ABUSE TRACKER

DEUTSCHLAND
Regensburg Digital

Von Robert Werner in Nachrichten, Überregional

Kürzlich hat der Verein der „Freunde des Domchors“ dem sadistischen Gewalttäter Johann Meier die Ehrenmitgliedschaft aberkannt – heimlich, still und leise. Der ehemalige Domkapellmeister Georg Ratzinger hielt die Fahne für den Exzess-Täter lange hoch und redete seine Verantwortung klein – mit erstaunlicher Unterstützung. Zweiter Teil der Recherche von Robert Werner (Hier geht’s zum ersten Teil).

Als der ehemalige Domkapellmeister Georg Ratzinger im März 2010 zu den körperverletzenden Erziehungsmethoden des Internatsdirektors Johann Meier nach Tagen der Verweigerung doch noch Stellung beziehen musste, gab er sich in einem Exklusiv-Interview in der PASSAUER NEUEN PRESSE (PNP) vom 9. März 2010 teils reumütig, teils unwissend. Zwar habe er während seiner Zeit als Domkapellmeister (1963 bis 1994) auf Konzertreisen von Schülern über die Prügel in Etterzhausen erfahren. Ihre Berichte seien bei ihm aber nicht so angekommen, dass er „glaubte, etwas unternehmen zu müssen“. Das Ausmaß der brachialen Methoden Meiers sei ihm nicht bekannt gewesen. So Ratzinger im PNP-Interview.

Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.

CONNECTICUT
Norwalk Community College via YouTube

Published on Dec 8, 2015

Spotlight on investigative journalism. Covering the Catholic Sexual Abuse Scandal with panel moderator NCC Professor Lori Soderlind. Guest panelists include: Tom Connor (Connecticut Magazine), Dan Tepfer (Connecticut Post), Gail Howard (Snap Co-Leader), and Dave Altimari (Hartford Courant).

Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.

UNITED STATES
Bilgrimage

William D. Lindsey

Until yesterday, the story of what’s happening with Father Peter Miqueli and former USCCB president Cardinal Timothy Dolan in the New York archdiocese seemed largely confined to the tabloid news, and for that reason, I haven’t commented on it. I’m averse to wading through tabloid slime, I’m far from confident that what the tabloids report is accurately reported, and stories they break have a nasty way of twisting and turning, leaving folks who comment precipitously on them embarrassed at having trusted a tabloid report.

But when a commentator of the integrity and stature of Charles Pierce began talking yesterday about the Miqueli story, I perked up my ears. Pierce’s angle: fourteen years down the road from the Boston Globe exposé of the abuse crisis on which the film “Spotlight” focuses, the Catholic church is still dealing with sex scandals — because nothing seems to change with the leaders of the Catholic church.

Pierce writes,

Now, as is well-known, we don’t go in for mere voyeurism here in the shebeen—But, if we did, hoo, boy!—so our excuse for mentioning Father 50 Shades Of Grace here is to mention once again that Dolan From New York is proving to be a rather less than effective leader of his flock. Earlier in his career, when he was presiding in Milwaukee, Dolan almost literally buried church funds to keep them away from litigants who’d been molested by priests of that archdiocese, stashing $57 million away in an archdiocesan cemetery trust fund. Despite these shenanigans, he got the red hat and the big chair in New York where he has behaved like a cheap-seats Spellman, wearing his Yankee cap, cracking wise on satellite radio and on Morning Joe, and being altogether a handy nuisance for those people opposed to what Papa Francesco is about over there in Rome. Now, as it turns out, he probably knew more than he’d liked to have known about his alleged wandering slave-boy cleric.

Why does Pierce think Dolan knew more than he’d liked to have known about “his alleged wandering slave-boy cleric”? Pierce points to the testimony of Tatyana Gudin, erstwhile live-in girlfriend of Miqueli’s S&M “master” Keith Crist. Gudin emailed Dolan with information about the scandal, and she states that Dolan’s response was to pressure her to keep the information in-house and talk to archdiocesan investigators before the criminal authorities got involved (due to the charges that Migueli has embezzled funds to pay his S&M “master”). He wanted her to come to a meeting with Catholic officials without any legal representation, and she backed out. …

Also yesterday, another highly trustworthy commentator, Joelle Casteix, who’s a SNAP leader, wrote about the Miqueli story at her Worthy Adversary blog: as she notes, this story is framed by lurid headlines like the following from the UK’s Daily Mail: ” ‘Sex slave’ priest who ‘stole from church for BDSM with his master’ railed against gays and lesbians and called parishioners ‘sinful’, congregation claims.” The Daily Mail article then points to a thread of comments by parishioners of Miqueli’s parish St. Frances de Chantal in response to a Change.org petition calling for his removal as pastor.

These comments allege that he was an abusive pastor, imperious, angry, prone to fits of rage when parishioners defended gay folks. They also suggest that he used denial of the sacraments as a tool to control parishioners.

Joelle’s noteworthy take on the Miqueli story:

The story is lurid and new details are being leaked every day. But here’s the meat of the story: the “sex slave priest” Fr. Peter Miqueli is being accused by worshippers of stealing millions to pay for his BDSM “boy toy” and their very icky antics.

But the REAL news hasn’t been released yet: I predict that when the always-fatal “drip, drip, drip of information” is fully underway, we are going to learn WHAT NY Cardinal Timothy Dolan knew about the perv priest and WHEN he knew it … and that Dolan knew a whole lot more (a whole lot sooner) than he says he did.

Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.

NEW MEXICO
Gallup Independent

Published in the Gallup Independent, Gallup, N.M., Dec. 4, 2015

First in a two-part series

By Elizabeth Hardin-Burrola
Independent correspondent
religion@gallupindependent.com

GALLUP – For the past two years, much of what has happened in the Diocese of Gallup’s bankruptcy case has taken place out of the public’s view.

Most of the case’s important battles and agreements occur in private emails, phone calls and meetings between the different parties. Details about the case’s three mediation sessions — the most recent session being held in Phoenix this week — are confidential and carefully guarded.

However, the bankruptcy case occasionally provides information about the Gallup Diocese that under normal circumstances would never be revealed — to either Catholics in the pews or to anyone outside chancery walls.

An example of this are the monthly operating reports that diocesan attorneys file with the bankruptcy court. Each lengthy report contains several pages of expenditures that document how diocesan officials have spent church money throughout the bankruptcy. Much of the expenditures range from small purchases like postage to making large payouts like payroll.

Sometimes buried between the postage and the payroll are expenditures that shed light on the inner workings of a Catholic diocese that has found itself in U.S. Bankruptcy Court because of clergy sexual abuse.

Flagstaff investigators

One such discovery involves payment for internal investigations Bishop James S. Wall has ordered since the Diocese of Gallup filed its Chapter 11 petition on Nov. 12, 2013. Those investigations have cost the diocese more than $22,700.

A recent review of 22 months of expenditures, from December 2013 to September 2015, reveals Wall authorized four payments to Flagstaff Security Services LLC for internal investigations. In 2014, the bishop authorized payments of $4,530 in August, $4,938 in September, $3,163 in October and $10,113 in November.

According to the website for Flagstaff Security Services, the firm employs retired federal law enforcement agents and it provides a variety of services including internal investigations, surveillance, asset searches, missing person cases, and tracking and locating missing inventory. The Arizona Corporation Commission lists Kenneth G. Engstrom as the firm’s agent and manager.

It’s unknown what may have triggered the hiring of Flagstaff Security Services. But in April, in the midst of a dispute between attorneys for Catholic Mutual and the Gallup Diocese, Catholic Mutual filed a court document that stated of the 57 sex abuse claims filed against the diocese, a single claim alleged recent sexual abuse that occurred in July 2014. One month later, in August 2014, the Gallup Diocese began paying the Flagstaff firm for its investigative services.

It’s also unclear whom Flagstaff Security Services was investigating. Repeated questions posed earlier in the year, as well as this week, have gone unanswered by the diocese’s attorneys and its media spokeswoman.

Contrary to the standards set in the Charter for the Protection of Children and Young People, which was approved by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, Wall has never informed the public about this July 2014 abuse allegation or the internal investigations by Flagstaff Security Services. Wall has never informed the public about the identity of the accused abuser or the credibility of the allegation. Wall has also not explained whether the allegation was ever turned over to local law enforcement authorities for an independent investigation.

Additional costs

The monthly expenditure lists also shed light on the bankruptcy’s additional costs.

According to quarterly reports of professional fees and expenses filed with the court, the Diocese of Gallup has racked up more than $3.2 million in bankruptcy fees as of Sept. 30.

In addition to that constantly rising figure, the expenditure lists show the Gallup Diocese has paid $5,200 each quarter to the Department of Justice’s U.S. Trustee Program, for a total of $33,475 thus far. Assistant U.S. Trustee Ronald E. Andazola is assigned to the Diocese of Gallup’s bankruptcy case, and according to the Department of Justice, the primary role of the program is to serve as the “watchdog” over the bankruptcy process.

The expenditure lists also detail a number of other bankruptcy costs. In May, the diocese paid $5,000 to JAMS Inc., a firm that provides mediation and arbitration services. Randall J. Newsome, a retired bankruptcy court judge and JAMS mediator, agreed to serve pro bono as the first mediator for the Diocese of Gallup’s case. That mediation proved to be unsuccessful.

In July, the diocese reimbursed the Rev. Lawrence O’Keefe, the former rector of Gallup’s Sacred Heart Cathedral, $361 for his attendance at the first mediation session. In April, the diocese also paid $862 to Headquarters West Ltd., an Arizona agricultural real estate company that provides rural appraisals and ranch brokerage services.

As for the reason the Diocese of Gallup filed for bankruptcy — mounting clergy sex abuse lawsuits and claims — the expenditure lists show the diocese paid $18,270 to five counseling agencies during the 22-month period. It paid $9,425 to Sokol Counseling & Consultation, $5,085 to Comprehensive Counseling Service, $1,560 to Q Counseling, $1,200 to Integrative Behavioral Health and $1,000 to the Catholic Counseling Agency.

Some of these counseling services may have been provided to Gallup priests and seminarians or they may have been provided to clergy sex abuse survivors who have requested counseling assistance.

In spite of repeated media requests through the years, the Diocese of Gallup has never released information as to the number of abuse allegations it has received, the amount it has spent on legal fees and settlement deals, or the amount it has paid on counseling services for abuse survivors.

TOMORROW: A look at the money spent on credit cards, travel, utilities and retirement plans.

Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.

NEW MEXICO
Gallup Independent

Published in the Gallup Independent, Gallup, N.M., Dec. 5, 2015

Final in a two-part series

By Elizabeth Hardin-Burrola
Independent correspondent
religion@gallupindependent.com

GALLUP – When the Diocese of Gallup filed its Chapter 11 petition in U.S. Bankruptcy Court Nov. 12, 2013, a door was cracked open to information church officials had never previously released.

Attorneys for the Gallup Diocese admitted to the court that chancery officials knew of 105 alleged clergy sex abuse victims. Soon they revised that figure to 121 alleged victims. And after the deadline to file clergy sex abuse claims passed, court documents revealed that 57 individuals filed abuse claims against the diocese in bankruptcy court.

Then in December 2014, after more than five years of promising to release the information, Bishop James S. Wall published the names of 31 men — 30 members of the clergy and one lay volunteer — who the diocese has confirmed are credibly accused abusers.

The bankruptcy case has also provided public access to financial information about the Gallup Diocese that was never available prior to the Chapter 11 filing. Once the bankruptcy case is resolved, however, that information will most likely be unavailable to the public again.

Chancery checking accounts

Each month, attorneys for the diocese file a monthly operating report that generally runs more than 200 pages in length. In the middle of each report are several pages that detail expenditures from three checking accounts controlled by chancery officials, as well as an operating account for Sacred Heart Catholic School in Gallup. The school, along with the Sacred Heart Retreat Center, is included under the umbrella of the Diocese of Gallup’s bankruptcy case.

A recent review was conducted of the expenditures from the Gallup chancery’s checking account, its restricted checking account and its custodial checking account. Twenty-two monthly reports were reviewed, from the first full month report in December 2013 to the most recently filed report in September 2015.

The chancery’s checking account produces the most disbursements each month, for a wide variety of expenses, with total expenditures generally ranging from $101,000 to $155,000. The chancery’s twice-monthly payroll is issued out of this account. Soon after the diocese filed for bankruptcy, its December 2013 payrolls were approximately $34,100 and $43,900. After about 20 months of fluctuating and declining figures, the September 2015 payrolls were approximately $28,700 and $40,100.

Expenditures from the restricted checking account generally cover expenses for seminary students, some clergy health care and medical bills and limited credit card charges. Expenditures from the custodian checking account mostly include the payment of Mass stipends to priests, the disbursement of grant money, and payments toward insurance policies and priest retirement funds.

Utilities and credit cards

Each month the Diocese of Gallup pays thousands of dollars from its chancery checking account to cover a variety of expenses at various residences, offices and the retreat center. Some of those expenses include electricity and water, natural gas and propane, trash removal, telephone and Internet services, DirectTV, security systems, pest control, and repair supplies and services.

For the first three months after the Chapter 11 filing, the expenditure lists were fairly detailed as to the specific locations and expenses. For example, those months listed multiple expenses at the Sacred Heart Retreat Center, the Gallup chancery, the bishop’s private residence, the Cure of Ars House of Discernment and residences at 110 E. Green and 205 Black Diamond Canyon in Gallup and 11 Beta in Mentmore. In subsequent months, however, the expenditure lists have provided fewer specific addresses.

In the case of the bishop’s home, the Diocese of Gallup pays $2,200 in rent each month to Catholic Peoples Foundation, the diocese’s nonprofit fundraiser organization. Housing expenses for the bishop’s residence — rent, utilities and various services — ran more than $2,900 in December 2013, and more than $3,800 in both January and February 2014.

