ABUSE TRACKER

IRELAND
Irish Times

PATSY McGARRY

Priests accused of child sex abuse should never be stood down at parish Masses and should not be asked to vacate their places of residence unless particular circumstances demand it.

These were among proposals put to the Catholic Church child protection watchdog, its National Board for Safeguarding Children, at a recent meeting with the Association of Catholic Priests .

The association’s team of Fr Séan McDonagh, Fr Tony Flannery and Fr Brendan Hoban met board chief executive Ian Elliott last Friday as part of a review of church guidelines in the area of child protection.

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NEW YORK
AFP

By Sebastian Smith (AFP)

NEW YORK — The mother of a girl who says she was abused by a powerful and respected spiritual counselor in a New York community of ultra-Orthodox Jews testified Monday that she never suspected the accused man, given their sect’s radical restrictions on sexual behavior.

In a dramatic moment, Rachel Krausz took the stand in the trial that has upended the normally closed Satmar branch of Hasidic Jews and pointed across the Brooklyn courtroom at Nechemya Weberman.

Weberman, a heavyset 54-year-old with a traditional Hasidic beard and dark clothing, is alleged to have repeatedly abused Krausz’s daughter for three years starting in 2007, when she was 12.

Krausz said she could never have known what would happen when she sent her daughter to Weberman for counseling sessions, given his standing and the community’s strict separation of the sexes.

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NEW YORK
Washington Post

Orthodox counselor on trial in NY sex abuse case; girl testifies she was molested

By Associated Press
Updated: Monday, December 3

NEW YORK — A young girl with questions about her ultra-Orthodox Jewish religion was sent to a respected counselor to help her back on a path of faith. Prosecutors say the girl was instead molested by the man for years behind a locked office door starting when she was just 12. Defense attorneys say the counselor is the victim of a vindictive child, angry that he had betrayed her trust.

The ongoing sex abuse trial of Nechemya Weberman in Brooklyn court has rocked the insular, tight-knit group of ultra-Orthodox Jews, not only because of the shocking charges but also because the case is being played out in a public court and the guarded society strongly discourages going to outside authorities. The girl, now 17, testified that she and her family were harassed and shunned for coming forward; her father lost his business and her nieces were kicked out of school.

During the trial, which began last week, four men were charged with criminal contempt for snapping images of the accuser on the witness stand with cellphone cameras and posting them online. And before the trial began, Brooklyn District Attorney Charles Hynes charged other men with trying to bribe the girl to drop the charges.

The girl testified for three days about the abuse, detailing that the 54-year-old Weberman, who was not a licensed counselor, forced her to perform oral sex and act out porn films. She said the abuse lasted from 2007 to 2010. Her family paid him $12,800 in counseling fees during that time, the girl’s mother testified Monday.

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NORTH CAROLINE
WECT

By: WECT Staff

WILMINGTON, NC (WECT) – A preacher from Wilmington was sentenced in superior court Monday to six to nine years in prison for sex charges that date back to 1998.

Thomas Archie Wiggins took a plea deal Monday, pleading guilty to six counts of sex offense in a parental role.

He confessed in 2011 to five charges of first degree sex offense and five counts of indecent liberties with a minor for incidents that happened in 1998.

The charges stem from allegations of a boy who was 14 years old at the time of the incident. Prosecutors said Wiggins asked the victim about his sexual experience when he turned 14 and started sleeping in the same bed as the adolescent, cuddling him.

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NORTH CAROLINA
WWAY

WILMINGTON, NC (WWAY) — A Wilmington pastor charged last year with sex crimes against a minor pleaded guilty today.

Thomas Wiggins Jr. pleaded guilty to six counts of felony sex offense as a substitute parent for crimes that happened in 1998.

Prosecutors say Wiggins’s victim was a 14-year-old boy, who was a member of Wiggins’s church and whose parents were divorced. They say Wiggins became a father-figure to the victim, but over the course of the next two years began to sexually violate him.

Today, wiggins said he did commit the crimes. His lawyer said there is not a day that goes by Wiggins does not ask for forgiveness.

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NORTH CAROLINA
Star News

A Wilmington pastor accused of indecent liberties with a minor pleaded guilty Monday in New Hanover County Superior Court to six counts of felony sexual abuse of a minor by a substitute parent.

Thomas Archie Wiggins, 54, former pastor of Wilmington’s Faith Temple Church of God in Christ, was given a prison sentence of between six years and three months and nine years and nine months. He was taken into custody Monday.

Wiggins was arrested in November 2011 on five counts of first-degree sexual offense and five counts of indecent liberties with a minor.

The crimes involved a teen boy and took place in 1998, according to officials.

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CANADA
APTN

APTN National News
OTTAWA–The commission created to delve into the dark chapter of residential schools is taking its battle for “control over history” with Ottawa to the courts, says a lawyer for the Truth and Reconciliation Commission.

The federal government has refused to hand over millions of Indian residential school documents still locked away in its vaults, despite the Truth and Reconciliation Commission inching closer to the end of its mandate in 2014. The documents originate from 23 federal departments and agencies ranging from the RCMP, the Office of the Privy Council to Parks Canada and are held by the Library and Archives Canada.

The TRC is applying to the Ontario Supreme Court of Justice to force Ottawa’s hand to release the documents. The TRC wants the court to issue a definition on Canada’s responsibility on the production of residential school documents. A decision by the court could order Canada to pay.

The TRC believes Canada is obligated to hand over all documents under the multi-billion dollar Indian Residential School settlement which created the commission. Canada, however, is refusing to pay for the cost of digitizing, processing and organizing the documents, which range from reports to photographs of residential schools.

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CANADA
APTN

By Jorge Barrera
APTN National News
OTTAWA–Indian residential school records on dead and missing children and abuse complaints to the RCMP may never see the light of day if Ottawa gets its way in its battle with the commission created to shed light on Canada’s darkest chapter, according to court documents.

The Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) is taking Ottawa to court over its refusal to hand over millions of records related to the 150 year existence of Indian residential schools. The court fight has been described as a battle for control over the history of residential schools.

The TRC alleges in court documents that the Harper government is refusing to release documents and files written following the closure of a residential school, even though some of these schools opened and closed on an ongoing basis and sometimes shut down and reopened in the same building.

“To the extent that documents were generated by Canada about a particular residential school after its closure, these materials would be necessary to complete the historical record of the (Indian residential school system),” stated Ken Roach, research advisor to the TRC, in an affidavit. “(The documents) would be essential to understand the particular legacy of that school.”

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CANADA
Toronto Star

Colin Perkel
The Canadian Press

Years of mounting frustration over access to government records has prompted the commission of inquiry into Canada’s residential school system to turn to the courts for help, The Canadian Press has learned.

In court filings, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission accuses Ottawa of stymying requests for documents the inquiry says are vital to its core mandate: “delivery on truth, reconciliation and ultimately healing.”

Documents filed with the Ontario Superior Court of Justice show the commission worries that Ottawa’s alleged intransigence will make it impossible to complete its work as required by July 1, 2014 and within budget.

“If the parties, through incompetence, delays or deliberate stonewalling (or a combination thereof) sabotage the work of the commission, then Canadians are certain to forget (and never fully learn) what has happened,” the commission’s factum states.

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CANADA
Vancouver Sun

OTTAWA – The federal government will release millions of files documenting the abuse suffered by aboriginal children who attended Canada’s Indian residential schools, Aboriginal Affairs Minister John Duncan said Monday.

His statement comes as the Truth and Reconciliation Commission prepares to take the government to court on Dec. 20 to gain access to the files.

Although the government has released 937,000 documents to the commission, millions of records are still sitting in archives across the country. The commission says it wants the remaining files in order to fulfil its mandate of recording the controversial and tragic history of Canada’s residential school system.

In a lawsuit filed in the Superior Court of Ontario, Toronto lawyer Julian Falconer states the commission has encountered “serious difficulties” in obtaining the enormous amount of paperwork it requires.

By withholding millions of records, the government is reneging on its promise to create a national residential school research centre, according to Falconer. In a statement Monday, he dubbed the court case a battle over “control of history.”

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UNITED STATES
Slate

By L.V. Anderson|Posted Monday, Dec. 3, 2012

survey of 40 Catholic priests in the Kansas City, Mo., area indicates that Bishop Robert Finn has lost the support of his priests since he was convicted earlier this year of failing to report child abuse by a priest in his diocese. Many priests and other critics have suggested that Finn resign. If he does not, the only way for him to be removed from office is for the pope to fire him. How common is it for a bishop to be fired?

Quite uncommon. As a rule, the Vatican avoids firing bishops outright, since doing so reflects poorly on the church and implies that it was a mistake for the pope to have appointed the fired bishop in the first place. In cases of conflict between the Vatican and a bishop, the Vatican usually pressures a problematic bishop to resign before resorting to actively dismissing him.

In recent years, the most famous cases of bishops being fired by the Vatican have been cases of liberal bishops who question church doctrine. In 1995, Pope John Paul II fired Jacques Gaillot, the Bishop of Evreux in France, after Gaillot offered to bless gay couples, endorsed condom use and the abortion pill, and expressed support for the ordination of married priests. In a similar case in Australia last year, the bishop of Toowoomba, William Morris, was fired by Pope Benedict XVI five years after writing a letter to his parish suggesting that the church should consider ordaining women and married men. Pope Benedict XVI appears to have a more liberal attitude toward firing than his predecessor; he has also fired three other bishops (in Slovakia, Congo, and Italy) for financial mismanagement.

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WISCONSIN
National Catholic Reporter

by Joshua J. McElwee | Dec. 3, 2012

A Catholic priest who participated in a eucharistic liturgy with a woman priest last month has been ordered to no longer celebrate the Mass or perform any other priestly duties.

Jesuit Fr. Bill Brennan, a 92-year-old Milwaukee-area priest, said the superior of his religious community told him of the restrictions Nov. 29, saying they came at the request of Archbishop Jerome Listecki.

Brennan, a retired parish priest and former missionary to Belize, participated in a liturgy Nov. 17 with Janice Sevre-Duszynska, a woman ordained in the Roman Catholic Womenpriests movement.

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MISSOURI
St. Louis Post-Dispatch

FAIR: To the priests in the Kansas City-St. Joseph Diocese who were courageous enough in a private survey commissioned by the diocese itself to say they have lost confidence in their leader, Bishop Robert W. Finn. The survey of 40 priests was conducted by Church Development. The New York Times reported Monday that it had obtained 32 of the responses and that the priests in half of those expressed serious doubt about whether Bishop Finn should continue as their leader. Several of those priests suggested that he resign. The priests were identified by name and by the churches they lead.

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Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests

Posted by David Clohessy38pc on December 03, 2012

Could there be a more shrewd way for child molesting clerics to avoid getting caught than this: legally changing their names?

The Catholic clergy sex abuse and cover up crisis is exploding in Australia. A few months back, a newspaper there noted the case of Fr. Peter Chalk.

