ABUSE TRACKER

BOSTON (MA)
The Associated Press

June 27, 2018

Olympic gymnast Aly Raisman says she’s barely been able to work out since going public with allegations of sexual abuse at the hands of a former sports doctor.

The six-time Olympic medalist told The Improper Bostonian magazine, for a cover story published this week, that she’s still regrouping and recovering after confronting former USA Gymnastics team doctor Larry Nassar.

“In the past few months I’ve barely worked out, which for someone who loves working out, that’s saying a lot,” the magazine quoted Raisman as saying.

The 24-year-old Raisman, captain for both the gold-medal winning 2012 and 2016 U.S. women’s Olympic gymnastics teams, says she was abused by Nassar in multiple locations beginning in 2010, including at the U.S. national team training facility in Texas and at the 2012 Games in London. Hundreds of other women and girls have said they, too, were sexually assaulted by Nassar.

Nassar pleaded guilty to molesting women and girls under the guise that he was treating them for injuries. He is serving sentences that likely will keep him in prison for life.

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

UNITED STATES
In Style

June 27, 2018

By Jonathan Borge

Aly Raisman skyrocketed to fame as one of the Fierce Five gold medalists that represented Team USA at the 2012 Olympics, but in the past year, the 24-year-old has also become known as a staunch advocate for justice. She was among hundreds of athletes who came forward as victims of sexual harassment and abuse at the hands of USA Gymnastics doctor Larry Nassar—now in prison for life—and, in January, shared an empowered testimony at his court appearance.

“All these brave women have power, and we will use our voices to make sure you get what you deserve,” she said at the time, and she hasn’t stopped fighting. In March, she filed a lawsuit against the U.S. Olympic Committee and USA Gymnastics for failing to pick up on Nassar’s abusive and criminal behavior. Since, she’s also become a body-positive fashion campaign star and has deftly taken down trolls on social media.

But fighting for what’s right comes at a price, Raisman says. “In the last year, I have not put myself first,” she says in the video at top, explaining that she wants to continue to speak out about her own abuse and listen to other women’s stories but sometimes feels triggered as a result. “I’ve learned that if I can’t take care of myself then I won’t have the energy to help other people,” she adds. To do so, she plans to spend this summer sun grazing at her family’s beach house in Cape Cod and meditating, a “life-changing” practice she’s recently taken on.

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

KANSAS CITY (MO)
Yahoo Sports

June 26, 2018

By Chris Cwik

The Kansas City Royals are seriously considering signing a pitcher who pleaded guilty to child molestation. Royals general manager Dayton Moore confirmed that the team’s interest in Oregon State pitcher Luke Heimlich was real, saying that Heimlich, “has earned an opportunity to play professional baseball.”

Heimlich went un-drafted the past two seasons after an article from The Oregonian revealed he pleaded guilty to molesting his six-year-old niece when he was 15. In the weeks following the 2018 draft, there have been rumors that the Royals were considering signing Heimlich.

Moore confirmed those rumors, and actively advocated for the team to sign Heimlich in a televised interview with Fox Sports Kansas City. In that interview, which Rustin Dodd transcribed in his article on The Athletic, Moore frames it as courageous for a team to sign someone who pleaded guilty to child molestation, ignores Heimlich’s guilty plea by calling it an accusation, makes false claims about Heimlich’s family still being close and indicates that he believes being exposed to porn might have played a role in Heimlich molesting his niece.

Moore also says the Royals are an organization that believes in giving players second chances. He mentions former Royals outfielder Jarrod Dyson as a player who the Royals did not give up on. Dyson was suspended 50 games for a positive PED test in 2009. By making that comparison, Moore appears to equate testing positive for PEDs to a child molestation conviction.

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

VATICAN CITY
Reuters

June 27, 2018

By Philip Pullella

When Pope Francis wanted to appoint a woman as deputy head of the Vatican press office in 2016, he quickly ran into opposition from the Catholic Church’s male-dominated hierarchy.

“I had to fight,” Francis said in a rare, two-hour interview with Reuters in his residence this month.

Asked why the leader of the world’s 1.3 billion Catholics, then three years into his papacy, could not put a woman into a middle-ranking Vatican role without a fight, the pope smiled and replied: “Bosses cannot always do what they want.

“They have to convince. There is a verb, a word, that helps me very much in governing: ‘to persuade’. It is persuasion, slowly persuading, if you can manage to do it.”

