ABUSE TRACKER

AUSTRALIA
Brisbane Times

An elderly Brisbane priest has been deposed from his Holy Orders for possessing child exploitation material.

Andrew Peter Stabback Johns was convicted in February after more than 1000 child exploitation images that he had stored on his computer between 2010 and 2014 were found.

Johns was 88 when he was sentenced to 15 months behind bars. The sentence was wholly suspended for two years given his age.

The Anglican Diocese of Brisbane announced on Saturday that the Archbishop of Brisbane, Dr Phillip Aspinall, formally deposed Johns from Holy Orders on October 23.

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MILWAUKEE (WI)
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests

Settlement will leave major issues, including identities, case histories and locations of dozens of alleged offenders secret

Deal will likely stop any investigation into former Archbishop Timothy Dolan’s $60 million Cemetery “Fraud” Trust

WHO/WHAT
Victim/survivors of childhood rape, sexual assault and abuse by priests of the Milwaukee Archdiocese will be attending a final confirmation hearing for the nearly five year old Milwaukee archdiocese bankruptcy and will be conducting a press conference on the steps of the Federal Courthouse after the hearing. During the hearing, Milwaukee Archbishop Jerome Listecki is expected to testify. Survivors are also available for comment this weekend (see contact information below).

WHEN
Monday, November 9; hearing is scheduled to start at 9:00 a.m.

WHERE
Courtroom of Federal Bankruptcy Judge Susan V Kelley, 517 E. Wisconsin Ave., Milwaukee

WHY
Nearly five years ago, some 575 victims of child sexual assault by clergy filed cases into Federal Bankruptcy Court in Milwaukee at the urging of Archbishop Jerome Listecki, for “healing and resolution”. In total, victims reported in excess of 8,000 acts of criminal sexual abuse over several decades by at least 150 clergy (diocesan and religious order), teachers and lay ministers.

Court ordered release of over 60,000 pages of internal church documents during the course of the bankruptcy confirmed what was long known, suspected or revealed in previous criminal and civil court cases: that the archdiocese, under several archbishops and often with the knowledge of top Vatican officials had been engaged in a long standing, wide spread and systemic cover of up childhood sex crimes. In fact, a clergy child molester, according to documents, has been assigned or worked in each of the over 250 parishes and schools operated by the church .

On Monday, November 9, Bankruptcy Judge Susan V Kelley is expected to approve a settlement plan between creditors and the archdiocese, a decision that will effectively bring an end to the bankruptcy. At the urging of attorneys, the Creditors Committee, which represents victims, has voted in favor of the settlement, and most creditors are expected to follow their recommendation. The archdiocese has taken the public position that it would “spend down” the remaining money in the estate in litigation if victims did not agree to the offer. The archdiocese also threatened to remove a significant portion of victims from any compensation whatsoever.

The bankruptcy will be the longest and most legally expensive of all sex abuse bankruptcies in the country, with the lowest victim settlements and the highest lawyers’ fees and percentages in US history: over twice the amount of money will be going to a handful of lawyers than all of the 575 victims that filed cases.

But the unprecedented proportion of money landing in the pockets of lawyers is just one of the many troubling aspects that have emerged from the bankruptcy. Several key issues, some which directly concern public safety, potential criminal conduct, and the financial integrity of church officials will now remain unexamined, uninvestigated and unresolved by the court, particularly alarming because under Wisconsin law clergy and church officials can keep “secret” any knowledge they have of child sex crimes or cover ups.

Specifically:

–There will be no investigation of the highly publicized transfer by former Archbishop Timothy Dolan of nearly $60 million dollars into a “cemetery trust” before the archdiocese filed for bankruptcy. Based on the timing of the trust and church internal documents, the move was likely fraudulent (significantly, the archdiocese filed chapter 11 in the first place because of state court fraud cases). Among the documents that have surfaced in court is a signed letter from Dolan to the Vatican obtaining Papal permission to set up the trust to keep the money from court ordered liability settlements.

–Detailed, written victim reports of criminal sexual abuse were filed by each of the nearly 575 claimants. These reports are under a court seal and appear not to have been referred for investigation to the proper law enforcement authorities (or at least fully reviewed by law enforcement). There is strong evidence (particularly from a 2012 Wauwatosa police investigation) that even while under chapter 11 bankruptcy, the archdiocese was not referring serious sexual abuse reports to law enforcement and leaving potential abusers in ministry.

–When filing for bankruptcy and for nine months until the bar date, Milwaukee Archbishop Jerome Listecki publicly and repeatedly stated the reason for the bankruptcy was to fairly compensate victims of sexual abuse. Yet, after that date, the archdiocese has argued in oral presentations and written briefs that “none” of the 575 cases filed by victim/creditors are “legally valid”. The original chapter 11 filing has not been challenged or investigated for being filed in bad faith.

–Victims have been left totally at the mercy of the archdiocese “substantiating” their child rape or sexual assault “claim”, some receiving as little as $2,000 dollars.

–A “therapy” fund is being established under the complete control of the archdiocese (the very corporation responsible for concealing and transferring the clergy who assaulted those now needing treatment). This sets a dangerous precedent that uses bankruptcy court to allow church officials to create their own mechanism to control the clinical and mental health treatment of survivors.

CONTACT
Peter Isely, SNAP Midwest Director (Milwaukee), 414.49-7259 (peterisely@yahoo.com)

Survivors in the bankruptcy available for comment:
Monica Barrett (414.704.6074; 1lmbarrett@gmail.com)
Peter Loberg (414.881.5831; peteloberg@yahoo.com)
Dan Ograndowski (262.347.9672; danno_469@yahoo.com)
Jim Essenberg (971.226.4592; james.essenberg@frontier.com)
Nick Janovski (813.391.8291; nicolas.janovsky@gmail.com)

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ROME
Irish Times

Paddy Agnew in Rome

“And the Lord sent fiery serpents among the people, and they bit the people; and much people of Israel died.”

It may just have been a coincidence but, in his homily during Tuesday’s Mass In Suffrage for deceased cardinals and bishops, Pope Francis quoted the above words from Numbers 21, 6. In what has been another dramatic week for the Holy See, no one could blame the pope for having “fiery serpents” on his mind. For now, there seem to be a lot of them about.

This has been another Vatican week when reality has outdone the most outlandish Dan Brown fiction. A Watergate-style break-in, stolen documents, not so thinly veiled Mafia-style threats and Opus Dei all featured.

It began with the arrest on Monday by the Vatican gendarmerie of Spanish monsignor Lucio Angel Vallejo Balda and Francesca Chaouqui in connection with “the removal and dissemination” of confidential economic Vatican documents.

These arrests came just four days before the publication of two books, outlining the resistance of elements in the Roman Curia (and elsewhere) to the ongoing Francis “reform” process.

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GEORGIA
Daily Report

Meredith Hobbs, Daily Report
November 6, 2015

The University of Georgia School of Law is launching the first legal clinic in the nation to assist victims of child sexual abuse, thanks to a gift from an alumnus, Atlanta plaintiffs lawyer Marlan Wilbanks.

Wilbanks declined to say how much he is donating, but he said it’s a “substantial gift” that will be ongoing. He also plans to be personally involved in the clinic. “This is going to be a lifelong commitment for me,” he said.

The clinic, called the Wilbanks Center for Child Sexual Assault and Exploitation Survivors, will both assist adult survivors of child sexual abuse in filing civil suits and help children to gain protection from their abusers, he said.

Wilbanks is a longtime advocate for preventing child sexual abuse and helping survivors because his mother is a survivor of sexual abuse by her father. He said she was able to disclose her abuse only when she was well into adulthood, in her late 40s, which is common for many survivors.

“She has gone from being a victim to being an unbelievable advocate,” Wilbanks said. “She is my hero, and I want to continue her legacy.”

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AUSTRALIA
The West Australian

[with video]

Tim Clarke
November 7, 2015

Dawid Volmer moved to Australia because God spoke to him very clearly and told him to come.

He did not have a job or any means to support his family when he got here. But he left Singapore and came to Perth anyway, with his wife and two daughters, on the word of the Lord.

In reality, his inner demons were a lot stronger and louder and more persuasive.

This week, those demons that had chased the South African-born Christian since childhood led him into prison as an inmate and an outcast — from his family, from his church and even from the general jail population, which he had once preached to and prayed for.

His crimes — involving the repeated sexual abuse of a teenage girl who was “offered” to him by her own father — have shocked the nation.

How he came to commit them combines his own abusive father, drugs, sex addiction and a double life spanning many years and four continents.

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MILWAUKEE (WI)
Wall Street Journal

By TOM CORRIGAN
Nov. 6, 2015

The Archdiocese of Milwaukee on Monday will ask a federal judge to approve its $21 million clergy sexual abuse settlement and to exit bankruptcy after nearly five years of legal battles.

Though U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Susan Kelley’s signature is expected to formally resolve the archdiocese’s chapter 11 case, few expect the pain and anger felt by abuse victims, and throughout the church, to vanish. The archdiocese has been accused of covering up the sexual abuse of children by its priests, much of which took place decades ago.

The archdiocese sought chapter 11 protection in January 2011. Of more than a dozen bankruptcies within the Roman Catholic church in the U.S., the Milwaukee archdiocese has taken the longest to reach a settlement and has accrued the largest legal bill.

“We can’t change the past, but what’s important is that together we reached an agreement to bring this proceeding to a close,” Milwaukee Archbishop Jerome Listecki, who is expected to attend Monday’s hearing, told The Wall Street Journal in an email. “We hope that we are turning a corner on a terrible part of our history and embarking on a new road lined with hope, forgiveness and love.”

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IOWA
Catholic Globe

By Colleen Sulsberger

Protecting the Innocent

In the years since the first Charter for the Protection of Children and Young People was established by the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, there has been much debate about the education of children in abuse prevention and personal safety. The debate looks at whether or not education by the church contributes significantly to the safety, well-being, and spiritual growth of our children. Can education by the church uniquely contribute to the physical, emotional and spiritual well-being of our children?

Sexual abuse can have a devastating effect on the spiritual development of children. When abuse occurs in a setting or at the hands of an individual not associated with the church, it often raises questions about God’s love or even God’s existence. If an individual who abuses represents the church, the impact becomes more devastating to children’s spiritual development.

Given the nature of children’s thoughts, it is often difficult for youngsters and even adults to separate the actions of a fallible human being from the message and the institution that they represent. Children need to hear consistent messages that they are deserving of dignity and respect; that God and the church want them to be safe and involved in right relationships; that we want to help them if a relationship isn’t right. Such messages can help children retain their faith in the face of disappointing or even devastating behavior of an adult.

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UNITED STATES
Rolling Stone

BY DAVID EHRLICH November 6, 2015

Listen,” sighs director and co-writer Tom McCarthy as his train of thought derails while trying to answer a question. “I just finished this movie in September and I haven’t really had time to process it objectively. I just know it probably won’t be for a few more months.” In this case, it’s an understandable reaction. His new film Spotlight, a painstakingly detailed procedural about how the Boston Globe exposed the most pervasive and insidious cover-up in the history of the Catholic Church, is a powerful reminder that the truth can be hard to wrap your head around.

Unfolding like a cross between Zodiac and All the President’s Men, Spotlight rewinds to the summer of 2001, when the Globe’s new editor Marty Baron (Liev Schreiber) assigned the paper’s investigative “Spotlight” unit to look into an old story regarding a local priest who’d been accused of molesting kids and was reassigned to another parish. The team, led by veteran journalist Walter “Robby” Robinson (Michael Keaton), eventually uncovered decades of sexual abuse perpetrated by priests who preyed upon children and were protected by the Church — a story that everyone in Boston knew but nobody wanted to believe.

Most movies, especially ones with A-list stars like Keaton, Mark Ruffalo and Rachel McAdams, tend to play to the cheap seats in the name of awards-season glory. But by focusing instead on the hard-nosed journalism that broke the story, McCarthy has crafted a bracingly powerful film about the institutions that hold sway in our society, the need for a free press to hold them accountable, and the pervasive sense of guilt that can get in the way. The director rang up Rolling Stone to talk about heroes, healing, and how it feels to direct a box office mega-bomb and a presumptive Best Picture nominee in the span of a single year.

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MASSACHUSETTS
NewBostonPost

By John Farrell | November 5, 2015

I know a priest whose ecclesiastical career in this city was ruined because he had the temerity to praise the Boston Globe Spotlight team’s investigation of the clerical abuse scandal—in front of a bishop.

It’s been well over a decade since the story broke and Cardinal Law was forced to resign. And “Spotlight,” co-written and directed by Tom McCarthy, which opens today in a limited release, is a superb account of the Globe’s exposure of a scandal that still affects Boston.

Full disclosure: my late father, David J. Farrell, was a political columnist for The Boston Globe from 1972-1985.

I attended B.C. High in the late 1970s, and one of the priests there, whose sexual abuse of students forms a key piece in the storyline, was my junior year history teacher. So, watching the movie portray both of these institutions and their leaders so accurately was both strange — and gratifying.

I did not expect the film to be so good. The story opens with a brief prelude, in 1976, showing a young Irish Catholic police officer on the sidelines as he observes the secretive settlement arranged between the family of a molested boy and representatives of the Archdiocese. We learn the priest responsible for the molestation is the notorious Fr. John Geoghan. – See more at:

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LOUISIANA
The Times-Picayune

By Michelle Hunter, NOLA.com | The Times-Picayune
on November 03, 2015

A 9-year-old girl who thought she was going to see a picture of her catechism teacher dressed as Santa Claus told her mother that the teacher instead showed her a photo of a naked man.

Authorities arrested Daryle Rodriguez, 71, of Harvey, and booked him with indecent behavior with a juvenile, according to Col. John Fortunato, spokesman for the Jefferson Parish Sheriff’s Office.

Rodriguez taught fourth grade catechism classes at St. John Bosco Catholic Church’s parish school of religion, said Sarah McDonald, spokeswoman for the Archdiocese of New Orleans. He was relieved of his teaching position following his arrest, she said.

Rodriguez, who does bear resemblance to St. Nick, was trying to show his young student and her friend cell phone photos of himself dressed in full Santa regalia. But the first picture the girl saw was a full-frontal photograph of a nude man, an arrest report said. The girl went home and told her mother.