In a story that seems ripped from Hollywood, Peter Murphy, a sex abuse victim, went into a meeting with senior church officials wearing a wire, with police listening in on their conversation. During the meeting, Fr. Brian Gallagher – the head of Chalk’s order, the Missionaries of the Sacred Heart –revealed that at least eight allegations had been levied at Fr. Chalk. Yet somehow, Gallagher did not believe it was his responsibility to report Chalk to police.

Instead of being in jail where he belonged, Chalk was able to leave Australia. He moved to Japan where he changed his name and became a teacher, giving him numerous opportunities to abuse more kids. Instead of doing the right thing and reporting this predator to police, the MSC allowed him to escape justice and public scrutiny, and likely allowed him to hurt more kids.

Sadly, this is not unique. Right here in Missouri, two such cases leap to mind:

–In 1983, Fr. Carmine Sita was convicted of abusing a New Jersey boy. He was sentenced to five years on probation. Less than a year later, however, Catholic officials urged him to legally change his name – to Fr. Jerry Howard – and quietly sent him to Boonville MO, without warning parishioners. There, he sexually assaulted several boys from 1983-1988. (He’s in jail now, but may soon be freed if a judge deems that the statute of limitations on his crimes has run out).

–In 2003, Fr. James Beine was sentenced to 12 years behind bars for exposing himself to three elementary school students in 2000-2001. However, the decision was overturned on a technicality in 2005, at which point Fr. Beine was released from prison and began to call himself “Mar James.” Although he was defrocked in 2005 and had his teaching certificate revoked in Missouri in 2007, he was last known to be living in the Las Vegas area where he applied for a teaching license that same year. While that license was denied, Fr. Beine remains free from jail and using his assumed name.

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CALIFORNIA
Modesto Bee

By Andy Furillo
afurillo@sacbee.com

The trial of a Catholic priest accused of child molestation has been rescheduled for April 11.

The Rev. Uriel Ojeda had initially been set for trial this Thursday in Sacramento Superior Court.

Ojeda, 33, is accused on seven counts of molesting a girl under the age of 14 while he served at Holy Rosary Parish in Woodland and later at Our Lady of Mercy Parish in Redding.

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KANSAS
WIBW

Nov 15, 2012

GEARY COUNTY, Kan. (WIBW) – Prosecutors say they’re still waiting to receive vital DNA results in the shocking investigation of a minister accused of molesting young boys at a Junction City church.

Jordan Young, 25, is facing child molestation charges in six cases involving separate victims. The state will be charging Young in connection with four more cases, prosecutors told WIBW. It will bring the number of victims to 10 in the church sex scandal.

Young appeared in Geary County District Court Thursday for a status hearing on his cases.

He was originally arrested in August after the Junction City Police Department launched an investigation into reports of sexual misconduct at Faith Tabernacle Apostolic Church where he’d been serving as the music minister.

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SPRINGFIELD (VA)
St. Raymond of Penafort Roman Catholic Church

In the midst of all this media flurry over the failure of the Catholic Church’s officials in the past to quickly “defrock” priests who were guilty of the heinous sin of sexual abuse of children, one question never seems to be actually addressed – “how does a decree laicizing such a priest in any way protect children?” The reason the question is never asked surely cannot be that the question is unimportant. One reason it is never asked is that the underlying but never stated assumption has to be, at least for the lawyers and reporters, “yes it does.” But I can immediately think of at least two other reasons why the question is never asked and more than one argument why the real answer is more likely “no, this process does not really safeguard children.” It safeguards only the Church.

Another reason this question is ignored today may be that the people who are feeding this firestorm are not at all interested in that question simply because their immediate purpose is to discredit the Catholic Church and hold it up to ridicule. It’s most interesting that this onslaught on the Catholic hierarchy, now including the Pope, is happening after the Catholic Bishops in this country, – with the assistance of the Vatican that has streamlined its ancient procedures precisely to laicize such clergy – have moved to safeguard children in concrete ways that have dramatically reduced the incidence of this terrible crime by Church employees of any kind and have made our schools and other activities the safest environments in the country for children. Each year the public school system alone has thousands of such cases, while in the Catholic Church, there are now only a few credible incidences each year. No institution can guarantee that the crime will never happen under its auspices, but the Catholic Church has come close to that promise.

However, the people feeding this firestorm are not interested in this effort of the Church because their real motives go beyond protecting children. The media like AP and The New York Times have their own agenda, i.e., discrediting a whole Church that they find an recalcitrant obstacle to the transformation of the morals of modern society, and of course the media today feeds on any story that has traction with a lot of people who hate the Catholic Church, the last respectable bigotry even among the intelligentsia.

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AUSTRALIA
The Australian

Pia Akerman
From:The Australian
December 04, 2012

A RABBI accused of sexually assaulting students at a Jewish school in Melbourne has appeared in court following his extradition from the US.

David Kramer, a 52-year old American citizen who was living in Missouri, was surrendered by US authorities last week and flown back to Melbourne, where he has not lived since the 1990s.

A Victorian warrant was issued for his arrest last year amid allegations he abused four boys while teaching at Yeshivah College in St Kilda East between 1990 and 1992.

He was arrested in the US in April and unsuccessfully fought the extradition order through the courts.

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NEW YORK
CBS NewYork

NEW YORK (CBSNewYork) – Testimony continued Monday in the sex abuse case of a prominent ultra Orthodox leader in Brooklyn’s Satmar community.

The mother of the now-17-year-old accuser testified that she trusted counselor Nechemya Weberman. But the woman testified that she had no idea that her daughter was locked in a room alone with a man, which is a clear violation of Satmar law.

The mother testified that it was always a struggle to keep her youngest daughter out of trouble at her Satmar school because the girl fought modesty rules.

It was the school that ordered the girl to continue counseling with Weberman, 54, or be kicked out, WCBS 880′s Irene Cornell reported.

The school reportedly considered the accuser an angry, damaged child with pure hatred in her heart, Cornell reported.

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MISSOURI
Inquisitr

Kansas City, MO — Reverand Matthew Brumleve is waiting for an apology. Like many other priests in the diocese headed by Bishop Robert Finn, he is waiting for the bishop to give a “robust” apology for his actions.

Father Brumleve wants to know why — when Finn knew that one of his priests was exploiting children, photographing hundreds of pornographic images and storing them on his computer — the bishop didn’t turn the priest over to authorities.

Finn is the leader of the Diocese of Kansas City-St. Joseph, and “an outspoken conservative in the American hierarchy,” according to USA Today. Not so outspoken, however, that he would turn one of his own priests over to authorities, even after discovering that the Reverand Shawn Ratigan had taken hundreds of lewd images of children in Catholic schools and parishes.

Instead, Finn sent Ratigan to a convent, and called it good. While the crimes were discovered by Finn in December of 2010, authorities were not notified until another priest notified went over the bishop’s head to notify police in May 2011.

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MISSOURI
Catholic League

Bill Donohue released the following comments today:

The Catholic Left has been trying to unseat Kansas City-St. Joseph Bishop Robert Finn for well over a year. Their effort received another boost today from the New York Times. It deserves a response.

The Times says that Finn’s conviction of a misdemeanor “stemmed from his failure to report the Rev. Shawn Ratigan to the authorities after hundreds of pornographic pictures that Father Ratigan had taken of young girls were discovered on his laptop in December 2010.”

That statement is factually wrong. On October 15, 2011 the Times mentioned there was “a single photo of a young girl, nude from the waist down,” and “hundreds of photographs of children” showing “upskirt images and images focused on the crotch.”

Now anyone who takes such pictures is clearly disturbed. But it also needs to be said that crotch shots are not pornographic. Moreover, the diocese described the “single photo” of a naked girl to a police officer who served on the diocesan sexual review board, and he said it did not constitute pornography. So why would the Times say that “hundreds of pornographic pictures” were found two years ago this month? The record shows that it was not until after the diocese called the cops in May 2011 that porn pictures were found on Ratigan’s computer.

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UNITED STATES
Channel 3000

I’ve read a couple of strange reports recently that lead me to an idea for how the Catholic Church might redeem itself.

The first came out of Rome. The Vatican is urging Catholic religious leaders to wear black cassocks when visiting Rome. A cassock is an ankle-length robe that buttons down the front.

“The very example of those who, sealed with the episcopal dignity are faithful to the daily use of the cassock proper to them during daily office hours becomes an explicit encouragement to all,” the Vatican said.

OK, that was one story: The pope apparently wants to class up the clergy in Rome.

The second report came from the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops meeting held recently in Baltimore. Well, actually, it wasn’t a report. What happened is Bishop Robert Finn of Kansas City attended the meeting, participated in its legislation – and no one said a word about the fact that he was recently convicted of criminally endangering children by knowingly covering up evidence that one of his priests was molesting kids.

There are those who thought Finn’s fellow bishops might have noticed. There are even those who think that, once a bishop is convicted of a major crime, he might consider retiring.

What do these stories have in common? Each of them suggests a mindset within the church that clergy are not bound to the same rules of the road as are lesser folk.

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UNITED STATES
Huffington Post

Jaweed Kaleem
Huffington Post

In an editorial published Monday morning, a prominent Catholic newspaper endorsed the controversial movement to ordain women priests.

Calling the priesthood a “gift from God … rooted in baptism,” the National Catholic Reporter says that “barring women from ordination to the priesthood is an injustice that cannot be allowed to stand.”

The Kansas City, Mo.-based newspaper’s editorial pits it directly against the Vatican, where church leadership has strongly rejected any possibility of women being ordained, even as a small pro-ordination movement has grown and independently ordained several women in recent years.

The editorial comes weeks after the Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith’s laicization and excommunication of Roy Bourgeois, a former American priest and peace activist who was a member of the Maryknoll Fathers and Brothers and an outspoken supporter of the women’s ordination movement in the U.S., was made public. In a high-profile Mass in 2008 in Lexington, Ky., Bourgeois claimed to ordain a woman into the Roman Catholic priesthood. His religious order later said that he was part of an “invalid ordination of a woman and a simulated Mass.”

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MIAMI (FL)
CBS Miami

MIAMI (CBSMiami) – Embattled Miami priest Father Rolando Garcia has resigned in the wake of a new sexual abuse accusation.

Fr. Garcia, pastor of St. Agatha Catholic Church in West Miami-Dade, submitted his letter of resignation to Archbishop Thomas Wenski, which was accepted, effective November 21st, 2012.

In his resignation letter, Fr. Garcia wrote that he wished not to be a distraction to the parish during this tumultuous time in his life. “I want to do what is best for the parishioners, school parents and students of St. Agatha,” he stated. Fr. Garcia added that he has resigned in good conscience and of his own free will and volition after much prayer and reflection.

In accepting his resignation, Archbishop Wenski expressed his gratitude to Fr. Garcia for his years of service in St. Agatha parish, and that he will be in his prayers.