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

IRELAND
Daily Mail

June 26, 2018

By Madhvi Mavadiya

– Pope Francis will tour the Republic of Ireland across two days in August 2018
– All tickets for the pontiff’s trip to Knock Shrine in County Mayo were allocated
– The Pope’s tour will conclude with a final Mass in Phoenix Park in Dublin

Pope Francis is expected to visit the Republic of Ireland in August and all 45,000 free tickets for the pontiff’s trip to Knock Shrine in County Mayo were allocated within hours of being released.

During his two-day visit, the Pope will lead Catholic ceremonies at a number of venues across Ireland and his tour will conclude with a final Mass in Phoenix Park in Dublin, for which tickets are still available.

Here’s everything you need to know about Pope Francis’s visit to Ireland, his itinerary and how to get tickets to the events at Croke Park and Phoenix Park.

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

NEW YORK CITY (NY)
New York Times

June 26, 2018

By Sam Roberts

[See also the obituary as it appeared in print, and a PDF of the full page.]

Kathy Shaw, a journalist who doggedly investigated allegations of sexual abuse by clergymen and compiled a national register of misconduct accusations so that the public could grasp the dimensions of the crisis, died on Sunday in a hospital in Worcester, Mass. She was 72.

The cause was complications of pneumonia, her niece Renee Whitenett said.

By surveying thousands of cases and posting them on a blog called Abuse Tracker, Ms. Shaw played a meaningful if largely unheralded role in helping fellow journalists and victims of abuse.

“She connected people who were suffering in isolation and blaming themselves and assuming they were the only ones,” David Clohessy, former national director of the Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests, said in a telephone interview. “She helped them understand that, in fact, they were part of a system of corruption that could only really be addressed with a personal response like disclosure, therapy and calling the police, and a collective response like pushing for broad change.”

As a religion reporter for The Telegram & Gazette of Worcester, Ms. Shaw was credited in 2003 with bringing into view a confidential 1962 Vatican document that mandated complete secrecy by church leaders in dealing with cases of sexual abuse by priests and bishops.

Advocates for victims of abuse said that the edict had shielded clergy members from prosecution and contributed to cover-ups.

A number of canon lawyers pointed out, though, that the edict’s provisions had been revised in 2001 and that the Vatican document would not in any case have prevented a bishop from referring crimes by priests to the civil authorities.

Ms. Shaw and another reporter, George Griffin, tracked down a local priest who had fled to Canada in the late 1970s after the Worcester police issued a warrant accusing him of molesting boys at a youth home he operated.

The priest was extradited and convicted in 1995 of sexually abusing a teenage boy. The conviction was later overturned on the grounds of defects in the jury deliberations and improprieties by the prosecutor in his closing argument.

The Abuse Tracker (originally the Clergy Abuse Tracker) was the inspiration of Bill Mitchell of the Poynter Institute for Media Studies, a nonprofit research organization in St. Petersburg, Fla. It was started not long after The Boston Globe published a series of articles in 2002 by its Spotlight investigative team revealing that the Archdiocese of Boston had covered up sexual abuse by priests. Mr. Mitchell enlisted Ms. Shaw to help.

“If journalism is the first draft of history,” Mr. Mitchell said in an email, “Kathy Shaw spent more than 15 years compiling the essential index of one of church history’s most important and painful chapters: sexual abuse by clergy and the cover-up by many of their bosses — the bishops and cardinals who valued the church’s reputation above the well-being of victims and survivors.”

After a year at Poynter, Abuse Tracker continued for a time under the auspices of the independent newspaper The National Catholic Reporter.

“It gives a different dimension to the issue because we can clearly see the issue of clergy abuse is affecting the entire Catholic Church from the top on down to the tiniest parishes in the smallest towns,” Ms. Shaw told the newspaper in 2002.

Abuse Tracker has been hosted by Bishop-Accountability.org in Waltham, Mass., since 2006, and the website said on Monday that it would continue to operate the blog.

“In the 16 years since 2002, Kathy posted tens of thousands of articles in Abuse Tracker, transforming the news blog into an indispensable resource and record, used by everyone who works on the clergy abuse crisis or cares about it,” Terence McKiernan and Anne Barrett Doyle, who direct Bishop-Accountability.org, said in an email. “Thanks to Kathy and Abuse Tracker, every local development in the abuse crisis could be followed by people everywhere.”

