, over 20 people walked out as Msgr. Vincenzo Murgano, vicar general of the Diocese of Piazza Armerina, presided over a Mass at the Shrine of Our Lady of Valverde in Enna.

Standing outside the shrine in silence, the protestors held signs admonishing Msgr. Murgano, as well as local clergy, for their role in covering up abuse in the diocese. According to local media, a separate protest was also held…

View Cache

Well-known media figure Fr. Thomas Rosica has been accused of sexually assaulting a younger priest during the lead up to the Church’s 2002 World Youth Day in Toronto, Canada.

Rosica has denied any “improper conduct” with the priest, and urged a judge to dismiss a lawsuit filed against him, so that allegations can be addressed in a canonical court. Rosica’s faculties for priestly ministry were withdrawn in March, after the alleged victim filed suit against him.

Rosica was the principal organizer of the 2002 World Youth Day, a Vatican advisor and media attaché, and was a fixture in Catholic media and television for nearly two decades, before his prominence was stalled by 2019 reports of widespread plagiarism. The priest was also a high-profile participant in the Vatican’s 2019 global abuse summit, convened by Pope Francis, where he urged that the problem of clerical sexual abuse not be “ignored.”

—
According to…

View Cache

When the Vatican acknowledged in 2022 that the Nobel Peace Prize-winning, East Timorese independence hero Bishop Carlos Ximenes Belo had sexually abused young boys, it appeared that the global clergy sexual abuse scandal that has compromised the Catholic Church’s credibility around the world had finally arrived in Asia’s newest country.

And yet, the church in East Timor today is stronger than ever, with most downplaying, doubting or dismissing the claims against Belo and those against a popular American missionary who confessed to molesting young girls. Many instead focus on their roles saving lives during the country’s bloody struggle against Indonesia for independence.

Pope Francis will come face to face with the Timorese faithful on his first trip to the country, a former Portuguese colony that makes up half of the island of Timor off the northern coast of Australia. But so far, there is no word if he will meet with…

View Cache

When Pope Francis makes his trip to Asia’s newest country, East Timor, it will make him the second pope to visit after John Paul in 1989, and the first since the country gained independence from Indonesia in 2002.

It also comes only two years after the Vatican acknowledged that the Nobel Peace Prize-winning, East Timorese independence hero Bishop Carlos Ximenes Belo had sexually abused young boys, and three years after a popular American missionary was convicted of molesting young girls.

The two clergymen still enjoy widespread support among the overwhelming Catholic people of East Timor, for their staunch support of the country during its bloody struggle for independence.

An Associated Press visit to the capital, Dili, ahead of Francis’ visit, which starts Sept. 9, found that most people downplay, doubt, or dismiss the claims against the two.

Experts say that if Francis chooses to tackle the issue head-on and apologize to…

View Cache

After initially expressing hope that a Vatican investigation into his sister’s disappearance more than 40 years ago reflected “a desire of Pope Francis for the truth,” the brother of Emanuela Orlandi, the celebrated “Vatican girl” whose fate remains modern Italy’s most notorious unresolved mystery, is now voicing “no confidence” in the probe.

“I don’t have faith in the Vatican investigation,” Pietro Orlandi, the older brother of Emanuela, told a gathering in Sicily dedicated to combatting anti-female violence on August 24.

Instead, Orlandi said that his hopes now reside with two other parallel investigations of his sister’s case, one being conducted by Rome’s chief prosecutor and the other by a bipartisan panel of the Italian parliament.

“Hope for arriving at the truth is growing,” Orlandi said, despite his skepticism about the Vatican. “It’s important to talk about it in the schools, because I find in young people a sense of justice…

View Cache

A 13-year-old girl told police a priest hugged and kissed her on the lips while she was alone at St. George’s Ukrainian Catholic Cathedral.

Last March, a 13-year-old girl told police that a Saskatoon priest hugged and kissed her on the lips while she was alone in a room at St. George’s Ukrainian Catholic Cathedral in the city’s Pleasant Hill neighbourhood.

She said Father Janko Kolosnjaji then told her she had “beautiful eyes” as she walked away.

The girl, whose identity is protected by a mandatory publication ban, made her video-recorded police statement in Ukrainian on March 17, 2023. A court-approved translator is interpreting her statement during Kolosnjaji’s sexual assault trial, which began Monday in Saskatoon provincial court.

He is represented by defence lawyer Brian Pfefferle.

The girl, now 15, listened from a separate room in the courthouse as her statement was played in court. She told court everything she…

View Cache

A city court judge dismissed a sexual misconduct allegations case against Father David Tokarz.

Tokarz is a pastor at Our Savior Catholic Church in West Mobile, and he was arrested in April and charged with sexual misconduct and harassment.

According to the original complaint, the incident allegedly occurred in March on two separate occasions. The complaint alleges that sexual conduct with the victim by hugging her but when he released her from the hug he rubbed his hands on the side of her breasts and patted her breasts as well.

Tokarz’s attorney, Jeff Deen, said the victim requested for the case to be dismissed.

“She expressed some reasons,” Deen said. “And it was a very emotional experience for her, and she didn’t want to pursue it any further.”

WKRG News 5 reached out to the Archdiocese of Mobile for comment but has not heard back.

View Cache

Around 2,000 police raided a religious compound in the Philippines this weekend in search of Filipino televangelist Apollo Quiboloy, who has been accused of child sex trafficking, several local news stations reported.

The raid, which is ongoing and led to clashes between members of Quiboloy’s Kingdom of Jesus Christ Church (KOJC) and police, injured six officers, police stated on social media. Authorities say they will not stop until they have found Quiboloy.

Quiboloy is a self-proclaimed “Son of God” and spiritual advisor to former Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte. His church also has a United States headquarters in Los Angeles. The church claims to have more than 6 million members in 200 countries, The Roys Report (TRR) previously reported.

The 74-year-old pastor is on the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s (FBI) most wanted list for multiple charges, including child sex trafficking, sex trafficking by force, bulk…

View Cache

A violent standoff between Philippine police and followers of a fugitive preacher wanted by both the FBI and local law enforcement on sexual abuse and human trafficking charges entered a fourth day on Tuesday as nearly 2,000 officers surrounded a sprawling church compound.