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LOUISIANA
The Raw Story

BETHANIA PALMA MARKUS
04 NOV 2015

A Catholic school student who was simply hoping to see a picture of her catechism teacher in a Santa Claus costume, but she ended up seeing a picture of a nude man instead, the New Orleans Times-Picayune reports.

Daryle Rodriguez, 71, was arrested after allegedly showing the fourth grader the picture. He is an instructor at St. John Bosco Catholic Church’s parish school, but was fired after his arrest, an Archdiocese of New Orleans spokeswoman told the paper. He was booked on charges of indecent behavior with a juvenile and was given a $15,000 bond.

Rodriguez was apparently trying to show the child a picture of himself on his cell phone but the first picture that came up was a fully nude frontal shot of a man. The girl went home and told her mother.

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UNITED STATES
The New York Times

By RAVI SOMAIYA
NOV. 6, 2015

“Spotlight,” a movie about The Boston Globe’s reporting on the sexual abuse of children in the Roman Catholic Church that opens in theaters on Friday, has caught the attention of critics.

But its costumes, based on the clothing of the real journalists involved, have caused comment for another reason: They have uncannily captured a particular style (or lack of style), that still distinguishes reporters and editors today.

When the movie’s high-wattage stars, including Rachel McAdams and Mark Ruffalo, were pictured on set last year, their unglamorous outfits made tabloid headlines.

The film’s costume designer, Wendy Chuck, a veteran of subtle clothing choices in movies like “Sideways” and “Twilight,” spoke Friday by phone on what makes newsroom-chic, and the challenges of making movie stars look like journalists. The conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

Q. How would you describe the style of journalists?

A. It’s an unthought-about uniform. It mirrors school uniforms really. It’s something you don’t think about when you dress. You don’t really care; you’ve got other things to think about that are not clothes.

It says you’re comfortable, but nobody is going to comment on how you look or how you appear. You’re not going to offend anybody. Nobody is going to be able to read much into you.

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UNITED STATES
Washingtonian

By Andrew Beaujon | November 6, 2015

Washington Post Executive Editor Martin Baron did not coach Liev Schreiber, who plays him in the just-released film Spotlight. The film centers on Baron’s time as top editor of the Boston Globe. “The idea that I’m going to coach a professional actor to play me is preposterous,” Baron says. Schreiber “asked me a bunch of questions and we had a conversation, and then he went and played me.”

Baron says he’s “not the person to ask” but everyone he knows who’s seen the movie says that Schreiber “nailed” the portrayal. He got to see one day of filming in person, and got a lot of questions about his wardrobe. “They got everything right about the newsroom, the set and what people wore and how they looked,” Baron says. “Their basic mannerisms, things like that.” Among the questions: “what kind of shoes I wore, and what kind of pants I wore, and where I shopped, and what shirts, and all that.”

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BOSTON (MA)
Catholic Culture

By Phil Lawler
Nov 06, 2015

In the new film Spotlight, which opens this weekend, the investigative reporters of the Boston Globe are portrayed as brave underdogs who dared to confront the overwhelming power of the Boston archdiocese, and thus exposed the sex-abuse scandal. It might make for a good movie (I wasn’t invited to the previews), but that story line is bunk.

The Globe did do the Catholic Church an enormous favor with the “Spotlight” series that opened in January 2002, revealing how the archdiocese had protected a predatory priest, the late John Geoghan, allowing him to continue molesting children for years. That Globe story—and the dozens of similar stories that came tumbling out in that “long Lent” of 2002—revealed a cancer within the Catholic clergy. The diagnosis of cancer is never welcome, but if an accurate diagnosis leads to proper treatment, it can be a blessing.

So give the Globe credit for some solid investigative journalism. But do not pretend, for the sake of the plot line, that the Globe was reluctant to do battle with the Catholic Church, or that it required a special sort of courage to do battle with the archdiocese. Quite the contrary. For years the Globe had been the most virulently anti-Catholic major newspaper in the country. And by the early years of the 21st century, when this drama opened, the Globe had achieved an unquestioned dominance as the single most powerful institution in the public life of Greater Boston: far more powerful than the Church. (If you doubt me, make a list of the political candidates who won Massachusetts elections in the 1990s, and ask yourself whether the views of those candidates more closely reflected the teachings of the Catholic Church or the editorial directives of the Boston Globe.) This was not a case of David vs. Goliath; or if it was, Goliath won.

As an antidote to Hollywood fantasies that could make Spotlight misleading, I recommend Sins of the Press, a little book self-published by an investigative reporter who really is an underdog, David Pierre.

Let me stipulate at the outset that I do not always agree with Pierre. In his determination to demonstrate the bias of the Globe he sometimes fails to give credit where credit is due. In his zeal to protect the Church from unjust criticism he sometimes defends the indefensible. Still the defects of his approach serve as a counterbalance to the politically-correct approach of the Globe and the fawning early reviews of Spotlight.

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VATICAN CITY
The New Yorker

BY ALEXANDER STILLE

Ithas been an unusually turbulent week in Rome. The Vatican’s gendarmes arrested two members of Pope Francis’s economic-reform committee—Lucio Angel Vallejo Balda, a powerful monsignor, and Francesca Immacolata Chaouqui, whose background is in public relations—for allegedly leaking documents to two Italian journalists. The news suggested a new round in the scandal known as Vatileaks, which began when Paolo Gabriele, the butler to Pope Benedict XVI, leaked portions of the Pope’s correspondence in 2012. Indeed, Gianluigi Nuzzi, who wrote a book, “Sua Santità,” based principally on the leaks of the former butler, is, along with Emiliano Fittipaldi, of the weekly L’Espresso, one of two journalists involved in this case, too. Both have new books out this week: Nuzzi’s is called “Via Crucis” (published in English with the title “Merchants in the Temple”) and Fittipaldi’s is “Avarizia” (“Greed”). But the two Vatileaks scandals may be more different than similar.

The original Vatileaks affair created the impression of a Pope who had lost control of his own government—whose own correspondence could be stolen from under his nose and published as the Vatican stood by helplessly. It contributed, one suspects, to Pope Benedict XVI’s almost unprecedented decision, in 2013, to resign. By contrast, the highly unusual decision this week to arrest the pair of alleged leakers, just days before the journalists they had supplied were about to publish their books, was the expression of a much more proactive Vatican. The Holy See is determined to show that it was not taking this matter lying down. And the content of the cases is different, too. The first Vatileaks case portrayed an elderly Benedict XVI seemingly unaware of the power struggles and institutionalized corruption around him, while the two new books show Pope Francis vigorously pushing the Vatican bureaucracy to clean house.

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BOSTON (MA)
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests

The Church needs to do more to protect children, help survivors, as well as live up to its promise of being open and transparent.

WHAT
Holding signs and childhood photos at a sidewalk news conference, Boston clergy sex abuse victims will be speaking out after the premiere of the movie “Spotlight” here in Boston this weekend, and giving their personal feelings viewing it, along with what action the church needs to take to protect children and help wounded survivors.

They will also urge Cardinal O’Malley, as the head of the Pontifical Commission, to urge Pope Francis to take concrete action punishing, firing, and defrocking known Cardinals, Bishops, and Supervisors, who are responsible for the cover-ups and destruction of children’s lives by protecting criminal clerics in their care, as well as other actions, that will protect children.

These are actions that will protect children, and send the message that the church is serious about children’s safety.

WHEN
Sunday, Nov. 8, 2015 at 11:45 am

WHERE
Outside the Cathedral of the Holy Cross, Boston
1400 Washington St, Boston, MA 02118

WHO
Two-four members of a self-help group called SNAP, the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAPnetwork.org), and supporters, including Mark Vincent Healy, a survivor from Dublin, Ireland, who was one of the European survivors who met with Pope Francis at the Vatican in 2014

WHY
With the release of the movie, “Spotlight” this weekend, the eyes and ears of the world will see played out on the big screen the shameful truth of the cover-ups of child sexual abuse by the leadership of the Catholic Church all the way up to the Pope, who were and are complicit of this reality even today.

We are concerned that “Spotlight” may trigger other victims memory’s, victims who may still be trapped in silence, shame and self-blame. We encourage them to come forward speak with police and began healing process.

CONTACT
David O’Regan 434 446 6769 worcestersnap@gmail.com David Clohessy 314 566 9790, davidgclohessy@gmail.com, Barbara Dorris 314 503 0003, bdorris@SNAPnetwork.org

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BOSTON (MA)
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests

Remarks by Phil Saviano at the Boston showing of SPOTLIGHT for abuse victims

Welcome to your film. It’s your film because it’s your courage and your compassion that made it possible.

The Globe’s team did remarkable work. But they’re the first to admit that without brave Boston survivors, they couldn’t have done their outstanding investigation.

Each one of you should feel deeply proud of your role in this film and in this crisis, regardless of whether you sued, settled, spoke publicly or didn’t. Each of you has exposed wrongdoers, protected kids, and deterred wrongdoing. We in SNAP are incredibly grateful for all you have done and are doing to safeguard the vulnerable and heal the wounded.

Please keep taking care of yourself. And please do what you can to get or stay more involved in our on-going struggle to make sure others don’t suffer like we’ve suffered.

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UNITED STATES
America Magazine

Sam Sawyer, S.J. | Nov 6 2015

Letting go of looking the other way

I dreaded the sight of satellite trucks as I drove to daily Mass. It was the winter of 2002; I was actively discerning a vocation to priesthood in the Jesuits, and most days, I went to daily Mass at St. Ignatius, just a stone’s throw down Commonwealth Avenue from the chancery and cardinal’s residence of the Archdiocese of Boston. Satellite trucks outside the archdiocesan offices meant more tragic news, more revelations of priests who had abused children, more damning evidence that the church had moved them around, covered them up and kept the victims quiet and out of sight rather than removing the abusers from ministry.

Many days, there were satellite trucks.

There were, after all, so many victims, so many years of cover-up all coming to light at once, following the Boston Globe’s breaking the story in January of 2002. The closing scene of “Spotlight,” in which calls start to pour into the Globe’s investigative team with even more stories of abuse than they found initially, was just the beginning of the story for the rest of us in Boston. The revelations, the disappointment, the scandals and the disgust kept coming for months and years, marked, for me, by satellite trucks outside the chancery. It spread beyond Boston, too; but that stretch of Commonwealth was the part of the scandal I could see, and had to see, just before Mass.

Knowing that I had seen “Spotlight” early at press screening, many fellow Jesuits in my community have asked what I thought of it; asked from one priest to another, the question carries inevitable subtext: How bad was it? Was it fair? Did it pile on, joining the collection of cheap jabs that call the whole church hypocritical and tar all priests as if we’re predators?

In order: not bad at all; yes, it was for the most part very fair; and no, it didn’t pile on.

It was all the more gut-wrenching for being so good a film and for telling its story so carefully and fairly.

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BOSTON (MA)
WBUR

Part four of our “Spotlight” series, in advance of the film’s release Friday.

The critically acclaimed film, “Spotlight”, tells the story of the Boston Globe’s 2002 investigation of what later became the world-wide clergy sex abuse crisis.

We’ve talked to members of the original Globe team, to a lawyer, and a priest. Now, we hear from someone who represents the most important group of people in this story: the survivors.

Guests

Phil Saviano, founder of the New England Chapter of SNAP, the Survivors’ Network of Those Abused by Priests.

More In This Series

Radio Boston: A ‘Spotlight’ Shines On Reporters Who Broke The Clergy Sex Abuse Story

“In 2002, an investigation by The Boston Globe’s Spotlight team revealed widespread sexual abuse that had long remained concealed within the Catholic Church.”
Radio Boston: The Longtime Advocates Behind ‘Spotlight’

Radio Boston: The Longtime Advocates Behind ‘Spotlight’

“The film ‘Spotlight’ tells a story that broke in 2002, but started years earlier. Before the Spotlight team investigated allegations of clergy sexual abuse, others — like attorney Mitchell Garabedian and Father Thomas Doyle — were already trying to get justice for the victims.”
Radio Boston: ‘Spotlight’ And A History Of Newspaper Movies

Radio Boston: ‘Spotlight’ And A History Of Newspaper Movies

“On Friday, Bostonians will finally be able to see the new film, “Spotlight,” which details how a group of investigative journalists at the The Boston Globe’s uncovered a Catholic church sex abuse crisis that affected the real lives of many people still living around Boston. But perhaps another reason there’s been so much buzz around this film is because it’s also — at its heart — a newspaper movie.”

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UNITED STATES
Religion News Service

Brian Truitt / USA Today | November 6, 2015

No need to bury the lede: Spotlight is a masterpiece.

Director Tom McCarthy’s drama (**** out of four; rated R; opens Friday in New York, Los Angeles and Boston, nationwide Nov. 20) embraces both great cinema and even better journalism as it chronicles a Boston Globe investigative team’s real-life expose on child abuse by local priests and the Catholic Church cover-up that followed. Not only is it an amazingly crafted movie, it’s an important one as well.

The Globe group won a Pulitzer Prize for its 2002 work, but the real tale begins a year earlier with the arrival of new boss Marty Baron (Liev Schreiber) to the newspaper. He wants to see the Globe dig into some really hefty stuff, like following up on a recent column accusing a priest of sexually molesting dozens of kids over three decades.

Led by editor Robby Robinson (Michael Keaton), the Spotlight team is initially wary of setting aside other projects and taking on the church, a hot-button subject in town and one of the most sacred of cows. Yet reporters Mike Rezendes (Mark Ruffalo) and Sacha Pfeiffer (Rachel McAdams), with the help of mustached ace researcher Matt Carroll (Brian d’Arcy James), begin to dig into what’s been going on and find victims as well as more damning, shocking evidence.

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KANSAS CITY (MO)
The Kansas City Star

BY RICK MONTGOMERY
rmontgomery@kcstar.com

The bishop is a fan of Johnny Cash.

One tune in particular stirs Bishop James V. Johnston, who was installed this week as leader of the Catholic Diocese of Kansas City-St. Joseph

“I think it was (first) done by Nine Inch Nails,” he said.

The song is called “Hurt.” It’s about harming one’s self. Cash’s voice breaks as he sings of addiction and a need for redemption.