Kathleen Ann Shaw was born on Aug. 1, 1945, in Gardner, Mass., to Alexander Shaw Jr., a foreman in a drill factory, and Evelyn (Burwood) Shaw. Her closest survivor is her sister, Jean Shaw.

She began working for a local radio station when she was 17 and graduated from Becker College and Assumption College, both in Worcester. While working as a reporter, she was also a mental health crisis counselor and clinician in the Worcester area.

Once she began reporting on the sexual abuse allegations in the early 1990s, Mr. Clohessy said, “Kathy was blown away by how extensive this horror is and, with deep empathy, she understood how devastating this is to people in a life-altering and a life-threatening way.”

She retired as a reporter in 2006 but continued to post articles for Abuse Tracker.

“Part of her legacy is that we fly higher and the view gets wider — closer to the Vatican’s own view,” Mr. McKiernan said. “Abuse Tracker includes other countries now, and other abuse besides clergy abuse.

“As a result, solidarity increases across regions and countries,” he added. “Abused Olympic gymnasts and abused altar boys have common cause, especially in changing the laws.

“Kathy opened our minds,” he said.

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

KANSAS CITY (MO)
National Catholic Reporter

June 26, 2018

By Bill Mitchell

[See also a screen shot of this appreciation with a photo of Kathy Shaw.]

Before the credits roll at the conclusion of “Spotlight,” a list appears showing 105 cities and towns in 41 states and another 101 places in 29 countries “where major abuse scandals have been uncovered.”

It was a fitting close to the Academy Award-winning film that told the story behind the story of the Boston Globe’s Pulitzer Prize-winning coverage of the clergy abuse scandal.

Kathy Shaw, the journalist who helped put those places on the map of this searing landscape in church history, died Sunday after a long illness.

For more than 15 years, Kathy played a remarkable behind-the-scenes role as the driving force of the Abuse Tracker blog.

The Tracker started at the Poynter Institute for Media Studies in 2002, moved to NCR at the end of 2003 and was adopted in 2006 by Bishop Accountability.org, where it operates today.

If journalism is the first draft of history, Kathy Shaw compiled the essential index of one of the church’s most important and painful chapters.

I started the Tracker a couple of months after the Globe’s first story in January 2002 and recruited Kathy as a volunteer collaborator a few months later. At the time, I was running Poynter.org, a resource for journalists wrestling with the transition from print and broadcast to digital.

Far and away the most popular feature on the site was the blog created by Jim Romenesko, who tracked issues and developments across the world of news during one of the most tumultuous periods in its history. The success of Romenesko suggested to me that the clergy abuse story could use something similar.

As Kathy’s dedication to tracking the story became clear, I began thinking of her as the Romenesko of the abuse story. Through the Tracker, Kathy helped the various stakeholders — not just journalists, but survivors, attorneys, church officials, probably even perpetrators — get a daily handle on what was unfolding as one of the most important, chaotic stories in the world. With its audience expanding, the Tracker clearly was outgrowing its original fit with Poynter. Thus the move to NCR.

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

PITTSBURGH (PA)
Tribune-Review

June 26, 2018

By Debra Erdley

The Pennsylvania Supreme Court, which stayed the release of a sweeping secret grand jury investigation into allegations of sexual abuse in Catholic dioceses across the state, said Monday it will withhold the report to give unindicted people named in it a chance to challenge its findings.

In an unsigned opinion that shed light on last week’s brief ruling, the justices said “many individuals” named in the grand jury report that examined decades of abuse reports in six dioceses, including Greensburg and Pittsburgh, petitioned the court, saying they were denied due process to defend their reputations.

Noting that reputation is a right under the state constitution and that some petitions have yet to be reviewed, the justices said they will review the temporary stay once those challenges “can be resolved, or an informed and fair determination can be made as to whether a continued stay is warranted.”

Pennsylvania Attorney General Josh Shapiro initially said he would make the report public this week. Although he did not oppose the delay, he is urging the court to act swiftly.

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

PITTSBURGH (PA)
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

June 26, 2018

By the Editorial Board

The state Supreme Court has finally explained its decision last week to delay the release of a grand jury’s report on the sexual abuse of children in six Catholic dioceses. In part, the court wants to give the law establishing grand juries the once-over.

It wants to review criticism the grand jury included about an unknown number of individuals, determine whether they had ample opportunity to defend themselves and, if it concludes their due-process rights were violated, presumably rule on whether those folks should be kept out of a report that’s now hundreds of pages long.