Pastor Apollo Carreon Quiboloy, a self-styled “appointed son of God” and founder of the Kingdom of Jesus Christ church, has been on the run for at least three years.

A 2021 US indictment accuses the 74-year-old preacher and his alleged accomplices of running a sex trafficking ring that coerced girls and young women to have sex with him under threats of “eternal damnation.”

Quiboloy, who has denied all the charges against him, is believed by Philippine police to be hiding inside a 30-hectare (75 acre) compound that includes a cathedral, a college, a bunker and a taxiway leading to Davao International Airport.

Police have been attempting to…

View Cache

ROME – Pope Francis on Friday met with an archbishop who belongs to a scandal-plagued lay group in Peru and who was recently removed from leadership of the Piura archdiocese as an ongoing Vatican investigation into his community moves forward.

According to an Aug. 23 Vatican bulletin, Pope Francis that morning met privately with Archbishop José Antonio Eguren Anselmi, who in April resigned as head of the Archdiocese of Piura at the age of 67, eight years shy of the usual retirement age for Catholic prelates.

The reasons for the pope’s meeting with Eguren were not disclosed, nor was it clear whether Eguren had been summoned, or whether he had asked for the meeting himself.

Eguren’s exit from Piura in April came amid ongoing allegations of land trafficking and financial corruption, and as part of a Vatican investigation into this community, the Sodalitium Christinae Vitae (SCV).

Founded by Peruvian layman Luis Fernando…

View Cache

More than 50% of women want Eamonn Casey’s remains disinterred from the Galway Cathedral crypt, a new poll has found.

And, after a litany of child sexual abuse allegations were revealed against the former Bishop of Galway, this figure rises to 60% of all those aged 55 and over who want him removed from his current resting place.

It is nearly a month since the Galway Diocese issued its last statement on whether the disgraced cleric will remain in the hallowed grounds of the cathedral crypt, following calls for him to be disinterred. It has since refused to comment further after outlining that time and space was needed for consultation, a position it has held since July 27.

Now, an Amárach poll commissioned by the Irish Daily Mail/DMG Media has found that overall, 49% of some 1,000 adults surveyed believe he should be disinterred, with 17% disagreeing, and 34% saying…

View Cache

TARRANT COUNTY — The North Texas megachurch embroiled in controversy over its founder’s alleged child sex abuse is facing another lawsuit involving accusations of abuse by a youth group member.

Gateway Church recently settled a 2020 lawsuit alleging child sex abuse.

The lawsuit filed Wednesday in Tarrant County accuses a member of the Gateway Church youth group of sexually assaulting a 13-year-old girl repeatedly on church grounds. The lawsuit alleges the assaults began in 2016.

According to the lawsuit filed by Julia Long, who was 13 years old at the time, she regularly attended youth group meetings at The King’s University in Southlake with roughly 200 other members ranging in age from 11 years old to 18 years old. One of those members was then 17-year-old Gabriel Snyder, according to the lawsuit.

In late 2016, the lawsuit alleges Snyder began grooming Long during youth group meetings, using…

View Cache

Vice President Kamala Harris bragged about her supposed passion for helping victims of sexual assault while speaking at the Democratic National Convention (DNC), ignoring her track record of failing to prosecute sexual abuse cases within the Catholic Church and even hiding “vital records on abuses that had occurred” when she was a San Francisco district attorney.

Addressing the crowd to formally accept her party’s presidential nomination on Thursday night, Harris reflected on a “pivotal moment” in her life that influenced her decision to become a prosecutor by bringing up the story of a peer who was victimized. 

Harris said that when she was in high school, she started to “notice something about my best friend Wanda.”

After Wanda supposedly confided in her that she was being abused by her stepfather, Harris claimed that she “immediately told her she had to come stay with us, and she did.”

“This is…

View Cache

A senior priest who was subject to five police investigations for sexual impropriety and assessed as a major risk to young men received a six-figure payoff from the Church of England to resign in 2022, the BBC reported on August 13. Church leaders say the case raises major questions about the adequacy of the church’s disciplinary system and clergy employment rules at a time when major reforms are planned.

The Rev. Canon Andrew Hindley, 65, known by some as “the Teflon priest,” served for 20 years in the Diocese of Blackburn, 15 of them as canon sacrist at Blackburn Cathedral in Lancashire, before stepping down, after receiving what the BBC has been told was a £240,000 ($370,000) payment.

Hindley insists that he posed no safeguarding risk, and was never charged with a crime. He also alleges that as an openly gay priest, he was subject to a homophobic…

View Cache

More than 10,000 pages of highly confidential and legally protected information from a sexual abuse victim’s case against Paige Patterson and Southwestern Seminary were published publicly online for about three days this weekend.

The apparent clerical error occurred as case materials in Jane Roe v. Leighton Paige Patterson and Southwestern Seminary were transferred from the Fifth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals to the Texas Supreme Court. The Fifth Circuit has asked the Texas high court to rule on one particular issue in the case, which both Southwestern and Patterson have sought to have thrown out for lack of merit.

Four files containing a combined 10,000 pages of sealed information were left open for public view.

Visible information included the victim’s name, medical and psychiatric records, Social Security number, driver’s license number, banking information, address, phone number, email address, police reports of her alleged assaults, sealed testimony, and other personal identifying information and confidential…

View Cache

» Continue to this story on Nacional (Croatia) 

CWN Editor’s Note: A Croatian newsmagazine has reported that Archbishop Dražen Kutleša of Zagreb, the nation’s leading prelate, violated the norms of Vos Estis Lux Mundi (You Are the Light of the World), Pope Francis’s apostolic letter on addressing sexual abuse (2019, 2023).

Nacional reported that Archbishop Kutleša also violated the guidelines of Croatia’s episcopal conference.

Archbishop Kutleša, while archbishop of Split-Makarska (2022-23), “relocated priests accused of pedophilia and allowed them to continue to serve and be in contact with the faithful and altar boys,” according to the report.

Update (8/16/24): Nacional offered additional details of the cover-up allegations against Archbishop Kutleša in an August 16 article.The above note supplements, highlights, or corrects details in the original source (link above). 

About CWN news coverage.

View Cache

Geo, the name he prefers, sits in a coffee shop on a rainy afternoon as streetcars clang along outside. He is 64. He arrived at Madonna Manor, the Catholic orphanage he is now suing, in August of 1967, as a ward of Louisiana, age seven.