Now Catholics throughout northwest Missouri are praying that Johnston, as successor to Bishop Robert W. Finn, will help heal the diocese of its own self-inflicted wounds. …

Finn resigned in April, 31 months after his criminal conviction for failing to report suspected child abuse. The diocese had waited five months to inform police that lewd pictures of pupils at a Catholic school were found on Fr. Shawn Ratigan’s computer.

At Johnston’s installation on Wednesday, he asked perishioners to support Finn with “prayer and kindness.” He did not reference the Ratigan case, the dozens of lawsuits alleging long-ago instances of sexual abuse by priests, nor specific policies he’d propose to keep children safe.

The diocese made strides in that direction before Finn’s resignation. Still, the homily given by Johnston didn’t go over well with the group SNAP, which stands for the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests.

“Ignoring abuse and cover up won’t prevent abuse and cover up,” director David Clohessy said Thursday.

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UNITED STATES
Entertainment Weekly

BY JEFF LABRECQUE • @JEFFLABRECQUE

“Journalistic thriller” doesn’t really qualify as its own movie genre. There’s All the President’s Men, of course, and The Parallax View and State of Play, to a degree. But typically, reporters and their editors are depicted as rumpled cynics, lending the profession a more comic slant when it shows up on screen, in movies like The Philadelphia Story or The Paper.

Spotlight, however, will have journos and cinephiles sitting on the edge of their seats. The new film from director Tom McCarthy, who co-wrote the script with Josh Singer (The Fifth Estate), is based on the Boston Globe investigative reporting team that published the 2002 series of articles exposing how the local Catholic Church, under the powerful Cardinal Bernard Law, had knowingly shielded scores of known pedophile priests for decades, allowing them to prey on countless children again and again. The stories were proved to be a bombshell, and the impact reverberated far beyond Boston. (Cardinal Law resigned less than a year after the news first broke.) In 2003, the Globe’s Spotlight team was awarded a Pulitzer Prize.

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VATICAN CITY
Crux

By John L. Allen Jr.
Associate editor November 6, 2015

Pope Francis continued his moderate makeover of the senior leadership of the Catholic Church on Friday, announcing key appointments for two major European archdioceses. In both cases, the pontiff tapped pastorally-minded figures not seen as either political or theological conservatives.

In Barcelona, Spain, Francis accepted the resignation of Cardinal Lluís Martínez Sistach, 78, and replaced him with 69-year-old Archbishop Juan José Omella Omella. In Brussels, Belgium, the pope accepted the resignation of Archbishop André-Joseph Léonard, 75, and put in his place Archbishop Jozef De Kesel, 68.

The move in Brussels will strike Church-watchers as especially significant, given that Léonard had carried the reputation of being one of the most staunchly conservative prelates to head a major European archdiocese. He was appointed in 2010 under Pope Benedict XVI, replacing Cardinal Godfried Danneels, who was seen as a leading progressive.

(Danneels’ term ended in controversy amid allegations that he tried to cover up sexual abuse allegations against a fellow Belgian prelate. He remains in good standing with Pope Francis, who named Danneels as a participant in the recent Synod of Bishops on the family.)

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UNITED STATES
Reuters

WASHINGTON | BY LAWRENCE HURLEY

The U.S. Supreme Court on Friday agreed to hear appeals brought by Christian groups demanding full exemption from the requirement to provide insurance covering contraception under President Barack Obama’s signature healthcare law.

The nine justices will consider seven related cases on whether nonprofit groups that oppose the requirement on religious grounds can object under the federal Religious Freedom Restoration Act to a compromise measure offered by the Obama administration.

Among those mounting objections are various Roman Catholic groups in Washington, D.C., including the Roman Catholic archdiocese and Catholic University of America. Another petition was filed by the Little Sisters of the Poor, an order of Roman Catholic nuns that runs care homes for the elderly. Some groups belonging to other Christian denominations also objected.

By agreeing to hear the cases, the justices will once again wade into the controversial subject of how to weigh religious objections to the contraceptive requirement.

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TENNESSEE
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests

For immediate release: Friday, Nov. 6, 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)

A convicted ex-priest charges that his lawyers were inept, prosecutors committed misconduct, and that both a judge and a district attorney’s office should be removed from his case and he deserves another trial.

Give me a break. More important, give the predator’s brave victim, Warren Tucker, a break.

[Greeneville Sun]

We believe in due process. But we also believe that victims of horrific child sex crimes deserve some closure. Enough is enough.

It’s been almost seven years since Warren reported to law enforcement his suffering due to sexual abuse by Casey. Still William Casey continues his increasingly desperate legal maneuvers.

We urge Knoxville Bishop Richard Stika to publicly denounce Casey’s hurtful legal shenanigans. And we hope that not a single victim of a single child sex crime by a single child molester is deterred from coming forward because Casey is making a mockery of our justice system.

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UNITED STATES
Newsmax

Bill Donohue

In the run-up to the November 6 debut of “Spotlight,” movie reviewers hailed it as an eye-opening account of the sexual abuse scandal that occurred in the Boston Archdiocese.

But Hollywood has no interest in turning its cameras on itself, which is why the public’s eyes have been shut tight from seeing a movie that documents child rape in Tinseltown.

In 2011, when word surfaced that actor Corey Feldman was going public with accounts of child sexual molestation in Hollywood, it caught the attention of Boston producer Matthew Valentinas.

He had been contemplating doing a film on sexual abuse anyway, so when Feldman’s revelations hit the news, he decided the time was ripe to strike.

Feldman was interviewed by ABC’s “Primetime Live” in August 2011. He astonished viewers when he exclaimed, “I can tell you that the No. 1 problem in Hollywood was, and is, and always will be, pedophilia.”

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MINNESOTA
Pioneer Press

By Mara H. Gottfried
mgottfried@pioneerpress.com

St. Paul will get a new police chief next year — Thomas Smith said Friday he will retire at the end of his six-year term.

Smith became a St. Paul officer in 1989 and is a native of the city’s West Side, where he still lives. He stressed strong community ties when Mayor Chris Coleman appointed him chief in 2010. Smith said Friday he’s been proud of his department’s community outreach work, especially with youth programs. …

During Smith’s more than five years as chief, his department: …

— Conducted a major investigation into the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis, resulting in criminal charges over the handling of an abusive priest. The archdiocese didn’t enter a plea at its initial hearing last month.

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UNITED STATES
Poynter.org

by Bill Mitchell
Published Nov. 6, 2015

The new Spotlight movie opening in select cities this weekend is such a big deal in Boston that several university journalism programs staged special advance screenings earlier this week.

After failing to worm my way into any of those events, I showed up at Spotlight’s first public unveiling Thursday night. It’s showing at a theater just down the street from a couple of notable scenes in this stunning account of the Boston Globe’s investigation of clergy sexual abuse.

Crossing Tremont Street from the Boylston stop on the Green Line, I confessed to my wife, Carol, a parochial question I imagine one or two other journalists might share.

And that’s this: When the film comes up in discussion with family and friends at Thanksgiving Dinner in a few weeks, what impact will it have had on the public’s perception of journalists?

By the time the credits rolled, I had to agree with reviewers who’ve concluded that ink-stained, web-whipped wretches haven’t looked this good since All The President’s Men. That’s true as a result of both similarities and differences in the two movies. It’s the differences that render Spotlight a must-see not only for journalists but for the people they serve. …

Bill Mitchell is a Poynter affiliate who launched the Clergy Abuse Tracker as director of Poynter Online and ran it from March 2002 until December 2003. The tracker is now hosted by BishopAccountability.org and is updated daily by the editor Mitchell recruited in 2002, Kathy Shaw.

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ST. LOUIS (MO)
Berger’s Beat

. .Small victory for Barbara Dorris and David Clohessy of SNAP that new House Speaker Paul Ryan’s first day on the job, in response to the group’s prodding, Ryan quietly removed the portrait of ex-Speaker Dennis Hastert taken down. Hastert pled guilty to financial misdeeds stemming from alleged child sex crimes he reportedly committed years earlier. For months, SNAP argued that honoring Hastert was hurtful to victims of sexual violence. .

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CHICAGO (IL)
Crux

By Michael O’Loughlin
National reporter November 6, 2015

CHICAGO — When the movie “Spotlight” hits theaters across the country Friday, the Catholic Church’s cover-up of child sexual abuse will again be in focus, more than a decade after The Boston Globe published a series of stories exposing policies that allowed abusive priests to stay in ministry.

After the Spotlight series, revelations surfaced that many other dioceses in the United States and around the world operated in a similar manner, keeping credible allegations secret from police and parishioners, with policies aimed at protecting priests instead of children.

Just this week, an investigation by the National Catholic Reporter found that the Catholic Church in the United States incurred more than $4 billion in costs related to the sex abuse crisis, which affected more than 95 percent of all US dioceses and saw more than 4,000 priests accused, according to an independent 2004 study commissioned by US bishops.

But in Chicago, archdiocesan authorities have a message: Don’t paint with too broad a brush.

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MARYLAND
Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Baltimore – The Catholic Review

November 06, 2015

The following is an official statement released Nov. 6 by the Archdiocese of Baltimore:

Prevention, accountability, transparency and healing continue to be top priorities for the Archdiocese of Baltimore 13 years after Boston

The Archdiocese of Baltimore has made it an institutional priority to protect children in its care and restore the trust of the faithful by enacting and enforcing policies and practices that prevent future incidents of abuse, hold abusers accountable, create a culture of transparency, and promote healing for victims.

While the Archdiocese had child protection measures in place prior to the 2002 creation of the Charter for the Protection of Children & Young People, the landmark document that spells out the Catholic Church’s commitment to protecting children and young people, it has taken many additional steps since then to further strengthen the Archdiocese’s child protection efforts to create safe environments for children in our care, promote healing for victims, and to restore the trust of God’s people in the Archdiocese.

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CHILE
Radio Agricultura

[The Supreme Court on Wednesday authorized the issuing of a warrant to Pope Francis as part of the judicial investigation of allegations against priest Fernando Karadima who is accusing of abusing minors. The Chilean foreign ministry is responsible for getting the warrant to the Vatican. The issue involves a video where the pope describes as fools those who oppose appintment of Bishop Juan Barros to Osorno. It is alleged that Barros knew of the abuse by Karadima but said nothing abut it. He has denied the allegation.]

La Cancillería será la encargada de hacerlo llegar hasta el Vaticano.

La primera sala de la Corte Suprema autorizó este miércoles enviar un exhorto al Papa Francisco en el marco de la investigación judicial del denominado caso Karadima. La solicitud surgió por parte de los denunciantes luego que se diera a conocer un video del Pontífice donde se refería al Obispo de Osorno.

En las imágenes se puede apreciar que el Papa califica como tontos a quienes se oponen a la designación del Obispo, Juan Barros. Cabe mencionar, que según las presuntas víctimas Barros sería testigo de los hechos que es acusado Karadima.

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TENNESSEE
Greeneville Sun

Ken Little

A post-conviction hearing initially scheduled last week in Sullivan County Criminal Court for former Catholic priest and Greene County resident William Casey will now be held on Feb. 3.

A hearing relating to the case was held on Oct. 30. Judge James F. Goodwin denied a motion by Casey’s lawyer, Francis X. Santore Jr., to recuse prosecutor Barry Staubus and his office from the case.

Goodwin had earlier denied a motion by Santore to have himself recused from the case as judge. Santore appealed to the state Court of Criminal Appeals, which also denied the motion and remanded the case back to Goodwin’s court.

Staubus is district attorney general for the 2nd Judicial District that includes Sullivan County. He was lead prosecutor in July 2011, when Casey’s jury trial was held.

The trial judge, Robert H. Montgomery Jr., became a state Court of Criminal Appeals judge in 2014.

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PHILADELPHIA (PA)
Catholics4Change

NOVEMBER 6, 2015 BY SUSAN MATTHEWS

“Spotlight” opens in limited-release today. This movie about the Pulitzer-prize winning Boston Globe journalists who broke the clergy abuse story, may finally raise awareness to the level of outrage needed to create real change, if not in the Church, in our laws regarding statute of limitations law reforms.

Because I’m not a victim, many have wondered about my passion for this cause. While being a Catholic and a mother is certainly enough of a reason, it’s also because I began my career as a journalist. I worked as an editor with the Catholic Standard and Times – the official newspaper of the Archdiocese of Philadelphia. Cardinal Bevilacqua was the publisher during my six years there. I worked with talented, dedicated, loving people of deep faith who sacrificed better pay and work hours to spread the news and the truth of the Church.

Years later, I know the absolute evil that was taking place just floors above us. It is enraging and sickening. That’s betrayal that every Catholic should feel. Harder to imagine is the pain of those children who were raped by a trusted and adored priest as a child and then raped again by the cover up that continued past 2011 in Philadelphia.

Many would like to believe that it’s all better now. But Father Paul situations tell us that things aren’t better yet. After allegations, he was left as Pastor of Our Lady of Calvary without parents’ knowledge of an investigation. Is this the transparency that was promised? Those allegations were eventually deemed credible. He is no longer a priest. Criminal charges were not pressed due to the statute of limitations. The Pennsylvania Catholic Conference continues lobbying against statute of limitation law reform. The Church is still siding against children. Father Paul can live anywhere he chooses.

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VATICAN CITY
Star Tribune

By FRANCES D’EMILIO Associated Press NOVEMBER 6, 2015

VATICAN CITY — Pope Francis on Friday decried how bishops and other clergy exploit their roles to advance their careers and to increase wealth, in his first public comments following the latest leaked revelations of greedy Vatican prelates resisting his efforts to reform Holy See finances and administration.

“Even in the church there are these people, who, instead of serving, of thinking, of others … use the church. They are the career-climbers, those attached to money,” the pope said during Mass in the chapel of the plain Vatican hotel where he chose to live, in an example of simplicity, instead of dwelling in the ornate Apostolic Palace.

Looking somber and sounding grim, he added: “And how many priests, bishops we have seen like this. It’s sad to say it, no?”

Francis delivered the impromptu remarks during his daily homily, apparently inspired by revelations in two books, which went on sale on Thursday, of leaked documents and conversations.