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by NCR Editorial Staff | Dec. 3, 2012

Editorial

The call to the priesthood is a gift from God. It is rooted in baptism and is called forth and affirmed by the community because it is authentic and evident in the person as a charism. Catholic women who have discerned a call to the priesthood and have had that call affirmed by the community should be ordained in the Roman Catholic church. Barring women from ordination to the priesthood is an injustice that cannot be allowed to stand.

The most egregious statement in the Nov. 19 press release announcing Roy Bourgeois’ “excommunication, dismissal and laicization” is the assertion that Bourgeois’ “disobedience” and “campaign against the teachings of the Catholic church” was “ignoring the sensitivities of the faithful.” Nothing could be further from the truth. Bourgeois, attuned by a lifetime of listening to the marginalized, has heard the voice of the faithful and he has responded to that voice.

Bourgeois brings this issue to the real heart of the matter. He has said that no one can say who God can and cannot call to the priesthood, and to say that anatomy is somehow a barrier to God’s ability to call one of God’s own children forward places absurd limits on God’s power. The majority of the faithful believe this.

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VATICAN CITY
Irish Times

PADDY AGNEW, in Rome

The so-called “Vatileaks” trials which last month saw the Pope’s butler, Paolo Gabriele, sentenced to 18 months in prison for leaking sensitive documents, can now be considered a “closed chapter”, according to Vatican spokesman Fr Federico Lombardi.

He made the comment during the presentation of the motivazioni or judges’ reasoning behind the decision which in a separate trial, also in November, saw computer technician Claudio Sciarpelletti given a two-month suspended sentence for having lied to protect Gabriele.

Various documents, some of which appeared in the controversial book, His Holiness: The Secret Papers of Benedict XVI, had been found by police in Sciarpelletti’s desk.

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VATICAN CITY
The Telegraph (United Kingdom)

Vatican clergy and employees will be issued with an identity card complete with a microchip-tracking device in sweeping new security measures designed to prevent a repeat of the Vatileaks scandal.

By Josephine McKenna in Rome
4:28PM GMT 02 Dec 2012

Much tighter controls have already been introduced for anyone seeking access or photocopies of the Holy See’s archives, dossiers and documents.

The Papal Apartments, which include the living quarters of Pope Benedict XVI and the offices of his personal staff inside the Apostolic Palace, are totally off limits to anyone without strict authorisation.

Slovenian priest, Mitja Leskovar, an anti-espionage expert nicknamed ‘Monsignor 007’, is in charge of implementing the new security procedures with the identity cards expected to be introduced from January 1.

Leskovar, who grew up in the former Yugoslavia under Communism, is responsible for the transmission of confidential documents between the Vatican and its papal nuncios or diplomats inside the Secretariat of State and also supervises all requests for document photocopying within the secretariat.

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VATICAN CITY
Catholic News Service

By Cindy Wooden
Catholic News Service

VATICAN CITY (CNS) — Explaining why they found a Vatican computer technician guilty of aiding and abetting the papal butler who stole private papal correspondence, Vatican judges said they found much of his testimony hard to believe.

The Vatican court Nov. 10 found Claudio Sciarpelletti, 48, a computer technician in the Vatican Secretariat of State, guilty of obstructing the investigation into the leak of Vatican documents. The court gave Sciarpelletti a two-month suspended jail sentence.

As is the normal practice at the Vatican and in Italy, the judges released a detailed explanation of their findings and of their sentence weeks after the verdict was delivered.

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MISSOURI
National Catholic Reporter

by Michael Sean Winters | Dec. 3, 2012

Today is December 3. On September 6, Bishop Robert Finn was convicted in civil court of failing to report an instance of child sexual abuse. Not only is Finn now serving a suspended sentence, he is in violation of the Dallas Charter the bishops adopted ten years ago to confront the sex abuse crisis. Three months. Bishop Finn is still the Bishop of Kansas City-St. Joseph. The Vatican is said to want the American bishops to exert fraternal correction and get Finn to step down. The US bishops are said to be waiting for the Vatican to move. Enough already. Someone do something. As long as Bishop Finn remains in office, the entire body of bishops lacks any credibility on the issue of child sex abuse. All the ten years of effort, the repeated promises to never let this happen again, all the apologies, all the settlements, none of that matters. And, as long as the US hierarchy lacks credibility on this issue, a sizable proportion of the flock, somewhat understandably, declines to listen to them on anything else.

If you doubt it, check out this story from the Times.

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MISSOURI
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests

Posted by Barbara Dorris on December 03, 2012

The New York Times reports that roughly half of the Kansas City diocese’s priests have no confidence in Bishop Robert Finn. Sadly those sentiments, unless backed by action, won’t change a thing.

Kansas City priests must find courage and take action if ever their diocese is to become safer and healthier. Privately expressing disapproval of a criminal behavior won’t get the job done.

A decade ago, some 50+ Boston priests publicly rebuked Cardinal Bernard Law seeking his resignation. They won.

The church is a feudal hierarchy. Bishops hold virtually all of the power. Priests, like lay people, are essentially serfs, so they are understandably reluctant to challenge bishops, even one who is a proven lawbreaker. (Bishops have clearly retaliated against brave whistleblowers, basically shunning them and transferring them to small, remote parishes for decades.)

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IRELAND
The Association of Catholic Priests

Sean McDonagh, Brendan Hoban and Tony Flannery had a meeting with Ian Elliot of the NBSCCC on Friday, November 30th. This was in the context of a review of the Interim Guidelines, which is currently taking place. First we clarified that we are totally in favour of best practice for the protection of children in all Church activities. This is a report of the issues we raised with Mr. Elliot.

1. The first issue we raised concerned the way in which news of an allegation is conveyed to a priest. A few basic points should be observed.
• When the bishop or religious superior invites a priest/religious to come to meet him he should inform that person of the nature of the meeting, and advise him that he has the right to bring a support person with him.
• The priest/religious is entitled to know the name of the accuser, and to have the accusation in writing.
2. The problems related to the stepping down of a priest. This is more likely to concern diocesan priests than religious. The points we made on this were:
• The parish Eucharistic celebration should never be used as the occasion for making an announcement of the stepping down of the priest.
• A public announcement to the whole parish is not necessary. It almost inevitably leads to the priest being considered guilty.

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INDIA
The Hindu

A five-year-old girl was allegedly raped by a temple priest in Mangolpuri here two days ago.

According to the police, the victim had gone to a temple close to her house. The priesttook her inside the temple on the pretext of giving prasad and allegedly raped her. The accused also warned her against telling anyone about the act.

The girl, however, returned home and told her parents about the incident.

The parents then approached the police and a case was registered under section 376 of the Indian Penal Code. A medical examination of the victim confirmed rape.

The girl had gone to the temple alone and there was no one present there except the priest at the time of the incident, said the police.

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BALTIMORE (MD)
The Baltimore Sun

[Catholic officials knew of teacher’s abuse, court files indicate]

Sean Caine, Baltimore
The writer is vice-chancellor of the Archdiocese of Baltimore.

I write in response to last Sunday’s article, “Catholic officials knew of teacher’s abuse, court files indicate” (Nov. 24) and the subsequent editorial regarding the horrific abuse committed by John Merzbacher in the 1970s. Contrary to the article’s implication that the former archbishop or others in the central offices of the Archdiocese of Baltimore delayed the reporting of the abuse, the archdiocese first learned of the abuse when a victim — by then an adult — reported it to us in 1988. At our prompting, the victim reported the matter at that time to the Department of Social Services. Five years later, when the same victim came back to us, we again encouraged her to report it (which she did, leading to the eventual criminal indictment of Mr. Merzbacher), and we also reported the matter to civil authorities.

•The article criticized the archdiocese for not reporting the matter until 1993, but it failed to state that it was in fact reported to civil authorities in 1988. Like most institutions in 1988 (and indeed like many or most states even today), we encouraged adult victims to report allegations to civil authorities, but we respected their wishes regarding whether they wanted to do so.

•Only in 1993 did the Maryland Attorney General clarify that all suspected child abuse should be reported even when the child was now an adult and even when the alleged perpetrator was deceased. In its official 1993 opinion, the attorney general noted that “We acknowledge that [the reporting law] could reasonably be construed to apply only if the alleged victim were still a child.”

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AUSTRALIA
NEWS.com.au

A FORMER Melbourne school teacher extradited from the US after being charged with sex crimes has appeared in court.

David Kramer, 52, was extradited from the US at the weekend after being charged with 10 counts of indecent assault.

The former Yeshiva College teacher is also facing two charges of indecent acts with children under the age of 16.

The offences are alleged to have happened while he was a teacher at the college between 1989 and 1992.

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AUSTRALIA
9 News

A former teacher at a Jewish Orthodox school has faced court in Melbourne over indecent assaults allegedly committed more than a decade ago.

US national David Kramer, 52, was extradited from the US state of Missouri on Thursday, and faced 10 charges of indecent assault and two charges of an indecent act with a child under the age of 16.

The offences are all alleged to have occurred against three victims over two years between January 1990 and February 1992, when Kramer was a teacher at Yeshivah College in St Kilda East.

He appeared in Melbourne Magistrates Court on Monday wearing a white T-shirt, spectacles and with a beard and moustache.

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AUSTRALIA
The Age

December 3, 2012

Stephen Cauchi

A rabbi has appeared in court over allegations he sexually assaulted three boys at Yeshivah College in St Kilda East between 1990 and 1992.

David Kramer, 52 – who was extradited from the US state of Missouri – appeared in the Melbourne Magistrates Court and was remanded in custody until January 18. He did not apply for bail.

As he was led from the court, a member of the gallery yelled out “welcome back to Australia, Rabbi Kramer”.

Deputy Chief Magistrate Felicity Broughton heard that Kramer had been charged with 10 counts of indecent assault and two counts of indecent acts with a child under the age of 16.

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AUSTRALIA
ABC News

A former Melbourne school teacher who was extradited from the United States has appeared in court charged with sex offences.

David Kramer, 52, used to teach at Yeshivah College in St Kilda East.

He has appeared at Melbourne Magistrates Court charged with 10 counts of indecent assault and two counts of indecent acts with children under the age of 16.

The offences are alleged to have happened between 1989 and 1992 in St Kilda East.

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AUSTRALIA
Herald Sun

Shannon Deery
From:Herald Sun
December 03, 2012

A FORMER Melbourne school teacher extradited from the US after being charged with sex crimes has appeared in court.

David Kramer, 52, was extradited from the US at the weekend after being charged with 10 counts of indecent assault.

The former Yeshiva College teacher is also facing two charges of indecent acts with children under the age of 16.

The offences are alleged to have happened while he was a teacher at the college between 1989 and 1992.

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CANADA
Globe and Mail

Gloria Galloway

The commission examining the treatment of aboriginal children at Canada’s residential schools is taking the federal government to court for refusing to release millions of documents that were supposed to form a permanent and public record of the abuses committed.

The Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) – established in 2008 as part of the settlement between former students, the Canadian government, the churches that ran the schools, and others – has asked an Ontario Superior Court judge to decide whether Canada is obligated to hand over the material. Prime Minister Stephen Harper apologized in 2008 for the forced assimilation of more than 150,000 first nations, Inuit and Métis children at the schools. However, Ottawa’s failure to produce the documents threatens to undermine the aboriginal community’s faith in the government, says the Assembly of First Nations.

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CANADA
Hamilton Spectator

TORONTO Years of mounting frustration over access to government records has prompted the commission of inquiry into Canada’s residential school system to turn to the courts for help, The Canadian Press has learned.

In court filings, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission accuses Ottawa of stalling on requests for documents the inquiry says are vital to its core mandate: “delivery on truth, reconciliation and ultimately healing.”

Documents filed with the Ontario Superior Court of Justice show the commission worries that Ottawa’s alleged intransigence will make it impossible to complete its work as required by July 1, 2014, and within budget.

“If the parties, through incompetence, delays or deliberate stonewalling (or a combination thereof) sabotage the work of the commission, then Canadians are certain to forget (and never fully learn) what has happened,” the commission’s factum states.

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NEW ZEALAND
Newstalk ZB

One of Bernard McGrath’s victims says he’s worried the former Catholic brother has been granted bail.

McGrath has previously served time for offending in Christchurch and is now charged with over 250 new counts of sexual abuse against children and young adults in New South Wales.

He was today granted bail to live with his sister.

The 65-year-old flew back to New Zealand late last week.

He now faces extradition to Australia but has been given a fortnight to consider his stance on the charges.

Alan Nixon says while McGrath hasn’t yet been convicted, it’s hard for victims to know that he’s back.

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NEW ZEALAND
9 News

Alys Francis, ninemsn

A former Catholic brother charged with more than 250 counts of sexual abuse against children and young adults in Australia has appeared in a New Zealand court.

NSW police are trying to extradite Bernard Kevin McGrath to Australia to face 252 charges laid in a Newcastle court on June 27.

The 65-year-old is understood to have flown to Sri Lanka, where he regularly holidays, shortly after the charges were laid.

He is believed to have flown back to New Zealand last week and appeared in a Christchurch court this morning where he applied for bail.

He will now decide whether to fight the extradition or return to Australia.

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NEW ZEALAND
The Age

December 3, 2012

David Clarkson

Former Catholic brother Bernard Kevin McGrath has been granted bail while he considers his stance on 252 fresh sex abuse charges on which he faces extradition to Australia.

The 65-year-old flew back to the city from Sri Lanka on Thursday and was arrested on Friday after fresh charges were laid in Australia.

The new charges allege he repeatedly raped, molested and abused dozens of young boys at church-run institutions in the Newcastle-Maitland diocese over several decades.

He was due to fly back to Christchurch from Sri Lanka next Saturday but he brought the flight forward.

Defence counsel Phillip Allan said McGrath had returned from Sri Lanka knowing that he would be arrested. He would have seen news reports on a New Zealand website before his return.

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NEW ZEALAND
New Zealand Herald

By Kurt Bayer

Monday Dec 3, 2012

A former Catholic brother and convicted paedophile has been arrested in Christchurch after returning to New Zealand from Sri Lanka.

Bernard Kevin McGrath, a former St John of God brother, faces extradition to Australia on 252 sexual abuse charges.

In 2006, he was jailed for five years for sexually abusing boys at Marylands School in Christchurch in the 1970s, and was paroled in 2008.

McGrath fled New Zealand to Sri Lanka earlier this year and was reportedly living on a tea plantation in the highlands.

Now, Australian police want him extradited from New Zealand to face the new charges of abusing, molesting and raping boys and young adults at church-run institutions in New South Wales over several decades.

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AUSTRALIA
ABC News

By Giselle Wakatama

A former Catholic brother has been granted bail in New Zealand after returning to face hundreds of child-sex charges relating to matters in Australia.

Bernard Kevin McGrath, 65, has been charged with 252 child sex offences and is facing extradition to Australia.

The offences relate to his time as a brother with the St John of God Catholic order at the Kendall Grange home for boys at Morisset, south of Newcastle.

The ABC has been told there are 35 alleged victims.

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NEW ZEALAND
TVNZ

Former Catholic brother and convicted sex offender Bernard Kevin McGrath has been granted bail while he considers his response to a bid to extradite him to Australia.

McGrath, 65, was remanded on bail for two weeks in Christchurch District Court this morning.

The former St John of God brother recently served two years in a New Zealand prison for sexually abusing boys.

He also spent time behind bars in the 1990s for similar offending.

McGrath had 252 fresh abuse charges laid against him in a Newcastle court on June 27.

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NEW ZEALAND
Boston Globe

WELLINGTON, New Zealand (AP) — New Zealand police have arrested a former Catholic brother and convicted pedophile after Australian authorities filed 252 new charges against him.

Police say they arrested 65-year-old Bernard Kevin McGrath on Friday in Christchurch after he voluntarily returned to New Zealand from Sri Lanka. A judge on Monday released the former St. John of God brother on bail.

New South Wales police say they’ve investigated a large number of sexual assault claims by former students of the St. John order’s Kendall Grange school for boys in the town of Morisset, about 110 kilometers (70 miles) north of Sydney.

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AUSTRALIA
The Age

December 4, 2012

Joanne McCarthy

FORMER Catholic brother Bernard Kevin McGrath has returned to New Zealand from Sri Lanka a week early to face an extradition hearing to Australia on child sex charges.

McGrath, 65, was granted bail in a Christchurch court on Monday morning while he considers his next move in relation to 252 child sex charges in Australia.

News of his return to New Zealand was greeted with relief by the family of an alleged victim who had feared McGrath would not return from a Sri Lankan holiday where he was staying at a tea plantation.

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UNITED KINGDOM
Morning Star

Sunday 02 December 2012

by Peter Frost

Large Establishment organisations like the Church of England, the Roman Catholic Church and even the BBC have always been more concerned to protect their own reputations than to protect young people abused by their employees.

The recent Jimmy Savile scandal and countless examples from Catholic dioceses all over the globe have proved that.

Abuse by those in power appears to be everywhere – even it seems within the Church of England.

This month a canon at Carlisle Cathedral was jailed for four years for sexually abusing three teenage boys.

Complaints were made about Ronald Johns 20 years ago but his bishop covered it up, moving the abusing canon to a remote country parish.

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IRELAND
Evening Echo

The incoming bishop of Cloyne has been hailed as a “man of real courage” who will restore the trust of the people in the diocese.

Archbishop Dermot Clifford, who took over the running of the Diocese of Cloyne following the resignation of Dr John Magee in 2010, told the Evening Echo that bishop-elect Canon William Crean from Cahersiveen in Kerry, would restore people’s confidence because of his warm and gentle demeanour, as well as his steely determination and dignity.

Archbishop Clifford was speaking at the official opening of Whitechurch National School’s new school building.

He added that Canon Crean was known for his engagement with people and predicted they would take him to their hearts.

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NEW ZEALAND
Radio New Zealand

Former Catholic brother and convicted sex offender Bernard Kevin McGrath has appeared in Christchurch District Court on charges over a warrant for his extradition to Australia.

Mr McGrath has already served prison time in New Zealand and is facing 252 charges of sexual abuse laid in a court in Newcastle, New South Wales.

He was a St John of God brother when he abused boys in Christchurch, for which he spent two terms in prison, released most recently in 2008.

In October this year Australian police asked their New Zealand counterparts to help extradite him, but he left the country before the new charges could be laid.

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IRELAND
Irish Independent

By Sarah MacDonald

Monday December 03 2012

PRIESTS accused of sexual abuse want their accusers identified and the allegations against them in writing, a group representing liberal clergymen has said.

The Association of Catholic Priests (ACP) issued the demand to the National Board for Safeguarding Children in the Catholic Church.

In a meeting with the board chief, Ian Elliot, the ACP, which now represents over 1,000 Irish priests, outlined a series of changes it is seeking to the guidelines on the standing aside from ministry for priests accused of abuse.

The group hopes the areas they are unhappy with will be taken into consideration when the interim guidelines come up for review in January.

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AUSTRALIA
Australian Times

By Australian Times on 3 December, 2012

A FORMER Catholic brother and pedophile, facing 252 child sex charges in Australia, has been arrested after returning to New Zealand from Sri Lanka.

Bernard Kevin McGrath, a former St John of God brother appeared in Christchurch District Court on Monday over a warrant to extradite him to Australia to face charges laid in Newcastle in June.

The news was greeted with relief by the family of an alleged Australian victim who had feared McGrath would not return, Fairfax Media reports.

“It’s excellent news. This really is very good news and an enormous relief after all this time,” said the father of an alleged victim who reported sexual abuse allegations to police two years ago.

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NEW YORK
Algemeiner

Author:
Ronn Torossian

Every New York City tabloid newspaper this week is covering the repeated harassment by members of the Charedi Jewish community of a 17-year-old girl who has testified in the sexual abuse trial against Brooklyn Rabbi Nechemya Weberman. Four men were arrested recently for taking the girl’s picture in court and posting it online in an attempt to intimidate her.

Earlier in the week, the New York Post reported that “the alleged victim was left trembling after Weberman allegedly glared at her through a glass door to the courthouse conference room where she sat during a break in her testimony.” Before the trial, other men were charged with trying to bribe the girl so she would drop charges.

Are these people “religious” Jews? If so, then I am a Martian. If Weberman is really a Rabbi, then I am from Venus. They are simply gangsters, thugs and despicable people who deserve to be punished.

Orthodox Jews are supposed to adhere strictly to the laws and ethics of the Torah (Bible) – and clearly the Torah abhors behavior like this. These people’s acts are neither religious nor Orthodox – and it infuriates me to hear them referred to by the media as “religious”, or Weberman referred to as a “Rabbi.” Rabbi is a title of respect, even reverence, and surely someone who allegedly fondled a young girl and forced a 12-year-old to perform indecent acts is not worthy of this label.

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NEW ZEALAND
Christchurch Court News

By David Clarkson

Former Catholic priest and convicted sex offender Bernard Kevin McGrath has been granted bail while he considers his stance on 252 fresh sex abuse charges on which he faces extradition to Australia.

The 65-year-old, who was jailed for offending against boys at Marylands School in Christchurch, in 2006, flew back to the city from Sri Lanka on Thursday and was arrested on Friday after the issuing of the fresh charges in Australia.

The new charges allege he has repeatedly raped, molested and abused dozens of young boys at church-run institutions in the Newcastle-Maitland diocese over several decades.

He was due to fly back to Christchurch from Sri Lanka next Saturday but he brought the flight forward.

Defence counsel Phillip Allan said McGrath had returned from Sri Lanka knowing that he would be arrested. He would have seen news reports on the Stuff website before his return to New Zealand.