“My childhood was horrific,” he says matter-of-factly. “My father was an abusive alcoholic, my mother diagnosed as paranoid schizophrenic. Madonna Manor was a place where dysfunctional parents dumped their children. My mom was subject to electroshock therapy and thorazine. She lost a baby. She had a psychotic breakdown and was placed in a mental hospital. The state took me over.”

Thin, bearded, redolent of nicotine, he holds a sketchbook of his works.

He enjoys the fellowship of a drawing class once a week, sketching figures of live models. Alcoholics Anonymous helps too, he says, adding: “I have been sober since May 30 and intend to…

View Cache

Phil Donahue was to talk show hosts as Fr. Andrew Greeley was to priests and Jason Berry is to print journalists: the first in his field to credibly address the Catholic Church’s then virtually unspoken problem of pedophile priests.

(At great risk, of course, the National Catholic Reporter was the first newspaper with a national circulation to write about abuses and cover-ups, before both Donahue and Greeley. The two men — and years later, many others — clearly read and were inspired by the NCR’s seminal work exposing this corruption.)

The internet wasn’t around back then and my memory isn’t flawless, so it’s possible that, technically speaking, other outlets may have discussed the abuse crisis even earlier than Donahue (perhaps an ultraconservative Wisconsin-based weekly called The Wanderer, for instance).

But none had anything like the reach and impact of “The Phil Donahue Show” (later shortened to…

View Cache

The annual SNAP conference highlighted the need for reforms to hold religious organizations accountable, including lifting statutes of limitations on child sexual abuse claims.

For more than 15 years, David Clohessy says, he fondly recalled all the camping, skiing, canoeing and hiking trips with his parish priest, Father John Whiteley.

Then while watching “Nuts” with his girlfriend (now his wife, Laura) — a movie in which the protagonist suffered sexual abuse as a child — it all came rushing back to Clohessy: waking to the priest lying on top of him, sexually molesting him, then turning over and drifting off to sleep.

Recalling the long-suppressed sexual abuse that he suffered over the course of four years as a child, Clohessy curled up into a fetal position and sobbed uncontrollably.

Since then, Clohessy, now 67, has cried almost every day over the abuse by the priest at St. Pius X, his…

View Cache

• Cases from Argentina, Australia, Ecuador, France, Mexico, and the United States prove how the Roman Catholic leaders foster the clergy sexual abuse crisis.English Edition
• These seven cases prove how the Roman Catholic Church upholds a system prone to clergy sexual abuse with little or no regard for its own members.
• These seven cases of clergy sexual abuse are not anecdotical. They are representative of how predators attack their victims and the strategies they follow to prey.

On Thursday, despite the deep economic crisis shaking Argentina, most of the media there published stories about Julio César Grassi, a Roman Catholic priest and the former leader of a foundation allegedly devoted to helping homeless and destitute children there.

Grassi had that day a hearing to seek either the full dismissal of his case or an advance release. A tribunal sentenced him in late 2009 to 15 years in jail. Given his high profile…

View Cache

Many years ago, I served as an adjunct professor of worship and preaching at a Baptist seminary. One day, as I prepared for an upcoming class, I went to a photocopy shop and begin copying large numbers of worship bulletins and sermons to give to my students.

An employee at the shop noticed the photocopied materials and asked me, “Are you a minister?”

“Yes, I am,” I replied.

He said, “Are you a Southern Baptist minister?”

“No,” I said, “but I used to be. I’ve recently joined the United Methodist Church.”

He looked at me for a moment with suspicious eyes and asked, “Are you divorced or are you gay?”

“Neither one,” I replied.

He said, “Then why did you change denominations?”

I’ve been asked that question many times over the years. The short answer is that I lost faith in the evangelical church. To that subject I’ll now turn.

Early doubts

In…

View Cache

The Government will “reflect” on “what action is next appropriate” into the alleged abuses of former Dr Michael Shine after his victims called for a public inquiry into what happened, Taoiseach Simon Harris has said.

In an interview with the Journal.ie, a number of men who were allegedly sexually assaulted by Dr Shine while children and teenagers said they want a public inquiry into the cases to be launched.

Michael Shine worked as a senior registrar and later a consultant at Our Lady of Lourdes Hospital in Drogheda, Co Louth between 1964 and 1995.

Now aged 93, he was found guilty of assaults against nine boys at two trials, in 2017 and 2019, before serving three years in prison.

More than 200 people have settled civil claims against the Medical Missionaries of Mary religious order that oversaw the running of the hospital at that time.

Responding to the calls for…

View Cache

The New Zealand Royal Commission’s final report condemns Catholic Church leaders for failing to address abuse and neglect, despite past promises of transparency. Their lack of accountability and evasion of responsibility suggests that the current bishops should reconsider their positions.

Based on the New Zealand Royal Commission of Inquiry into Abuse in Care’s final report, Catholic Church leaders have brought great shame on the New Zealand Catholic Church. Their lack of accountability and transparency in responding to pervasive abuse merits serious condemnation.

The Commission found that “Catholic Church leaders have not been accountable or transparent to their congregations and the broader community about the nature and extent of abuse and neglect by their members.” (199) Given such a finding, perhaps it would be best for the local Church and New Zealand society if those church leaders—the bishops, tendered their resignations to the pope.

The Commission’s use of the words…

View Cache

Prosecutors in the trial of 14 people accused of killing an eight-year-old girl by withholding her diabetes medication have completed presenting evidence after nearly seven weeks of hearings.

Elizabeth Rose Struhs died on January 7, 2022 while lying comatose on a mattress on the floor of her family’s home in Toowoomba, west of Brisbane.

She had gone six days without her prescribed multiple daily injections of insulin for her type-1 diabetes, which left her suffering from vomiting and unquenchable thirst.

The defendants charged over Elizabeth’s death, including both her parents, are members of a small religious congregation known as ‘The Saints’.

All 14 defendants are self-represented and have refused to enter pleas.

Crown prosecutor Caroline Marco on Friday told Justice Martin Burns the prosecution had finished presenting its case to the judge-only Supreme Court trial that started early in July.

“The trial has reached the point where no more evidence…

View Cache

When a New Mexico bankruptcy judge ruled against a clergy sex abuse claimant earlier this summer in her legal dispute with the Archdiocese of Santa Fe, he may have issued more than a routine legal opinion and order.