The monthly expenditure lists also include credit card expenses, with most of the charges attributed to the bishop. The chancery checking account paid more than $59,400 in credit card bills, and the restricted checking account paid more than $1,470. Of the 33 total credit card payments, 27 were designated as the bishop’s charges.

Travel, retirement plans

The Diocese of Gallup also regularly spends money on travel. Some of it includes professional travel to workshops or conferences, but much of it is spent on its revenue generating Mission Co-op Program. The program, which used to be under the direction of the Catholic Peoples Foundation, is now under the direction of the Rev. Matt Keller, the current vicar general. The program sends Gallup clergy to visit wealthier Catholic parishes across the country, where they make presentations and request financial donations for the Gallup Diocese.

According to the monthly expenditure lists, the diocese financed dozens of Mission Co-op trips, often using visiting international priests as presenters. Mission Co-op travel expenses were listed as more than $16,000 in 2014 and more than $17,000 in the first nine months of 2015. However, many more travel expenses were also listed, but the purpose of the travel was not disclosed. Information about how much revenue the Mission Co-op Program brings to the Gallup Diocese each year has never been publicly released.

The monthly expenditure lists also provide information about how much money the Diocese of Gallup currently contributes to clergy retirement plans. For years, longtime Gallup priests have voiced concerns about whether the diocese has properly funded their retirement plans. Media questions to the diocese about those concerns have never been answered.

According to the monthly reports, beginning in April 2014, quarterly contributions were made to the Diocese of Gallup Priest Retirement Plan for the bishop and several priests not assigned to parish ministry. Those quarterly contributions ranged from $900 to $1,500.

As for the remaining priests, other contributions were made to an account at Frost Bank, which is the financial institution that handles priest retirement accounts. During the 22 months reviewed, five contributions totaling $55,651 were specifically designated as priest retirement contributions, and a Good Shepherd Second Collection was listed as $30,777. Three other disbursements made to Frost Bank, listed as BAA disbursements or restricted pledges, totaled $25,600.

The monthly operating reports are available at the federal government’s public access to court electronic records website (www.pacer.gov). Users must open an account and pay viewing fees. Records can also be viewed at no cost at any U.S. Bankruptcy Court.

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NEW MEXICO
Gallup Independent

Published in the Gallup Independent, Gallup, NM, Dec. 11, 2015

By Elizabeth Hardin-Burrola
Independent correspondent
religion@gallupindependent.com

GALLUP – It’s one of the ironies of living in the rural Four Corners. While Gallup is listed at the end of the critically acclaimed movie “Spotlight,” most residents in northwestern New Mexico or northern Arizona will have to travel long distances — or wait — to see the film.

“Spotlight” tells the story of the Boston Globe’s Spotlight investigative news team’s dogged research that exposed the clergy sex abuse scandal in Boston in 2002. The news team published hundreds of articles and was awarded a Pulitzer Prize.

Widely praised by film critics across the country, “Spotlight” received three Golden Globe nominations and is currently viewed as an Oscar frontrunner. It is being compared to “All the President’s Men,” the classic 1976 film about Washington Post reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein who uncovered the Watergate scandal.

In the wake of the Globe’s investigation in Boston, thousands of similar stories of sexual abuse and cover-ups have been reported in dioceses around the world, including Gallup. The names of those dioceses are listed at the end of the film.

Although “Spotlight” is set in Boston, many of the same practices uncovered there have played out on a smaller scale in the Gallup Diocese. Vulnerable children were sexually abused, law enforcement officials turned a blind eye, cases were settled confidentially, and abusers were quietly sent to treatment facilities and new parishes. But in spite of those similar issues, Gallup moviegoers most likely won’t get the chance to view the film until early 2016. Currently, only two communities within the Diocese of Gallup have theaters showing “Spotlight.” In New Mexico, moviegoers can see the film at the Animas 10 in Farmington. In Arizona, the film is being shown at the Village 8 in Pinetop-Lakeside.

Besides these two theaters, which are separated by more than 250 miles, the closest cities to see “Spotlight” are Albuquerque and Santa Fe to the east and Flagstaff to the west.

Allen Theatres owns the Animas 10 in Farmington, as well as theaters in Gallup. Charles Green, who works at the theater headquarters in Las Cruces, said “Spotlight” was a limited release movie so his company only sent the film to its larger New Mexico markets in Las Cruces, Roswell and Farmington, as well as its theater in Durango, Colorado. When limited release movies do well, he said, they are sent to smaller cities like Gallup. Afterward, the movies are made available to small, independent theaters and cable television before moving to DVD.

Asa Allen, the vice president of studio relations and programming for Allen Theatres, said attendance for “Spotlight” has been best at the theater in Durango. Theaters are currently filled with holiday releases, he said, and nine more movies, including the new “Star Wars” film, are scheduled for release soon. After the new year, Allen said, he should be able to get a print of “Spotlight” to one of the Gallup theaters.

Although Arizona’s Pinetop-Lakeside has a population less than 5,000, “Spotlight” has been doing well at the Village 8, theater manager Lanny Croney said.

“It did relatively well. It was our third busiest movie,” Croney said of the film. “Spotlight” will continue to run in Pinetop-Lakeside for at least another week, she said.

The Village 8, along with the nearby Show Low 5, is independently owned by White Mountain Entertainment. Croney said the company selects its own films and tries to choose a wide variety of films to attract a broader audience.

Croney said movies based on true events tend to do well in the WME Theaters. “Spotlight” was chosen, she said, because it falls in that category and because it has garnered many favorable reviews.

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TENNESSEE
CBS News

KINGSPORT, Tenn. — Tennessee police have cited a Salvation Army bell ringer for indecent exposure at a grocery store, reports CBS affiliate WJHL.

According to a police report obtained by the station, officers responded to a call regarding indecent exposure at a Kingsport Food City location just before 4 p.m. Thursday.

A man reportedly told them that a young child had walked up to the bucket and donated money. As the child walked away, the bell ringer allegedly lifted up his red apron, according to WJHL.

The witness said that the bell ringer’s genitals were fully exposed. The witness reportedly said that he quickly escorted the child away from the offender and called police.

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TENNESSEE
The Smoking Gun

DECEMBER 14–A Salvation Army “bell ringer” stationed outside a Tennessee supermarket exposed himself after a child dropped money into the donation kettle, police charge.

Cops were dispatched Thursday afternoon to a Food City outlet in Kingsport after a man called 911 to report that a Salvation Army volunteer had “lifted up his red apron” and exposed his genitalia, which the suspect had “pulled out from the inside of his pants.”

The lewd act, witness Cody Estes reported, occurred after his four-year-old son placed change into the Salvation Army’s trademark red kettle. The witness told police that the boy did not notice the volunteer exposing himself.

While suspect William Martin, 61, initially denied any wrongdoing, he “eventually admitted to the illicit act,” according to a Kingsport Police Department arrest affidavit.

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IRELAND
Irish Times

Conor Kane in Clonmel

A former priest and music teacher who told the Pope in a letter last year he had a history of “abusing young boys” has been given a four-year prison term for indecently assaulting a secondary school student in the 1980s.

Henry Moloney (77) with an address at Kimmage Manor, Dublin was handed down the sentence on Tuesday at Clonmel Circuit Court for abuse which had a “devastating” impact on his victim.

He was given consecutive sentences of 18 months, 18 months and 12 months, with the last of those four years suspended, as well as four concurrent sentences.

The only time Moloney spoke during the sentencing hearing was when asked if he acknowledged he would be bound to the peace for a year upon his release from prison, and he replied “I do indeed”.

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NEW YORK
CBS New York

NEW YORK (CBSNewYork) — A Long Island college student who claims she was sexually molested by her parish priest when she was a child has scored a court victory.

A state Supreme Court judge in Nassau County has ruled that the 21-year-old woman’s civil lawsuit against Father Gregory Yachyshyn and the Diocese of Rockville Centre can proceed.

“She is thankful that the courts are going to allow this important case to proceed,” said the woman’s attorney, John Michael Reck.

The alleged abuse took place around the woman’s first communion when she was 8 years old and a parishioner at St. Francis of Assisi Church in Greenlawn, Reck said. The lawsuit claims the diocese “failed to protect children, ignored credible complaints of sexual abuse and failed to act on obvious warning signs of sexual abuse.”

WEB EXTRA: Read The Judge’s Ruling

The diocese could eventually be forced to reveal the names of 66 priests accused of molesting minors, Reck said.

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AUSTRALIA
Herald Sun

December 15, 2015

Lucie Morris-Marr
Herald Sun

A LEADING Catholic bishop stands accused of lying to the child abuse royal commission about crimes committed by Australia’s worst paedophile.

Brisbane’s auxiliary bishop, Brian Finnigan, the former adviser and secretary to former Ballarat bishop Ronald Mulkearns, insisted in the past few days he only learned of Gerald Ridsdale’s horrific crimes against children after 1993, when Ridsdale was charged.

However, examination by the Herald Sun of the evidence, given in a private hearing by Bishop Finnigan in July, shows he admitted he knew of abuse complaints against Ridsdale more than 10 years earlier.

On Monday, counsel assisting the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse Angus Stewart, SC, accused Bishop Finnigan of distancing himself from any knowledge of child sexual abuse in his two days on the stand.

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CANADA
Toronto Star

By: Joanna Smith Ottawa Bureau reporter, Published on Tue Dec 15 2015

OTTAWA—More than 3,000 indigenous children and youth died in residential schools — many of them buried in unmarked graves — and those who had the power to prevent these deaths did little to stop it.

The heartbreaking details of those deaths are contained in the final report of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) to be released Tuesday, which details the dark history and unsettling legacy of Canadian residential schools that saw 150,000 First Nations, Métis and Inuit children come through their doors for more than a century.

“Many students who went to residential school never returned. They were lost to their families. They died at rates that were far higher than those experienced by the general school-aged population. Their parents were often uninformed of their sickness and death. They were buried away from their families in long-neglected graves. No one took care to count how many died or to record where they were buried,” says the final report.

The 3,231-page final report — hard copies of which will be delivered Tuesday in Ottawa to federal government and churches who were parties to the class-action settlement that led to the creation of the TRC — includes a volume titled “Missing Children and Unmarked Burials” detailing the circumstances, when known, of the 3,201 students deaths between 1867 and 2000 it was able to record.

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UNITED STATES
Reveal – The Center for Investigative Reporting

By Trey Bundy / December 14, 2015

Besieged by reports that Jehovah’s Witnesses shield child sexual abusers from prosecution, the religion’s top leadership appears to have settled on a strategy: “Let the story die.”

A Portuguese news documentary released in October was yet another report from across the globe to detail the Witnesses’ policy of not reporting child abusers to law enforcement. As in other media reports, top officials refused to speak to the journalists who produced it.

After it aired, however, David Splane, a member of the Witnesses’ Governing Body, spoke to 600 congregations from the religion’s Portuguese headquarters in Carnaxide, according to TVI, the station that aired the documentary. Splane’s talk provided a window into how Jehovah’s Witnesses leaders are handling the scrutiny.

“Now, sometimes, the brothers will call New York and say, ‘Why don’t you do something about this? This was a terrible program,’ ” said Splane, who was visiting from global headquarters in Brooklyn. “What do you want us to do? The journalist has a closed mind. The journalist isn’t interested in the truth. And so we usually just leave things as they are and let the story die.”

The documentary, “In the Shadow of Sin,” was based on the Witnesses’ own internal documents.

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VATICAN CITY
CNN Money

by Jim Boulden @CNNMoney

It’s time the Vatican got serious about money laundering.

An independent group of European financial experts wants to see “some real results” in terms of indictments and prosecutions at the Vatican Bank.

The experts have been reviewing the Vatican’s attempts to clean up its bank after money laundering scandals rocked the home of the Catholic Church in 2010.

In a progress report released Tuesday, the experts say the bank must go after those accused of money laundering in order “to deliver effective results in terms of prosecutions, convictions and confiscation.”

While 11 million euros ($12 million) has been frozen, and 29 money laundering investigations launched, no one has been prosecuted or indeed indicted by Vatican authorities for money laundering since new procedures were put in place in 2012.

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VATICAN CITY
BBC News

The Vatican must “deliver real results” from its investigations into money-laundering, the Council of Europe’s financial agency has said.

In its latest report, Moneyval said the Vatican had improved its financial management and its bank had shut down almost 5,000 suspicious accounts.

Vatican prosecutors had frozen about €11m ($12m;£8m) and 29 money-laundering investigations had been launched.

However, the agency said there had yet to be any indictments or prosecutions.

It said there was “a need now for the anti-money-laundering and counter-terrorist financing system to deliver effective results in terms of prosecutions, convictions and confiscation”.

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WISCONSIN
Roman Catholic Diocese of Superior – Catholic Herald

WASHINGTON (CNS) — Pope Francis has appointed Fr. James P. Powers, a priest of the Diocese of Superior, Wisconsin, and currently its administrator, to be bishop of the diocese.

The appointment was announced Dec. 15 in Washington by Archbishop Carlo Maria Vigano, apostolic nuncio to the U.S.

A native of Baldwin, Wisconsin, Bishop-designate Powers, 62, was ordained a priest of the Superior Diocese May 20, 1990. He has served as administrator of the diocese since December 2014, a month after Bishop Peter F. Christensen was named to head the Diocese of Boise, Idaho.

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WISCONSIN
United States Conference of Catholic Bishops

December 15, 2015

WASHINGTON—Pope Francis has named Fr. James Powers, 62, as bishop of Superior, Wisconsin; Fr. Powers is a priest of the diocese and serves as diocesan administrator.

The appointment was publicized in Washington, December 15 by Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò, apostolic nuncio to the United States.

Bishop-elect Powers was born February 6, 1953 in Baldwin, Wisconsin. He was ordained a priest of the Diocese of Superior on May 20, 1990. He holds a bachelor’s in theology and a master’s of divinity from St. John Vianney Seminary at the University of St. Thomas in St. Paul, Minnesota, and at St. Paul Seminary in St. Paul. He pursued graduate studies in canon law at St. Paul University in Ottawa, Canada.