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BELGIE
KW

donderdag 29 november 2012

Wingene – De Wingense priester Norbert Bethune van de Werkgroep Mensenrechten in de Kerk heeft na zijn oproep eind vorige maand nog zo’n 80 klachten ontvangen over seksueel geweld in onze provincie. Tot eind oktober konden slachtoffers van de verjaarde feiten van seksueel misbruik nog met hun klacht terecht bij de Arbitragecommissie. Vlak daarvoor lanceerde Norbert Bethune via Krant van West-Vlaanderen en De Weekbode Tielt de oproep om slachtoffers te wijzen op het afsluiten van die klachtenperiode.

Norbert Bethune over de gevolgen van die oproep: “Na de tweede oproep stond de telefoon hier niet meer stil. Het waren helse dagen. Mensen hebben dus heel lang getwijfeld of ze naar buiten zouden komen met wat hen indertijd is aangedaan”. In totaal zijn in onze provincie zo’n 80 klachten van slachtoffers ingediend. Het gaat in de meeste gevallen om verjaarde feiten en feiten die zich op parochieniveau hebben afgespeeld. Onder die ‘nieuwe’ slachtoffers zijn er nogal wat mensen die ooit misdienaar waren.

De gevolgen van het seksueel misbruik, zo leerde Norbert Bethune, zijn niet te overzien. Veel slachtoffers zijn voor het leven getekend. Sommigen slagen er niet in om nog een relatie aan te gaan, maar er waren ook verscheidene getuigenissen van slachtoffers over medeslachtoffers die uit het leven zijn gestapt.

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AUSTRALIA
Newcastle Herald

Dec. 3, 2012

ON November 5 I contacted the Salvation Army about professional misconduct charges against two solicitors who represented it in a NSW Supreme Court compensation case brought by Bucketty man Graham Rundle.

Mr Rundle was repeatedly and savagely sexually assaulted by a Salvation Army officer at a Salvation Army boys’ home in South Australia in the 1960s.

I asked the Salvation Army to comment on its handling of Mr Rundle’s case, given that his rapist, William Ellis, was jailed for 16 years in 2009 after a truly extraordinary criminal trial in South Australia, and given the church’s sustained challenges to his ultimately successful compensation case.

In the email I noted the Victorian Legal Services Commissioner had referred professional misconduct recommendations against the two solicitors to the Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal.

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AUSTRALIA
Newcastle Herald

By JOANNE McCARTHY
Dec. 3, 2012

GRAHAM Rundle of Bucketty on the Central Coast is living proof of the need for a royal commission into child sexual abuse in Australia.

As a child in the 1960s he was repeatedly and savagely raped in a South Australian boys’ home run by the Salvation Army, and as a man he fought and beat the Salvation Army in both criminal and civil courts.

The Salvation Army officer who raped him, William Ellis, was jailed for 16 years in 2009, after a judge described the boys’ home as ‘‘a horrific place by any standards’’.

The Salvation Army was forced to pay substantial compensation after a civil case that included a NSW Supreme Court judge, and three NSW Court of Appeal judges, describing evidence from two solicitors representing the church as ‘‘misleading’’, ‘‘disingenuous’’ and ‘‘worrying’’.

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MISSOURI
The New York Times

By JOHN ELIGON and LAURIE GOODSTEIN

Published: December 2, 2012

KANSAS CITY, Mo. — In the three months since Bishop Robert W. Finn became the first American prelate convicted for failing to report a pedophile priest, lay people and victims’ advocates have repeatedly called for his resignation.

Now, recent interviews and a private survey by a company working for the Roman Catholic diocese here show for the first time that a significant number of the bishop’s own priests have lost confidence in him.

Bishop Finn, who oversees the Diocese of Kansas City-St. Joseph, is serving two ears of court supervised probation after his conviction in September on a single misdemeanor count. The survey by Church Development, a consulting firm the diocese hired to run a capital campaign, was of 40 priests. In the 32 responses obtained by The New York Times, half of them seriously doubted whether the bishop should continue as their leader, and several suggested that he resign.

“I think it would be easier for us to move forward without Bishop Finn as our bishop,” the Rev. Michael Clary, the pastor at Holy Spirit Catholic Church in Lee’s Summit, Mo., which is part of Bishop Finn’s diocese, said in an interview. He added, however, that the bishop’s resignation may not be the only way forward.

Such sentiments raise the question of whether Bishop Finn can successfully continue to oversee a diocese of nearly 87 parishes and more than 130,000 people, or whether he will go the way of Cardinal Bernard F. Law, who gave up his post in Boston a decade ago after an outcry over his practice of reassigning priests accused of abuse to new parishes. An online petition calling for Bishop Finn’s resignation has collected 110,000 signatures to date.

But the bishop also has a strong base of supporters who contend that the critical priests do not appreciate Bishop Finn’s doctrinally conservative approach. He belongs to Opus Dei, a conservative Roman Catholic organization.

“Yes, there is a divide in the presbyterate, but in my opinion it’s the same old tired divide that has existed from the day he arrived,” the Rev. Vince Rogers, the pastor at St. Andrew the Apostle in Gladstone, Mo., and a 20-year veteran of the diocese, wrote in an e-mail. “In a word, some of the priests wish that we had a more liberal bishop, and they are willing to use any means to achieve that end.”

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AUSTRALIA
SNAP Australia

WHAT
Holding signs and childhood photos at a footpath news conference, clergy sex abuse victims will blast the top Catholic official for refusing to cooperate with a police investigation. They will also prod him to

–hold a series of open public meetings across the archdiocese and explain his reversal and his involvement in a predator priest’s crimes, and

— post the names, photos and whereabouts of all predator priests on his archdiocesan and parish websites, so that parents can better protect their kids and so that victims can better heal.

WHEN
Monday, 3 December at 12:30 pm

WHERE
Outside the St Francis Xavier Cathedral, 39 Wakefield Street in Adelaide

WHO
One or two members of an international support group for clergy sex abuse victims called SNAP, the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, including a US woman who is the organisation’s founder

WHY
One of Australia’s most influential Catholic prelates is refusing to cooperate with a police investigation. He is Adelaide Archbishop Philip Wilson who is accused of concealing child sexual crimes by at least two priests, including serial child offender Father Denis McAlinden and failing to report them to police. (McAlinden, originally from Ireland, died in 2005 and may have molested hundreds of kids.)

In May 2010, Wilson’s spokesman told The Advertiser that Wilson would welcome the “opportunity” to be involved in any police investigation. (Australia’s top Catholic official, Cardinal George Pell, has similarly pledged that bishops would cooperate with law enforcement in clergy child sex cases.)

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UNITED KINGDOM
Failed Messiah

Group Of Haredi Rabbis Reportedly Try To Have Rabbi Chaim Halpern Resign From His Synagogue

A group of London haredi rabbis are reportedly trying to get Rabbi Chaim Halpern to resign or to be removed from his synagogue. Halpern already resigned from several positions of community leadership at the order of leading haredi rabbis from Kedassia, after multiple, credible allegations of sexual abuse committed by Halpern against women he counseled surfaced and police began to investigate. But Halpern’s synagogue was packed last Shabbat with his supporters, and rumors began to circulate that Haplern’s resignations were only temporary, and that he would be back in his positions of authority in a few months after things calm down.

I reported over a week ago that Rabbi Chaim Halpern’s resignations were meant to stop the women he abused from cooperating with police – a clear, evident fact the JC and the Times of Israel missed in their breathless reports of the resignations, which relied heavily of work I’d done and that others, including the British haredi blog IfYouTickleus, did. But the Times of israel and the JC didn’t cite any of us.

Now the Times of israel has another breathless report by the same journalist reporting that a group of London haredi rabbis are now trying to get Rabbi Chaim Halpern to resign or be removed from the last bastion of his power – the synagoge he owns and controls.

Why?

These haredi rabbis – most not part of Kedassia – just figured out that Halpern’s other resignations were probably only temporary. They also panicked when so people turned out to support Halpern last Shabbos.

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NEW YORK
Failed Messiah

After days of testimony and more days of grueling cross examination and the brief redirect that followed, the 17-year-old alleged victim of accused child rapist Rabbi Nechemya Weberman has completed her testimony.

Oren Yaniv, who’s covering the trial for the Daily News and who is live tweeting it from the court, reports that the alleged victim was asked (I believe by the prosecution on redirect) why she decided to come forward and report the alleged sexual abuse.

According to Yaniv, the alleged victim responded, “I felt I had responsibility…it’s kind of my fault that he kept doing what he was doing to other people.”

It took tremendous courage for the alleged victim, who is now 17-years-old (the alleged sexual abuse began when she was 12) to come forward. She, close friends and some family members have had to endure intense harassment from what many increasingly call the Satmar Mafia. Her then-boyfriend was extorted and lost his restaurant due to that extortion. She has been demonized as a “slut,” a “whore,” a girl who “wanted it,” a “liar,” a “machshefah [witch],” et cetera.

If Weberman is indeed guilty, this young woman is a hero because she stood fast against intense waves of abuse heaped on her, not only to get justice for herself and, as she said on the stand the other day, “peace,” but to protect other young girls from Weberman’s exploitation, abuse and rape.

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SCOTLAND
Scotsman

By EMMA COWING
Published on Sunday 2 December 2012

THE man widely tipped to be the next Pope told an audience in Glasgow yesterday that the Catholic Church will not grow unless it deals with the sex abuse scandal that has rocked it in recent years.

Cardinal George Pell, the Archbishop of Sydney, warned the Bishops’ Conference of Scotland that sex abuse was a “criminal moral cancer” and that the Catholic Church will not recover 
“until every cell is excised”.

He said: “Few, if any, people 50 years ago expected the dark stain of sexual abuse to have spread so widely across the church, while varying in extent even within countries. It does not need to be said that this is the most important and powerful barrier to the New Evangelisation.”

He also admitted the Catholic Church in Australia had not dealt properly with sexual abuse within the church.

“It is shameful and shocking that this abuse, with its tragic toll on those who were abused and on their families, was committed by Catholic priests and church workers,” he said during a speech at the Glasgow City Chambers.

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MASSACHUSETTS
Pokrov

Author: Theodore Kalmoukos
Date Published: 11/29/2012
Publication: The National Herald

BOSTON, MA – A sexual scandal of huge magnitude has shaken the Orthodox Monastery of the Transfiguration in Brookline, MA. The Monastery’s founder and former abbot Archimandrite Panteleimon Metropoulos has been accused by his own monks of homosexual advances and activities in the monastery involving members of his monastic community.

Eight monks made their written and signed accusations to Metropolitan Ephraim of Boston at the end of August 2012. The Monastery does not belong to the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America, but it is rather an autonomous group. In the past, the Monastery was under the jurisdiction of the Orthodox Russians Abroad. In 1986 it left and joined an Old Calendarist group in Greece under Archbishop Afxentios. Initially in early 1970, the Monastery had existed under the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America. Also, the first group that established it including former Abbot Panteleimon as well as the current one Fr. Isaac are graduates of Holy Gross Greek Orthodox School of Theology. The Monastery is within walking distance of the Theological School.