Judge David Thuma’s decision may now serve as a cautionary warning to attorneys in other church bankruptcies — attorneys for both church entities and abuse claimants — about the challenges of enforcing provisions in reorganization plans and settlement agreements, especially the legal pitfalls posed by ambiguous language in those documents.

“The Court has reviewed the covenants, the confirmed plan, and related documents and has heard oral argument on the dispute,” Thuma explained in his opinion on June 21, which was accompanied by a court order denying a motion by Mela LaJeunesse, an abuse claimant.

LaJeunesse’s motion, filed by attorney Levi Monagle, was centered on a 142-word non-monetary covenant,…

View Cache

Four church leaders have stepped down since June, when senior pastor Robert Morris left over allegations he abused a 12-year-old girl while he was a married 21-year-old

Prominent members of Gateway Church continue to resign or step down following child sex abuse allegations against former senior pastor Robert Morris, who publicly admitted to having “inappropriate sexual behavior with a young lady” 35 years ago.

Morris resigned from the Texas megachurch in June, four days after 54-year-old Cindy Clemishire went public with allegations that the pastor began molesting her when she was 12 and he was 21. Though he downplayed them, Morris acknowledged the allegations.

A month after Morris’ resignation, his son and daughter-in-law, James and Bridget Morris, stepped down as pastors of the Dallas-based church. And on Wednesday, the church’s leadership announced that executive pastor Kemtal Glasgow resigned due to an unspecified “moral issue” that “disqualifies him from serving.”

Here is…

View Cache

A Lake Catholic High School teacher is accused of having inappropriate relationships with students, according to the Catholic Diocese of Cleveland.

Scott Posey, the music director and former director of performing arts, was fired after an investigation into the allegations, the diocese said. He had been at the school for more than 20 years.

In a statement, the diocese said its examination began in January when it obtained information that Posey had inappropriate relationships with two students about 15 years ago.

Based on the allegations, a private investigator interviewed several former students and found one who reported that Posey “had, on a number of occasions around the same time period, engaged in inappropriate conduct with her that included touching of a sexual nature,” the diocese’s statement said.

The allegation was reported to law enforcement, and Lake Catholic placed Posey on administrative leave. At the conclusion…

View Cache

In this extract from his new book, the former Irish Times Religious Affairs Correspondent recounts the story of a victim of child sexual abuse

Darren McGavin is now a middle-aged man in his 50s. Our first meeting, in Dublin’s St Stephen’s Green shopping centre many years ago, was one of the few occasions in my life when I wept in public.

I belong, very much, to the “weep alone” brigade when it comes to emotional issues. But I couldn’t help it then, even though Darren and I, drinking our coffee, were surrounded by so many people at tables nearby. I kept seeing the small boy, not the man before me, being brutalised.

His recollection of incidents of sexual abuse by Fr Tony Walsh were vivid, detailed and told with the calm delivery of a man who had been over the ground many times. By then, having talked to many other…

View Cache

During his recent trip through Latin America, the prelate of Opus Dei, Monsignor Fernando Ocáriz, gave an interview to the Chilean newspaper El Mercurio, in which he spoke about various topics, such as the role of women, the reform ordered by Pope Francis, and a response to those who consider Opus Dei to be “conservative, powerful and secretive.”

“Everyone can have their own opinions and reasons for evaluating reality. If some people perceive it that way, it will be because there is something objective and/or subjective that can cause that impression,” said the third successor of St. Josemaría Escrivá as the head of Opus Dei.

“Making the Work [Opus Dei] better known is, in part, the task of each member: to live one’s own vocation in an authentic way. It is something great and wonderful, although I understand that a perspective of faith is required to understand it in depth,”…

View Cache

Scott Surette joins the National Review Board to shift the church’s focus from anger to healing and forgiveness

Scott Surette, a devout Catholic and longtime owner of a home inspection firm, is on a mission to help renew the church.

Yet for all his four decades of experience with construction and code compliance, he’s not looking to renovate buildings — instead, Surette is seeking to repair what Scripture calls the “living stones” that comprise the spiritual house of Jesus Christ.

And now, as one of several recent appointees to the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ National Review Board, a lay-led advisory group on child and youth protection, Surette is “under contract,” so to speak, to make that happen.

The board is mandated by the USCCB “Charter for the Protection of Children and Young People,” established in 2002 amid a torrent of emerging clerical abuse scandals. Commonly called the Dallas Charter,…

View Cache

An Episcopal Church bishop based in California has been accused of not properly enforcing disciplinary action against a pastor who allegedly failed to properly vet a sex offender.

Earlier this week, The Christian Post was directed to an Anglican Watch story from July 30 accusing Bishop Lucinda Ashby of the Episcopal Diocese of El Camino Real of mishandling a Title IV disciplinary complaint.

At issue, according to Anglican Watch, was an incident in which the Rev. Ruth Casipit-Paguio of Holy Family Episcopal Church of San Jose, failed to enforce “Safe Church requirements.”

“Casipit-Paguio reportedly didn’t bother to run background checks on church staff and volunteers during that time, a violation of diocesan policy. Possibly as a result, a known pedophile listed on a state sex offender registry attempted to become involved with the parish. That individual obtained keys to the church,” claimed Anglican Watch.

“When…

View Cache

Hundreds of police officers backed by riot squads raided a vast religious compound in a southern Philippine city Saturday in search of a local preacher accused of sexual abuse and human trafficking, police officials said.

A supporter of the group, called Kingdom of Jesus Christ, reportedly died due to a heart attack during the massive police raid that started at dawn in the group’s compound in Davao city, livestreamed online by a local TV network owned by the group, police said, adding that the death was not related to the police operations.

Officers brought equipment that could detect people behind cement walls. But by mid-afternoon, they found no sign of Apollo Quiboloy in the compound — some 30 hectares (75 acres) that includes a cathedral, a school, a living area, a hangar and a taxiway leading to Davao International Airport.

Quiboloy and his lawyer have denied the criminal allegations against him and…

View Cache

Lawyers tied up in the fight to land settlements for hundreds of alleged victims of Catholic clergy sex abuse hope that a move this week by a federal judge will speed things along.

$40 million has already been spent on attorneys’ fees, and a settlement for some 500 alleged victims is nowhere in sight.