Assignments after ordination included 1990-1993, associate pastor, St. Joseph Church, Rice Lake, Wisconsin; 1993-1994, parochial administrator of four parishes in Wisconsin: St. John the Baptist Church, Webster; Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary Church, Scott; and Our Lady of Perpetual Help Church, Danbury. From 1994-1998, he was named pastor of St. Bridget Church in River Falls, Wisconsin; 1995, elected to the diocesan priest personnel board, and reelected in 1999; 1998, adjunct vicar general; 1998-2003, pastor of three parishes: St. Pius X, Solon Falls; St. Mary Church, Minong; and St. Anthony of Padua, Gordon, Wisconsin.

From 2003-2014, he was named administrator of the last three parishes aforementioned, and pastor of St. Joseph Church, Rice Lake, Wisconsin; in 2010, he was appointed vicar general. Since 2014, he has been pastor of St. Joseph Church and three other churches in Wisconsin: Our Lady of Lourdes in Dobie, St. John the Evangelist in Birchwood, and Holy Trinity in Haugen. He has also served as diocesan administrator for the Diocese of Superior since December 2014.

The Diocese of Superior, Wisconsin, has been a vacant see since November 2014, when then- Bishop Peter F. Christensen, was named Bishop of Boise City, Idaho.

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VATICAN CITY
Vatican Information Service

Vatican City, 15 December 2015 (VIS) – The Holy Father has appointed Fr. James Patrick Powers as bishop of Superior (area 40,701, population 464,000, Catholics 77,200, priests 74, permanent deacons 68, religious 81), United States of America. The bishop-elect was born in Baldwin, United States of America in 1953 and was ordained a priest in 1990. He has served in a number of pastoral roles, including parish vicar, parish administrator, parish priest and adjunct judicial vicar. He is currently diocesan administrator of the diocese of Superior and pastor of the St. Joseph Parish in Rice Lake.

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UNITED KINGDOM
Harlow Star

A former Catholic priest and psychiatric nurse has been jailed for more than 14 years for a number of historical sexual offences committed against men in Essex and north-west London.

Christopher Bosworth was arrested at his home in Wales by detectives from Essex Police in September 2012 following allegations of sexual assault dating back to the 1980s.

Bosworth, 57, from Cae Greynor in Tycroes, was convicted of three counts of indecently assaulting a man, one count of indecently assaulting a man, two counts of conspiring to sexually assault a man, one count of sexually assaulting a man and one count of perverting the course of justice.

The four victims in the investigation were in the Wickford area of Essex and the Willesden and Kingsbury areas in London in the 1980s and 1990s.

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IRELAND
RTE News

A 77-year-old former Spiritan priest has been sentenced to four years in prison, with the final year suspended, for the indecent assault of a schoolboy in a well-known Tipperary school.

Before sentence was handed down, Clonmel Circuit Court heard the victim would never forget the panic he felt as he stood outside Henry Moloney’s bedroom door, having been summoned there by the teacher, knowing what was going to happen to him inside the room.

Moloney, with an address at Kimmage Manor, a Spiritan care home, was accompanied by a Spiritan priest at today’s hearing.

His victim, who cannot be named, sat at the back of the court with a family member.

Earlier this month, Moloney had been found guilty on seven counts of indecent assault in Rockwell College, where his male victim was a first-year border in 1981 and 1982.

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OHIO
WOWK

COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) – A woman sexually assaulted by an Ohio pastor when she was 15 years old is asking the state Supreme Court to boost the amount of damages paid by the church where the minister worked.

Attorneys for the woman and her father say a state law that limits noneconomic damages to $350,000 violates the constitutional rights of underage victims of sexual assault.

They argue that sexual abuse is typically more emotionally damaging than physical injury and sexually abused minors often spend years dealing with the trauma.

Attorneys for Grace Brethren Church of Delaware in central Ohio argue the limits placed on noneconomic damages create a fairer and predictable civil justice system.

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VATICAN CITY
ANSA

(ANSA) – Strasbourg, December 15 – The Vatican has brought most of its laws into line with international standards on money laundering and financial transparency but the new rules need to be applied, Moneyval, the Council of Europe’s anti-money laundering agency, said in a report published Tuesday.

“The Holy See has addressed most of the technical deficiencies in its legislation and regulations,” Moneyval said.

However the anti-money laundering system now needs to “deliver some real results” in terms of trials, convictions and confiscations. This is the second report issued by Moneyval on progress made by the Vatican in cleaning up its finances since the agency issued a series of recommendations in 2012.

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NEW YORK
Church Militant

If half of what is alleged in the million-plus dollar lawsuit against Cdl. Timothy Dolan and his archdiocese is true, it could be the end of him being archbishop of New York. And this is a case that other bishops should pay close attention to because if it can happen here, it can happen anywhere.

There are two major areas that overlap in this tragic case. First: the sordid sexual deeds of a priest made pastor of a Bronx parish by Cdl. Dolan — Fr. Peter Miqueli — whom parishioners charge with carrying on a perverted pay-for-gay sexual relationship with a live-in lover for years. The second area which overlaps is that in order to pay for this perverted lifestyle, Fr. Miqueli embezzled nearly a million dollars over the course of years from two parishes.

The first is obviously sinful; the second is not only sinful, but also criminal. For at least two years, parishioners took their case to various personnel at the archdiocese and were dismissed. Other troubling areas involve gay porn on the rectory computer seen by a young teenage boy. When he saw it, the gay prostitute, who was present at the moment, made up excuses for it. Despite a mountain of evidence, chancery officials kept denying there is any evidence — and that includes most especially Cdl. Dolan, who is the one where the buck stops.

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NEW YORK
New York Post

By Julia Marsh and Kate Sheehy December 15, 2015

The Bronx priest accused of paying an S&M “slave master’’ to humiliate him during sex wasn’t satisfied with his male lover — he also wanted to romp with the man’s girlfriend, the woman says.

Disgraced Rev. Peter Miqueli — who allegedly swiped $1 million from church coffers to help fund a kinky drug-fueled lifestyle with beefy beau Keith Crist — pestered his bisexual lover to convince his gal pal to join them in a ménage à trois, says the former girlfriend.

“Keith told me to pretend that I didn’t know Miqueli was really [a] priest,’’ Crist’s ex, Tatyana Gudin, wrote in an e-mail to Timothy Cardinal Dolan detailing the two men’s alleged trysts.

“When Miqueli met me for the first time, he told Keith he thought I was pretty. Miqueli started asking Keith to try to pull me into their perverted sex games. I, of course, declined,” she said.

Gudin said Miqueli became enraged when he eventually learned that she and Crist were already more than platonic roommates.

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NEW YORK
Daily Mail (UK)

By Kieran Corcoran and Alexandra Klausner for MailOnline

A Catholic priest accused of living a sordid double-life as the urine-drinking sex slave of a musclebound S&M master begged to have a threesome with his girlfriend, it has been claimed.

Tatyana Gudin said that Reverend Peter Miqueli, the pastor at St. Frances de Chantal in the Bronx neighborhood of New York City, wanted to rope her into his erotic fantasies.

Miqueli, 52, has been accused of paying out as much as $1million to Keith Crist in exchange for his services – allegedly funded by embezzling from church coffers.

According to Gudin, Miqueli and Crist, 41, used whips, chains and chastity belts in drug-fueled romps which culminated in Crist urinating in the priest’s mouth while he was still dressed in his dog collar.

The shocking claims came to light last week when parshioners filed a lawsuit with the Manhattan Supreme Court detailing the alleged relationship.

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CANADA
Metro

By: Bruce Cheadle The Canadian Press Published on Tue Dec 15 2015

OTTAWA — When Justice Murray Sinclair formally ends the six-year Truth and Reconciliation Commission later this morning with the release of its final report, he’ll be setting a high bar for Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.

Last June, when Sinclair released the damning preliminary report on the legacy of Canada’s residential school system, the former Conservative government said it would await the final document before committing to any of the commission’s 94 recommendations.

Trudeau’s Liberals, however, swept the Conservatives from office in the October general election on a pledge to reset the Crown’s relationship with Canada’s indigenous peoples — including promising to implement all 94 of the proposed remedies laid out in the June summary.

As the final report cautions, “Reconciliation will require more than pious words about the shortcomings of those who preceded us.”

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CANADA
National Post

Mark Kennedy, Postmedia News | December 15, 2015

More than 3,000 aboriginal children died at residential schools, often of causes that could have been prevented, and the failures of those responsible for properly safeguarding the students bordered on criminal, according to a special report on the scandal.

In its final report to be released Tuesday, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) provides a detailed account of the known deaths. The recorded figure is 3,201 but the actual number is probably much higher because of incomplete records, and the commission notes the death rate was much higher than among children in Canada’s general population.

Its report documents how the children were buried in gravesites, many unmarked, that were not in their own communities. Today, many of those gravesites sit untended – the final injustice to the children.

“Thousands of Aboriginal children died in residential schools,” says the TRC’s new report. “They were killed by relentless waves of epidemics – tuberculosis and a host of other infectious diseases – that swept repeatedly through the institutions. Those children did not have to die.

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CANADA
Truth and Reconciliation Commission

TRC final report will be available here on December 15, 2015

Please click on the reports below:

Executive Summary
Principles
Survivors Speak (EN)
Calls to Action (EN)

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AUSTRALIA
ABC News

By Danny Morgan

A Catholic priest has backed Cardinal George Pell’s recollections of a 1993 telephone call where he allegedly offered to buy the silence of a sexual abuse victim.

In the phone call, Cardinal Pell and the victim, David Ridsdale, discussed the fact that Mr Ridsdale had been sexually abused by his uncle, Father Gerald Ridsdale.

In May, Mr Ridsdale told the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse the conversation ended acrimoniously after Cardinal Pell allegedly said: “I want to know what it will take to keep you quiet.”

Cardinal Pell denies ever trying to bribe Mr Ridsdale and rejected the suggestion the phone call ended acrimoniously.

Father John Walshe was living with Cardinal Pell in 1993.

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AUSTRALIA
Cairns Post

BY MEGAN NEIL AAP DECEMBER 15, 2015

CARDINAL George Pell appeared shocked and crestfallen after speaking to a clergy abuse victim who alleges he asked what it would take to keep him quiet, an inquiry has heard.

MENTONE parish priest Rev John Walshe said Cardinal Pell looked ashen but did not appear angry after a 1993 phone call with David Ridsdale.

Mr Ridsdale, a victim and nephew of pedophile priest Gerald Francis Ridsdale, has accused Cardinal Pell of trying to bribe him by saying: “I want to know what it will take to keep you quiet.”

Fr Walshe, who shared a house with the then-Melbourne bishop, said Cardinal Pell told him after the call: “Ridsdale’s played up, even played up with his nephew.”

Counsel assisting the child abuse royal commission Angus Stewart SC has suggested Fr Walshe’s description of Cardinal Pell still fits with Mr Ridsdale’s allegation.

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AUSTRALIA
9 News

AAP

A Catholic priest who stayed silent when he heard a colleague had sexually abused a child says he would speak up if a priest stole money.

Victorian priest Fr Lawrence O’Toole has told an inquiry he thought a victim of Gerald Francis Ridsdale was confessing his guilt and shame when the man told him about the childhood abuse.

That was in 1988, while Ridsdale was still serving as a priest in the Diocese of Ballarat.

Fr O’Toole did not tell church authorities or police even though he admitted under questioning in the child abuse royal commission he knew it was wrong and a crime.

“I would believe that he was old enough and man enough to be able to do that himself,” he said.

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VATICAN CITY
ABC News

By NICOLE WINFIELD, ASSOCIATED PRESS
VATICAN CITY — Dec 15, 2015

Vatican prosecutors have launched 13 new investigations into suspected money-laundering this year, and currently have frozen some 11 million euros ($12.1 million) as part of beefed-up measures to prevent illicit activity at the Vatican’s scandal-marred bank, according to a report released Tuesday.

The Council of Europe’s Moneyval committee revealed the findings in a periodic progress report on the Holy See’s compliance with international norms to fight money-laundering and terror financing.

Moneyval praised the Holy See for addressing most of the outstanding legal loopholes flagged in the committee’s original 2012 evaluation. But it said it remained unclear how the laws are being implemented, since prosecutors haven’t yet handed down any money-laundering indictments despite having 25 investigations open, half of them launched this year.

The Vatican submitted itself to the Moneyval evaluation process after it signed onto the 2009 EU Monetary Convention and in a bid to shed its image as a financially shady tax haven whose bank has long been embroiled in scandal.

In recent years, the Vatican has written and rewritten laws criminalizing money-laundering, entered into financial information-sharing agreements with dozens of countries, closed nearly 5,000 accounts at its bank and made sure it knows the background of all the clients who stayed on.

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VATICAN CITY
Moneyval

The Council of Europe’s anti-money laundering and counter terrorist financing body MONEYVAL today published the second progress report of the Holy See/Vatican City State. The report evaluates its compliance with the recommendations made by MONEYVAL in its Mutual Evaluation Report in July 2012 and its first progress report in December 2013.

MONEYVAL concludes that the Holy See has addressed most of the technical deficiencies in its legislation and regulations. However there is a need now for the anti-money laundering and counter terrorist financing system to deliver effective results in terms of prosecutions, convictions and confiscation.

Council of Europe Secretary General Thorbjørn Jagland said: “I welcome the progress the Holy See has made in a number of areas since 2012. I urge its authorities to take into account MONEYVAL´s recommendations and to deliver some real results in the money laundering investigations being conducted”.

The report includes MONEYVAL’s analysis of the Holy See’s compliance with the 16 key and core 2003 Financial Action Task Force (FATF) Anti-Money Laundering and Counter Terrorism Financing Recommendations.

MONEYVAL points out that the intensive review process in respect of accounts in the Institute for the Works of Religion (IOR) appears to have been a success. This process, in which approximately 4,800 accounts have been closed, has corrected many significant shortcomings in the implementation of the measures to accurately identify and verify account holders.