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AUSTRALIA
The Australian

BY NATHAN PAULL AAP NOVEMBER 06, 2015

AN elite Brisbane school boss has refused to concede a former headmaster lied about knowing students had been sexually abused by a pedophile counsellor.

BRISBANE Grammar School board chairman Howard Stack sidestepped questions about the school’s knowledge of the abuse while giving evidence at the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse on Friday.

It came despite the inquiry hearing from multiple former students and their parents who claimed they had told then-headmaster Max Howell and senior teachers as early as 1979 of sexual abuse by counsellor Kevin John Lynch.

Dr Howell, who died in 2011, repeatedly denied he had knowledge of Lynch’s abuse – an assertion he took to his grave.

Mr Stack told the inquiry, now in its fifth day in Brisbane, that he believed former students’ claims that they had complained to Dr Howell at the time of the abuse.

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NORTHERN IRELAND
UTV

Story by Alan Erwin, Belfast

A former resident at a children’s care home treated with “cold and callous indifference” is to be denied compensation due to his delay in taking legal action, a High Court judge has ruled.

Mr Justice Horner held Michael McKee would have been entitled to £6,500 damages for emotional distress in fearing the consequences of wetting the bed during his stay at Nazareth Lodge in Belfast nearly 60 years ago.

But the claim was dismissed as statute barred because of the excessive time he took to bring proceedings.

Mr McKee, 65, sued The Sisters of Nazareth over the physical abuse he was allegedly subjected to during his stay as an eight-year-old boy back in 1958.

Lawyers for the congregation defended the case by challenging the reliability of his account and questioning why he waited half a century to take legal action.

Mr McKee spent 73 days at the home after being admitted with his older brother due to their parents’ ill-health.

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VATICAN CITY
Vatican Information Service

Vatican City, 6 November 2015 (VIS) – The Holy Father has appointed:

– Bishop Juan Jose Omella Omella of Calahorra y La Calzada-Logrono, Spain as archbishop of Barcelona (area 340, population 2,657,000, Catholics 2,116,479, priests 826, permanent deacons 46, religious 3,092), Spain.

– Bishop Jozef de Kesel of Bruges, Belgium, as archbishop of Malines-Bruxelles (area 3,635, population 2,825,000, Catholics 1,807,000, priests 1,794, permanent deacons 88, religious 3,249), Belgium. He succeeds Archbishop Andre Leonard, whose resignation from the pastoral care of the same archdiocese upon reaching the age limit was accepted by the Holy Father.

– Bishop Jozef de Kesel as military ordinary for Belgium.

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ROME
Washington Post

By Michelle Boorstein and Paul Farhi November 6

Gossip and internal politicking are so much a part of Vatican life that an old Rome joke goes: “In the Church, a secret is something you only tell one person at a time.”

But this week the definition of secret-spilling got blown up.

Two Italian journalists — an economics reporter for a prominent newsweekly and a muckraking TV figure — published books that used extensive leaked Vatican data to show in detail the kind of financial irregularities that in the past have come out in dribbles and rumors. And the alleged findings are dramatic, from the top Vatican official whose swanky Rome penthouse was refurbished by a church charity to the Vatican pension fund’s $800 million hole, to a report that Vatican real estate is worth about seven times as much as is reported on balance sheets.

Even for a place accustomed to leaks, this week produced a torrent, including surreptitiously made recordings of Pope Francis — a barrier Vatican-watchers said had never been crossed before. For an institution long accustomed to some standard of deference, one thing is becoming clear: The Catholic Church is in a new era.

“Cardinals living in fat apartments for free — we’ve known that since the dawn of time. But this is a new level of stuff spilling out. It’s the Catholic version of people-have-the-right-to-know,” said John Allen, a longtime reporter on the Vatican and Catholicism who is associate editor of Crux, a Catholic site owned by the Boston Globe. Of the Vatican, Allen said: “I think they’re living in a world that doesn’t exist anymore.”

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MASSACHUSETTS
MassLive

By Stephanie Barry | sbarry@repub.com
on November 06, 2015

SPRINGFIELD — A jury on Thursday awarded $250,000 to a 53-year-old Ludlow woman who sued her stepfather for raping her as a child after a three-day trial in U.S. District Court.

An eight-member panel found in favor of plaintiff Kathy Picard, who was at the forefront of pushing new legislation in 2014 to extend the statute of limitations to allow victims of sexual abuse more time to sue their alleged abusers.

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UNITED KINGDOM
Church Times

by Gavin Drake

Posted: 06 Nov 2015

SOCIETY is confronted by a “floodtide of unhealthy, objectifying, sexual pornography”, the Bishop of Chester, Dr Peter Forster, said on Thursday, in a take-note debate in the House of Lords on pornography and its impact.

“Pornography is a very widespread feature of Western society, especially since the advent of the internet age,” he said. “In my ministry, I have come across addiction to pornography as a factor in individual marriage breakdown.

“As a Bishop, I have had two of my clergy prosecuted for downloading child sexual-abuse images, usually called child pornography. Both these priests were given custodial sentences and both are unlikely ever again to exercise the Christian ministry for which they were trained.”

He said that the “sheer volume of cases” of child-sex abuse images meant that “prosecutions are no longer routinely brought”. He quoted a University of Bristol survey, that suggested that 40 per cent of children between the age of 13 and 17 “had suffered sexual coercion of some sort, ranging from rape to being pressurised into unwanted sexual activity, often with elements of physical violence.”

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DEUTSCHLAND
NWZ Online

Der frühere Hildesheimer Bischof soll während seiner Amtszeit einen Jungen sexuell missbraucht haben. Das Bistum halte die Schilderung des Betroffenen für plausibel. Bischof Norbert Trelle ist bestürzt.

HILDESHEIM Der frühere und 1988 verstorbene Hildesheimer Bischof Heinrich Maria Janssen wird des sexuellen Missbrauchs beschuldigt. Ein Mann erhebt den Vorwurf, Ende der 1950er-Jahre bis Anfang der 1960er-Jahre von dem Geistlichen missbraucht worden zu sein, wie das Bistum Hildesheim am Freitag berichtete. Die Diözese halte die Schilderungen für plausibel und habe den Antrag des Mannes auf Anerkennung des Leids an die Deutsche Bischofskonferenz weitergeleitet.

Der amtierende Bischof Norbert Trelle zeigte sich bestürzt. Der Vorgang sei bereits im Frühjahr 2015 an das Bistum Hildesheim herangetragen worden. Der Mann habe den Wunsch geäußert, den Missbrauch strikt vertraulich zu behandeln. Dem sei das Bistum aus Gründen des Opferschutzes zunächst gefolgt. Wegen einer Presse-Anfrage zu den erhobenen Vorwürfen sehe sich das Bistum nun jedoch in der Pflicht, die Öffentlichkeit über die Missbrauchs-Anzeige zu informieren.

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DEUTSCHLAND
Spiegel

Ein deutscher Bischof zählt nach Informationen des SPIEGEL offenbar zu den Missbrauchstätern in der katholischen Kirche: Heinrich Maria Janssen (1907 bis 1988), langjähriger Bischof von Hildesheim, soll sich über Jahre an einem Ministranten vergangen haben.

Das “Büro für Fragen sexuellen Missbrauchs Minderjähriger im kirchlichen Bereich” der Deutschen Bischofskonferenz hat den Missbrauchsvorwurf des ehemaligen Messdieners durch den Bischof geprüft und das Leid anerkannt.

Es bestätigte dem Mann “in Anerkennung des erlittenen Leids” den “erlittenen sexuellen Missbrauch als besonderen Härtefall” und sprach ihm 10.000 Euro als “Anerkennungszahlung” zu.

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GERMANY
ABC News

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

BERLIN — Nov 6, 2015

A Roman Catholic diocese in Germany says a man has made a “plausible” claim that he was sexually abused in the late 1950s and early 1960s by its then-bishop, who died in 1988.

The Hildesheim diocese in northern Germany said Friday that the man came forward earlier this year with the claim against the late Bishop Heinrich Maria Janssen. It said the current bishop’s advisors on questions of sexual abuse considered the claim plausible, and that it made a payment to the man in “recognition of his suffering” at the recommendation of the German Bishops’ Conference.

It didn’t specify how much was paid out, but said the man made further financial demands that the diocese rejected.

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NEW YORK
TWC News

[with video]

An online petition asking the Vatican to remove Bishop Robert Cunningham as head of the Syracuse Diocese now has more than 85,000 signatures.

Kevin Braney is one of the creators of the petition. He says a letter was sent to the Vatican requesting a meeting to present the petition in person. The Vatican has not replied to the request.

The petition asks for Cunningham to be removed due to comments made about sex abuse in the church. Creators say he described victims as culpable in a deposition. The Syracuse diocese says that the bishop has repeatedly apologized for the words pulled from his deposition.

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VATICAN CITY
Vatican Radio

(Vatican Radio) The Secretariat for the Economy released a statement to the press on Friday, regarding certain claims advanced in recent Italian publications, insofar as the management of expenditure by the Prefect of the Secretariat, Cardinal George Pell, and the expenditure incurred by the Secretariat throughout 2014. Please find the full text of the statement in the original English, below.

******************************************************

PRESS STATEMENT FROM A SPOKESPERSON FOR THE SECRETARIAT FOR THE ECONOMY
The recently released books appear to have included false and misleading claims about the management of expenditure by Cardinal Pell and the expenditure incurred by the Secretariat throughout 2014. These matters were addressed in a Statement issued earlier this year which does not appear to have been mentioned by the authors. It is attached for reference.

Key facts about the 500,000 Euro expenditure in 2014 that has been reported include:

1. In the period between March 2014 (when the Secretariat was established) and December 2014, operational costs, including initial set up costs for furniture and computers as well as salaries were incurred.

2. Salaries and related costs accounted for 292,000 Euro.

3. The net costs of air travel by staff of the Secretariat for these 9 months was less than 4000 Euro, considerably less than many other entities.

4. 2500 Euros was spent on acquiring vestments and altar cloths for the Chapel in the Secretariat office so that staff could come together in prayer and for the celebration of Holy Mass.

5. 16000 Euro was spent in travel and accommodation by advisors working on a project for the C9.

6. A Vatican apartment was secured for one senior staff member from abroad on a term contract. It is anticipated this asset will continue to be used by the Secretariat for many years as it provides a less expensive option of accommodating international experts on long term placement than alternatives at one of the Domus’ or in expensive hotels.

7. Consistent with the practice at the time, the Secretariat was not consulted prior to APSA awarding contracts. The Secretariat was not asked to provide specific approval of each cost item prior to making a commitment – these practices have now changed. Expenditure by the Secretariat now requires the explicit approval of the relevant manager before costs can be incurred.

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ROME
Gazzetta del Sud

Rome, November 5 – Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, the former Vatican secretary of state, on Thursday rejected allegations contained in a book in the middle of the new Vatican leaked-documents scandal that he paid for renovations to his ‘top-floor’ apartment with money from a foundation linked to a children’s hospital in Rome. The allegations are contained in Avarice by L’Espersso journalist Emiliano Fittipaldi, which is out in Italy on Thursday. In an interview with Corriere della Sera newspaper Bertone described the allegations as “slander”. “It is shameful, I don’t know how to defend myself, it is almost impossible to defend oneself from slander,” he said. Cardinal Bertone insisted that he had paid for the 300,000-euro renovations out of his own pocket even though the apartment belonged to the Vatican governorate.

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VATICAN CITY
America Magazine

Gerard O’Connell | Nov 5 2015

Last weekend, following investigations, the Vatican Gendarmerie arrested a Spanish monsignor, Lucio Angel Vallejo Balda, and an Italian public relations expert, Dr. Francesca Immacolata Chaouqui, for their alleged roles in leaking confidential and reserved information regarding Vatican finances and other matters to Italian journalists who have just published two books mainly based on this information.

While Mgr. Vallejo Balda, 54, is still in a Vatican prison, Ms. Chaouqui, 33, is back in her home. She was released after being detained for a day and a half as she had begun to collaborate with the investigators.

The Vatican issued a press communique on November 2 announcing the arrests and said, “Today, the office of the Promoter of Justice, in the persons of Prof. Gian Piero Milano, Promoter of Justice, and Prof. Roberto Zannotti, vice-Promoter of Justice, convalidated the arrest of the above named persons, but provided for the release of Dr. Chaouqui, given that the demands of preventative detention were no longer judged necessary because of her cooperation with the investigations.”

America has now learned that there was another reason – could it be the main one? – for her rapid release. It relates to the fact that she is more than two months pregnant and sources say the Pope did not want her held in prison given this delicate condition. This fact too explains why Chaouqui was actually detained in a convent of women religious inside the Vatican, and not put in a prison cell as happened to Vallejo Balda. He is in the same cell that was occupied by Benedict XVI’s butler, Paolo Gabriele, 3 years ago.

Since her arrest, Chaouqui has engaged one of the most famous lawyers in the country, Giulia Bongiorno, to defend her. After her release, she has protested her total innocence in conversations with journalists, and on Facebook and Twitter she stated: “I am not a mole. I have not betrayed the Pope. I never gave a page to anybody.” She blames Vallejo Balda for dragging her into all this.

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UNITED STATES
Take Action

about the petition

By some estimates, the number of victims of clergy sexual violence is in the hundreds of thousands and on the rise as more survivors come forward and civil authorities begin investigations in Europe, Latin America, Africa, Australia, and Asia. The Vatican’s own experts have said there are 100,000 cases in the U.S. alone. Sexual violence in the Catholic Church is not a historical crisis but an ongoing problem, as is the lack of accountability.

Today, throughout the world, perpetrator priests who are known to church officials continue to hold posts in congregations, schools, orphanages, and elsewhere, unbeknownst to local communities. The church has shown over and over that it cannot police itself. In 2014, the United Nations issued a series of recommendations on what the Vatican must do to fulfill its obligations to human rights treaties and end this epidemic of sexual violence.