Federal judge Meredith Grabill has hired an outside expert to move the process along.

The expert is a man named Mohsin Meghji, who works with a New York restructuring firm named M3, and his payment will be capped at $350,000, money which will further cut into church bankruptcy funds that so far have not found their way to any victims,

“This should’ve been done a long time ago like a lot of situations involved with the bankruptcy,” said claimant John Anderson, who heads up the National Association of Survivors of Childhood Abuse.

Plaintiffs’ attorneys like Frank…

View Cache

In short:

Paedophile Marist Brother will be released in less than three weeks, after being sentenced to only five months actual jail time.

Gerard McNamara was sentenced in the County Court in relation to the latest victim to come forward whom he sexually assaulted in 1995. 

What’s next?

He’ll be released in three weeks. 

Notorious Marist Brother paedophile Gerard McNamara will be released from Victoria’s Hopkins Correctional Centre within three weeks.

Known as ‘The Rat’ by students in the Gippsland Catholic high schools he taught in, prior to today McNamara had already been sentenced four times in relation to his offending.

He has served two separate periods of imprisonment, in 2019 and 2020.

All victims were sexually assaulted under the guise of massages for injuries, or pastoral care.

The 86-year-old appeared in the County Court via video link, wearing prison greens.

He closed his eyes, shaking his head as Judge…

View Cache

In short:

A former student of Champagnat College in north-east Victoria is taking legal action against the Marist Brothers, alleging he was sexually abused by music teacher William Allen in the early 1970s.

After leaving the school, Allen was re-employed by the Victorian Education Department, despite declaring a conviction for child abuse.

What’s next?

Allen, who died in 1985, will be among scores of abusive former teachers whose assaults on students will be examined during the Victorian government’s recently announced truth-telling process for state school abuse survivors.

A “psychopathic” paedophile teacher was employed in a Marist Brothers school despite a prior conviction for child sexual abuse and having previously been banished from the Victorian Education Department school system, a new lawsuit has revealed.

Warning: This story contains discussion of child sexual abuse and suicide.

William Alexander Allen, who had two stints as a Victorian government school teacher despite declaring a…

View Cache

Disgraced Hillsong founder Brian Houston and his wife, Bobbie, are asking for money for an online church venture. The longtime pastor says they’ve “got desperate needs” for a TV studio, while glossing over recent scandals and a government probe into past church spending.  

“This is actually a dream I’ve had for some time,” said Brian Houston in the launch video for Jesus Followers TV, which premiered on July 28. The website describes the ministry as an “online platform and church . . . a trustworthy voice of hope and inspiration in the days ahead.” 

Two years ago, Brian and Bobbie Houston resigned as global senior pastors of Hillsong Church based in Sydney, Australia, after an internal investigation revealed Brian had acted inappropriately toward two women. Hillsong’s board of directors stated that Houston had spent time alone in a hotel room with a woman, not his…

View Cache

A senior priest who was subject to five police investigations for sexual impropriety and assessed as a major risk to young men received a six-figure payoff from the Church of England to resign in 2022, the BBC reported on August 13. Church leaders say the case raises major questions about the adequacy of the church’s disciplinary system and clergy employment rules at a time when major reforms are planned.

The Rev. Canon Andrew Hindley, 65, known by some as “the Teflon priest,” served for 20 years in the Diocese of Blackburn, 15 of them as canon sacrist at Blackburn Cathedral in Lancashire, before stepping down, after receiving what the BBC has been told was a £240,000 ($370,000) payment.

Hindley insists that he posed no safeguarding risk, and was never charged with a crime. He also alleges that as an openly gay priest, he was subject to a homophobic plot by the…

View Cache

A former Michigan pastor is facing four new charges in an ongoing child sex abuse case. Michael Ronald Goble, formerly the pastor of the now-defunct Church of the Good Shepherd in Adrian, Michigan, was originally arrested in July and charged with two counts of criminal sexual conduct in the second degree.

In July, two victims were identified, both of whom were younger than age 13 at the time of the alleged abuse.

At the time of Goble’s arrest, police said that “more victims are believed to exist that have not yet been identified.”

The original charges were the result of accusations that Goble, 75, sexually abused two brothers on separate occasions as they helped him with yard work at his home. These incidents are alleged to have occurred in 2022 and earlier this year.

RELATED: Former Christian School Teacher Charged With Multiple Counts of Sexual Battery With a Student

Now…

View Cache

A former teacher at a Christian school in South Carolina is facing 12 counts of sexual battery with a student.

Norman Jermaine Roberson, 36, a former Fountain Inn Christian School music director, is accused of engaging in inappropriate relationships between April and November 2015, as reported by Fox Carolina. 

Fox Carolina reported Roberson allegedly had encounters with students in several South Carolina locations, including in Fountain Inn, Simpsonville, Greenville, and Greenville County.

According to Roberson’s LinkedIn profile, Roberson has also worked as a youth pastor at Word of Life Church in Simpsonville since Nov. 2019. A receptionist answering the church’s phone on Thursday said Roberson was no longer employed with the church and they were not allowed to provide additional information. 

Roberson also lists he was a mathematics teacher at Fountain Inn from March 2015 to June 2016….

View Cache

Growing up, spending time on the Canim Lake Band (Tsq̓éscen̓ First Nation) reserve with his extended family in British Columbia, Julian Brave NoiseCat would hear stories. They were horrifying, unspeakable stories about what happened to babies at St. Joseph’s Mission in Williams Lake, B.C., one of many residential schools that North American governments once forced Native children to attend for purposes of assimilation.

“I honestly dismissed those stories as sort of rez legends,” NoiseCat said, in a Zoom interview in mid-August. “It sounded too grisly to be true.” He learned much later that “not only were those stories true,” but he believes his father to be the only known survivor of a pattern of infanticide at the school. Their story is part of a history of abuse, at St. Joseph’s and numerous other Native boarding schools.

NoiseCat, a…

View Cache

As the future of six Catholic dioceses in New York remain clouded by bankruptcies brought on by thousands of lawsuits from people who say they were sexually abused as children by clergy, a statewide settlement that would tap into a multi-billion-dollar revenue source appears to be under consideration.