In the middle of last September, 17 monks and one Bishop, Demetrios, left the Monastery and they entered in the jurisdiction of the Greek Orthodox Metropolis of Genuine Orthodox under the ecclesiastical leadership of Metropolitan Pavlos Stratigeas of Astoria. The 17 monks and Bishop Demetrios have already resettled at the Monastery of Ascension in Bearsville in Upstate New York. Demetrios was appointed as abbot and everything was made official last month with the visit of the Archbishop Kallinikos, who is the Archbishop of Old Calendar Group in Greece, to which the Metropolis of America under Pavlos Stratigeas belongs. There are more than seven different Old Calendar Groups in Greece, all of which proclaim themselves Genuine Orthodox.

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AUSTRALIA
Sydney Morning Herald

December 2, 2012

A Catholic brother convicted of child abuse has described how a senior clergyman lured him to molest boys. Rory Callinan and Rick Feneley investigate.

Brother Bernard McGrath was a young trainee in the St John of God order when, as he recalls it, a superior brother approached him.

”Come here Bernard. You know I am gay. Come and give me a kiss,” he alleges the brother said.

Days later, the same superior brother, Rodger Moloney, an Australian, again approached McGrath, calling him into his office at the Marylands School for boys with learning and intellectual disabilities in Christchurch, New Zealand.

There in the office was ”some poor kid”, alleges McGrath, who claimed he was then invited to watch while Moloney – his scholastic master and the Marylands prior – molested the boy. Moloney then asked him to participate. The boy was fondled, not raped.

This would be the first of many horrific encounters with Moloney and children at the school in the 1970s, according to notes in a never-before-revealed account of McGrath’s experiences that were sighted by Fairfax Media.

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SPRINGFIELD (MA)
BishopAccountability.org – Assigment Record

Summary of Case: Ordained a priest of the New York archdiocese in 1929, Weldon was a parish priest, boys’ school chaplain and Navy chaplain. Upon his return from World War II, He was named master of ceremonies for Cardinal Spellman, who also named him executive director of Catholic Charities. Weldon was appointed Bishop of Springfield, MA in 1950, where he served until his 1977 retirement. He died in 1977. In 2005 Weldon was accused of having sexually abused a boy in the 1950s, when the boy was between 10 and 16 years of age. Weldon’s accuser also claimed six other priests sexually abused him as a boy, including his uncle. His family denied the abuse. Springfield diocesan officials said there was nothing in their records to support the claims.

Ordained: Sept. 21,1929
Appointed: Bishop of Springfield, MA Jan. 28, 1950
Consecrated: March 24, 1950
Retired: October 15, 1977
Died: March 19, 1982

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BELGIE
Het Belang Van Limburg

“Volgens de Kamer mogen stukken die nietig verklaard zijn toch nog gebruikt worden om iemand te veroordelen. Dat is een flagrante schending van de Mensenrechten”. Dat zei Rik Torfs (CD&V) zopas in de Senaatscommissie Justitie.

Die debatteert over het tweede wetsvoorstel van de Kamercommissie Seksueel Misbruik. Eén onderdeel van dat voorstel gaat over het gebruik van nietig verklaarde stukken. In de toekomst mag de raadkamer beslissen wat met deze nietige stukken gebeurt en wie ze nog mag gebruiken. Het onderdeel kwam in het wetsontwerp naar aanleiding van de inbeslagname van de slachtofferdossiers van Peter Adriaenssens. De inbeslagname was nietig verklaard en de stukken bleven op de griffie liggen, maar de slachtoffers wilden ze terug.

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NEDERLAND
NOS

Geen van de drie beschuldigingen van seksueel misbruik tegen de Maastrichtse pastoor Schafraad zijn terecht. Een commissie heeft de laatste klacht vandaag ongegrond verklaard vanwege gebrek aan bewijs.

Eerder was al een klacht om die reden ongegrond verklaard. Een andere oud-leerling gaf zelf toe dat hij het seksueel misbruik verzonnen had om een schadevergoeding te krijgen.

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NEDERLAND
NRC

door Danielle Pinedo

Na katholieken komen ook Joden met een meldpunt voor slachtoffers van seksueel misbruik in eigen instellingen. De hulplijn is een initiatief van Joods Maatschappelijk Werk (JMW) en het in oorlogstrauma gespecialiseerde Sinai Centrum.

Onder het motto ‘Seksueel misbruik, je neemt het je hele leven mee’ doen de organisaties deze week in het Nieuw Israelietisch Weekblad een oproep aan geloofsgenoten om hun ervaringen te delen.

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NEW YORK
New York Post

By NATALIE O’NEILL, AARON FEIS and PEDRO OLIVEIRA JR.
Last Updated: 7:54 AM, December 1, 2012

What a bunch of shmucks.

Members of Brooklyn’s Orthodox Jewish community lashed out yesterday at the gang of creeps who allegedly tried to intimidate a young sex-abuse accuser by snapping her picture in court as she testified against a powerful Hasidic leader.

“This was done to deteriorate the victim again, to make sure there is a mistrial,” fumed Rabbi Nuchem Rosenberg, who has been following the trial of Nechemya Weberman, the unlicensed counselor accused of abusing the teen starting when she was 12.

Three ultra-Orthodox Jews — Lemon Juice, 30, Joseph Fried, 23, and Yona Weisman, 23 — who were arrested Thursday, were arraigned late last night on criminal-contempt charges for allegedly snapping iPhone pictures of the now-17-year-old as she testified. They were released on $2,500 bail and declined to comment.

The charges against Abraham Zupnick, 23, who was also arrested Thursday, were dropped.

The men, all members of the insular Satmar sect of Williamburg’s Hasidic Jewish community, were nabbed after a picture of the girl surfaced on Twitter.

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VATICAN CITY
Washington Post

Pope’s ex-sex crimes prosecutor, now Malta bishop, kept on as member of Vatican congregation

By Associated Press

Updated: Saturday, December 1

VATICAN CITY — The Vatican’s former sex crimes prosecutor, who was recently named a bishop in Malta, is keeping a foot in his old office.

The pope on Saturday named Bishop Charles Scicluna a member of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. Scicluna had been based at the congregation for 10 years as its chief prosecutor, or promoter of justice, investigating clerical sex abuse cases and earning the respect of victims and even some of the Vatican’s toughest critics for his hard line against pedophile priests.

As a member of the congregation now, Scicluna will sit alongside the two dozen cardinals and handful of bishops who judge the abuse cases that come before the office.

Scicluna’s October appointment as an auxiliary bishop in his native Malta had raised alarm that the Vatican might be backing off his hard line on abuse and forcing him out. Scicluna insisted that was not the case and his appointment Saturday makes clear he’ll remain very much involved.

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NEW YORK
New York Daily News

SICK SEX SHOCKER: I had to reenact porn, alleged teen victim of Hasidic leader Nechemya Weberman testifies

By Kerry Wills AND Oren Yaniv / NEW YORK DAILY NEWS

Saturday, December 1, 2012

The alleged teenage victim of Satmar Hasidic leader Nechemya Weberman testified Friday that he showed her pornography and then made her reenact the sex acts during their closed-door molestation sessions.

I had to “copy what was in the porn,” the beautiful blond 17-year-old testified in Brooklyn Supreme Court. “I remember it happening a lot.”

During her fourth grueling day on the stand, the teen detailed why she hid her torment, which allegedly lasted for three years, beginning in 2007 when she was 12.

“Everybody respected him, he was a leader,” she said of Weberman, 54, whom she described as a member of the powerful modesty committee, which enforces the morality rules of the insular sect.

She never broke down on the stand, even when confronted with intimate details of her tumultuous early teens

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AUSTRALIA
SNAP Australia

WHAT:
Holding signs and childhood photos, clergy sex abuse survivors and their supporters will hand out fliers to church members as they leave Mass. The leaflets urge Sydney’s Cardinal George Pell to

— personally visit every parish where a predator priest has worked and beg anyone who has seen, suspected or suffered clergy sex crimes to come forward, and

–post the names of all credibly accused child molesting clerics on diocesan and parish websites and bulletin boards and in newsletters.

The victims will also encourage anyone who many have seen, suspected or suffered child sex crimes or cover ups – at this parish or others – to come forward, get help, call police, expose wrongdoing, protect others and start healing.

WHEN:
Sunday, December 2 at 11:15 am

WHERE
Outside St Mary’s Cathedral on St. Mary’s Road (between Riley Street and College Street) in Sydney

WHO
Two to four members of an international victims’ support group called SNAP, the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, including a Chicago woman who is the organisation’s long-time president

WHY
SNAP is also calling on Cardinal Pell to permanently post the names of all proven, admitted and credibly accused Sydney area predator priests on his website, in his archdiocesan newspaper, and in parish bulletins. SNAP says that is “one of the simplest, quickest and cheapest ways to keep kids safe.”

Roughly 30 US bishops have posted the names of their predator priests, usually after considerable public pressure. SNAP believes it is the “bare minimum” church officials should do to help protect kids and help victims heal, especially given that bishops recruit, educate, ordain, train and often transfer and protect child molesting clerics. At least some of the predators would be in jail had not their crimes been concealed for years and years by church officials, SNAP maintains.

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VATICAN CITY
Washington Post

Second defendant in Vatican leaks case drops appeal; Vatican tribunal explains guilty verdict

By Associated Press,

Updated: Saturday, December 1

VATICAN CITY — The Vatican computer expert convicted along with the pope’s former butler in the Holy See’s leaks scandal has dropped his appeal.

Vatican spokesman the Rev. Federico Lombardi said Claudio Sciarpelletti had initially appealed his conviction of aiding and abetting the former butler.

But Lombardi said Saturday Sciarpelletti subsequently dropped the appeal, perhaps after considering the “benevolent” suspended two-month sentence he received from the Vatican tribunal.

Sciarpelletti was convicted Nov. 10 of obstructing the Vatican’s investigation into Paolo Gabriele, the pope’s former butler who was convicted of stealing Benedict’s private correspondence and leaking it to a journalist. The embarrassing security breach convulsed the Vatican for months and prompted an unprecedented investigation and trial.

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AUSTRALIA
Sydney Morning Herald

December 1, 2012

Eamonn Duff
Sun-Herald senior investigative writer

A new council has been appointed to the trouble-plagued University of Sydney college St John’s in the hope of restoring order and “lasting change.”

The group, hand picked by Catholic Archbishop of Sydney, George Pell, and the university’s vice-chancellor Michael Spence, comprises 10 lay fellows and six clerical fellows who will hold office for three years.

Fairfax understands the college rector Michael Bongers is also now anxiously waiting to learn if – or how – he fits into the new college set up.

Among the lay fellows are professors, members of the Sydney archdiocese and retired NSW Supreme Court judge Kenneth Handley who earlier this year deliberated over the fate of 33 suspended students at the college. The council’s former chair, Christine Liddy, has returned despite having resigned several weeks ago.