Pope Francis has all the authority he needs to move from words to action and stop further abuse. By signing this petition, you’re standing with SNAP, CCR, and many others to demand that Pope Francis take the following concrete steps to address the violence:

* Immediately remove all known and suspected child sexual abusers from assignment, and refer the matter to relevant law enforcement authorities for investigation and prosecution;

* Hand over files containing details of cases of sexual violence to civil authorities for investigation and prosecution of abusers as well as those who concealed their crimes and knowingly placed offenders in contact with children, and demand bishops do the same in their local jurisdictions;

* Encourage and protect church whistle-blowers who have come forward with information about the crisis of sexual violence. So far church officials have intimidated and retaliated against whistle-blowers.

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CHILE
Yahoo! News

SANTIAGO, Chile (AP) — There has been no cover up by Chile’s Catholic church of the abuses committed by its most infamous pedophile priest, the archbishop of Santiago said on Thursday.

Cardinal Ricardo Ezzati spoke after testifying in a case brought against the church by three victims of the Rev. Fernando Karadima. The Vatican sanctioned Karadima in 2011 to a lifetime of penance and prayer for having abused young boys. A Chilean judge later dismissed a criminal case because the statute of limitations had expired, but she determined the abuse allegations were truthful.

“I answered all the questions and I hope it helps to clarify the stance of the church, which is of love for the truth and understanding for those who have been victims,” Ezzati said after being questioned for two hours at a court hearing in Santiago.

“There has been no cover up by the Church.”

The three victims are demanding a monetary compensation and a public apology.

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UNITED STATES/ROME
The Guardian (UK)

Stephanie Kirchgaessner in Rome and Amanda Holpuch in New York
Friday 6 November 2015

When Cardinal Bernard Law was forced under public pressure to resign as archbishop of Boston in 2002, he was considered a pariah within the ranks of the American Catholic church.

In an editorial at the time, the Boston Globe – which had helped bring him down by exposing how the archdiocese had covered up years of sexual abuse by paedophile priests – said that Law had become the “central figure in a scandal of criminal abuse, denial, payoff and coverup that resonates around the world”.

The story behind the Globe’s exposé is the subject of a new film called Spotlight, which stars Michael Keaton and Mark Ruffalo and is being released in the US on Friday.

The movie is likely to revive questions about the church’s handling of sex abuse – both then and now – and revive memories of a painful period for abuse victims and millions of American Catholics.

But Law is likely to be insulated from any controversy: in the 13 years since his resignation, he has found a haven far from Boston, behind the walls of the Vatican.

At the time of his resignation, the cardinal was being pilloried publicly for having turned a blind eye to sex abuse, and embodying a culture that “reflexively placed the reputation of the church above the pain of victims”.

But for years, he served in an honorific role as the archpriest of the Basilica of the Santa Maria Maggiore until his retirement, at the age of 80, in 2011.

Today, Law enjoys the quiet life that any senior and retired cardinal living in Vatican City would: he is a fixture of the annual 4 July Independence Day party held by the US embassy to the Holy See, and was until recently considered an active and important conservative voice within many of the Vatican offices where he served. …

But for men like David O’Regan, who was abused by a member of the Boston archdiocese in the 1960s and suppressed the experience until the Boston Globe’s investigation made it public in 2002, Law is still a symbol of the church’s legacy of abuse.

“Being caught in [Law’s] lie, that was such a betrayal to me, because my faith meant so much to me,” he said.

Now serving as the New England director of the activist group Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests, O’Regan said that he was one of about 100 people who attended a Spotlight screening last week, organised by the film’s distributor, Open Road Films. There were several advance screenings of the film for clergy sex abuse survivors and their families and friends.

The anger and sadness O’Regan felt in 2002 was resurrected during the screening, but he said he is thankful for the film.

“I felt validation,” said O’Regan. “When we first came forward to the church, we were not believed, they minimised what happened to us.”

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MASSACHUSETTS
Boston Herald

James Verniere Friday, November 06, 2015

From “The Front Page” and “His Girl Friday” to “All the President’s Men” and “The Paper,” America has been in love with newspaper movies. This gives “Spotlight,” a film from New Jersey-born director and co-writer Tom McCarthy (“Win Win,” “The Cobbler”) about the Boston Globe’s award-winning investigation into the Catholic church child sexual abuse scandal, both the urgency of front-page headlines and a certain backward, nostalgic air.

Remember newspapers? Weren’t they great?

The action begins in 2001. The New York Times-owned Globe has a new editor from Miami named Marty Baron (Liev Schreiber, nailing the guy’s “Visit to a Small Planet” aura). Not long after unpacking, Baron asks editor Walter “Robby” Robinson (Michael Keaton, stellar), who is supervised by Managing Editor Ben Bradlee Jr. (John Slattery), and Robinson’s “spotlight” team of reporters — Mike Rezendes (Mark Ruffalo), Sacha Pfeiffer (Rachel McAdams) and Matt Carroll (Brian d’Arcy James) — to look into why no prosecutions have resulted from church payments to settle sexual abuse cases.

Holy Whitey Bulger, is it possible the Boston church has been able to suppress the truth for decades?

The screenplay by McCarthy and Josh Singer (“Fringe”) gives a shout­out to the Boston Phoenix, which broke the story, but it’s a left-handed compliment. The case involves “sealed documents” the church desperately does not want to come to light and the number of priests who have molested children in the Boston area and what disgraced Bernard Cardinal Law (Len Cariou, “Blue Bloods”) knew and when he knew it.

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MASSACHUSETTS
Eagle-Tribune

Posted: Friday, November 6, 2015

By Mike LaBella mlabella@eagletribune.com

HAVERHILL — A major motion picture about a newspaper investigation into the Catholic priest sexual abuse scandal is showing in theaters, and the character of Ronald Paquin, a former Haverhill and Methuen priest, has a strong presence in the film.

Paquin is free after serving 12 years in prison for raping boys while he was a priest. The Essex District Attorney tried recently to get him committed to a mental hospital, where he would be held after his prison term, but a judge refused.

Boston lawyer Mitchell Garabedian, who has represented more than 100 victims of the scandal and currently represents victims from 13 different countries, recently filed a civil suit against the Archdiocese on behalf of a former Haverhill woman who said she was sexually abused by already convicted Haverhill priest Kelvin Iguabita.

Garabedian said he recently attended a screening of the movie “Spotlight” and found it to be accurate for the most part. Actor Stanley Tucci portrays Garabedian in the movie.

“It’s a powerful film that drives home a message of the evils of clergy sexual abuse,” Garabedian said. “It also addresses the cover up by the church, the power and influence of the Catholic church, and the ability to have the truth revealed. It’s a film that shows how the law, the media, and victims of clergy sexual abuse are combined to overcome the most powerful institution in the world.”

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NEW MEXICO
Albuquerque JournalI

By Olivier Uyttebrouck / Journal Staff Writer
Friday, November 6th, 2015

Legal and professional costs in the Diocese of Gallup bankruptcy case have climbed to more than $3.2 million as the case enters its third year this month and attorneys prepare for a third round of mediation talks.

Meanwhile, a Texas law firm has asked U.S. Bankruptcy Judge David T. Thuma of Albuquerque to allow 15 alleged victims of sexual abuse by priests to file civil lawsuits against the diocese.

All 15 allegedly were abused by priests at churches in Winslow, Ariz., where the diocese posted seven priests identified as having had “credible allegations” of sexual abuse made against them.

They are among 57 alleged sex abuse victims who have filed claims against the Diocese of Gallup in the Chapter 11 reorganization bankruptcy filed by the diocese in November 2013.

Attorneys representing some of the alleged victims have sought Thuma’s permission to bring some of the civil cases to trial in state court. Thuma will consider the requests at a hearing Tuesday.

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MINNESOTA
Pioneer Press

By John Lundy
Forum News Service
POSTED: 11/05/2015

DULUTH, Minn. — A priest who was accused of molesting a choirboy during a European tour in 1990 has been exonerated in a third-party investigation, according to the abbot of his monastery.

But an advocate for victims of sexual abuse by priests isn’t satisfied.

“Their third-party investigator was paid to find exactly what they were looking for,” said Verne Wagner, the northern Minnesota director of the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests.

“We’ve seen this in many instances, and it is not credible.”

The allegations against the Rev. Timothy Backous, who was placed on leave from positions with Essentia Health and St. Michael’s parish in Duluth in June 2014 after they resurfaced, “were not supported by evidence,” said Abbot John Klassen of St. John’s Abbey in Collegeville, Minn., in a statement released Thursday.

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IRELAND
The Journal

ARCHBISHOP EAMON MARTIN has revealed that in the past year he has come across a number of situations where there were concerns that somebody vulnerable may have been abused by a priest.

Speaking to Eamonn Mallie on Irish TV, the leader of Ireland’s Catholics said, “Every single time that I come across anything now that potentially could be a criminal offence, it may not be a criminal offence, but potentially- we now have a system, we have a dedicated person”.

“With regard to my own life and my own work as archbishop,” Martin continued, “I would say yes, even since last September [2014] there have been a number of cases, not of child abuse, but cases where we’ve been worried that somebody who is vulnerable may have been abused by a priest.

We immediately seek the advice of the civil authorities.

“We have a very close link with the statutory authorities and we refer everything, if we have any suggestion at all that somebody might be at risk or that there might be a danger to a child, it’s referred.

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WORCESTER (MA)
Telegram and Gazette

By David Clohessy

Posted Nov. 6, 2015

Soon, millions across the US will see “Spotlight,” a highly-acclaimed film that shows how dogged Boston Globe reporters, with the help of courageous abuse victims, unearthed horrific clergy sex crimes and cover-ups in the Boston archdiocese and beyond.

In anticipation of the movie, and the distressing picture it paints of complicit Catholic officials, Worcester church staff are disingenuously distancing themselves from both their neighboring diocese and their own indefensible track record of abuse. It’s smart public relations. But it doesn’t correspond with reality.

In a recent Telegram op-ed (Nov. 4), Judge Edward Reynolds claims the local Catholic hierarchy is “protecting children today by implementing nationally accepted protocols.” That’s wishful thinking.

Judge Reynolds and his colleagues should be promoting vigilance instead of complacency. They should take off their rose-colored glasses, look hard at the evidence, and admit that what church spin-doctors pass off as progress is really “smoke and mirrors” designed to mollify the flock, not actually safeguard the vulnerable.

Judge Reynolds was hand-picked by Bishop Robert McManus for an essentially meaningless abuse panel that is primarily “window dressing” mandated by a weak, vague national church policy. Judge Reynolds means well, no doubt. But he’s being fooled and exploited by church officials who continue to put their comfort and careers ahead of kids’ safety.

Here’s the clearest evidence of this. Bishop McManus, Judge Reynolds and their colleagues refuse to take the most simple and effective way to protect kids from child molesting clerics — posting their names, photos and work histories on diocesan and parish websites.

About 30 U.S. bishops have done this. Not Bishop McManus, however. None of those 30 bishops have expressed regret for having taken this easy, quick prevention step. It’s common sense: if a cleric is too dangerous to keep in a parish, then the public should be warned about him.

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UNITED KINGDOM
BBC News

A man sexually abused as child by an East Sussex vicar has criticised the Church of England for suggesting there was no cover-up or collusion by clergy.

Bishop of Horsham the Rt Rev Mark Sowerby was speaking after retired clergyman Vickery House, 69, was jailed for six-and-a-half years for carrying out sex offences against a boy and three men in the 1970s and 1980s.

Mr Sowerby said last week he had not yet been provided with evidence proving any cover-up by the church..

Gary Johnson, who now lives in California and has waived his right to anonymity, said the comments were “outmoded, distasteful and only serve to traumatise victims”.

Mr Johnson was among at least 10 victims of convicted paedophile the Rev Roy Cotton, who died in 2006.

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IRELAND
Belfast Telegraph

[with video]

By Cate McCurry

PUBLISHED 06/11/2015

The Archbishop of Armagh has revealed that he has reported suspected clerical abuse to the authorities on three or four occasions since becoming the leader of Ireland’s Catholics.

Since Archbishop Eamonn Martin became all-Ireland primate last September, he said there have been three or four occasions when he feared a vulnerable person was being abused by a priest.

The church leader said none were children and none of the cases were taken forward by the authorities.

In a wide-ranging interview with veteran broadcaster Eamonn Mallie, to be shown this Sunday, Dr Martin also said he believes it is possible for a gay man to be a priest – but not a woman.

He added that he has “no problem” with priests who have gay tendencies as long as they remain celibate.

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UNITED STATES
Aleteia

JOHN BURGER NOVEMBER 5, 2015

A well-known Catholic intellectual referred to the year 2002 as the Long Lent—a period in which shame was just heaped upon the Church because of the mishandling of sexual abuse cases by members of the clergy.

Indeed, Father Richard John Neuhaus’s term was appropriate: revelations about the Archdiocese of Boston’s mishandling of abusive priests did not end tidily with a bright Easter Sunday morning. What began as investigative reports by The Boston Globe on Jan. 6, 2002, just seemed to snowball for the rest of the year, with other journalistic inquiries around the country finding similar malpractice in other dioceses. While many Catholic leading lights went on the defensive, viewing the exposés as an attack on the moral authority of the Church, American bishops themselves revamped the policies that should have prevented the mishandling in the first place. The year ended with the resignation of Boston’s Cardinal Bernard Law, and it would seem that “Lent” was finally coming to an end.

But for many victims of abuse, the Lent has continued; for some, sadly, it has never gotten past Good Friday.

Spotlight, a major motion picture depicting the Globe’s efforts to expose the Boston Archdiocese’s handling of clergy abuse cases, opens in New York, Los Angeles and Boston on Friday and nationwide later this month. Undoubtedly, it will reopen old wounds and revive old debates. Aleteia wanted to take a measure of one aspect of the abuse scandal: the healing of victims. We contacted several survivors and others involved in recovery and asked them to tell their stories, talk about what has helped them to find healing, and what steps they feel the Church still needs to take.

The uniqueness of each person’s journey is important to bear in mind. We present two stories today, but we by no means wish to imply that they represent a “typical” sexual abuse victim or survivor. These vignettes represent a range of experiences: both were abused by Catholic priests but in different places and different decades. One is male, the other female. Tomorrow, we will present the stories of survivors who speak about the impact sexual abuse has had on the family.