Such a “global” settlement – which would likely need to be approved by Cardinal Timothy M. Dolan, the archbishop of New York, and possibly the state attorney general – could help resolve the bankruptcy proceedings that have frustrated aging survivors in Buffalo for more than four years because of their slow pace.  

Documents filed in U.S. Bankruptcy Court that were obtained and analyzed by 2 On Your Side Investigates make clear that a statewide settlement with the use of proceeds from the $3.75 billion sale of Fidelis Care is on the table. The Catholic bishops of New York used proceeds from…

View Cache

Claims seminarian targeted him for nearly a decade

It represents the first Roman Catholic seminary founded in this country more than two centuries ago, but now, St. Mary’s Seminary has emerged as the latest institution to draw legal action for allegations of child sex abuse.

Tom Finnerty’s family sent him there back in the Seventies for religious tutoring where a seminarian named John Banko allegedly exploited him.

“It happened at a very young age,” said Finnerty, “I was six years old in first grade and it went on for years.”

Whether it was outside in St. Mary’s parking lot or inside his private quarters, the alleged abuse ramped up over time with Banko plying Finnerty with alcohol and eventually even transmitting a sexual disease.

“This is a seminary. This is where they taught people how to be compassionate to people that needed it, cause that was their job,” said Finnerty,…

View Cache

As the coordinator of restorative practices and survivor support for the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis, Paula Kaempffer works one-on-one and in small groups with victims-survivors of clergy abuse.

Support for victims, Kaempffer said, is an important aspect in the healing process. As a victim of clergy sexual abuse herself, Kaempffer took the position hoping to bring healing to all those she could.

Kaempffer told “Practicing Catholic” radio show host Patrick Conley during an interview debuting at 9 p.m. Aug. 23 on Relevant Radio 1330 AM, “One statement that I hear said to victims-survivors over and over and over again by bishops, by priests, by parishioners, ‘Why can’t you just get over it?’ And my response to that is, ‘Don’t you think we would if we could?’ … It doesn’t go away. We never get over it. We get through it to a certain point in our lives, but…

View Cache

U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Meredith Grabill said Tuesday she will appoint an independent expert to help determine whether the long-running Archdiocese of New Orleans bankruptcy can be settled, raising the stakes in a case that’s grown increasingly bitter between the church and the abuse survivors who have filed claims.

More than four years after the nation’s second-oldest diocese filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, Grabill raised the possibility for the first time that forging a settlement agreement to financially compensate abuse survivors — one that the church can afford and that survivors will approve — may not be possible.

“I need someone who can tell me if there is a path forward,” Grabill said during the hearing Tuesday. “There needs to be a path forward. If not, we need to cut our losses and look elsewhere for a solution.”

Grabill’s independent expert, who will add another layer of oversight…

View Cache

Parties in the Roman Catholic Diocese of Rochester’s Chapter 11 bankruptcy have asked to put off a previously scheduled hearing for the court to consider confirmation of the diocese’s plan of reorganization.

Plan confirmations by Bankruptcy Court judges are a final step in Chapter 11 cases before creditors can be paid. Creditors in the diocese case are more than 400 survivors of childhood sexual abuse by priests and other church officials.

Parties say they need time to revise the current reorganization plan to accommodate a June 27 U.S. Supreme Court ruling.

How much plan revisions might further delay a conclusion to the now five-year-old case is not clear.

The diocese asked for court protection in 2019 a month after New York’s Child Victims Act took effect. The act opened a two-year window for such survivors to pursue abusers who otherwise would have been protected by a statute of limitations.  

The…

View Cache

A Baltimore man is suing the country’s oldest seminary and the religious order that runs it, claiming they were negligent in his sexual abuse at the hands of a seminarian in the 1970s.

Tom Finnerty, 61, said the abuse started when he was in the first grade. His family wanted him to have supplemental religious education, so they looked to St. Mary’s Seminary & University for a tutor.

He was paired with then-seminarian John Banko.

What happened during that time has had a big impact throughout Finnerty’s life.

“I have a little problem with authority figures. I had really bad, low self-esteem, depression, anxiety,” he said.

Finnerty is now suing the institutions he claims caused his pain: St. Mary’s and the Associated Sulpicians of the United States, the religious order that runs the seminary.

In the 23-page complaint filed Wednesday by the law firm SBWD Law, the abuse…

View Cache

[The following is a partial text of the original article.]

Weeks before the Maryland Supreme Court hears arguments over the Child Victims Act, a man from a prominent local Catholic family on Wednesday sued the seminary that he says allowed him to be sexually abused for years.

Tom Finnerty, 61, sued St. Mary’s Seminary and University in Baltimore City Circuit Court on Wednesday, saying the institution was a “haven and breeding ground for pedophilia” that turned a blind eye as John Banko abused him from when he was about 6 years old until he was 15.

“It took me a long time to get here,” Finnerty said at a press conference on Thursday. “It has affected me my whole life. It affects me every day . . . They did nothing to protect me.”

Finnerty’s lawsuit comes less than three weeks before the state’s high court considers whether the 2023…

View Cache

Survivors of childhood sexual abuse are frustrated that the Catholic Diocese of Rochester’s bankruptcy case is still unresolved.

Carol Dupre was 15 when her parish priest, who was forty years older, started abusing her. She says she told her mother. But when she complained to the church, no one believed her, and nothing was done. 

Carol is one of hundreds to file a claim against the Catholic Diocese of Rochester when the state enacted the Adult Survivors Act. That extended the statute of limitations for sex crimes and gave adult survivors two years to file lawsuits. 

The Diocese filed for bankruptcy protection after that, and insurance companies and the diocese have been hashing out what each will pay to survivors. 

Now 77, Carol says she’s only worn black for the last three years as a sign of mourning while she waits for resolution.

“I have a white dress and that…

View Cache

Clerical abuse has been in the news again lately. For more than two decades, horrific stories of abuse and coverup have been a mainstay of the news in the English-speaking world and beyond. The most recent round of stories raises the the question of whether the church will ever really address the root of the problem.

Earlier this month, a Western Australia parliamentary committee gave its final report after examining the support available to survivors of institutional child abuse, saying the Catholic Church and other religious entities had put their own institutional and financial wellbeing over the needs of victims.

In New Zealand last month, the Royal Commission of Inquiry into Abuse in Care lambasted the Catholic Church in its report to the abuse of children and vulnerable adults in care facilities.