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NEW YORK
New York Magazine

By Joe Coscarelli

The highest profile case in the rash of sexual abuse allegations within Brooklyn’s insular Orthodox Jewish community was hit with another disturbing twist in the courtroom yesterday. During the alleged victim’s testimony against her former therapist Nechemya Weberman, who is charged with 88 counts of sexual misconduct and molestation, four Hasidic men were detained for taking pictures of the anonymous accuser. “You know about the Torah, you know about rabbinical courts. This is a civil court!” Supreme Court Justice John Ingram reportedly boomed. “Your phones will be held for possible criminal prosecution. You may wish to avail yourself of counsel.” But intimidation tactics have been common in this case.

The accuser, now 17, has testified for 12 hours over three days and is expected to continue in court today. “I wanted to die rather than live with myself,” she said, alleging that she was touched inappropriately and forced to perform oral sex on Weberman for three years. “I didn’t know how to fight. I was numb.” She visited Weberman twice a week for counseling meant to get her “back on the spiritual path.”

According to the New York Post, “the alleged victim was left trembling after Weberman allegedly glared at her through a glass door to the courthouse conference room where she sat during a break in her testimony.” The door has since been covered with paper.

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NEW YORK
Wall Street Journal

By Pervaiz Shallwani

The young woman who accused a respected ultra-Orthodox Jewish counselor of sexual abuse wrapped up her testimony Friday afternoon, telling jurors that she came forward because she felt a sense of “responsibility.”

Asked by prosecutors why she decided to step forward after three years of allegedly being abused by Nechemya Weberman, 54 years old, the 17-year-old testified, “I felt like I had a responsibility.”

“I didn’t want anybody else to go through what I went through,” she said.

Asked why she did not come forward sooner, the girl said ”I thought they would never believe me, because he is supposedly a God in Williamsburg.”

The girl also told jurors that Weberman made her watch pornography on a computer in his office.

She spent more than 15 hours over four days on the stand in Brooklyn Supreme Court. The majority of the young woman’s testimony came during tough questioning from defense attorneys, who argue the girl singled out their client and the Satmar sect because of its ultra-Orthodox policies as pay back for the arrest of a former love interest.

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NEW YORK
JTA

By Ami Eden · November 30, 2012

The latest headlines in the sex abuse trial of Nechemya Weberman, an unlicensed therapist and Satmar chasid, were about four young Satmar community members who are accused of taking photos of the 17-year-old accuser in court this week and posting at least one to Twitter.

Their names: Joseph Fried, Yona Weisman, Abraham Zupnick and… Lemon Juice.

That’s right: Lemon Juice.

I’m not surprised the Gray Lady would report that with a straight face. But even the New York Post passed that tidbit along without any sort of explanation. Or even a pun.

I realize there are more important issues at stake here. But, still…

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TEXAS
ABC 4

Reported by: Kylie Conway

ELDORADO, TX (ABC 4 News) – ABC 4 News has learned more about the perverted past of jailed FLDS leader Warren Jeffs.

Pictures from a 2008 raid show the while custom bed that Jeffs requested. It’s the very one that was placed in the temple where he raped girls. Now, more excerpts of Jeffs’ diary explains the specific requests Jeffs made for the bed. Requests so detailed they include comfort for his height, sound prevention and disguise methods.

The bed was first discovered four years ago during a raid on Jeffs’ FLDS Texas compound. Now, while the state of Texas is in court battling for control over $100 million dollar FLDS assets, more details from Jeffs diary, or what he calls his “Priesthood Records” have been read in court by Texas prosecutors.

One excerpt written by Jeffs in reference to the bed read Wednesday stated “When I need it, I will pull it out and set it up. The bed will be a size big enough for me to lay on. … It will be covered with a sheet, but it will have a plastic cover to protect the mattress from what will happen on it,” Jeffs wrote.

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PENNSYLVANIA
Patch

By Heidi Dezayas

Central Catholic High School’s guidance counselor is being accused of selling heroin from her Forest Hills apartment.

Forest Hills police have charged Kelly Scherer, 36, with conspiracy, two counts of possession of a controlled substance, two counts of possession with the intent to deliver and two counts of prohibited acts.

According to KDKA, Scherer, the counselor at the Oakland private school, is accused of dealing heroin and selling it to an undercover police officer.

According to WPXI, police found about 150 needles and at least 50 stamp bags of suspected heroin in her Sumner Avenue apartment at the time of her arrest.

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AUSTRALIA
The Age

December 1, 2012

Maris Beck

A RABBI has been extradited from the US to face child-sex charges in Melbourne.

David Kramer, 52, faces allegations he abused four boys while he was teaching at Yeshivah College in St Kilda East between 1989 and 1992.

A victim of sexual assault by other staff at Yeshivah, Manny Waks, said the allegations against Rabbi Kramer had been known to Jewish leaders since the 1990s but they sent him overseas rather than report him to police.

”They were just going to simply ignore it, they weren’t going to deal with it. A lot of the parents at the time were threatening to take action including going to the police. Only [then] the Yeshivah Centre decided to take action … and sent him overseas.”

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MILWAUKEE (WI)
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

By Annysa Johnson of the Journal Sentinel

A deceased Catholic priest accused of raping a young girl in the 1970s has been added to the Archdiocese of Milwaukee’s list of clergy restricted because of substantiated allegations of sexual abuse of children – 15 years after the victim first made the allegations against him.

The late Father Donald Musinski, who served parishes in and around Milwaukee for nearly 40 years, is only the second priest added to the list since it was first published in 2004.

The archdiocese had known about Musinski since at least 1997 when the victim, Karen Konter, reported him to Project Benjamin, the church’s now-defunct program for sex abuse victims.

It declined to list him when then-Archbishop Timothy Dolan first published the names of 43 offender priests on the archdiocese website in 2004 because it could not substantiate the allegations, according to a letter sent to Konter the following year.

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CALIFORNIA
The Record Searchlight

SACRAMENTO — A new trial date was set today in Sacramento County Superior Court for a suspended Redding priest charged with seven felony counts of child molestation, a spokeswoman for the Sacramento County district attorney’s office said.

The Rev. Uriel Ojeda, 33, who had been scheduled to begin standing trial next week, is now set to have his trial begin on April 11, the spokeswoman said. He also has a trial readiness conference scheduled for April 5.

The spokeswoman did not know the reason for the trial postponement.

Ojeda, who was arrested Nov. 30, 2011, is accused of seven counts of lewd and lascivious acts with a teenage girl over a two-year span — starting when she was 14 — in Sacramento and Shasta counties, according to the criminal complaint.

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FLORIDA
el Nuevo Herald

Melissa Sanchez
msanchez@elnuevoherald.com

El sacerdote Rolando García, acusado en varios casos de abuso sexual de menores, ha renunciado de su cargo en la iglesia St. Agatha.

García entregó su carta de renuncia al arzobispo Thomas Wenski,el 21 de noviembre, informó el viernes la Arquidiócesis de Miami.

En su carta, García dijo que renunciaba con la conciencia tranquila y que lo hacía por su propia voluntad tras un período de oración y reflexión.

El sacerdote había sido suspendido hace un mes tras una nueva alegación de que había mantenido una relación sexual con un menor durante los años 90. Esta fue una de varias acusaciones en su contra en años recientes.

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FLORIDA
WSVN

MIAMI (WSVN) — A Miami priest has stepped down from his role after being accused of sexual abuse for the fourth time.

Reverend Rolando Garcia resigned on Friday as pastor of Miami’s Saint Agatha Catholic church after a new accuser claimed Garcia sexually abused him in the mid-90s.

This is the fourth alleged victim to claim sexual abuse against Garcia.

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NEW YORK
DNA.info

November 30, 2012 1:44pm | By Nicole Bode, Sonja Sharp

BROOKLYN SUPREME COURT — Court officers stepped up security at sexual assault trial Friday, a day after supporters of the rabbi accused in the case were allegedly caught taking photos of the alleged victim on the stand to post online.

Officers used hand-held metal detectors to check spectators and confiscated cellphones from everyone who was not a credentialed member of the press before allowing them to enter Rabbi Nechemya Weberman’s criminal trial in Judge John Ingram’s courtroom.

Before testimony began, Ingram reminded the audience about proper court procedure.

“We’ve had several breaches of the laws of the state of New York. Our courts are open to the public but the court cannot tolerate any further violations,” he said. “This is not some kind of sporting event, it’s not a theater production, and I expect everyone to act accordingly.”

Despite his warnings several Weberman supporters scoffed and snickered at times while the alleged victim was giving her testimony.

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PENNSYLVANIA
Main Line Today

By Emily Riley Published November 29, 2012

Even in the wake of the most recent wave of child sex-abuse scandals, many parents still believe it can’t happen to their family. Malvern’s Maureen Martinez used to be among them—until the day in March 2011 when she learned that one of the priests at her Malvern church would be going on administrative leave. The Rev. Peter Talocci had helped Martinez through marriage counseling and baptized their children. He was now among the 21 clergymen suspended by the Archdiocese of Philadelphia over allegations of sexual abuse. Even more disturbing: A February 2011 jury report found that dozens of priests remained active in the ministry despite credible evidence against them.

“I sat there shocked,” says Martinez of her initial reaction to the news that rocked St. Patrick’s parish. “I was a lifelong Catholic. I never heard of anyone being sexually abused by priests.”

When the sex-abuse scandal in the Archdiocese of Boston broke in 2002, Martinez had convinced herself that it was an isolated case. But as the scandal grew, so did her concern that the issue was bigger than she—and most others—first thought. “I spent some time doing research, and I couldn’t believe what I was finding out. It bothered me to the point where I didn’t want to go back [to church] ever again. It made me want to do something proactive.”

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UNITED STATES
National Catholic Reporter

by Joshua J. McElwee | Nov. 30, 2012

The leaders of one of the largest groups of Catholic sisters in the western hemisphere have expressed support for a U.S. priest dismissed by the Vatican for his backing of women’s ordination.

The leadership team of the Sisters of Mercy of the Americas is “saddened and disturbed” by the Vatican move, made by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith against Roy Bourgeois, they wrote in a statement Wednesday.

Bourgeois, widely known for his work calling attention to injustices in Latin America, had been a member of the Maryknoll Fathers and Brothers, a U.S. missionary society, for 45 years. The Vatican congregation dismissed him from the society on Oct. 4, the order announced in a press release Nov. 19.

The dismissal drew criticism from a former head of the U.S. missionary order, who said in an interview it represented interference “with the integrity of the society.”

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PITTSBURGH (PA)
WPXI

[with video]

PITTSBURGH —

A former Central Catholic High School guidance counselor was arrested this week on drug charges, including possession with intent to deliver, police said.

According to police, detectives had been investigating Kelly Scherer for a lengthy amount of time before arresting her this week.