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NEW JERSEY
NJ.com

By Jessica Mazzola | NJ Advance Media for NJ.com
on November 05, 2015

NEWARK — It was only a walk of about three miles along Broad Street – from Lincoln Park to Washington Park, and back. But, the Thursday morning walk through Newark made a difference for victims of sex abuse, its organizers said.

Fred Marigliano, who recently completed a 270-mile walk from Cape May to Mahwah to bring awareness to childhood sexual abuse, added a city walk to his agenda.

“A number of people from Newark reached out to me, asking why I hadn’t walked through the city,” Marigliano said Thursday.

Marigliano said he was abused by a family priest at age 11. It took him about 50 years to come forward with his story, he said. Marigliano is now a board member of Road to Recovery, Inc., a nonprofit that works to support other victims and their families.

The 68-year-old said he spoke to hundreds of people along the walk, and achieved his goal of spreading awareness about the issue.

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CHILE
El Mostrador

[Ezatti arrives to testify as part of the lawsuit against Fernando Karadima.]

El cardenal Arzobispo de Santiago Ricardo Ezatti concurrió este jueves hasta la oficina del juez Juan Manuel Muñoz quien lleva adelante el proceso por la demanda que presentaron un grupo de víctimas del ex párroco de El Bosque Fernando Karadima.

Los afectados, José Andrés Murillo, James Hamilton y Juan Carlos Cruz piden una indemnización de $450 millones. En este contexto, Ezatti deberá responder un cuestionario de 35 pregunntas.

“El mayor rol de encubridor nosotros sostenemos es realizado por el cardenal Errázuriz, que es quien no atiende las denuncias en su momento. Y con posterioridad más bien lo que uno le reprocha a Ezzati es el tema de haberse olvidado de las víctimas y haberse preocupado más bien de los victimarios”, aseguró el abogado Juan Pablo Hermosilla quien representa a los demandantes, según consigna T13.cl

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VATICAN CITY
National Catholic Register

BY EDWARD PENTIN 11/05/2015

VATICAN CITY — Pope Francis’ choice of Cardinal Godfried Danneels to attend last month’s Ordinary Synod of Bishops on the Family as one of his 45 papal delegates was heavily criticized on account of the Belgian cardinal’s record.

The archbishop emeritus of Mechelen-Brussels advised the king of Belgium to sign an abortion law in 1990, told a victim of clerical sex abuse to keep quiet and refused to forbid pornographic, “educational” materials being used in Belgian Catholic schools. He also once said same-sex “marriage” was a “positive development” and congratulated the Belgian government for passing same-sex “marriage” legislation, although he has sought to distinguish such a union from the Church’s understanding of marriage.

The cardinal, who was pictured standing next to Pope Francis on the loggia of St. Peter’s Basilica on the night of the Pope’s election, also admitted in September to being part of what he called the St. Gallen “mafia” club that was opposed to Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger and campaigned to prevent him being elected in 2005.

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MINNESOTA
The Catholic Spirit

Maria Wiering | November 4, 2015

The Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis and the State of Minnesota will continue meeting outside of court to discuss criminal and civil charges the Ramsey County Attorney’s Office filed against the archdiocese, attorneys for both parties said in an initial hearing Oct. 29 in Ramsey County Court.

Judge Teresa Warner said the archdiocese and state were keeping her apprised of their conversations. She scheduled the next hearing for 9 a.m. Nov. 30 at the Ramsey County Courthouse in St. Paul.

In June, the Ramsey County Attorney’s Office charged the archdiocese with six gross misdemeanors of failing to protect three victims of now laicized priest Curtis Wehmeyer, and contributing to the victims’ delinquency, asserting Wehmeyer provided them drugs and alcohol. The county also filed a civil petition against the archdiocese alleging it failed to protect children and seeking a legal remedy to prevent future victimization.

Although the criminal charges and civil petition are separate cases, attorneys for the archdiocese and the state agreed to address them jointly at the November court appearance. Representing the archdiocese is Joe Dixon, an attorney with the Minneapolis law firm Fredrikson & Byron and a former federal prosecutor.

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KANSAS CITY (MO)
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests

For immediate release: Thursday, Nov. 5, 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’re sad that Kansas City’s new bishop chose to basically ignore his diocese’s horrific track record on the biggest crisis his church faces.

[Kansas City Star]

This is not a good sign. Ignoring abuse and cover up won’t prevent abuse and cover up. By making this choice, he’s following the same failed pattern bishops across the world have followed for decades – essentially denying, minimizing, and thus enabling more heinous crimes against children by child molesting clerics.

Bishop James Johnston devoted “just a few minutes of a 20-minute homily to the challenge of healing the diocese,” the KC Star reported. Healing, however, is secondary. Preventing abuse and exposing wrongdoers and deterring cover ups comes first. And there’s much still to be done in this regard.

Again, we appeal to Johnston to take practical, proven steps to safeguard kids from clerics who commit abuse. We appeal to KC Catholic and citizens to insist that he do this.

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MINNESOTA
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests

For immediate release: Thursday, Nov. 5, 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 fear that Duluth’s bishop will appeal an $8 million jury verdict or use it to justify seeking bankruptcy protection. We hope he’ll do neither. Both are irresponsible.

A Pennsylvania bishop once appealed a jury verdict for an abuse victim for more than a dozen years. Instead of paying the original $1.5 million, the diocese ultimately paid $2.569 million

[BishopAccountability.org]

More recently, an Illinois bishop appealed a $5 million jury verdict for years, and ended up paying $ 6.3 million (because of the interest that had accrued).

[St. Louis Post-Dispatch]

Appeals like this are mean-spirited and often financially dumb. They delay long-deserved healing for everyone involved.

We also fear that Bishop Paul Sirba will also now claim “We must seek Chapter 11 protection.” We hope this doesn’t happen.

Bishops declare bankruptcy for selfish reasons, not financial ones. They want to keep their reputations, not their assets. They want to keep their cover ups covered up. Bankruptcy brings an abrupt halt to disclosures about which clerics committed and concealed child sex crimes.

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VATICAN CITY
Crux

By John L. Allen Jr.
Associate editor November 5, 2015

In the wake of two new books in Italy detailing charges of Vatican overspending and corruption, the pope’s top financial official has dismissed claims of lavish outlays in his own department, insisting that a half-million euro spent in the first six months were related to legitimate start-up costs.

A statement issued on behalf of Australian Cardinal George Pell, appointed by Pope Francis to run the Vatican’s Secretariat for the Economy in February 2014, claimed on Thursday that Pell’s department actually is one of the few in the Vatican that proposed spending less money in 2015 than in 2014.

“The recently released books appear to have included false and misleading claims about the management of expenditure by Cardinal Pell and the expenditure incurred by the Secretariat in 2014,” said a statement released by Pell’s office.

“For the avoidance of doubt about the commitment of Cardinal Pell to cost management and control,” the statement said, “the secretariat completed the year well below its 2014 budget and was one of the very few entities to propose a reduction in total expenditure in 2015.”

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MISSOURI
St. Louis Post-Dispatch

ST. LOUIS COUNTY • A new sexual abuse lawsuit has been filed against Chaminade College Preparatory School, over the actions of a now deceased Marianist Brother between 1968 and 1971.

According to the suit, John Woulfe engaged in the abuse while working as a guidance counselor, which is how he met the boy during his junior year of high school.

The suit accuses Woulfe of pulling the boy, identified in the suit as John Doe, out of class for college counseling sessions that turned sexual. It alleges school officials knew of the abuse and failed to stop it, and says that Woulfe had sexually assaulted at least one other boy at Chaminade before Doe.

It is the latest complaint to be filed against the school and more than a half dozen clerics there, according to the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests.

And it is at least the third lawsuit against Woulfe alleging sexual abuse. The Missouri Supreme Court issued an opinion on a previous lawsuit involving Woulfe and another teacher at Chaminade College Preparatory, the Rev. William Christensen, in 2006. The lawsuit was first filed in 2002 by Michael Powel, a former student at the school.

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MINNSESOTA/ILLINOIS
Peoria Public Radio

By CASS HERRINGTON

A jury in Minnesota has awarded $8.1 million to a victim of sexual abuse by a Catholic priest. The priest previously worked in Peoria.

The unnamed victim claims Father James Vincent Fitzgerald molested him in 1978 while he was an altar boy in the Duluth Diocese.

The Ramsey County jury decided Wednesday that the diocese and a religious order were negligent in their supervision of Fitzgerald.

Catholic directory records shared by BishopAccountability.org show that Fitzgerald was quote “in residence” at an orphanage in Peoria in 1962. The records say the Guardian Angel Home housed 40 children at the time.

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MISSOURI
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests

For immediate release: Thursday, Nov. 5, 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)

There have basically been three “waves” of Catholic child sex abuse victims.

First were many who no longer had ties to the church. Their faith had been stolen from them. So they had fewer fears about seeking justice.

Then there were many who were abused in parish settings. They worried about their privacy, since parishes can be somewhat tightly knit. But they came forward anyway.

In recent years, many who were abused in Catholic high schools – even very expensive and prestigious ones – have begun coming forward. These schools are smaller than most parishes and even more tightly knit. They often have active and sometimes influential alumni groups. And the victims hurt at these schools often have conflicted feelings. On one hand, they were obviously and severely injured. On the other hand, however, many remain convinced they got a better education than they might have at another school.

For these reasons and more, it’s often harder for someone who was sexually abused at St. Louis University High or Vianney or St. Mary’s to step forward, protect kids, seek justice and expose clerics who commit

We’re glad this is happening more and more. These schools will be safer as a result.

Two examples:

–In 2005, Brother William C. Mueller’s first victim publicly stepped forward. Now more than 50 of Mueller’s victims have spoken up.

–In 2011, Brother Louis Meinhardt’s first victim publicly stepped forward. Now more than 15 of Meinhardt’s victims have spoken up.

Two months ago, during his US visit, Pope Francis made strong promises. He pledged that “abuse cannot be kept secret any longer,” “all responsible will be held accountable,” and that church officials will provide “careful oversight to ensure that youth are protected.”

The Marianists are thumbing their noses at Francis. They’re doing none of this. It’s time that they start. And where better to start than with Br. Woulfe, a now-deceased cleric who faces multiple accusers and criminal charges in Illinois, in other words, a cleric whose guilt is not really in doubt.

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KANSAS
Roman Catholic Diocese of Salina

The movie, Spotlight, is likely to remind victims of the pain and suffering they have endured at the hands of someone they had every right to trust, a member of the Catholic priesthood. Our hearts ache and our Bishop expresses great sorrow and profound regret for all victims of sexual abuse. We apologize for the grave harm that has been inflicted on all victims throughout the world. Words alone cannot express our sorrow, shame and disappointment. So, it is our prayer and hope that through our actions victims will find the healing they so richly deserve.

The Diocese of Salina has participated in the Charter for the Protection of Children and Young People and independent audits for the last 12 years. We ask for your continued help, support and prayers as we: promote healing and reconciliation with victims/survivors of sexual abuse, respond effectively to allegations of sexual abuse, become accountable for our procedures, and protect the faithful in the future.

The Catholic Church strives to put the child in the center of the room when making decisions about children, and she will not be finished with this issue until child sexual abuse is no longer a part of society or our churches.

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NEW YORK
Syracuse.com

By John O’Brien | jobrien@syracuse.com
on November 05, 2015

SYRACUSE, N.Y. — Two men who say they’re survivors of child-molesting priests have sent more than 85,000 signatures to the Vatican demanding the resignation of Syracuse’s bishop.

The survivors, Kevin Braney and Charles Bailey, cite Bishop Robert Cunningham’s characterization of victims in 2011 and his refusal to publicize the names of 11 priests against whom the diocese has found credible allegations of abuse.

Braney said he was hoping for 10,000 people to sign the petition they started two months ago on Change.org. As of this week, 85,193 people from across the country had signed, he said.

Cunningham, in a 2011 court deposition, testified that “the boy is culpable” in cases of child-molesting priests, and referred to child victims as “accomplices.” After a story was published in September on Syracuse.com about the deposition, Cunningham said his words gave the wrong impression, and that the victims were never at fault.

“We were hoping for 20,000 to 25,000 at the max,” Bailey said of the petition. “That’s an impressive number — 85,000 people agreeing that the bishop should go.”

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MASSACHUSETTS
Catholic League

Bill Donohue comments on a lawyer featured in “Spotlight”:

Stanley Tucci plays church-suing attorney Mitchell Garabedian in “Spotlight,” the film that opens tomorrow about the sexual abuse scandal in the Boston Archdiocese. Tucci, who has never met Garabedian, calls him “the unsung hero” of this story. He also says the lawyer “cares about these victims.”

It is too bad Garabedian cares not a whit about priests who have had their reputations ruined by false allegations. For example, in 2006 Garabedian sued Fr. Charles Murphy for inappropriately touching a minor; the girl said the incident occurred 25 years earlier. On the eve of the trial, the woman dropped her suit. In 2010, Garabedian sued Fr. Murphy for allegedly fondling a man 40 years ago. The accuser was deep in debt and his credibility was questioned even by his own family! After a six month probe by the archdiocesan review board, the priest was exonerated.

When Fr. Murphy died in 2011, he was a broken man. Brian McGrory wrote about him in the Boston Globe saying that what Garabedian did was “a disgrace.” After reading the story, I called Garabedian to see if he had any regrets about pressing charges against Fr. Murphy. He went ballistic: He started screaming like a mad man accusing the archdiocese of operating a “kangaroo court.” I asked him to calm down but he would not. Indeed he made sweeping condemnations of all Boston priests.

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WORCESTER (MA)
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests

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’re saddened that a Catholic layman disingenuously defends how Worcester Catholic officials deal with clergy sex crimes and cover ups.

In a newspaper op ed today, Edward Reynolds, claims the church hierarchy is “protecting children today by implementing nationally accepted protocols.” That’s baloney. They’re doing smart public relations. But they aren’t reforming.

[Telegram & Gazette]

Reynolds should be ashamed for promoting complacency instead of vigilance.

He was hand-picked by Bishop Robert McManus for an essentially meaningless abuse panel that is primarily “window dressing” mandated by a weak, vague national church policy. He means well, no doubt. But he’s being fooled and exploited by church officials who continue to put their comfort and careers ahead of kids’ safety.