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VATICAN CITY
Wall Street Journal

By FRANCIS X. ROCCA
Dec. 15, 2015

VATICAN CITY—A European watchdog has put the Vatican on notice to prosecute those suspected of financial crimes now that the city state has brought its laws on money laundering and terrorist financing in line with international standards.

The Vatican “needs to deliver some real results on the prosecutorial side,” said a report published Tuesday by the Council of Europe’s Moneyval committee. Nobody has yet been prosecuted under a 2013 Vatican anti-moneylaundering law.

The committee praised the “intensive review process” at the scandal-plagued Vatican bank. The bank has closed around 4,800 accounts, in some cases because a client’s profile didn’t conform with the bank’s stated mission to serve “works of religion.”

The reported noted that the Holy See’s own financial supervisor and regulator is still inspecting APSA, an entity that serves as the Vatican’s treasury though it has also functioned as a financial institution for outside clients.

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VATICAN CITY
Reuters

Tue Dec 15, 2015

By Philip Pullella

VATICAN CITY (Reuters) – The Vatican should be much more aggressive in dealing with people suspected of financial crimes such as money laundering and step up prosecutions and indictments, a European finance watchdog agency said on Tuesday.

Moneyval, the monitoring body of the Council of Europe, said that while the Vatican has made great strides in cleaning up its scandal-plagued bank and other financial departments, it was still excessively timid on the judicial front.

There was no immediate response from the Vatican but Pope Francis has made cleaning up finances a priority and Holy See staff worked with the Moneyval evaluators.

The Strasbourg-based watchdog evaluates how a country’s financial legislation and practices comply with international standards on combating money laundering and other financial crimes.

The highly detailed 150-page report, Moneyval’s third evaluation of the tiny sovereign city-state since 2012, said many past deficiencies had been addressed.

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UNITED STATES
Christianity Today

Bob Smietana/ DECEMBER 14, 2015

For the past decade, “How Great Is Our God” has been one of the most popular worship songs in the United States.

The song’s success helped to make Chris Tomlin the world’s top worship leader, and turned his co-writer Ed Cash into one of the most sought-after Christian music producers in Nashville.

It also helped launch what former members are calling a cult.

Cash is a leading member of The Gathering International, a small group of followers devoted to Wayne “Pops” Jolley, a prosperity gospel preacher with a history of alleged spiritual and sexual abuse.

Jolley’s followers, including Cash, call him a prophet and their spiritual father. They answer his sermons with “Yes, sir” and shower him with gifts and tithes in exchange for his blessing. They also submit the details of their lives—where to work, where to live, and who to associate with—for his approval.

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MINNESOTA
Star Tribune

By Jean Hopfensperger Star Tribune DECEMBER 14, 2015

A national team of lawyers has joined forces to focus on a group of children who are underrepresented in clergy abuse cases — namely, girls.

The group announced its first legal action Monday, a suit by a Minnesota woman who charges that she was sexually abused for several years in the 1970s by a former youth minister at Zion Lutheran Church in Hopkins.

Although 1 in 4 girls reports being a victim of child sex abuse in national studies, just a small fraction of them take advantage of laws that permit victims to seek legal remedy in decades-old cases, Patrick Noaker, a Minneapolis attorney who is part of the team, said at a news conference.

The relatively small number of women stepping forward is true not just for clergy sex abuse, said fellow team member Marci Hamilton. In general, girls are reluctant to report abuse by coaches, teachers, family members and family friends, Hamilton said. Yet all can be sued through the Minnesota Child Victims Act, which allows older abuse cases to have their day in court.

Similar laws are on the books in Hawaii, Georgia, Massachusetts and Connecticut, she said.

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ALASKA
KTUU

[with video]

By MJ Thim / KTUU

ANCHORAGE –
A new movie called “Spotlight” is literally putting the spot light on clergy sexual abuse.

It covers the 2002 Boston Archdiocese sexual abuse scandal but the issue impacts people all the country, including here in Alaska.

Trevor Storrs, Executive Director with the Alaska Childrens Trust, and Elsie Boudreau, a clergy sexual abuse survivor, talked about it on Monday’s Morning Edition.

“The movie looks at the history,” Storrs said. “That concept of breaking silence.”

Storrs said the most powerful line in the movie is about the saying ‘it takes a village to raise a child.’

“It takes a village to abuse a child,” he said. “If we all stay quite and ignore the signs, it can happen. We can break the cycle by breaking the silence.”

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UNITED STATES
Des Moines Register

Bill LaHay December 14, 2015

When I was younger, I never understood why some non-Catholics griped about the ritual I knew as “going to confession.” It wasn’t the ’fessing up part that bothered them, but how easily one could get off the hook afterward. Declare your contrition, promise better behavior, say a few Hail Marys, and move on.

That such a casual effort could constitute “rehabilitation” explains a lot about the church’s response to the sexual abuse of children by Catholic clergy, with victims in the U.S. alone estimated to number more than 100,000. The abuse and subsequent cover-ups are the subject of the film “Spotlight,” which chronicles the Boston Globe’s 2001 investigation into the local archdiocese and its top cleric, Cardinal Bernard Law.Back then I didn’t dwell on it, but the critics were right. No priest ever demanded anything of me but these simple gestures of repentance. None told me to make restitution or to right the wrongs I had inflicted upon others. Instead, penance was painless and even self-serving, a quick way to press the reset button on my soul.

For me and other clergy abuse survivors, the film deserves credit for conveying the existential punch-in-the-gut that we experienced when a priest’s hand — the same symbolic hand of God that baptized us as infants — ended up down our pants.

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AUSTRALIA
Sydney Morning Herald

December 15, 2015

Jane Lee

Cardinal George Pell was worried about his planned appearance at a child abuse royal commission last month, his former housemate says.

Reverend John Walshe​ told the commission on Tuesday that they had had lunch at Cardinal Pell’s apartment in Rome in November, towards the end of a European holiday.

Father Walshe said that Cardinal Pell told him that he was trying his best to prepare for the upcoming hearing, where he was to give evidence of his handling of child sexual abuse allegations in Ballarat and Melbourne. The commission was “weighing on him” and he was worried about it, Father Walshe said.

Cardinal Pell was expected to be asked about his time as an adviser to former Ballarat bishop Ronald Mulkearns​, on the movements of priests in the diocese, such as paedophile priest Gerald Ridsdale​.

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AUSTRALIA
Sydney Morning Herald

December 15, 2015

Jane Lee
Legal affairs, health and science reporter

The former Bishop of Ballarat struggles to sleep at night and is “profoundly sorry” for moving priests accused of child sexual abuse to different parishes, one of his former advisers has told a royal commission.

Ronald Mulkearns, the Bishop of Ballarat between 1971 and 1997, presided over decisions to move priests, including paedophile priest Gerald Ridsdale, between parishes in the diocese, despite child sexual abuse allegations against them.

He was to attend the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse in the past fortnight, but was excused from testifying as he is currently receiving palliative care.

A number of his former advisers have testified that he often decided on the appointments of such priests without providing explanation or seeking their approval.

One of his former advisers, Father John McKinnon, told the commission on Tuesday that he had started visiting Bishop Mulkearns “from time to time” in the past year but had not discussed this period with him because his “memory is much worse than mine, so it’s useless doing it.”

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AUSTRALIA
Border Mail

By Melissa Cunningham
Dec. 15, 2015

Ballarat Bishop Ronald Mulkearns struggles to sleep at night due his role in concealing the child sex crimes of priests spanning decades, an inquiry has heard.

Retired Ballarat diocese priest John McKinnon, who still visits the terminally ill bishop at hospital, told the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse Bishop Mulkearns was “profoundly sorry” for what “he had done” or failed to do.

“He says he struggles to sleep at night…he probably still struggles to sleep of a night and so these things now are on his mind but beyond that there wasn’t much more we could say,” Fr McKinnon said.

Fr McKinnon said he had re-established contact with the bishop in the last two years as he became gravely ill with cancer.

He told the inquiry the two don’t often discuss Bishop Mulkearns’s role in covering up decades of child sex abuse but he knew had remorse for failing to act.

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NEW YORK
Catholic New York

Father Peter Miqueli, who was accused of scandalous behavior of a sexual and financial nature in a lawsuit filed by parishioners last week, stepped down as pastor of St. Frances de Chantal parish in the Bronx on Dec. 12.

Saying that he made the decision to step down “while this unfortunate and regrettable situation is investigated,” Father Miqueli maintained in a letter to parishioners of the Throgs Neck church that he was “not guilty of the charges” brought against him but “felt that my continued presence here would be a distraction to you, particularly during this season of Advent and Christmas.”

The letter went on to say that Father Miqueli has been cooperating for months “with the investigations that have been under way to get to the bottom of the allegations that have been brought against me, and I intend to continue in any way possible to resolve this matter.”

The letter was read to parishioners attending Masses at St. Frances de Chantal this past weekend.

The 36-page lawsuit, filed in Manhattan Supreme Court, includes salacious details of a sexual affair Father Miqueli allegedly carried on with Keith Crist as well as accusations that the priest took money donated to repair a church pipe organ and used drugs provided by a parishioner. The suit also claims the priest pays part of the monthly rent for Crist’s Manhattan apartment.

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NEW YORK
Staten Island Advance

By Daniel Leddy | For the Staten Island Advance
on December 14, 2015

You’d think that people holding themselves out to be faithful Catholic parishioners would be wary of airing their grievances in the mainstream media, the foremost purveyor of political correctness in the United States.

After all, The Catholic Church, with its principled opposition to such things as same-sex marriage, abortion and contraceptives, is the most politically incorrect institution in the country.

The media’s militant support of policies and practices that the Church conscientiously opposes is a major reason why anti-Catholicism remains an acceptable bigotry in today’s increasingly secular society.

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CANADA
CBC News

By Susana Mas, CBC News

The Truth and Reconciliation Commission releases its final report Tuesday on the history and legacy of Canada’s residential school system.

Here are some numbers and facts contained in the final report of the commission:

6,750 — Statements received by the Truth and Reconciliation from survivors of residential schools, members of their families and other individuals

150,000 — First Nation, Métis, and Inuit students who went to residential schools.

37,951 — Claims made for injuries resulting from physical and sexual abuse in residential schools.

30,939 — Claims resolved for sexual or serious physical abuse in residential schools by the end of 2014.

$2.69 — Compensation in billions for claims resolved by the end of 2014.

3,200 — Documented number of indigenous children who died in residential schools. Justice Murray Sinclair, the chair of the commission, estimates the number of deaths is much higher.

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CANADA
CBC News

By Susana Mas, CBC News

The Truth and Reconciliation Commission will make public on Tuesday its final report documenting the history and legacy of Canada’s residential school system, raising serious concerns for current and future generations of First Nations, Inuit and Métis children.

The final report, titled Honouring the Truth, Reconciling for the Future, is the culmination of thousands of hours of heart-wrenching testimony heard in more than 300 communities over a span of six years, from more than 6,000 indigenous women and men who were abused and lived to tell their stories.

“The survivors showed great courage, conviction, and trust in sharing their stories, which, collected here, are now a part of a permanent historical record, never to be forgotten or ignored,” writes Justice Murray Sinclair, the chair of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, in the final report obtained by CBC News.

A summary report released by the commission in June made 94 recommendations, including changes to policies and programs.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, who will be present when Sinclair unveils the final report in Ottawa on Tuesday, has committed to implementing all the recommendations, including the adoption of the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples and a national inquiry into missing and murdered indigenous women and girls.

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CANADA
CBC News

By Tim Fontaine, CBC News

The final report of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada was released Monday and reveals in chilling detail the horrors of the residential school system.

Within its over 3,700 pages are stories of children forcibly separated from their families, communities, language and culture who ended up suffering shocking rates of mental, physical and sexual abuse.

Over 3,200 of those children never returned home, with many of their bodies buried in unmarked cemeteries across the country. The majority were taken by disease — tuberculosis, influenza, typhoid and other maladies.

Nearly a dozen, however, died while trying to escape the schools. These accounts are contained in a couple of parts of the TRC’s final report, including one called “Missing Children and Unmarked Burials.”

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CANADA
Ottawa Citizen

MARK KENNEDY, OTTAWA CITIZEN

More than 3,000 aboriginal children died at residential schools, often of causes that could have been prevented, and the failures of those responsible for properly safeguarding the students bordered on criminal, according to a special report on the scandal.

In its final report to be released Tuesday, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) provides a detailed account of the known deaths. The recorded figure is 3,201 but the actual number is probably much higher because of incomplete records, and the commission notes the death rate was much higher than among children in Canada’s general population.

Its report documents how the children were buried in gravesites, many unmarked, that were not in their own communities. Today, many of those gravesites sit untended – the final injustice to the children.

Government, church, and school officials were well aware of these failures and their impact on student health.

“Thousands of Aboriginal children died in residential schools,” says the TRC’s new report. “They were killed by relentless waves of epidemics – tuberculosis and a host of other infectious diseases – that swept repeatedly through the institutions. Those children did not have to die.

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CANADA
Ottawa Citizen

MARK KENNEDY, OTTAWA CITIZEN

Modern-day Canada is perpetuating the mistakes that led to the creation of the often-abusive aboriginal residential schools more than a century ago by policies that still harm indigenous people, an exhaustive new report has concluded.

The warning comes in the final report of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, to be released Tuesday. The seven-volume report, a blistering indictment of Canada’s current approach to aboriginal issues, puts the onus squarely on political leaders at all levels to change government policies.

“The beliefs and attitudes that were used to justify the establishment of residential schools are not things of the past: they continue to animate much of what passes for Aboriginal policy today,” says the report.

“Reconciliation will require more than pious words about the shortcomings of those who preceded us. It obliges us to both recognize the ways in which the legacy of residential schools continues to disfigure Canadian life and to abandon policies and approaches that currently serve to extend that hurtful legacy.”