Authorities said officers found dozens of needles and at least 50 stamp bags of suspected heroin in the apartment where she was arrested.

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PENNSYLVANIA
CBS Pittsburgh

PITTSBURGH (KDKA) – A local high school counselor was arrested on drug possession charges.

Police say 35-year-old Kelly Scherer was dealing heroin and sold the drugs to an undercover police officer.

Scherer was a guidance counselor at Central Catholic High School in Oakland.

According to a criminal complaint, police were tipped off by a neighbor who suspected Scherer was dealing drugs out of her Forest Hills apartment.

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MISSOURI
Fox 4

[with video]

November 29, 2012, by Macradee Aegerter

KANSAS CITY, Mo. — It’s been a lonely stay in jail for Micah Moore, who had claimed that he had killed Bethany Deaton at the order of her husband – but whose attorneys now claim he made the story up.

Moore, 23, was booked into the Jackson County Jail on November 9th after police say he confessed to the October suffocation murder of Deaton, the wife of Moore’s religious leader Tyler Deaton, in a van at Longview Lake.

Moore claimed that the murder was carried out because Tyler Deaton didn’t want his wife to tell anyone of her alleged sexual abuse at the hands of the members of the group at the couple’s Grandview home.

Earlier this week, Moore’s lawyers claimed that their client made the story up, and that Bethany Deaton had committed suicide.

The Jackson County Jail’s visitor log, though partially blacked out by authorities owing to attorney-client privilege, shows no friends or religious community members have visited Moore during his incarceration, only members of his family from Texas.

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MAINE
Seattle PI

AUGUSTA, Maine (AP) — An Episcopal priest charged with mailing prescription drugs to inmates at a Maine jail has made his first court appearance.

The Kennebec Journal (http://bit.ly/Ufi44J ) reports that the Rev. Stephen Foote was not required to enter a plea in Lincoln County Superior Court on Thursday, but bail conditions were modified slightly.

The 70-year-old Foote, who lives in Bremen and was serving at St. Mark’s in Augusta, is charged with trafficking in prison contraband. He’s free on unsecured bail.

Prosecutors say he mailed suboxone to an inmate he knows at the Two Bridges Regional Jail in Wiscasset. Suboxone is used to treat opiate addiction but can be abused.

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PITTSBURGH (PA)
WTAE

PITTSBURGH —
Forest Hills police arrested a Central Catholic High School guidance counselor Thursday on charges of selling heroin out of her home Thursday.

Kelly Scherer, 36, faces seven drug charges, including possession with intent to deliver, according to police records.

Police have not indicated any suspected drug use or possession involved with the Central Catholic campus.

In the criminal complaint, police said they followed and arrested a man whom they watched buy drugs from Scherer, and he gave them the phone number of a person who he had called and who sent him to Scherer.

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AUSTRIA
Vatican Insider

The decision to revoke Mgr. Helmut Schueller’s title comes just as the Austrian rebel priest movement prepares for a big international event

Alessandro Speciale
Rome

This punishment, which is more symbolic that anything, is nevertheless the sign of a certain cooling towards the activity of Austria’s rebel priests, just as they prepare for a big international event in 2013, which is aimed at creating links between priests across the world who are becoming restless with the Vatican’s ultra-conservatism and are seeking deep reforms in the Catholic Church.

Yesterday, the Vatican announced it was stripping Helmut Schueller, former vicar general of the Archdiocese of Vienna who has led the Pfarrer Initiative for some years now, of title “monsignor”. The Pharrer Initiative is a movement of Austrian priests that is asking for ecclesiastical reforms in areas such as obligatory celibacy and the administration of communion to divorcees and same-sex couples. Scheuller remains a priest to all effects and purposes but is not longer the “Chaplain of His Holiness”, an honorary title he received when he was president of Caritas Austria.

The Diocese of Vienna informed Schueller about Rome’s decision, Cardinal Christoph Schoenborn’s spokesman, Michael Prueller told the Austrian press. Schueller is the parish priest of St. Stephan in the village of Probstdorf near Vienna.

The news comes just days after Schueller’s interview with Austrian news agency APA, in which he announced an international meeting of movements that have sprung up across the world in recent years, either following in the footsteps of the Austrian rebel priests or presenting their own requests.

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SAN JOSE (CA)
Mercury News

Mercury News Editorial

Of all the institutions caught up in child sexual abuse allegations — public and private schools, the Boy Scouts, the disaster that is Penn State University — wouldn’t you think the Catholic Church by now would know how to deal with it?

Not the Diocese of San Jose. Its handling of an incident with a registered sex offender on an elementary school campus last month is a worst-case example of institutional culture making it all but impossible to restore public trust. Registered pedophile Mark Gurries’ volunteer work at the St. Frances Cabrini Parish fiesta and its ugly aftermath is a textbook example of what not to do.

Registered sex offenders are barred from schools, with good reason. But soon after Gurries’ release from jail, someone at the diocese gave him a letter of permission to be there. A young woman who knew Gurries’ victim recognized him at the Oct. 6 festival and mobilized parents to protest his presence, but the parish priest resisted asking him to leave for hours.

That alone was appalling. Compassion for Gurries should never have trumped the risk to children or the discomfort of members of the school community at the pedophile’s presence. But Bishop Patrick J. McGrath quickly could have calmed the waters if he’d spoken openly about the incident from the start. Instead, he issued a brief statement that Gurries’ permission was not consistent with diocese policy and would be investigated.

It took six weeks for him to write a full apology — and even then, he left the origin of the permission letter unclear. A former personnel department employee has taken the fall, but many parents believe there had to be higher authorization and wonder if the problem really is resolved. Some think the parish priest, who has resigned, is another scapegoat. At a community meeting Wednesday night, emotions were as raw as they were at the festival.

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VATICAN CITY
Boston Globe

VATICAN CITY (AP) — An Austrian Roman Catholic dissident priest says the Vatican has stripped him of the right to use the title ‘‘monsignor’’ in an apparent act of censure for his campaign challenging church teachings that priests must be celibate and excluding woman from the priesthood.

The Rev. Helmut Schueller said Friday that he had been informed the title had been revoked, but that ‘‘the title for me was not so important. I can live with it.’’ He remains a priest.

The Vatican declined to comment.

Schueller earlier this month told the Austrian News Agency that he was working on making his Pfarrer-Initiative more international in 2013, with interest from Germany, Ireland, France, Australia and the United States.

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IRELAND
Irish Central

By
JAMES O’SHEA,
IrishCentral Staff Writer

Published Friday, November 30, 2012

Over one in five Irish who say they are Catholics do not believe in the resurrection, or that God created the universe, an Irish Times poll has shown.

It also showed that seven per cent of Irish Catholics do not even believe in God. 84 per cent believe priests should marry, while 80 per cent believe women should be priests.

The survey reveals ala carte Catholicism is very much in fashion in Ireland, with 78 per cent saying they do not follow church teaching but their own individual conscience on issues.

Meanwhile 45 per cent do not believe in hell and 18 per cent do not believe that God created man.

On some issues however they are traditional. 92 per cent believe in God, 82 per cent believe in heaven and 84 per cent believe Jesus was the son of God.

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AUSTRALIA
The Australian

EXCLUSIVE: DAN BOX
From:The Australian
December 01, 201212:00AM

THE AMERICAN Catholic church paid tens of thousands of dollars to the US victims of an Australian pedophile priest after they agreed not to pursue legal action against the Australian bishop who sent him there.

Evidence of this international agreement is contained in documents, seen by The Weekend Australian, which show the former Bishop of Ballarat, Ronald Mulkearns, sent the priest overseas despite receiving repeated warnings of his crimes against children.

The documents include a 1992 letter from Emeritus Bishop Mulkearns to an American cleric, detailing two such allegations against the priest, Father Paul David Ryan, and asking “what options there might be for him to minister . . . in the US”.

As a result of the allegations against Father Ryan, “he feels that it is now impossible for him to work in the diocese . . . I agreed with this assessment”, the unsigned letter said..

In another, signed, letter written to Father Ryan a year before, the bishop said he had received an allegation the priest had abused a young boy and “obviously there is the potential for some scandal”.

Father Ryan, who could not be contacted last night, was also moved between parishes within Victoria, where he also abused children, one of whom later committed suicide.

In 2006, he pleaded guilty to indecently assaulting two teenage boys.

Bishop Mulkearns, who did not respond to calls yesterday, has previously told The Weekend Australian he had “no recollection” of being told Father Ryan abused children.

“I’m not saying it didn’t happen. I suffered a stroke and I’m an old man,” the 82-year-old said.

The earliest evidence of Father Ryan’s sexual activities is contained in a 1977 letter sent from the seminary where he studied to become a priest, detailing “the harm he may have done to some of the younger students here . . . naive, innocent boys”.

He was subsequently sent to the US for what Bishop Mulkearns described as “treatment” for his homosexuality, and later worked as a parish priest in Virginia.

The priest went on to make visits to the US over three decades, where he allegedly abused at least three young boys.

One of these victims yesterday said he had since discussed pursuing a criminal prosecution against the priest with US authorities.

“I hope there’s still a chance he’ll see justice in this world,” the man said.

During the 1990s, the Catholic Diocese of Richmond, Virginia, made confidential financial payments to a number of Father Ryan’s victims.

These were agreed on the condition the recipients did not pursue legal action against several named church officials in both countries, including Father Ryan and Bishop Mulkearns.

Father Ryan left the church in 1993, although the diocese continued to provide him with money and did not report the allegations against him to police.

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AUSTRALIA
The Age

November 30, 2012

Rachel Wells
Consumer Affairs Reporter for The Age

Victoria Police announced on Friday it has launched a new taskforce to investigate new and historical allegations of child sexual abuse that have emanated from the Victorian Parliamentary Inquiry into child sex abuse.

Victoria Police say Taskforce Sano will initially comprise 10 detectives but could increase as the scale of investigations becomes more evident.

The taskforce will also provide expert support and advice to the Parliamentary Inquiry and, as required, to the Royal Commission.

The taskforce will be led by Detective Senior Sergeant Michael Dwyer of the Sexual Crimes Squad who has been working closely with the parliamentary inquiry over the past five months.

Detective Superintendent Rod Jouning, head of the Sexual and Family Violence Directorate, said police were determined to ensure that all reported matters were thoroughly investigated.

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UNITED KINGDOM
This is Cornwall

The former wife of a man accused of sexually abusing young girls told a court he attended “witches’ meetings” and encouraged her to wife-swap.

Prosecutors say Jack Kemp, 69, and Peter Petrauske, 72, were members of a witches’ coven whose members donned robes and used daggers to launch sex attacks on girls in Cornwall.

The two friends deny a string of sexual offences, including assault and, in Petrauske’s case, rape.

Jurors at Truro Crown Court have already heard the pair were involved in paganism from the 1970s onwards.

Yesterday Kemp’s ex-wife Pamela James said he went to “witches’ meetings” three to four times a week with Petrauske, who she admitted sleeping with.

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