Also last month, news reports on the legacy of Bishop Eamonn Casey appeared in newspapers and television  in…

View Cache

Thomas Finnerty remembers, as a child, when a police officer pulled over the car he was riding in on Saint Paul Street.

After the driver handed over an identification showing that he was a Catholic priest, the officer let the car go, Finnerty, 61, recalled in an interview with The Baltimore Sun. What the priest said to him next still haunts Finnerty decades later.

“He’s like, ‘All I have to do is let them know I’m a priest and I can do whatever I want,’” Finnerty recalled. “He was like, untouchable. For the only reason: Because he had a collar.”

Finnerty’s Irish Catholic parents had arranged for John Banko, who was studying to become a priest at St. Mary’s Seminary and University, to provide the 8-year-old with a religious education. Instead of tutoring Finnerty, Banko sexually abused him for about seven years, beginning around 1970, a lawsuit filed Wednesday in Baltimore…

View Cache

The Bishop of Blackburn has called for urgent reform of the way clergy are vetted, in the wake of scandal surrounding Blackburn Canon Andrew Hindley.

Rev Philip North said the Church of England is “hidebound by heavy legal structures and processes, many of which are not fit for purpose.”

Andrew Hindley worked in the Diocese of Blackburn from 1991 to 2021. A BBC investigation found that he had been assessed as a potential risk to children and young people by the NSPCC, and had been subject to five police investigations, including into allegations of sexual assault.  

He did not leave his post until 2022, when it’s believed he was offered a payment in the region of £240,000. The amount was part of a civil law settlement, however, the Church of England said the exact amount was subject to a non-disclosure agreement.

Canon Hindley argues his case was a move…

View Cache

A law firm hired by the International House of Prayer-Kansas City to examine how it handled sexual misconduct allegations faces criticism that its founder has been a defense attorney for ministries and won’t conduct an impartial investigation.

IHOPKC hired Telios Law to determine why a former volunteer youth group leader and musician was still involved with the organization years after being banned over allegations of sexual misconduct with teen boys. The firm also is tasked with helping create a safe environment for children within the 24/7 global ministry.

The news that IHOPKC had hired Theresa Sidebotham and her Colorado-based Telios Law prompted immediate backlash last week from some who have had dealings with the firm. They said that in previous investigations, Sidebotham had tried to minimize the damage done to organizations’ reputations and in some cases re-traumatized victims.

In an Aug. 12 statement, Audrey Luhmann said that the Anglican Church…

View Cache

Business-turnaround expert Mo Meghji will have his pay for two months capped at $350,000 amid soaring legal costs

A federal bankruptcy judge has appointed a nationally recognized business-turnaround expert to review the soaring costs of the Roman Catholic archdiocese of New Orleans’ Chapter 11 reorganization, and to file a public report within 60 days about whether the local church can afford to pay about 500 claimants of clergy molestation.

Just a day after judge Meredith Grabill told attorneys in the archdiocese’s contentious, complex bankruptcy case that she needed outside help, she appointed Mo Meghji, the managing partner of New York-based M3 Partners, as the court’s expert witness.

Meghji has more than 30 years of experience helping major corporations emerge from financial distress, according to M3’s website. He recently led major restructuring efforts for Sears and Barneys, among other companies, his official biography says.

His pay for two months of work will be…

View Cache

A Catholic archbishop in Pakistan is at the centre of allegations of sexual and financial irregularities.

Most Rev Sebastian Shaw is Archbishop of Lahore in Punjab in which Christians make up just over one per cent of the population of 241 million. However, 80 per cent of all Christians in Pakistan live in Punjab.

Last month a Christian-run YouTube channel ‘National News Nam’ reported Shaw’s imminent suspension and said he would be settling in the United States. It claimed there had been complaints to the Pope about “corruption and dishonesty”.

In August 2022, a Catholic priest suspended by Shaw accused him of homosexuality in a video message posted on social media.

Aftab Alexander Mughal, the editor of Minority Concern Pakistan told Crux the rumours were harmful for the nation’s small Christian community.

“It is unfortunate that there are moral allegations against a church leader. In an Islamic society, it is not good for the church’s moral position….

View Cache

A former Vatican envoy to the United States who has publicly called for Pope Francis’s resignation and who was excommunicated earlier this summer has said his life is in danger and voiced belief that the sanction against him is invalid.

Speaking to veteran Vatican journalist Franca Giansoldati with Italian newspaper Il Messaggero, Italian Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò said he has been candid about his whereabouts because “After the release of my memoir on the McCarrick case in August 2018 a contact of mine from the United States warned me that my life was in danger.”

“This is why I do not reside in a fixed place. I don’t want to end up like Cardinal Pell, nor like my predecessor in Washington, the nuncio Pietro Sambi,” he said, referring to the late Archbishop Pietro Sambi, who served as Vatican envoy to the U.S. from 2005 until his death in 2011.

According to…

View Cache

Sister Catherine ‘Cathy’ Cesnik’s 1969 murder still remains unsolved to this day

Warning: This article contains discussion of sexual assault which some readers may find distressing.

A true crime documentary from 2017 has stood the test of time after leaving viewers ‘disgusted to the core’.

The ‘incredibly distressing’ Netflix doc in question follows a grim true story of a cold case that tore through Baltimore back in the late 1960s.

Sister Catherine ‘Cathy’ Cesnik was loved by her students at Baltimore’s Archbishop Keough High School.

She was last seen on the evening of November 7th 1969 after leaving her apartment, which she shared with her friend and fellow nun, Sister Russell Phillips, and never returned home.

Sister Russell then turned to Pete McKeon and Gerry Koob, two friends who were priests and lived nearby (Koob was in a romantic relationship with Cesnik) to call police in the early morning hours after Cesnik’s empty car was…

View Cache

A retrial date has been set for the former Cape Cod priest charged with indecent assault and battery on a child under 14.

In June, Mark Hession was found not guilty on two counts of rape, however the jury was deadlocked on the indecent assault charge.

The retrial is set for February 10 but there will be a status hearing in November and final pretrial hearing in January.

Hession was the priest at Our Lady of Victory Parish in Centerville at the time of the alleged incidents.

The Catholic Church suspended him five years ago for misconduct.