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CANADA
Ottawa Citizen

MARK KENNEDY, OTTAWA CITIZEN

An upcoming public inquiry into missing and murdered aboriginal women must explore a range of possible causes, including the role of gangs and the international sex trade, says the Truth and Reconciliation Commission.

It also says the inquiry must expose “systemic” flaws that can be remedied with new policy.

In its final report, the commission strongly supports a public inquiry and provides more than 20 specific recommendations on how it should be structured. The TRC says the inquiry should look at the role played by governments, the RCMP and other police and the child welfare system.

Aboriginal women are more likely than other women to experience risk factors for violence.

As well, the commissioners say the inquiry should look at whether serial killers are at fault, and how the threat of violence against Canadian aboriginal women compares to similar threats in other countries.

“Aboriginal women are more likely than other women to experience risk factors for violence,” the commission says in its report, to be released Tuesday. “They are disproportionately young, poor, unemployed, likely to have been involved with the child welfare system and to live in a community marked by social disorder.”

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CANADA
Ottawa Citizen

[with video]

DREW GRAGG

The Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s final report into the history of Canada’s residential school system will be released tomorrow in Ottawa.

The commission released its summary report in June, with 94 recommendations for reform.

Then-prime minister Stephen Harper gave the report a cool, non-committal reception. But newly elected prime minister Justin Trudeau is much more supportive and has endorsed the report, pledging to enact its recommendations. He will have to work with premiers, because many of the proposals fall within provincial jurisdiction.

Trudeau promises to launch a new “nation-to-nation” relationship. That relationship will start with reconciling the mistakes of the past and building a better future for Indigenous people.

The Citizen’s parliamentary bureau chief Mark Kennedy has spent years writing about the TRC and the history of Canada’s aboriginal residential school system.

He has prepared this package on what Canadians should know about the report.

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CANADA
The Globe and Mail

GLORIA GALLOWAY
OTTAWA — The Globe and Mail
Published Monday, Dec. 14, 2015

The commission that has spent the past five years trying to learn the truth about abuses of children at the former Indian residential schools says it is time for the names of all of those students who died, and the locations of their burials, to be known.

The final report of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission is to be made public on Tuesday morning. Its main findings – including the determination that what happened behind the walls of the church-run schools amounted to cultural genocide – were released last spring along with a list of 94 “calls to action” to address ongoing problems. What is being put forward now is thousands of pages of contextual details, historical data and voices of survivors.

One section is devoted to the commission’s assertion that the students who perished in the institutions must be identified and their remains located.

“As a parent, as a family, when you’ve lost somebody, you need to know everything about that loss that you can get your hands on,” Murray Sinclair, the chair of the commission, said in an interview with The Globe and Mail. “You need to know all that can be disclosed, you need to know why they died, where they died, what they died of, and you need to know as well, where they are buried.”

Justice Sinclair says his commission’s final report is about 2,300,000 words long and presents, in tremendous detail, the post-colonization history of Canada’s indigenous peoples.

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DEUTSCHLAND
Kirchen Zeitung

[Time is not a measure of respectability. The doctor and Protestant theologian Dr. Bernd Deiningerhas been therapist for nearly 25 years to Catholic clergy. He said it is important to support victims of Abuse. The former Bishop of Hildesheim, Heinrich Maria Janssen, is said to have severely sexually abused a boy for several years. Many of his former companions are shocked. Had they not remembered something? How could he live a normal life as a bishop?]

Der Arzt und evangelische Theologe Dr. Bernd Deininger therapiert seit fast 25 Jahren katholische Geistliche. Für die Kirchenzeitung erklärt er, wie ein Mensch zum Täter wird und warum es wichtig ist, die Opfer zu stützen.

Der ehemalige Bischof von Hildesheim, Heinrich Maria Janssen, soll einen Jungen über mehrere Jahre hinweg schwer sexuell missbraucht haben. Viele der ehemaligen Weggefährten sind schockiert. Hätten sie nicht etwas merken müssen? Wie konnte er nach außen hin ein ganz normales Leben als Bischof führen?

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DEUTSCHLAND
Regensburg Digital

Von Robert Werner in Nachrichten, Überregional

Demütigungen, Schläge, foltergleiche und religiös aufgeladene Strafen, Übergriffe aller Art – dafür steht der frühere Direktor des Domspatzen-Internats Johann Meier. Kürzlich hat der Verein der „Freunde des Domchors“ dem sadistischen Gewalttäter die Ehrenmitgliedschaft aberkannt – heimlich, still und leise. Anmerkungen zum ehemaligen Domspatzendirektor Johann Meier, seinen (Ex-)Freunden und dem Domkapellmeister a.D. Georg Ratzinger. Eine Recherche in zwei Teilen.

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NEW YORK
The Worthy Adversary

Posted by Joelle Casteix on December 14, 2015

Two unrelated cases in New York State are going to test Catholics’ faith in their leadership.

The rest of us are going to get an unprecedented look at how NY church leaders handle cases of sexual abuse.

Case number one is dominating the headlines – I mean, how often do you see this:

‘Sex slave’ priest who ‘stole from church for BDSM with his master’ railed against gays and lesbians and called parishioners ‘sinful’, congregation claims

The story is lurid and new details are being leaked every day.

But here’s the meat of the story: the “sex slave priest” Fr. Peter Miqueli is being accused by worshippers of stealing millions to pay for his BDSM “boy toy” and their very icky antics. But the REAL news hasn’t been released yet: I predict that when the always-fatal “drip, drip, drip of information” is fully underway, we are going to learn WHAT NY Cardinal Timothy Dolan knew about the perv priest and WHEN he knew it … and that Dolan knew a whole lot more (a whole lot sooner) than he says he did. …

Case number two is not in the headlines …yet. But the effects of the case are going to change the way that some New Yorkers look at child sexual abuse in their dioceses.

The Supreme Court of the State of New York has decided that a public nuisance lawsuit against the Diocese of Rockville Centre can proceed. The lawsuit was brought by a Long Island girl who says she was sexually abused by Fr. Gregory Yackyshyn in 2003, when she was eight years old.

A year earlier in 2002, the Suffolk County Supreme Court Grand Jury issued a report of its investigation into the Diocese of Rockville Centre. The report concluded that “officials in the diocese failed in their responsibility to protect children.”

The report went on to say that their actions “were more than simple incompetence. Diocesan officials agreed to engage in conduct that resulted in the prevention, hindrance and delay in the discovery of criminal conduct by priests.”

It gets worse. In 2004, the diocese disclosed that they knew there were 66 sex-offending priests in the Diocese of Rockville Centre.

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PHILADELPHIA (PA)
Philadelphia Inquirer

Joe Slobodzian
POSTED: MONDAY, DECEMBER 14, 2015

Almost 3-1/2 years after a Philadelphia jury said it could not reach a verdict in the sex-assault trial of former Catholic priest James J. Brennan, the retrial of the 52-year-old has been put off again.

Again, as in the sixth time since June 22, 2012, when a Common Pleas Court jury hung. On Friday, Assistant District Attorney Meghan Goddard and defense lawyer William J. Brennan – not related to his client – met with Judge Gwendolyn N. Bright and decided that Jan. 4 would no longer work for what is estimated to be a three-day jury trial. Instead, the parties will meet on Jan. 4 and decide on a new trial date.

No legal issues or problems caused the delay, just the usual scheduling conflicts.

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MINNESOTA
Bring Me The News

A Minnesota woman is suing Zion Lutheran Church, saying she was abused by a youth minister there when she was a minor.

The woman, identified as Jane Doe 115, says she went to the Hopkins church while growing up, and because of that had developed a trust with the church and its members, according to a news release from Noaker Law.

But from 1974-77, the lawsuit says, Jane Doe was sexually abused by a youth minister who was a member of the church. She was between 11 and 14 years old at the time, according to the complaint.

Zion Lutheran Church told BringMeTheNews Monday it had no comment.

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MINNESOTA
KSTP

Jennie Lissarrague

A Minnesota woman has filed a lawsuit against the Zion Lutheran Church in Hopkins alleging that she was sexually abused as a child in the 1970s.

The victim says she was abused by youth minister John Huchthausen starting in 1974 when she was 12 years old. She was a parishioner at the church at the time.

The civil complaint was filed in Hennepin County and alleges negligence against the church for exposing her to the alleged abuse and for failing to properly supervise Huchthausen.

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MINNESOTA
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests

For immediate release: Monday, Dec. 14, 2015

Statement by David Clohessy of St. Louis, director of SNAP, the Survivors Network of those abused by Priests (314 566 9790, davidgclohessy@gmail.com)

We applaud the brave woman who is suing an abusive Minnesota youth minister and shining a light on child sex crimes and cover ups in Protestant denominations.

[Bring Me The News]

She reports having been repeatedly sexually violated when she was 12 and a member of the Zion Lutheran Church in Hopkins, Minnesota. The alleged predator is Rev. John Huchthausen who reportedly arrived at the Church in 1974 after being as a missionary in the Philippines. He appears to have stayed at the church until 1979.

We hope others who saw, suspected or suffered clergy sex crimes or cover ups in Protestant churches will come forward, expose wrongdoers, protect kids and call police.

We share the concern voiced by Doe’s attorneys: that relatively fewer women who were abused as girls seek justice than men who were abused by boys. We urge every single person who was raped or molested as innocent kids or vulnerable adults to use the courts to warn parents, police, prosecutors and the public about clerics who commit or conceal sexual violence.

The new civil suit was filed in Hennepin County.

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NEW YORK
Staten Island Advance

By Eddie DAnna | danna@siadvance.com
on December 14, 2015

STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. — While its investigation is ongoing, the Archdiocese says it has yet to substantiate claims against a priest with Staten Island ties accused in a lawsuit of using collection-plate money to support a homosexual relationship with his “sex master.”

In an email sent Sunday night to parishioners, the Archdiocese’s communications office said officials have met with parishioners at St. Frances de Chantal R.C. Church in the Bronx to hear their concerns over Rev. Peter Miqueli.

“To date we have found nothing to substantiate the allegations that have been raised, and, in fact, with regard to the parish finances, we know that the allegation that Father Miqueli stole $1 million from each parish, as was alleged by the plaintiffs’ attorney, is completely false,” the Archdiocese email reads. “We did find that Father Miqueli had deficient management and administrative practices, and have put forward several directives to remedy those deficiencies.”

The investigation, including a “forensic audit of the parish,” will continue, according to the email.

According to a lawsuit filed in Manhattan Supreme Court last Monday, several worshippers claim Father Miqueli used their money to fuel BDSM (bondage, discipline, sadism, masochism) sex romps with his “sex master,” Keith Crist.

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UNITED STATES
Mennonite Church USA

Ervin Stutzman is executive director of Mennonite Church USA.

The Discernment Group working to care for victims of John Howard Yoder’s sexual abuse and to advocate against sexual abuse in the Mennonite Church has established a Care and Prevention Fund with Mennonite Church USA.

The purpose of the fund is threefold: 1) to recompense, at least in some small measure, the material costs that persons victimized by Yoder or another credentialed leader of Mennonite Church USA undertook on their road to healing; 2) to provide tangible care for persons who have experienced sexual abuse; 3) to assist in prevention of sexual abuse.

We invite individuals with particular concern for victims and prevention of sexual abuse to contribute to this fund.

In addition, we are encouraging a number of Mennonite institutions specifically involved in promoting Yoder’s teaching and writing ministry to contribute to the fund. Further, we will receive an offering during the adult worship service on Wednesday, July 1 and the youth worship service on Friday, July 3, at Mennonite Church USA’s Kansas City Convention. That evening, there will be a Service of Lament and Hope at a nearby church facility, focused on the hurts experienced through sexual abuse in our denomination and the healing we seek from God.

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AUSTRALIA
9 News

AAP

The Catholic Church still has not got its act together and needs outside help to change a culture which has protected pedophile priests, an inquiry has heard.

Retired priest Fr John McKinnon said the church would never have held a royal commission into itself and needs people from the outside looking in to change its culture.

“I just think that we need help, but it will have to be help that we don’t want, in a sense. Help that’s hard for us to face,” Fr McKinnon told the child abuse royal commission.

“I just wonder whether we almost need to get to a stage where we’ve got to face the wall before we bounce back in a realistic way. But I hope this helps us, I really do.”

Fr McKinnon said there were a lot of failures by advisers to former Ballarat bishop Ronald Mulkearns on the College of Consultors.

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UNITED STATES
Esquire

BY CHARLES P. PIERCE
DEC 14, 2015

Holy hell, you should pardon the expression. It is for stories like this that God made tabloid newspapers.

“I have made the decision to step aside … while this unfortunate and regrettable situation is investigated,” said Miqueli’s resignation letter, which was read to the faithful at St. Frances de Chantal Church. Two days earlier, a lawsuit filed by members of St. Frances de Chantal and Miqueli’s former church, St. Francis Cabrini on Roosevelt Island, accused Miqueli of using the looted funds to help finance a perverse master/slave love affair with boy toy Keith Crist. The priest played the submissive role, even agreeing to drink Crist’s urine, the suit charged. The priest paid his sex partner $1,000 a pop for the rough sex sessions, according to the suit.

Now, as is well-known, we don’t go in for mere voyeurism here in the shebeen—But, if we did, hoo, boy!—so our excuse for mentioning Father 50 Shades Of Grace here is to mention once again that Dolan From New York is proving to be a rather less than effective leader of his flock.

Earlier in his career, when he was presiding in Milwaukee, Dolan almost literally buried church funds to keep them away from litigants who’d been molested by priests of that archdiocese, stashing $57 million away in an archdiocesan cemetery trust fund. Despite these shenanigans, he got the red hat and the big chair in New York where he has behaved like a cheap-seats Spellman, wearing his Yankee cap, cracking wise on satellite radio and on Morning Joe, and being altogether a handy nuisance for those people opposed to what Papa Francesco is about over there in Rome.

Now, as it turns out, he probably knew more than he’d liked to have known about his alleged wandering slave-boy cleric. Here’s the tell.