Here’s the clearest evidence of this. McManus, Reynolds and their colleagues refuse to take the most simple and effective way to protect kids from child molesting clerics – posting their names, photos and work histories on diocesan and parish websites.

About 30 US bishops have done this. Not McManus, however. None of those 30 have expressed regret for having taking this cheap, quick prevention step. It’s common sense: if a cleric is too dangerous to keep in parish, then the public should be warned about him.

Reynolds touts church policies, protocols and procedures. But kids weren’t hurt and crimes weren’t concealed because of inadequate policies, protocols and procedures. They were hurt by deliberate, repeated, selfish decisions by Catholic officials who have never been exposed or punished and are largely still on the job now.

At least 41 Worcester priests assaulted kids. Dozens of their church supervisors and colleagues knew of or suspected these crimes and ignored or hid them. No words on paper, regardless of how impressive they may sound, will change this. Only exposing and punishing those who commit or conceal child sex crimes stops this horror. But McManus and his colleagues continue to keep a tight lid on this cover up, while clerics who perpetuated it are still on the job, often winning promotions and continuing their complicity.

Instead of patting themselves on the back, Worcester church officials should be begging anyone who sees, suspects or suffers clergy sex crimes to call law enforcement. Instead of making self-serving reassurances, they should be warning parents about known predators.

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UNITED STATES
Godreports

October 22, 2012

By Mark Ellis

He saw himself as defective, but he wasn’t sure why. Alcoholism, anger issues, and two failed marriages led him to the brink of suicide. Then at age 35 repressed memories of sex abuse surfaced from the past, which sparked a profound journey of healing and forgiveness.

“I was hoping I was just crazy,” Bill Christman said, when repressed memories first surfaced of his sexual abuse at the hands of a Catholic priest. Bill’s father died when he was only six, and the priest offered to be a father figure to him and his older brother.

Father Wiebler took the boys on fishing trips, swimming at Buffalo Beach on the Mississippi River, and they played pool together in the rectory. “I thought it was wonderful that Father Wiebler offererd to spend time with my sons,” Billy’s mom, Mary, noted. “I felt he would be a good adult role model for Jeff and Billy.

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IDAHO
Southern Poverty Law Center

Bill Morlin
October 30, 2015

A long-haul trucker is under investigation in Idaho and Washington State on suspicion of sexually abusing at least 10 boys, including some while he was affiliated with a hard-core, anti-Semitic church.

Kevin G. Sloniker, 30, was arrested in Menomonie, Wis., and extradited to Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, where he was booked into the Kootenai County Jail on Oct. 9. Sloniker faces felony charges of rape and lewd conduct involving two underage boys, The Spokesman-Review reported this week.

Authorities say Sloniker, now in jail on a $1 million bond, is suspected of sexually abusing at least eight other boys over the past decade. Some of the alleged abuse occurred when Sloniker took the boys with him while traveling as a long-haul truck driver. He also is under investigation in Spokane County for allegedly sexually abusing and whipping a young boy at his parents’ home in Latah, Wash.

Sloniker became a truck driver after working as a counselor at Immaculate Conception Church in Post Falls, Idaho, which is part of the Society of Saint Pius X, and studying to become a church priest. Church officials have refused comment on the criminal case.

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SPAIN
Yahoo! News

By HERNAN MUNOZ and ALAN CLENDENNING

BARCELONA, Spain (AP) — The Polish monsignor who came out as gay and was fired by the Vatican just before a meeting of bishops about outreach to gays, divorcees and more traditional Catholic families says that a “special kind of homophobia” exists among priests, because those who are homosexual are forced to hate themselves.

Krzysztof Charamsa told The Associated Press in an interview that he hopes more priests will come out “to destroy the code of silence in the church.”

“Many priests, many bishops, many persons in Catholic clergy are gay, are homosexual people,” Charamsa said. “With sensitivity of homosexuals. But they must hate themselves.”

Charamsa was a mid-level official in the Vatican’s doctrine office who came out in interviews in Italian and Polish media last month a day before the bishops met, saying he was happy and proud to be a gay priest and in love with his boyfriend.

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UNITED KINGDOM
BBC News

A Jersey Anglican Church group has asked the Archbishop of Canterbury to make public a report into protecting young vulnerable people in the church.

In 2008 a woman, known as HG, made a formal complaint about abuse by a Jersey churchwarden.
The inquiry into the handling of the complaint recommended no disciplinary action should be taken against any Jersey Anglican clergy member.

The report has been kept confidential on legal advice.

HG said its publication could cause her harm and threatened legal action.

The renewed calls for it to be made public have been made in a letter from Senator Sir Philip Bailhache, the Lay Chair of the Deanery, to the Most Reverend Justin Welby, who said the matter was “gravely affecting Jersey”.

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UNITED STATES
The New York Times

By A. O. SCOTT
NOV. 5, 2015

“The city flourishes when its great institutions work together,” says the cardinal to the newspaper editor during a friendly chat in the rectory. The city in question is Boston. The cardinal is Bernard F. Law and the editor, newly arrived at The Boston Globe from The Miami Herald, is Martin Baron. He politely dissents from the cardinal’s vision of civic harmony, arguing that the paper should stand alone.

Their conversation, which takes place early in “Spotlight,” sets up the film’s central conflict. Encouraged by Baron, a small group of reporters at The Globe will spend the next eight months (and the next two hours) digging into the role of the Boston archdiocese in covering up the sexual abuse of children by priests. But the image of two prominent men talking quietly behind closed doors — Law is played with orotund charm by Len Cariou, Baron with sphinxlike self-containment by Liev Schreiber — haunts this somber, thrilling movie and crystallizes its major concern, which is the way power operates in the absence of accountability. When institutions convinced of their own greatness work together, what usually happens is that the truth is buried and the innocent suffer. Breaking that pattern of collaboration is not easy. Challenging deeply entrenched, widely respected authority can be very scary.

Directed by Tom McCarthy from a script he wrote with Josh Singer and based closely on recent history, “Spotlight” is a gripping detective story and a superlative newsroom drama, a solid procedural that tries to confront evil without sensationalism. Taking its name from the investigative team that began pursuing the sex-abuse story in 2001, the film focuses on both the human particulars and the larger political contours of the scandal and its uncovering.

We spend most of our time with the Spotlight staff. Their supervising editor, Walter Robinson (known as Robby and played by an extra-flinty Michael Keaton), has a classically blunt, skeptical newsman style, but he’s also part of Boston’s mostly Roman Catholic establishment. He rubs shoulders with an unctuous church P.R. guy (Paul Guilfoyle) and plays golf with a well-connected lawyer (Jamey Sheridan) who handled some of the archdiocese’s unsavory business. The reporters working for Robby — Sacha Pfeiffer (Rachel McAdams), Mike Rezendes (Mark Ruffalo) and Matt Carroll (Brian d’Arcy James) — come from Catholic backgrounds, and have their own mixed feelings about what they’re doing.

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MISSOURI
Riverfront Times

Posted By Danny Wicentowski on Thu, Nov 5, 2015

The latest addition to a string of lawsuits filed against Chaminade College Preparatory School accuses a now-deceased Marianist Brother, John Woulfe, of repeatedly molesting a high school student between 1968 and 1971.

The lawsuit, filed Wednesday in St. Louis County Circuit Court, alleges that Wolfe used his position as a guidance counselor at the exclusive all-boys’ school to schedule closed-door “college counselling” meetings with the victim, identified in the suit only as John Doe. Over the course of several sessions, Woulfe allegedly masturbated and performed oral sex on the student.

Woulfe died in 2005, three years after a different Chaminade alumnus accused him of similar abuses during private meetings in Woulfe’s office. Father Martin Solma, head of the St. Louis-based Marianist Catholic Order, revealed in 2012 that more than a dozen former students have come forward alleging sexual abuse involving Woulfe and other members of the order, including Brother Louis Meinhardt. Last month, Chaminade agreed to pay a $300,000 settlement to a former student who said Meinhardt sexually abused him during a typing tutoring session.

According to the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, or SNAP, at least eight Marianist clergy members have been accused of sexual abuse going back to the 1960s. The Marianists run three St. Louis-area high schools: Chaminade, St. John Vianney and St. Mary’s.

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AUSTRALIA
9 News

Australia is one step closer to a national redress scheme for thousands of survivors of sexual abuse in state-run and other institutions.

Victoria and NSW have joined faith-based institutions, including the Catholic Church and the Salvation Army, in backing the recommendation of the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse for a national approach to compensating victims.

The urgent need for such a national scheme was emphasised on Thursday by royal commission chairman Peter McClellan.

Justice McClellan told an international conference of sex-abuse treatment experts that extensive research and engagement with abuse survivors had led commissioners to decide “all previous responses (schemes) have been inadequate”.

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MINNESOTA
Noaker Law Firm

(St. Paul, Minnesota—November 05, 2015)—Yet another Minneapolis-area man filed a civil lawsuit against the Boy Scouts of America and the St. Paul-based Northern Star Council for alleged sexual abuse committed by his Scout leader.

Click Here for Complaint filed with Ramsey County District Court

Steven Parker was only eleven years old when he says he was first sexually abused by his Scout leader, Andrew Momont. According to court documents, the boy met Momont when he joined Troop 17, which was based out of the Olivet Baptist Church in Robbinsdale. Andrew Momont was the troop’s Assistant Scoutmaster. Andrew Momont’s father, Phillip Momont, was the Troop 17 Scoutmaster.

According to court documents, Parker, now age 59, was sexually abused by Scout Leader Andrew Momont on numerous occasions spanning from approximately 1967-1974.

Tomahawk Scout Camp SignThe abuse took place at “Scouting-related meeting, events, and outings in and around St. Paul, Minnesota” as well as at the Many Point Scout Camp near Ponsford, Minnesota and Tomahawk Boy Scout Camp near Birchwood, Wisconsin.

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NEW YORK
Syracuse.com

Bishop Robert Cunningham took an important step toward reconciling with his flock last week when he agreed to immediately report allegations of sexual abuse against priests or other religious workers to the civil authorities.

But the bishop can go farther by releasing the names of 11 priests in the diocese facing credible accusations of abuse.

First, the good news. Cunningham signed a “memorandum of understanding” with the seven district attorneys who have jurisdiction in the sprawling Catholic diocese of Syracuse. Onondaga County District Attorney William Fitzpatrick was among them.

The agreement goes beyond the diocese’s 2003 policy on dealing with sexual abuse of children, which was limited to “current cases involving a minor and any clergy member, employee, religious or volunteer.” The new memorandum requires the diocese to report “regardless of the age of the allegation or whether or not the clergy member is active.” Further, the diocese won’t investigate allegations on its own before reporting them to the district attorney, and it will work with DAs to preserve evidence.

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UNITED KINGDOM
Hull Daily Mail

A MAN has told a court how a priest tried to have sex with him in a church while he was at a children’s home.

The man, now in his thirties, told Leeds Crown Court he was young at the time and could not remember the name of the priest at the St William’s home in Market Weighton.

The prosecution claim the alleged offender was former chaplain Anthony McCallen, 69, who is on trial alongside former headmaster James Carragher, 75, and ex-teacher Michael Curran, 62.

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WORCESTER (MA)
Telegram & Gazette

By Edward J. Reynolds

Posted Nov. 4, 2015

When I was asked in 2009 by Bishop Robert J. McManus of the Diocese of Worcester to be a member of the Diocesan Review Committee, I agreed. Committees like this were established by The Catholic bishops of the United States to advise bishops on matters regarding sexual abuse allegations, including whether allegations are credible and how they should be handled, how victims can be helped, codes of conduct, and also monitoring how policies to protect children and young people are being followed.

I agreed to be a member because as a Catholic lay person, parent, grandparent, former trial judge, now practicing attorney, I wanted to know first-hand what was going on and to assist in the local protection efforts for children and young people in the Diocese of Worcester. Now that the movie “Spotlight” will be in theaters soon, I suspect many other people may want to know what is happening today in our diocese.

As a result of my past seven-year membership and the responsibilities connected thereto, I can represent that the Diocese of Worcester has fully adopted and works every day on past issues regarding persons who may have been sexually abused as a minor by a priest, deacon or other church personnel of the diocese. Likewise, I have seen how they are protecting children today by implementing nationally accepted protocols.

The Diocese of Worcester has been operating in compliance with the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops’ Charter for Protection of Children. As part of their response to that charter, it established the Office for Healing and Prevention in 2002 to work with victims coming forward seeking assistance. It also broadened its committee of advisers from outside the diocese, called the Diocesan Review Committee, to do the following: hear and assert the credibility of all complaints of sexual abuse of minors made against any diocese personnel; advise the Bishop on a course of action including termination from ministry, or employment or volunteer status, as well as assuring reporting to the District Attorney’s Office; advise the Bishop regarding outreach to alleged victims, treatment for victims and/or family members; and establish and maintain and confirm protocol with all the Diocesan parishes.

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AUSTRALIA
The Guardian

Joshua Robertson in Brisbane
Wednesday 4 November 2015

A former Brisbane Grammar junior school headmaster accused of dismissing a student’s complaint about suspected serial paedophile Kevin Lynch says he considered seeking the counsellor’s advice about his own son years later.

Raymond Cross, who the royal commission has heard told an alleged victim in 1977 that he should “not make up stories and that Lynch was a well respected man”, told the inquiry he could not rule out the conversation happening but that it was “most unlikely”.

Cross told the royal commission into institutional responses to child sexual abuse in Brisbane on Wednesday that when his second son had “settling issues” at Grammar in 1992, he “considered consulting [Lynch] about my son” even though Lynch had since moved to St Paul’s Anglican school.

The commission’s nine-day hearing is probing responses to Lynch’s suspected ritual sexual abuse of more than 60 students under the guise of “relaxation therapy” for more than two decades at both Grammar and St Paul’s.

Cross said while he found the green and red lighting system signalling student access to Lynch’s locked office “quite odd”, he was unaware of any formal record keeping or oversight of Lynch’s contact with students.

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AUSTRALIA
New Matilda

By Ben Eltham on November 5, 2015

As a student at Brisbane Grammar I heard stories of abuse. Then, as now, the school put its prestige and influence above all else, writes Ben Eltham.