The court gave no timetable for vetting the report, and Supreme Court justices aren’t known for burning the midnight oil, so anguished victims who have long waited to tell their stories will just have to keep biding their time.

The court didn’t even promise to release what’s left of the report when it’s completed any slicing and dicing it deems necessary. This isn’t the kind of ruling that boosts public trust in the judiciary. But it is precisely the kind of ruling that emasculates grand juries.

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

ERIE (PA)
Times News

June 21, 2018

By Ed Palattella

The court is to hear arguments on challenges to a grand jury’s findings on child sexual abuse in six Roman Catholic dioceses statewide.

The public might have to wait longer to read a grand jury report on child sexual abuse in the Catholic Diocese of Erie and five other Roman Catholic dioceses statewide.

In a one-page order issued on Wednesday, the state Supreme Court said it is halting the unsealing and release of the report pending a review of unspecified challenges to its release.

Attorney General Josh Shapiro, whose office is running the investigation, said in late May that he planned to release the report by the end of June.

The Supreme Court’s order, issued on Wednesday, would appear to complicate those plans, though details of what might happen next are sparse because grand jury proceedings are secret. The Supreme Court order is directed to the supervising judge of the grand jury, Norman Krumenacker III, of Cambria County, and Shapiro’s office.

The order reads: “And now, this 20th day of June 2018, the Applications for Stay are granted. The Honorable Norman A. Krumenacker, III, and the Office of the Attorney General are enjoined from releasing Report No. 1 of the 40th Statewide Investigating Grand Jury pending further order of this Court. The instant order is unsealed. All other materials at these docket numbers are not presently publicly available.”

The stays that are the subject of the Supreme Court order are believed to have been filed by people named in the report but who are not officials of the six dioceses.

All of the dioceses have said they do not oppose the release of the report, with Erie Catholic Bishop Lawrence Persico the first to state he wanted an unrestricted release. Persico, the bishop of the 13-county Erie diocese since October 2012, also was the only one of the six bishops to testify in person before the grand jury rather than submit a written statement. Persico was not under subpoena.

The other dioceses under investigation are those for Allentown, Greensburg, Harrisburg, Pittsburgh and Scranton.

In a statement, Shapiro said his office would continue to push for the release of the report, which is 884 pages and is expected to be one of the most sweeping studies of its kind issued in the United States.

“Just moments ago, the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania accepted legal challenges to the issuing of a grand jury report detailing widespread sexual abuse within the Catholic Church. In an unsealed order, the Supreme Court has issued a stay of proceedings to review and decide those challenges,” Shapiro said.

“My legal team and I will continue fighting tirelessly to make sure the victims of this abuse are able to tell their stories and the findings of this investigation are made public to the people of Pennsylvania.”

Persico in a statement confirmed that the Erie diocese did not ask for a stay.

“We anxiously await the Supreme Court’s decision on this matter, and support the release of the report which will give victims a voice,” Persico said. “Until the report is released, we will continue our efforts to identify abusers and provide counseling and assistance to victims.”

Under the direction of the attorney general’s office, the grand jury investigated the dioceses for two years and ended its term on April 30. Its report was done in May, and the dioceses on May 25 received copies of the report under seal to prepare written responses to it. Krumenacker was to decide whether to attach those responses to the final report before the public release.

On June 5, Krumenacker issued a rare public opinion in the case, in which he said that he denied legal challenges that unnamed individuals had filed with him objecting to the release of the report. Those individuals are believed to have appealed Krumenacker’s ruling — which he said dealt with unprecedented legal issues in Pennsylvania — directly to the state Supreme Court.

The requests that Krumenacker denied came from some individuals who are named but not indicted in the grand jury’s report. They asked that Krumenacker allow them to present evidence and testimony to the grand jury to refute the evidence that the attorney general’s office presented “that resulted in the language critical of them contained in the report.”

Krumenacker found that such hearings are not allowed under that state’s grand jury law and that, if the hearings occurred, they would “disrupt the functions of the grand jury.”

The grand jury law requires that those named but not charged in the grand jury’s report be notified and allowed to respond in writing, but the law does not allow the type of hearing that the individuals wanted, Krumenacker wrote. Commenting on the reason the grand jury was empaneled, Krumenacker wrote, “The Commonwealth’s interest in protecting children from sexual predators and persons or institutions that enable them to continue their abuse is of the highest order.”