Dolan said he turned the e-mails over to investigators soon after receiving them this past summer from whistle-blower Tatyana Gudin, onetime live-in girlfriend and confidante of the priest’s S&M “master” Keith Crist. First, though, Dolan invited Gudin to take her evidence to archdiocese investigators, the cardinal said. Gudin backed out when the archdiocese insisted she come alone, explained attorney Michael Dowd, who is representing her and the lawsuit’s 14 parishioner plaintiffs.

Jesus H. Christ on a steam table, there’s a damn hit movie out there right now about what happens when first you take your evidence to archdiocesan investigators. That Dolan thought he could run this rap after everything else that’s gone on over the past 15 years is proof enough that he’s learned nothing. Your Yankee cap won’t get you into heaven anymore, pal.

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AUSTRALIA
9 News

AAP

A group of angry Catholics is taking its campaign to have Cardinal George Pell removed from the Catholic church on the road – in a bright red caravan.

The small, as yet un-named group has collected more than 10,000 signatures on a petition calling for Pope Francis to sack Cardinal Pell over his response to child abuse within the church in Australia.

The caravan, emblazoned with the words “SACK PELL NOW”, will leave Melbourne’s St Patrick’s Cathedral on Tuesday and will be driven by volunteers across the state to gather more signatures.

It will return to Melbourne in February, when Cardinal Pell is due to appear before the royal commission into child sex abuse.

Ill health prevented him from travelling from the Vatican City to Melbourne for an expected appearance this week.

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AUSTRALIA
The Age

December 15, 2015

Judy Courtin

The Catholic Church continues to harm sex abuse victims by its failure to acknowledge the extent to which it covered-up sex crimes against children.

For three weeks, the County Court of Victoria has been host to countless victim survivors of Catholic clergy child-sex crimes. The severe psychological and psychiatric harm caused by these crimes was evident not only with the primary victims giving evidence, but also the many family members of loved ones who had killed themselves because the pain and damage of the sex crimes were too great to bear.

The Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse fastidiously scheduled four weeks of hearings into the Catholic Archdiocese of Melbourne and the Diocese of Ballarat. These were to be concluded this week by three days of evidence and cross-examination of Cardinal George Pell. But such an apotheosis was abruptly truncated on Friday as Cardinal Pell belatedly made an application to the court to have his evidence heard from Rome via videolink, rather than attend in person in Melbourne, as previously contracted. Pell’s blood pressure, it seemed, was elevated. He was well enough to give evidence, but not to travel.

As well as refusing the application, Justice Peter McClellan​ categorically quashed any perceived or real conflict of interest by declining to accept Pell’s invitation that his senior counsel, Allan Myers QC, be granted a private and confidential audience to determine Pell’s application to not travel to Australia. It is the imperious quality of this request that highlights Pell’s hard-wired sense of entitlement – that same sense of entitlement that has underpinned decades of rebuff and cruel dismissal of victims and their families by Pell and his henchmen.

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UNITED STATES
Crux

By The Rev. Kenneth Doyle
Catholic News Service
December 14, 2015

Q. I am an Irish Catholic/Catholic-school kid, now 68 years old, and this is what I want to know: Given the sexual abuse of children by Catholic clergy, how can my Church allow Bernard Law to remain a priest — no longer in Boston, but at the Vatican, no less? Given his performance in Boston, letting him continue as a priest in good standing is awful. My non-church-going Catholic friends comment on the Church’s hypocrisy because of issues like this one. I agree with them, although I intend to remain a practicing Catholic. (Loudonville, New York)

A. In early 2002, the grave scandal of sexual abuse of children by clergy was uncovered, largely through a series of articles in The Boston Globe. Later that same year, Cardinal Bernard Law resigned as archbishop of Boston in the wake of that scandal for what was widely regarded as a lack of proper oversight on his part.

In 2004, Cardinal Law was named archpriest of the Basilica of St. Mary Major in Rome; even though that post is largely ceremonial, some saw the appointment as the Vatican’s failure to grasp the magnitude of the sex abuse crisis.

In 2011, shortly after he reached the age of 80, Cardinal Law was replaced as archpriest of St. Mary Major. In accord with the “zero tolerance” policy adopted by the US bishops in June 2002, every cleric who has been credibly accused has now been removed from active ministry, but some have argued that bishops who failed to exercise due diligence in clerical assignments should also be punished.

In June 2015, Pope Francis created a Church tribunal to judge bishops who failed to protect children. During 2015, at least three bishops worldwide have resigned or been removed from office in the wake of sexual abuse scandals in their dioceses.

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MINNESOTA
Noaker Law Firm

New National Team Seeks Justice for the Female Survivor

Zion Lutheran Church CloseWhat: Press Conference: a newly-formed national attorney team will discuss a civil lawsuit filed by a local woman against the Zion Lutheran Church in Hopkins, Minnesota. The woman alleges sexual abuse by Youth Minister John Huchthausen beginning in 1974 when the girl was 12 years of age and a parishioner at the Church.

When: Monday, December 14, 2015 at 1:00 pm

Where: Noaker Law Firm, 333 Washington Avenue N., Third Floor, Minneapolis, MN 55401

Who: Jane Doe 115 is represented by Hamilton James, a newly formed national attorney team. Internationally renowned Constitutional lawyer and outspoken child protection adocate Professor Marci Hamilton, has joined three of the nation’s leading lawyers representing women and men in child sexual abuse cases — Leander James, Craig Vernon and Minneapolis-based Patrick Noaker.

“We are honored and immensely humbled that the leading intellect in child protection advocacy has chosen to work with us,” said Leander James. “For years, Professor Hamilton has been the go-to intellect for legislators drafting child-protection legislation and appellate courts addressing Constitutional aspects of child sexual abuse cases,” added Craig Vernon.

According to Professor Hamilton, “It has become clear to me that the best route to child protection is through the legal system. The best advocacy comes with a dedicated team. It is a fact that the entities that hide abusers simply will not stop until they are held accountable in a court of law. The window of time created by the Child Victims Act in Minnesota, which will close in May 2016, is an example of what is needed for the public to learn where hidden predators are.

Professor Hamilton says that she has been increasingly concerned that female survivors have not come forward here in Minnesota and elsewhere, even though girls are abused at a higher rate than boys. “I applaud Jane Doe 115 for her courage in coming forward today and I hope that women across the country will find their voices so that the public will learn who the hidden predators.”

More Detail:

In the civil Complaint filed in Hennepin County, the woman described as Jane Doe 115 brings claims of negligence against Zion Lutheran Church for exposing her to the sexually abusive Huchthausen, when she was a minor and for failing to properly supervise Huchthausen.

Click Here for a Photograph of Rev. John Huchthausen

Click Here for Photograph of Zion Lutheran Church HD Size 4MB

Click Here for Close Photograph of Zion Lutheran Church HD Size 2MB

According to the Zion Lutheran Church website, Rev, John Huchthausen arrived at the Church in 1974 after serving as a missionary in the Philippines. It is unknown whether he molested children while in the Philippines. Huchthausen was installed as a pastor in 1976 and appears to have remained at the Church until 1979.

“This young 12-year-old girl was subjected to repeated, severe sexual abuse at the hands of her youth minister, in and around the Church and during youth activities,” reported attorney Patrick Noaker. “The sexual abuse continued for two and a half years, until the girl was 14.”

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NEW YORK
New York Post

By Julia Marsh and Priscilla DeGregory December 14, 2015

The Rev. Peter Miqueli was intensely jealous of his S&M boy toy — and it was that jealousy that led to his ouster from the pulpit, The Post has learned.

Miqueli flew into a rage after discovering that his bought-and-paid-for “master,” Keith Crist, had a longtime girlfriend he secretly shacked up with in the Harlem apartment for which the priest was paying rent.

The randy rev eventually forced Crist to pick between him and the woman earlier this year, spurned girlfriend and whistle-blower Tatyana Gudin told The Post.

When Crist picked Miqueli, kicking her out of the apartment, it helped set off a chain of events that has led to the priest’s downfall at St. Frances de Chantal Church in The Bronx.

It was “the straw that broke the camel’s back,” Gudin said of getting tossed into the street by both Miqueli and Crist, prompting her to reach out to a lawyer, church parishioners and even Timothy Cardinal Dolan to tell them the priest was leading a secret life of lust and larceny.

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AUSTRALIA
ABC News

A former Brother and teacher at a Catholic school in Wollongong has been charged with historic sex offences against a pupil more than 20 years ago.

The 73-year-old is charged with 21 offences, including nine counts of indecent assault in authority and 12 counts of homosexual intercourse between a teacher and a pupil.

The offences allegedly occurred while the man was teaching a Catholic school in Wollongong between 1989 and 1991.

Police allege the victim was a student aged 12 to 14 at the time.

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NEW YORK
Church Militant

The news is now out — no thanks to the archdiocese of New York under Cdl. Timothy Dolan, which has dismissed faithful Catholics’ concerns for many months now.

An alleged homosexual priest, Fr. Peter Miqueli, whom parishioners at not one but two parishes in the New York archdiocese say has been stealing money from the parishes for years and using it in part to finance a sadomasochistic homosexual fantasy life has finally broken into the secular press.

ChurchMilitant.com was the first to report on the rumblings of all this last month — but unsatisfied with stonewalling for months from the New York hierarchy, the parishioners went public and filed a lawsuit, forcing Cdl. Dolan’s hand and the story into the open. We have linked to the story in the secular press, which has many of the more lurid details, but we will not air them here. Suffice it to say, they are lurid. But we offer the link to make the point that there is something terribly wrong in the Church in America.

ChurchMilitant.com has been investigating this story for more than a year after receiving various calls from within the archdiocese from concerned officials that nothing was being done or taken seriously. In fact, even with all these charges of theft and deviant sex flying around, Fr. Miqueli was left alone as pastor, despite pleadings from the faithful. And here is the problem in a nutshell: There is no real concern about homosexual priests in the ranks of the clergy as long as they are not molesting boys. And the reason is because there is too much gay-friendliness on the part of senior clergy and bishops and even cardinals.

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AUSTRALIA
Illawarra Mercury

By Melissa Cunningham
Dec. 14, 2015

THEY are in a city full of people but there were moments Ballarat’s clergy sex abuse survivors never felt more alone.

The Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse’s public hearing into Catholic Church authorities in Ballarat commenced at the Melbourne County Court last week.

As more truth emerges of Ballarat’s dark history of abuse, torture and rape survivors Andrew Collins and Peter Blenkiron say the emotional toll of being away from their loved ones intensifies.

“It’s really, really hard,” Mr Collins said. “I’m surrounded by people and I still feel alone. I’m really missing my family and my support structure but it’s important to be here so I’ve got to get through it.”

Mr Blenkiron said many of the survivors attended the public hearings then go back to their accommodation and fall to pieces.

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ITALY
Evangelical Focus

The Italian Evangelical Alliance (AEI) “joins the appeal” made by several entities (among them, the International Press Institute) which “cannot tolerate the interference of a foreign state violating important principles of freedom of press and the limits of its jurisdiction.”

In a statement, the AEI supported the right of journalists Emiliano Fittipaldi (author of the book Avaritia) and Gianluigi Nuzzi (author of Via Crucis) to inform about scandals affecting the Vatican.

On November 24, the State of Vatican City put on trial two journalists for reporting on the financial scandals of the Holy See in their publications, which were printed in Italy.

“The Vatican does not deny the veracity of the documents published, but accuses the two journalists of making them public by concealing their ‘secrecy’”, the AEI says.

“FREEDOM OF PRESS IS GUARANTEED BY THE ITALIAN CONSTITUTION”

“On trial there are not just two journalists, but also citizens of the Italian Republic. On trial is the right (in fact, the professional duty) of the journalist to disclose news of which he/she is aware.”

The texts defends “the freedom of press, guaranteed by the Italian Constitution, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union.”

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CANADA
Global News

The Canadian Press

OTTAWA – The Truth and Reconciliation Commission, which documented the haunting legacy of Canada’s residential schools, is set to present its final report Tuesday to the parties in the class-action settlement that led to its creation.

Justice Murray Sinclair, who has led the TRC’s exhaustive investigation over the past six years, said each member of the agreement will receive a copy of the massive findings to complete the commission’s obligation.

The Indian Residential Schools Settlement Agreement was reached after former residential school survivors took the federal government and churches to court with the support of the Assembly of First Nations and Inuit organizations.

The arrangement was designed to help repair the lasting damage caused by the schools, and – in addition to compensating survivors – to explore the truth behind the government-funded, church-operated assimilation program that existed in Canada from the 1870s to 1996.

After unveiling its summary in June, which included the key finding that the residential school system facilitated nothing short of “cultural genocide,” the TRC will now release hard copies of the full report.

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AUSTRALIA
The Standard

By Melissa Cunningham
Dec. 13, 2015

A SENIOR Catholic figure faced scrutiny for failure to respond to the pleas of parents trying to protect their children from paedophile priest Gerard Ridsdale.

Several parents complained to Brisbane auxiliary bishop Brian Finnigan about Ridsdale’s “disturbing” behaviour in Mortlake in 1981, the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sex Abuse was told.

The inquiry heard on Friday that Bishop Finnigan, then secretary to Ballarat Bishop Ronald Mulkearns, told parents there was no reason to be concerned about Ridsdale.

The commission was told he never reported any complaints to Ballarat Bishop Ronald Mulkearns. Bishop Finnigan said he had no proof at the time the allegations were true.

“That was the information that was said,” he told the inquiry.

“Whether it was true or not was another question.”

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UNITED STATES
Indianapolis Star

David Lindquist, david.lindquist@indystar.com

December 14, 2015

Twelve years after The Boston Globe’s Spotlight team of journalists won a Pulitzer Prize, a film based on the team’s work is collecting high honors.

“Spotlight” was named 2015’s best film by the Indiana Film Journalists Association. The drama, which explores the Catholic Church’s cover-up of clergy sexual abuse, also won in the categories of best original screenplay and best supporting actor for Mark Ruffalo.