The email arrived, out of the blue, several months ago.

It was from the chairman of my old school, Brisbane Grammar School. The subject was “Statement from Brisbane Grammar School regarding the Royal Commission.”

The school has been caught up in the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse.

“As a valued Old Boy,” the email read, “I wish to inform you of the impending involvement of the School in one of the many Case Studies which are being conducted by the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse around Australia.”

“The Royal Commission has now announced a public hearing in Brisbane from 3 November 2015, which will look at educational institutions in Queensland including our own, which relates to abuse by Kevin Lynch, our then student counsellor, in the 1970s and 1980s.”

I wasn’t surprised. When I attended the school in the early 90s, the reign of terror perpetrated by Lynch was still fresh in many memories. Though Lynch had left before I arrived, older boys who had been abused were still at the school. Rumours circulated. “Mr Lynch’s office” was a notorious phrase.

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IRELAND
The Irish Catholic

About 40 women with intellectual disabilities will be paid compensation for their time in Ireland’s Magdalene laundries, following the passage of the Assisted Decision-Making (Capacity) Bill.

Around €18 million has so far been paid in compensation to 500 women who have received sums of up to €100,000 each, but it has not been possible to compensate those incapable of applying for the scheme themselves.

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ROME
Telegraph

By Alice Philipson, Rome 05 Nov 2015

A British aristocrat tried to warn the Vatican it needed to sort out its murky finances years before the full extent of the Holy See’s waste and money mismanagement emerged, a new book has revealed.

Thomas Stonor, the 7th Baron Camoys and a former prominent banker at Barclays, predicted the Vatican’s reputation would be damaged by the corrupt officials handling its money after he worked as an adviser to the Holy See between 1991 and 2006.

His strongly worded memo, sent to Vatican officials in 2004, was revealed in Merchants in the Temple by Gianluigi Nuzzi, an Italian journalist, who lays bare the chaos of the Vatican’s finances in which millions of euros – including donations meant for the poor – are lost in waste and mismanagement.

The book’s publication on Wednesday came just days after the Vatican arrested two suspected moles for allegedly leaking confidential documents to journalists revealing gross financial mismanagement.

In the five-page letter, Baron Stonor wrote that the historic structure of the Holy See’s finances “is not only inappropriate for the 21st century but also dangerous to the resources of the Holy See and potentially to its reputation”.

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ROME
Corriere della Sera

di FIORENZA SARZANINI

ROME Various confidential documents have been stolen but not yet made public, secret papers that recount events in recent years at the IOR, the Vatican bank. Some of the documents have ended up in two books on the Vatican, due to be released tomorrow, while others are being pursued by investigators from the Vatican Gendarmerie, and could lead to new, sensational developments. This is why investigations are now focusing on various computer experts with hacking skills who may have helped Lucio Angel Vallejo Balda and Francesca Chaouqui find and copy the leaked documents. The Vatican gendarmerie has been keeping an eye on them for some time. Further evidence is thought to have been provided by the computer and mobile phone of Monsignor Vallejo Balda. By analysing the contacts of the high-ranking prelate, it was possible to reconstruct his network of relations in recent months. The data stored on his computer and phone may in fact provide confirmation of information gleaned from telephone tapping and other checks carried out since last May. It should also be considered that a few weeks ago Monsignor Vallejo Balda began to suspect he was under investigation, leading him to make moves that ultimately betrayed him. After being summoned to the Vatican, Chaouqui also had the distinct feeling that she had been framed, which is why she decided to cooperate.

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VATICAN CITY
The Tablet (UK)

05 November 2015 by Christopher Lamb in Rome

Sadly, allegations of money mismanagement by the Vatican are nothing new.

For years, many have assumed the Holy See was a) sitting on a lot of money and b) not being transparent with how it was spending it.

What is new, however, is that the Church now has a Pope who is serious about changing this. He has already started with a clean up of the leadership of the Vatican bank and financial structures.

What two new books show – one by Gianluigi Nuzzi, of the original Vati-leaks fame and the other by Emiliano Fitipaldi – is the depth of the problems he faced in 2013 when he became Pope and the continuing challenges.

Among the details the books reveal are:

* In 2011-12 the majority of a large fund, Peter’s Pence, contributed to by Catholics from across the world, worth €378 million, was being used to pay for the Vatican bureaucracy. The Holy See have stressed this fund is used for a variety of causes at the Pope’s discretion.On 29 and 30 there was a theft of documents from the archive of Cosea, a commission that was conducting an overhaul of Vatican administration and finances.

* In 2014 there was a theft of documents from the archive of Cosea, a commission that was conducting an overhaul of Vatican administration and finances.

* A lay postulator for a saint’s cause asked for €40,000 in order to make preliminary investigations

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UNITED KINGDOM
Spectator

Peter Hitchens

The Church of England has produced a lot of good men and women, but very few great ones. It is in its modest, cautious nature that it should be so. Greatness requires a lonely, single-minded strength that does not sit easily with Anglicanism’s gentle compromise.

And I suspect the Church has always been hesitant and embarrassed about the one undeniably great figure it produced in the 20th century. To this day, George Bell, Bishop of Chichester from 1929 to 1958, is an uncomfortable, disturbing person, like a grim obelisk set in a bleak landscape. Many British people still disapprove of his lonely public denunciation of Winston Churchill’s deliberate bombing of German civilians in their homes. Some still defend the bombing and seek to reconcile it with Christian teaching, which is hard. Others simply refuse to believe, against all evidence, that this is what we did. It is often said, though it cannot be proved, that George Bell would have become Archbishop of Canterbury — a post for which he was well qualified — had he kept his mouth shut.

And perhaps this is why he found so few defenders when, 57 years after his death, Bishop Bell was numbered among the transgressors by his old church, and said to have been a paedophilic abuser.

The church itself issued a public statement which correctly referred to the anonymous accusations against the late Bishop Bell as ‘allegations’, but in all other respects treated the claim as if it were a proven fact. Money had been paid in compensation. The current Bishop of Chichester, Dr Martin Warner, was said to have written to ‘the survivor’, apologising. He explained, ‘I am committed to ensuring that the past is handled with honesty and transparency.’ There were ‘expert independent reports’ (which have not been published). None ‘found any reason to doubt the veracity of the claim’.

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MASSACHUSETTS
WBUR

[with audio]

Thu, Nov 05, 2015
by Roy J. Harris Jr.

“Spotlight,” the movie about The Boston Globe’s investigation into a church cover-up of child sexual abuse by Catholic priests, opens in limited release nationwide tomorrow, including in Boston. It may well be, as a headline in Variety declared, that it’s “the film that will make journalism look good again.” That would certainly be a bonus for the nation’s beleaguered news business.

Still, questions remain about whether even such a taut, well-acted, realistic drama about a newspaper exposé from 2002 will draw movie-goers who today are far more likely to tap their news from a cellphone than to read it on the printed page of “Spotlight’s” world. The movie’s most unbelievable element, in fact, may also be its simplest truth: that then-Globe editor Martin Baron, played by Liev Schreiber, sparked such a profoundly powerful reporting effort on his very first day at the Globe, after being hired away from the Miami Herald.

Likely to give it additional appeal, though, is “Spotlight’s” broader, less-heralded angle: a warning about the dangers of uncritically deferring to authority. As Josh Singer, who co-wrote the screenplay with the movie’s director, Tom McCarthy, told me, “The theme of the film is really deference. It’s what makes this story universal.” Indeed, “It’s the same story as with Penn State and with Bill Cosby,” he added, pointing to the difficulties many people have had believing the sexual abuse accusations in those cases.

“Spotlight” is framed to highlight the Globe staff’s own shocking epiphany, as reporters overcame a deferential mindset when they began to penetrate the defenses thrown up by the entrenched Catholic hierarchy. “It’s about not wanting to stick one’s neck out to stop a problem,” Singer said, especially when that problem involves what are generally seen as “good institutions.” He asked, “Who really wants to bring them down?”

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GEORGIA
Atlanta Journal-Constitution

A lawyer for the Georgia statehouse lobbyist accused in a child sex abuse lawsuit said his client “has done absolutely nothing wrong.”

Matthew Stanley claims that Jim E. Collins abused him numerous times over the course of several years, as recently as 2002. Collins was a youth pastor at First Baptist Church of Vidalia. The lawsuit was filed Tuesday in Toombs County.

The suit is one of the first filed since the passage this year of House Bill 17, the Hidden Predator Act. The bill created a two-year window during which victims of past abuse can file civil claims against their alleged abuser, even if the statute of limitations has expired.

Collins’ attorney, Kendall Gross of Metter, said his client “denies any wrongdoing, period.”

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WISCONSIN
Fox 6

[with video]

NOVEMBER 4, 2015, BY BEN HANDELMAN

NEW BERLIN — A ministry with connections to the Duggar family is being sued — and a New Berlin pastor has found himself on the defensive. He and others are accused of covering up years of sexual abuse allegations.

The lawsuit claims Pastor David York hid or ignored serious accusations of sexual misconduct against children — not in New Berlin, but at a ministry in Illinois with a very controversial leader.

Pastor York leads services at Crossroads Community Church on Moorland Road in New Berlin. But it’s his service at another ministry that has him and other facing a possible multi-million dollar lawsuit.

York sits on the board of the Institute for Basic Life Principles — based in Oak Brook, Illinois.

A new lawsuit claims the ministry’s board turned a cold shoulder to years of sexual abuse allegations.

“They have done everything wrong. They’ve chosen to cover it up, hide it,” David Gibbs III, attorney said.

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AUSTRALIA
ABC News

By Joanna Menagh

One of eight Perth men charged with sexually abusing a 13-year-old girl has been sentenced to more than 10 years’ jail.

Dawid Volmer, 41, also known as David, pleaded guilty to 12 charges, including giving the girl a stupefying substance so he could abuse her.

The Perth District Court was told Volmer had three sexual meetings with the girl after her father answered an ad he placed online for sexual massages.

Volmer told police as soon as he saw the girl he knew she was underage, even though her father assured him she was over 16.

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AUSTRALIA
The West Australia

[with video]

Tim Clarke
November 5, 2015

A former Christian pastor who admitted abusing a 13 year-old victim who was allegedly “offered” to him by the victim’s father has been jailed for more than ten years.

David Volmer, 41, who was also known as Dawid Volmer, pleaded guilty earlier this year to 12 offences, including indecent dealing with a child, sexual penetration of a child and stupefying with intent to commit an indictable offence.

He will have to serve more than eight years in prison before he is eligible for parole – and had his jail time reduced by two years after promising to give evidence against the girl’s father, who has been charged with sex offences against his daughter.

At a sentencing hearing at WA’s District Court today, Judge Mark Herron was told how Volmer offered sexual massage services on an advert on website Craigslist – which the girl’s father responded to.

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AUSTRALIA
7 News

By Angie Raphael
November 5, 2015

A pastor and father-of-two who raped a girl as she lay naked and blindfolded on a bed has been jailed for more than 10 years in what a Perth judge has described as depraved and degrading offending.

Dawid Volmer, 41, had advertised sexual massages on Craigslist, initially meeting the girl and her father when she was aged 12, although her dad insisted she was 16.

Despite “knowing in his heart” that she was underage, Volmer met them three times at a city hotel and at the father’s home where he molested and raped the girl while her dad sat in the same room.

The girl cried after the first sexual incident and was chastised by her father, with a year passing before the second encounter, the West Australian District Court heard on Thursday.

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AUSTRALIA
Perth Now

A PERTH pastor leading a “sexual double life” has been jailed for 10-and-a-half years for the “degrading” sexual abuse of a 13-year-old girl, which included raping her while she was blindfolded, naked and drugged.

Married father-of-two, Dawid Volmer, better known as David Volmer, was one of eight men police charged over the alleged pedophile ring that abused the young girl.

Shocking details of Volmer’s role and the alleged involvement of the victim’s own father in exploiting her emerged when the disgraced evangelical Christian preacher was sentenced in the Perth District Court on Thursday afternoon.

Volmer, 41, pleaded guilty to 12 charges — indecently dealing with a child, sexual penetration of a child and stupefying in order to commit an indictable offence — over the course of three sexual encounters with the girl.

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MASSACHUSETTS
Boston.com

A no-spoilers guide to understanding the new film.

By Eric Levenson @ejleven and Bryanna Cappadona @brycappa
Boston.com Staff | 11.05.15

The new film Spotlight, out Friday, works at a rapid pace, speeding along with The Boston Globe reporters through their investigation into Boston’s Catholic Church. The movie throws out a number of names quickly — “Geoghan.” “Porter.” “Law.” — so it can be a bit hard to follow in all its details.

Here’s a guide to the basics of the story that will help you understand what the heck’s going on.

Why is the movie called Spotlight?

The Boston Globe’s Spotlight team is an award-winning ensemble of investigative reporters who take many months to largely research, prospect, and uncover large-scale stories. By that very nature, their stories usually pertain to fraud or corruption or abuse. Spotlight is also “the oldest continuously operating newspaper investigative unit in the United States,” according to the Globe .

Spotlight is noted for exposing child molestations at the hands of many priests in Massachusetts, as well as the intentional coverup within the Catholic Church in 2002—coverage that earned them the Pulitzer’s public service medal in 2003.

What you might not know is that Spotlight, under the leadership of Gerard O’Neill, exposed Whitey Bulger as an FBI informant in 1988. O’Neill and fellow Spotlighter Dick Lehr went on to co-author the ever-popular book about Bulger, Black Mass. (Sound familiar?)

As for their most recent work, Spotlight delved into concurrent surgeries at area hospitals in October.

OK, I remember the basics of the sexual abuse scandal. Was the Spotlight team the first to investigate that?

The core of the team’s reporting and interviewing took place in late 2001, and the Globe published their first story on the case in January 2002.

They weren’t the only outlet on the story. An article in March of 2001 in the alt-weekly Boston Phoenix detailed similar accusations against Father John Geoghan, who eventually faced accusations of abusing over 130 children. Written by Kristen Lombardi, that story quoted assault survivors who accused Cardinal Bernard Law, the Archbishop of Boston, of ignoring previous warnings. The piece laid out a compelling case that Law knew about the allegations against Geoghan.

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