Krumenacker also provided the most details to date about what the report includes. He wrote that the investigation relates “to allegations of child sexual abuse, failure to make a mandatory report, acts endangering the welfare of children, and obstruction of justice by individuals associated with the Roman Catholic Church, local public officials and community leaders.”

The grand jury document is an investigative report rather than a presentment. In Pennsylvania, a grand jury recommends the filing of criminal charges through a presentment.

However, the grand jury’s work has yielded criminal charges in one case — that of the Rev. David L. Poulson, 65, a priest in the Catholic Diocese of Erie charged May 8 with molesting two boys between 2002 and 2012 when the boys were 8 to 18. The investigating grand jury heard evidence about Poulson and issued a presentment.

Poulson waived his right to a preliminary hearing on May 31 before a district judge in Jefferson County. Persico forced Poulson to resign in February and he is no longer in active ministry. Poulson is free after he posted $30,000 bail, or 10 percent of the full amount of $300,000.

Bishop’s statement

Erie Catholic Bishop Lawrence Persico issued the following statement on Wednesday’s state Supreme Court order halting the release of the grand jury report on child sexual abuse:

“Bishop Lawrence Persico and the Diocese of Erie did not seek a stay of the publication of the grand jury report, and thus cannot comment on the merits of the legal arguments of others. As demonstrated from the recent revisions to our ‘Policy for the Protection of Children,’ we are committed to transparency.

“We anxiously await the Supreme Court’s decision on this matter, and support the release of the report which will give victims a voice. Until the report is released, we will continue our efforts to identify abusers and provide counseling and assistance to victims.”

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

JOHNSTOWN (PA)
WJAC 6

June 25, 2018

By Maria Miller

Harrisburg, Pa. – We’re hearing more Monday from the state’s high court after its decision last week to block the release of grand jury findings in six Roman Catholic dioceses across the state.

The Pennsylvania State Supreme Court says that many people named in the report have lodged challenges. In fact, the court says the overseeing judge, Norman Krumenacker III, gave individuals named until June 22 to come forward to submit their own responses to allegations within the report.

Because the attorney general’s office did not oppose a temporary or brief stay on releasing the reports, the state Supreme Court says it decided to temporarily block the results in order to give itself time to hear petitions of those named. It’s not clear how long the stay will continue.

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

GLASGOW (SCOTLAND)
The Herald

June 26, 2018

A retired archbishop has told an inquiry he is “deeply ashamed” after allegations of abuse by nuns at Catholic children’s homes were revealed.

Archbishop Mario Conti expressed his “pain and sorrow” to those who have suffered mistreatment.

And the former church leader asked for the forgiveness of survivors if “I was insensitive to their pain”.

The 84-year-old clergyman appeared before the Scottish Child Abuse Inquiry on Tuesday to give evidence.

Over the last eight weeks, the probe has been examining now-defunct children’s homes which were run by the Catholic congregation the Sisters of Nazareth in Scotland.

The inquiry has previously been told of a catalogue of alleged abuses by nuns at those institutions decades ago.

Archbishop Conti, the former Bishop of Aberdeen and Archbishop of Glasgow, was giving evidence primarily on his knowledge of Nazareth House in Aberdeen, after taking up the post in the city in 1977, and his reaction to the allegations that have emerged.

The retired churchman was asked about a statement he was said to have made around 20 years ago, describing lawyers as dangling a “pot of gold” before alleged victims.

He told the probe he would not use that phrase on Tuesday.

The inquiry was shown a BBC documentary from 1998 focusing on the allegations of survivors who had been at Nazareth House institutions.

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

NEW YORK CITY (NY)
New York Times

June 24, 2018

By Mark Joseph Williams

Re “Cardinal Accused of Sexual Abuse Is Removed From Ministry” (news article, June 21):

I don’t buy for one minute that Cardinal Theodore E. McCarrick has absolutely no recollection of sexually abusing a minor 47 years ago.

Coincidentally, it was 47 years ago when I was sexually abused by a Catholic priest. Victims do not forget. I haven’t.

Removing a prelate like Cardinal McCarrick so soon after Pope Francis accepted the resignation of Bishop Juan Barros Madrid of Chile, who also claimed loss of memory, feels like a watershed moment.

For the sake of the church, I hope so.