“Room,” runner-up in the best-film category, won three Indiana Film Journalists Association awards: Emma Donoghue’s script in the best adapted screenplay category, Brie Larson for best actress and Jacob Tremblay for best actor.

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UNITED STATES
Church Militant

by Christine Niles • ChurchMilitant.com • December 9, 2015

One of the biggest lies of the sex abuse scandal is that “pedophile priests” were the culprits In spite of the well-deserved acclaim received by the film “Spotlight,” which highlights the Boston Globe’s investigative work exposing the massive sex abuse cover-up in Boston under Cdl. Bernard Law, the film is not perfect. Namely, it exhibits a distinct discomfort in pointing fingers at homosexuality — the same discomfort exhibited in large part by the Church hierarchy, which, in spite of tough measures implemented after the sex abuse crisis, fails to look at the root cause: homosexual priests, and the gay-friendly bishops who protect them.

“Spotlight” deflects from the issue, one of its characters insisting in one scene, “This has nothing to do with homosexuality.” The character claims the abuse happened to both boys and girls — and to drive home the point, “Spotlight” ends on a scene with a couple little girls waiting in a law firm conference room while their attorney, Mitchell Garabedian (played by Stanley Tucci), makes clear they are yet more abuse victims in need of help.

Statistically, though, girls are only a fraction of the victims in the Church sex abuse scandal. After the crisis revealed itself to be much bigger than Catholics ever knew, stretching far beyond Boston — to date at least 11 dioceses have declared bankruptcy within the past decade as a result of lawsuits (Duluth being the latest), with settlements totaling hundreds of millions of dollars — the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops in 2002 commissioned a study to examine the root causes of the crisis.

The National Review Board, recruiting a research team from the John Jay College of Criminal Justice, released its initial report in 2004. The results were conclusive: This was not a “pedophile” scandal, but a homosexual scandal. Eighty percent of the alleged victims were male, and nearly 90 percent were post-pubescent, with “only a small percentage of priests receiving allegations of abusing young children.” An updated report, issued in 2011, revealed similar numbers: 81 percent of sex abuse victims were boys, and 78 percent were post-pubescent.

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AUSTRALIA
SBS

Source: AAP
14 DEC 2015

An Australian bishop has been accused of not being candid about his knowledge of pedophile priests in a bid to protect himself and the Catholic Church.

Brisbane auxiliary bishop Brian Finnigan had not sought to help the child abuse royal commission’s investigation into pedophile priest Gerald Francis Ridsdale’s offending in the Diocese of Ballarat, the inquiry heard.

Counsel assisting the commission Angus Stewart SC compared Bishop Finnigan’s evidence to church officials’ response to child sex abuse complaints in the 1980s.

Mr Stewart said the former Ballarat vicar-general and bishop’s secretary’s evidence lacked compassion and was not candid.

Bishop Finnigan disagreed, although he said the response of church officials was appalling.

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AUSTRALIA
ABC News

By Danny Morgan

A Catholic bishop has been accused of trying to protect himself and the church while giving evidence at the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse.

Bishop Brian Finnigan was among a group of priests who handled complaints of paedophilia among priests in the Ballarat Diocese in the 1980s.

Counsel Assisting the Commission Angus Stewart SC asked the bishop why his evidence in a private hearing earlier this year differed from his evidence in public hearings today and last Friday.

“The evidence that you have given for the royal commission on Friday and indeed this morning has not been given in such a way that you have sought to assist the royal commission and the public to understand the history of Gerald Ridsdale in the Diocese of Ballarat,” he put to Bishop Finnigan.

Bishop Finnigan replied that his intention was “certainly not to create confusion”.

Bishop Finnigan: “If I have created confusion because of my various ways of expressing things all I can say is ‘I’m sorry’.”

Angus Stewart SC: “I say to you bishop that in your evidence in this public hearing you have consistently distanced yourself from any knowledge of child sexual assault by priests of the dioceses to protect yourself and to protect the church – isn’t that right?”

Bishop Finnigan: I wouldn’t agree with that.

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AUSTRALIA
Sydney Morning Herald

December 14, 2015

Jane Lee

A Catholic bishop has been accused of being untruthful to a royal commission in order to protect himself and the church from criticism over their handling of child sexual abuse allegations against clergy.

Brisbane’s auxiliary bishop Brian Finnigan, formerly a secretary and adviser to former Bishop of Ballarat Ronald Mulkearns, has been grilled for almost two days about his knowledge of allegations against serial child sex offenders, including disgraced priest Gerald Ridsdale.
He said on Friday that he only learned of Ridsdale’s crimes after 1993 and maintained on Monday that he only had “suspicions” of them before then.

Counsel assisting the commission, Angus Stewart, SC, said on Monday: “… you’ve consistently distanced yourself from any knowledge of child sexual abuse by priests of the diocese to protect yourself and to protect the church.”

He likened the Bishop’s testimony to the “appalling” experiences of survivors when they tried to discuss their abuse with church officials in the 1980s, because it “lacked any compassion” and had “not been candid”.

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AUSTRALIA
Broken Rites

By a Broken Rites researcher (article updated 11 December 2015)

A former Catholic religious Brother, Edward Mamo, who had already spent time in jail, was jailed again in Melbourne on 11 December 2015 after 14 more of his victims contacted Broken Rites and/or the Victoria Police. Mamo pleaded guilty to 21 additional indecent assaults, committed against these 14 victims while he worked as a Brother at Monivae College, a Catholic secondary school at Hamilton in western Victoria, in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Mamo has also worked at Chevalier College in Bowral, New South Wales, but this Victorian court case was only for Victorian offences.

The 14 victims were boys aged in their early teens or were as young as eleven when the assaults occurred.

Some of these 14 victims contacted Broken Rites (separately) several years ago after reading on the Broken Rites website about a previous Mamo court case. Broken Rites gave each of these new victims the contact details for detectives in the Victoria Police. These detectives then found some additional victims for the 2015 case. The investigation for the 2015 case was completed by the Sano Taskforce in the Victoria Police sex-crimes unit.

Monivae College was established by a religious order, the Missionaries of the Sacred Heart. This order is known by its Latin initials, MSC. Monivae College was originally for boys only, including boarders as well as day boys. It has since become co-educational.

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AUSTRALIA
The Courier

By Melissa Cunningham
Dec. 14, 2015

CLERGY sexual abuse survivor Paul Levey says he has spent his whole life trying to escape his past.

Mr Levey said he been a “broken man” since he was forced to live with notorious paedophile Gerard Ridsdale after his parents separated in 1982.

After being subjected to daily sexual abuse at the hands of Ridsdale, Mr Levey spent years in a haze of drugs and alcohol, trying to numb the pain.

He said he was struggling with his parent’s separation and Ridsdale offered to take care of him.

He said his time in the “monster cave” tore his family apart.

“It destroyed me and everything I was,” Mr Levey said.

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AUSTRALIA
The Courier

By Melissa Cunningham
Dec. 14, 2015

1pm

Fr McKinnon told the inquiry the bishop’s consultors never questioned him.

Admits to the commission that it was a failing on his part and the part of other consultors not to push further.

Fr Mckinnon told the inquiry the idea of celibacy and chastity means priests often miss out on life experience.

“I sometimes wonder whether the fact we’re celibate means that we miss out on the normal incentive to grow,” he told the inquiry.

12.50pm

Fr McKinnon tells inquiry he had an “instinct of dislike” for Ridsdale.

Also tells inquiry he cannot recall when he became aware of his offending against children.

He is now being probed about disgraced priest Paul Ryan’s resignation in 1991.

The resignation was discussed at a meeting lead by Bishop Mulkearns but Fr McKinnon said he has no recollection if the circumstances surrounding his resignation were discussed.

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NEW YORK
ABC 7

[with video]

By Kemberly Richardson

THROGGS NECK, Bronx (WABC) — After morning mass, Timothy Cardinal Dolan addressed allegations that are tearing a Throggs Neck parish apart – not by worshipers, but by the man who once led them – Father Peter Miqueli.

“We’re dealing with a lot of innuendo, a lot of rumors, a lot of gossip – what we have to deal with is the truth,” Cardinal Dolan said.

Frustration is felt by many at St. Frances de Chantal Church and so as not to be a distraction, Miqueli abruptly resigned this weekend by voluntarily stepped down from his post. Just days ago, parishioners sued the embattled priest for allegedly stealing roughly $1 million from St. Frances and his prior church on Roosevelt Island.

One woman claims she has proof that Miqueli used part of the cash to buy a home in New Jersey, and to fund a drug-fueled lifestyle for him and his alleged boyfriend.

Cardinal Dolan tells Eyewitness News that he forwarded the emails from the accused to the Bronx District Attorney.

“They are lured, terrible – now when I read them about three months ago, it was she saying ‘this is what I’m telling you, I have photographs, I have evidence – and I said, ‘oh, I’m glad, please come in and give them to me and to the police, and she didn’t’,” Cardinal Dolan said.

The Archdiocese of New York was also named in the lawsuit, is investigating all of this, and says so far it has found no evidence of embezzlement.

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NEW YORK
New York Post

By C.J. Sullivan December 13, 2015

Worshippers at a Bronx Catholic church broke into applause Sunday when a letter from their disgraced priest was read before Masses announcing he was stepping aside in the wake of a humiliating sex scandal.

The Rev. Peter Miqueli was nowhere to be found at St. Frances de Chantal Church when another priest read a letter from him, causing cheers to break out.

Craig Burner, one of the cheering parishioners, said Miqueli should have been out months ago.

“He was just mean and nasty. His letter is a lie,” Burner said. “We reported him to the archdiocese, and they said they would look into this, but they never did.”

Miqueli is being investigated for allegedly lifting church funds to pay for private boy toy Keith Crist, a muscular S&M master.

Parishioner William Doucet said he grew so suspicious of Miqueli that he stopped using cash for the collection plate.

“I stopped giving money in my envelope and would only write a check when I heard about the funny business with the money,” Doucet said.

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CANADA
Edmonton Journal

ALEXANDRA ZABJEK, EDMONTON JOURNAL

Published on: December 13, 2015

A victim of a notorious pedophile who worked at a Catholic Church in Edmonton in the 1970s is suing the former priest, the Archdiocese of Edmonton, and the Oblate Fathers of Assumption Province for $3-million.

In a statement of claim filed in court last week, the plaintiff — a resident of Edmonton who is not identified — said she was a five-year-old girl when Eric Dejaeger befriended her and started spending time with her under the guise of spiritual guidance.

Dejaeger has since been convicted of sexually assaulting numerous children while working in Canada, including the woman who filed the lawsuit. He is currently serving a 19-year sentence for 32 sex offences against Inuit children between 1978 and 1982. As part of that prison term, he is serving five years concurrent for his assaults on the woman.

During his time in Edmonton, Dejaeger was studying to be a priest and spent time at the Charles Camsell Hospital Parish where the woman’s family attended services. She met Dejaeger in 1975 and knew him for three years.

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NEW YORK
Daily Mail (UK)

The Catholic priest who allegedly stole more than $1million in donations to pay for gay sex with a sadomasochistic ‘master’ used to routinely berate parishioners for being gay or single parents, members of his congregation claim.

Rev Peter Miqueli resigned from his post as pastor at St Frances de Chantal in Throggs Neck, the Bronx, on Saturday.

The 53-year-old is accused of taking from the donation plate at St. Frances de Chantal and also stealing from his former church, St. Frances Xavier Cabrini on Roosevelt Island.

According to a lawsuit filed against him in Manhattan Supreme Court, the stolen donations were used to fund his $1,000-a-time bondage sessions with a gay ‘sex master’ named Keith Crist.

Now, members of Miqueli’s flock are speaking out, claiming the disgraced reverend seemed to harbor a unique hatred for homosexuals and single parents.

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NEW YORK
New York Daily News

BY DANIEL LEWIS, ALYN ACKERMANN, REUVEN BLAU
Sunday, December 13, 2015

Parishioners had mixed reactions Sunday to the resignation of their alleged S&M-loving Bronx priest.

The Rev. Peter Miqueli’s resignation letter was read to the faithful gathered at the start of three separate morning services at St. Frances de Chantal Church Sunday morning.

“He will come back!” shouted Theresa Chirinnos after the missive was read at the 10:30 a.m. mass. The congregation applauded.

After the service, Chirinnos, 66, said that she was a trustee at the church and helped open collection envelopes every week. She said Miqueli was arrogant but blamed a lawsuit against him alleging stolen funds on a small group of parishioners with an axe to grind.

“He no gay. He never stole money,” she said.

On Thursday, members of St. Frances de Chantal and Miqueli’s former church, St. Francis Cabrini on Roosevelt Island, accused Miqueli of using the plundered reserves to help pay for a master/slave love affair with boy toy Keith Crist. …

On Sunday, Archdiocese spokesman Joseph Zwilling admitted the church had some management problems. But he stressed that so far the claims against Miqueli have been unsubstantiated.

Zwilling said a woman in the parish says she has photos and emails that prove Miqueli was stealing money and was giving it to Crist, but after asking her multiple times to show them the documents she refused.

“We don’t have any documentation,” Zwilling said. “We don’t have any proof.”

“All we have are allegations,” he continued. “We’ve asked for documentation and we don’t have any.”

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AUSTRALIA
9 News

AAP

The Vatican refused to remove a Victorian priest despite his child sex abuse conviction and the pedophile wanted money to agree to be defrocked, documents show.

The Vatican has still not agreed to remove Paul David Ryan, 67, from the priesthood, nine years after the Diocese of Ballarat asked he be dismissed, documents before the child abuse royal commission show.

Then Ballarat bishop Peter Connors wrote to the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith in 2006 telling them Ryan was in jail and asking he be laicised as soon as possible.

The Vatican’s response in 2006 was: “The summary of the case that you have provided, while helpful, is insufficient to proceed with your request that Reverend Ryan be dismissed from the clerical state.”

The Vatican asked for further supporting documentation or that Ryan himself petition the Pope for dispensation from the priesthood, the documents show.