View Cache

Gateway Church Houston is rebranding as Newlands Church in the wake of the sex scandal involving Robert Morris, founder of the main Gateway Church in north Texas. The change was announced last Sunday by Morris’ son-in-law and Gateway Houston’s Senior Pastor Ethan Fisher, who described the name-change as a call from God. 

“I believe that during this season, as a church, that God is once again calling us into something new, and I simply want to follow,” said Fisher, the husband of Morris’ daughter, Elaine.

The move comes after shocking allegations in June that Morris had sexually molested a 12-year-old girl in the 1980s, when he was a young pastor. This quickly led to Morris’ resignation as lead pastor. 

Morris’s son, James Morris, became lead pastor of Gateway after the confession. However, Gateway elders announced in July that James Morris and his wife Brigette would…

View Cache

Editor’s note: This article has been updated with additional information and reaction.

Daytime talk show host Phil Donahue tackled a wide range of topics on his show “Donahue,” which ran in syndication for 29 years. He also took on the issue of clergy sexual abuse in the Catholic church long before major media outlets were reporting on it.

In a 1993 episode he cautioned against “media hyperbole” but said people with more insight and who were more informed than him on this issue had described the abuse scandal as “the biggest crisis in the history of the largest church of Christendom — the holy Roman Catholic Church.”

“That’s not an overstatement, is it?” he asked on the show, nearly a decade before The Boston Globe’s investigation into abuse cover-ups in the Boston Archdiocese erupted into a national controversy. National Catholic Reporter had been the first publication to…

View Cache

The Department of Justice (DOJ) said there was nothing illegal with the offer of a reward for information that may lead to the arrest of Kingdom of Jesus Christ (KOJC) founder Pastor Apollo Quiboloy.

Quiboloy faces trafficking and child and sexual abuse cases in courts in Davao City and in Pasig. The controversial pastor however has said that these accusations came from disgruntled former members of his religious group.  

During the continuation of the hearing of the Senate Committee on Public Order and Dangerous Drugs, which is investigating if there was excessive force in the serving of a warrant against Quiboloy, DOJ Undersecretary Nicholas Ty said various laws allow the offer of a reward such as the National Internal Revenue Code, Customs Modernization and Tariff Act, Comprehensive Dangerous Drugs Act, and Anti-Terrorism Act.

View Cache

[This is an updated, longer version of the brief obituary blogged yesterday in Abuse Tracker. See also videos of Donahue’s March 1993 interview of Barbara Blaine, Jason Berry, and Fr. Andrew Greely: Part 1 and Part 2 (with David Clohessy and other survivors).]

Stalking the aisles, microphone in hand, he turned “The Phil Donahue Show” into a participation event, soliciting questions and comments on topics from human rights to orgies.

Phil Donahue, who in the 1960s reinvented the television talk show with a democratic flourish, inviting audiences to question his guests on topics as resolutely high-minded as human rights and international relations, and as unblushingly lowbrow as male strippers and safe-sex orgies, died on Sunday at his home on the Upper East Side of Manhattan. He was 88.

His death was confirmed by Susan Arons, a representative of the family.

“The Phil Donahue Show” made its debut in 1967 on WLWD-TV in…

View Cache

An evangelical pastor in Kenya ordered his flock to shun education and medicine and starve their children to death in order to meet Jesus, witnesses in a manslaughter trial said.

When her parents denied her food and water for eight days, the girl said that she knew she was going to die, just like her two younger siblings. For days, her parents had beaten her when they caught her sipping water or looking for food. Famished and frail, she said they dressed her in special attire worn for death.

“The children were not supposed to eat, so they could die,” the child, a 9-year-old identified only as EG and hidden inside a witness protection booth, told a packed courtroom on Thursday in the coastal Kenyan city of Mombasa.

She was among the first witnesses to testify last week in the manslaughter trial of Paul Nthenge Mackenzie, an evangelical pastor accused…

View Cache

David Haas is currently attending the Church of St. Thomas Aquinas in St. Paul Park, Minnesota. For those who are unaware, Mr. Haas has been credibly accused by over fifty women of a wide range of sexually abusive behaviors. A number of these reports come from Mr. Haas’s tenure at St. Thomas Aquinas in the 1980s, during which he served as music director. These reports indicate that Mr. Haas used his position of authority to groom and sexually abuse multiple teenage girls and women at St. Thomas Aquinas. Into Account’s Oct. 2020 report on Mr. Haas’s abuse includes some of these allegations. See also in the New York Times.

Into Account has received new first-person reports about Mr. Haas’s current behavior at STA, ranging from suggestive comments to surprising women with unwanted touching. Some of this behavior falls squarely into Mr. Haas’s known patterns…

View Cache

After news broke last week about the Vatican’s expulsion of Luis Fernando Figari, the founder of an influential Peruvian lay group, the original whistleblower who reported his abuses said she had asked that action be taken against him in 2010.

Speaking to Crux, Peruvian theologian Rocio Figueroa, who at the time belonged to the women’s branch of the Sodalitium Christianae Vitae (SCV) founded by Peruvian layman Luis Fernando Figari, said she had asked that Figari be removed from leadership while still part of the community.

“In that moment, this was in 2010 and it was more or less in July. I said to him, I’m going to Lima and [Figari] must not be the superior of the SCV…I asked for three things: I asked to close the cause of beatification for Germán Doig; remove Figari as superior; and third, investigate Figari.”

The SCV, Figueroa said, “did the first two, [they] didn’t do the…

View Cache

[See also video of Donahue’s March 1993 interview of Barbara Blaine, Jason Berry, and Fr. Andrew Greely: Part 1 and Part 2 (with David Clohessy and other survivors).]

Phil Donahue, who in the 1960s reinvented the television talk show with a democratic flourish, inviting audiences to question his guests on topics as resolutely high-minded as human rights and international relations, and as unblushingly lowbrow as male strippers and safe-sex orgies, died on Sunday at his home on the Upper East Side of Manhattan. He was 88.

His death was confirmed by Susan Arons, a representative of the family.

“The Phil Donahue Show” made its debut in 1967 on WLWD-TV in Dayton, Ohio, propelling Mr. Donahue on a 29-year syndicated run, much of it as the unchallenged king of daytime talk television.

Almost from the start, “The Phil Donahue Show” dispensed with familiar trappings. There was no opening monologue,…

View Cache