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NEW YORK
Free St. Frances de Chantal from Fr. Peter Miqueli

Joseph Zwilling, Director of Communications of the Archdiocese of New York, comments on the events and lawsuit regarding Fr. Peter Miqueli: CLICK HERE TO READ

A response:

While Zwilling continues to protect our pastor, Fr. Peter Miqueli, there are elements of his defense that are utterly false. He says that “The archdiocese has, from the beginning, taken these allegations seriously,” but this is hardly true. Had they been taking us seriously, we would not have had to go to the media for them to listen to us. For the past three years we have reached out to them and have been stonewalled with the most minimal efforts of help.
​
​He says that a forensic audit by the archdiocese is currently taking place. If the archdiocese is trying to protect itself, which as every time they issue a statement it is evident they are, the audit will be sloppy and not turn up any wrongdoing. Taking the audit into their own hands is suspicious and cannot be trusted.
​
One thing that Zwilling absolutely fails to comment on is Fr. Miqueli’s relationship with Keith Crist. This is a completely true, and sickening fact. There is no question about the two and their relations. The archdiocese has been well aware of the two being together and yet has done absolutely nothing, showing that they clearly approve of what is occurring.

Lastly, anything that has been said by our parish about Fr. Miquei is more true than anything the archdiocese has said or will say. The archdiocese is in the defense and is well experienced in covering things up. We as parishioners have gone to such lengths because of our convictions of Fr. Peter Miqueli. We have dealt with him and have personally witnessed his wrongdoing. The archdiocese has not. For them to try to understand the situation by staying in their offices and not really meeting with us to learn more about the situation, they cannot grasp the suffering we have been going through.

​In this situation, the archdiocese has something to lose. They have secrets they are protecting and Fr. Miqueli is a crucial element in them. If we did not stand firm in our attitude toward Fr. Miqueli, we would not have been fighting this for as long as we have been. The archdiocese, Cardinal Dolan, Zwilling, and Fr. Miqueli made this into the media circus that is has become. If the archdiocese had nothing to hide, and really cared about the issue at hand when first brought up three years ago, the extent to which this has escalated, would not have occurred.

God Bless St. Frances de Chantal and its Parishioners. ​​

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NEW YORK
Roman Catholic Archdiocese of New York

December 11, 2015

The following e-letter was sent out to parishioners on December 11, 2015.

Dear parishioners of the archdiocese:

You may have seen or heard some disturbing reports concerning a lawsuit filed against the pastor of one of our parishes, Father Miqueli of St. Frances de Chantal in the Bronx, as well as Cardinal Dolan and the Archdiocese of New York. I am sorry to have to discuss this issue, particularly during this time of the year, but I wanted you to have some more information about this than has been reported in the media.

First, I cannot and will not comment on the specifics of the lawsuit itself. As this is a legal matter, I will let the lawyers handle that in court.

But, I can say that there are a group of individuals at St. Francis de Chantal parish who have made some serious allegations concerning Fr. Miqueli. The archdiocese has, from the beginning, taken these allegations seriously, and has been investigating them, including conducting a forensic audit of the parish, which is still on-going. One of our auxiliary bishops, Bishop John Jenik, has met with the parishioners, in an effort to try to hear their concerns and reach a resolution, along with a distinguished group of legal professionals.

To date we have found nothing to substantiate the allegations that have been raised, and, in fact, with regard to the parish finances, we know that the allegation that Father Miqueli stole $1 million from each parish, as was alleged by the plantiffs’ attorney, is completely false. We did find that Father Miqueli had deficient management and administrative practices, and have put forward several directives to remedy those deficiencies.

We have asked the people who are making these charges to please provide us with documentation, but they have thus far failed to do so. I would like to reiterate that if anyone has information or documentation to substantiate the allegations, we would invite them to bring that information forward, or to contact the D.A.

However, I repeat, that we have been and continue to investigate this situation, but have not found anything that would confirm or substantiate the allegations raised. If, in the course of our ongoing investigation, we find additional information, we will, of course, take appropriate action in response.

Please keep all involved in this matter, particularly the parishioners of St. Frances de Chantal, in your prayers.

Sincerely,

Joseph Zwilling
Director of Communications

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NEW YORK
The American Conservative

By ROD DREHER • December 12, 2015

The parishioners at St. Frances de Chantal Catholic Church in the Bronx have had it with their pastor, Fr. Peter Miqueli, who allegedly brought habits of gross misconduct from his previous parish on Roosevelt Island into St. Frances. The Bronx parishioners, along with some of Miqueli’s former flock on Roosevelt Island, have filed a $1 million lawsuit in an effort to get him ousted and defrocked. …

Here’s what I don’t get: if you are the Cardinal Archbishop of New York, and you are credibly told that one of your priests is in an extremely kinky relationship with a gay prostitute, don’t you call that priest into your office the very next day and give him the third degree? Or at least the next day? Or the day after that?

Leaving aside the financial mismanagement charges, there are three possibilities here:

1) the Archdiocese investigated these allegations of grotesque sexual misconduct and found them groundless;
2) the Archdiocese investigated, found these allegations true, but chose not to act on them; or
3) the Archdiocese never investigated the allegations

If these salacious allegations against Fr. Miqueli are false, the Archdiocese should say so unambiguously, and clear his name.

If the Archdiocese did not take the allegations seriously, it owes the people of the Archdiocese an explanation as to why not, especially in an era of so-called zero tolerance in the Church.

If the Archdiocese substantiated these allegations against Fr. Miqueli, but left him in parish ministry, it owes the people of the Archdiocese an explanation.

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UNITED STATES
The Worthy Adversary

Posted by Joelle Casteix on December 13, 2015

For free on Amazon, that is!

The Power of Responsibility: Six Decisions That Will Help You Take Back Happiness and Create Unlimited Success—based on my TEDxPasadenaWomen talk—is now available. And the best part is that it’s free!

Download it here.

This short (under 2-hour) read blossomed from how I learned to use the power of responsibility to take back my life and find happiness and peace after being sexually abused as a child in the Catholic Church.

The lessons I learned, the power I achieved, and the Six Decisions can be applied to ANYONE—whether you are stuck in your job, school, or the pit of victimhood.

Still on the fence? The reviews are in—and I’m overwhelmed by the response.

Here is a sampling of some of the Amazon reviews:

“If there is room for improvement in your life, this will be one of the best purchases you’ll ever make.” – Mimi E.

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AUSTRALIA
The Australian

John Ferguson
Victorian Political Editor
Melbourne

Tessa Akerman
Reporter
Melbourne

George Pell’s most strident critics want the narrative to be Sesame Street simple.

They paint the nation’s most influential Catholic as being knowingly complicit in covering up sex crimes and then ripping off the victims by setting up a duplicitous and immoral redress scheme.

In both cases those critics are wrong.

At the same time, the evidence is pointing to deep flaws, with the most salacious of claims against Pell from his years in the diocese of Ballarat in western Victoria, where some of the world’s worst offending occurred.

But like the man himself, Cardinal Pell’s position in relation to the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse is deeply nuanced.

It is quite possible that he will be excoriated by the inquiry, with the church hierarchy in Australia worried that the commission is eager for a high-profile scalp.

Royal commissions do not work like normal courts; they have greater licence to destroy reputations with rhetoric and sharp commentary. They are not bound by the best evidence rule and are at liberty to admit hearsay evidence.

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UNITED STATES
Virtue Online

By David W. Virtue DD
www.virtueonline.org
December 12, 2015

The Presiding Bishop of The Episcopal Church, Michael Curry, has suspended his right hand man, COO Bishop Stacey Sauls, and placed him on administrative leave along with two other senior church officers over what is being described as “misconduct in carrying out their duties as members of senior management of the Domestic and Foreign Missionary Society.” The other two suspended officers are Deputy Chief Operating Officer and Director of Mission Samuel McDonald, and Director of Public Engagement Alex Baumgarten.

No one will give information about the exact nature of the incident. However, VOL and IRD writer Jeff Walton believe it might have something to do with the security tapes that were found by General Convention Executive Officer and Executive Council Secretary Canon Michael Barlowe at the Conference Center at the Maritime Institute in Linthicum Heights, Maryland, where the Executive Council was meeting last month.

A tape-recording device had been concealed and was running, Barlowe told a shocked room. Council members were exhorted to look under their tables to see if anything was taped. The hidden tape recorder was found on the floor near the lead table where top church leaders had been seated throughout Executive Council. These leaders included Presiding Bishop Michael Curry and House of Deputies President Gay Jennings. No surveillance cameras thatmight have recorded someone hiding the recorder were found.

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UNITED STATES
The Episcopal Church

December 11, 2015

Episcopal Church Presiding Bishop and Primate Michael Curry has issued the following letter to the staff of the Domestic and Foreign Missionary Society.

December 11, 2015

Dear Friends,

I need to inform you that on Wednesday I placed on administrative leave Bishop Stacy Sauls, Chief Operating Officer, Samuel McDonald, Deputy Chief Operating Officer and Director of Mission, and Alex Baumgarten, Director of Public Engagement. This is a result of concerns that have been raised about possible misconduct in carrying out their duties as members of senior management of the Domestic and Foreign Missionary Society.

I want to be clear. My decision should not be confused with a finding of fault, but is necessary to allow us to find clarity. We are taking these allegations seriously and there will be a full and fair examination of the concerns that have been raised to be conducted expeditiously by an independent investigator. To protect the integrity of that process, we will not be able to say more about the concerns at this time.

I ask that you pray for all who are involved and who are impacted by this situation.

I also ask that we all refrain from speculation, difficult though that may be. We all have a responsibility to protect the integrity of all the human beings involved and also the integrity of a fair and just process in this matter.

Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.

UNITED STATES
The National

Stephen Applebaum

December 13, 2015

Hailed by many as the best film about journalism since All the President’s Men, director/co-­writer Tom McCarthy’s Spotlight grippingly and truthfully dramatises how a team of investigative reporters exposed decades of child abuse by Catholic priests in Massachusetts.

The Boston Globe’s Spotlight team published the first story on January 6, 2002 – but its impact was felt internationally.

The movie is a cris de coeur for a kind of local investigative reporting that is dying out, as newspaper publishers trim budgets and lay off staff – in many places, it is already dead.

“I might be wrong but I don’t think the general public fully understands just how dire this ­situation is, and how fundamental to our individual democracies a strong free press is,” says ­McCarthy.

He and fellow writer Josh Singer felt the best way to highlight the issue was to show “by example, in the extraordinary work done by the reporters and editors at the Boston Globe, and the courage of the survivors”.

Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.

AUSTRALIA
The Courier

By Melissa Cunningham
Dec. 13, 2015

A senior Catholic figure faced scrutiny for failure to respond to the pleas of parents trying to protect their children from paedophile priest Gerard Ridsdale.

Several parents complained to Brisbane auxiliary bishop Brian Finnigan about Ridsdale’s “disturbing” behaviour in Mortlake in 1981, the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sex Abuse was told.

The inquiry heard Bishop Finnigan, then secretary to Ballarat Bishop Ronald Mulkearns, told parents he there was no reason to be concerned about Ridsdale.

The commission was told he never reported any complaints to Ballarat Bishop Ronald Mulkearns. Bishop Finnigan said he had no proof at the time the allegations were true.

Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.

AUSTRALIA
The Age

[with video]

December 11, 2015

Jane Lee
Legal affairs, health and science reporter

Cardinal George Pell’s testimony to a child abuse royal commission has been delayed until next year because he is too unwell to travel to Australia.

The cardinal was to appear in person at the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse in Melbourne next week to give evidence on how he responded to child abuse allegations as a priest in Ballarat and as the Archbishop of Melbourne.

His lawyer, Allan Myers, QC, asked the commission on Friday to allow his client to testify via video link from Rome, where he manages the Vatican’s finances, citing ill health.

The personal details of the medical certificates detailing Cardinal Pell’s condition — which were partly in Italian — were suppressed but understood to include his blood pressure. Mr Myers said he did not wish to “waive confidentiality” of his health records.

Cardinal Pell’s office released a statement shortly after the hearing, saying he had suffered from a heart condition “for some time”, and that its symptoms had “recently worsened”. A specialist cardiologist in Rome advised “it is not safe for him to undertake long haul flights in his current condition”. He “reluctantly and only on medical advice” asked to appear via video and had only decided in the “middle of this week” not to come to Australia.

Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.

FLORIDA
Sun Sentinel

[with video]

A Miami Beach rabbi who was accused of molesting an 11-year-old girl has taken a plea deal in the case – over the objections of the girl’s mother who wanted him prosecuted as a sex offender, according to Miami media reports.

Originally charged with lewd and lascivious behavior with a minor, Rabbi Steve Karro pleaded guilty Thursday to a misdemeanor battery charge and was placed on probation for nine months, WFOR-Ch. 4 reported.

The girl’s mother addressed the judge in court in an effort to persuade him to reject the deal.

“Rabbi Karro took my daughter, touched and squeezed her buttocks, placed her on his ap…rubbed her thighs and kissed her,” WSVN-Ch. 7 quoted the woman as saying.

Prosecutors concluded there wasn’t enough evidence to take the case to trial, the station reported.

Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.

FLORIDA
NBC 6

[with video]

By Claudia DoCampo

Rabbi Steve Karro was arrested nine months ago and accused of one count of lewd and lascivious molestation of a child under 12. On Thursday, he walked away from that felony charge.

“Hopefully it will never happen again. God forbid that it happen again to another child. I did my best,” the victim’s mother said.

The child told her mother the rabbi had been alone with her in his art gallery. She said the rabbi touched her buttocks, stroked her hair and kissed her neck, saying he was doing a cleansing.

“Who does this to children without their parents’ knowledge and consent?” said the victim’s mother.

But prosecutors said they didn’t have any substantial evidence to prove that Rabbi Karro molested the 11-year old girl. The plea deal was partly based on two polygraph tests, exclusively obtained by NBC 6, saying “there was no deception” by the rabbi; it was basically her word against his.

Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.