Mark Joseph Williams
Far Hills, N.J.

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

GLASGOW (SCOTLAND)
Daily Record

June 26, 2018

By Hilary Duncanson

Archbishop Mario Conti expressed his “pain and sorrow” at the Scottish Child Abuse Inquiry.

A retired archbishop has told an inquiry he is “deeply ashamed” after allegations of abuse by nuns at Catholic children’s homes were revealed.

Archbishop Mario Conti expressed his “pain and sorrow” to those who have suffered mistreatment.

And the former church leader asked for the forgiveness of survivors if “I was insensitive to their pain”.

Sex abuse claims against late priest Father Gerry Nugent who was key witness in Angelika Kluk murder trial
The 84-year-old clergyman appeared before the Scottish Child Abuse Inquiry on Tuesday to give evidence.

Over the last eight weeks, the probe has been examining now-defunct children’s homes which were run by the Catholic congregation the Sisters of Nazareth in Scotland.

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

NEWCASTLE (NEW SOUTH WALES, AUSTRALIA)
The Herald

June 27 2018

By Joanne McCarthy

An Australian Catholic organisation tasked with establishing professional standards to protect children has invited Hunter child sex survivors and advocates to discuss new draft standards at a meeting in Newcastle.

Catholic Professional Standards Ltd has already invited some Hunter survivors and advocates to the Newcastle City Hall consultation forum on Monday at 2pm, and issued an open invitation to all Catholic abuse survivors and advocates in a media statement on Wednesday.

The organisation issued draft National Catholic Safeguarding Standards in April, in response to the final report and recommendations of the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse.

CPSL director of safeguarding, Kate Eversteyn, said the consultation forums taking place around the country were designed to hear from people abused in Catholic institutions, or directly impacted by abuse.

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

PHILADELPHIA (PA)
Philadelphia Inquirer

June 25, 2018

By Craig R. McCoy

The Archdiocese of Philadelphia has settled a claim of sex abuse brought by the family of a 26-year-old former student in a Northeast Philadelphia parish who died of a heroin overdose in 2013 shortly before he was to testify in a criminal case against a local priest.

The suit was filed by the parents of Sean McIlmail, who had said that the now-defrocked priest, Robert L. Brennan, molested him for four years, starting when he was 11, while Brennan served at Resurrection of Our Lord parish.

While the payment amount is secret, the family’s lawyers say they understand it to be the largest yet paid by the archdiocese in an abuse case. It is only the sixth known sex-abuse settlement by the archdiocese — a remarkable fact given how extensive the priest abuse scandal proved to be here. The archdiocese has been the subject of two scathing grand jury reports that said its leaders had “enabled and excused” abuse by scores of priests for decades.

Elsewhere, some dioceses have faced myriad lawsuits with hundreds of millions of dollars in play. The Archdiocese of Los Angeles, for instance, in a single agreement paid $660 million to 508 victims. The Philadelphia Archdiocese has been spared a greater financial burden largely because of Pennsylvania’s more narrow statute of limitations for such crimes, which has left victims without legal authority to sue. So far, the church and other critics have successfully lobbied in the legislature to block any major liberalization of those restrictions.

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

ST. PETERSBURG (FL)
Poynter

June 26, 2018

By David Beard

The movie “Spotlight” ends with the first story published about the clergy scandal that would mushroom around the world.

The Boston Globe’s Spotlight team followed that story — but an unsung hero was a journalist from central Massachusetts named Kathy Shaw.

Shaw, who died Sunday night, worked on a clergy Abuse Tracker that became a reference to journalists worldwide who were following the story. Those who worked with her speak of her dedication, tackling the issue of church abuse from the early 1990s on. Though not famous or from a big town, Shaw showed how a journalist, even late in a career, can make a difference.

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

CARY (NC)
BRnow.org

June 25 2018

By Andrew J.W. Smith

Southern Baptists should take a strong stand against all forms of abuse and fight to create gracious church environments in which abuse victims are heard and loved, panelists said during the Baptist21 luncheon on June 12 in Dallas.

More than 1,300 people attended the sold-out event in the Kay Bailey Hutchison Convention Center during the 2018 Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) Annual Meeting to hear seven Southern Baptist leaders address the theme of “United and Diverse: Critical Issues for our Cooperative Future.”

The panel was moderated by Jedidiah Coppenger, co-founder of Baptist21 and lead pastor of Redemption City Church in Franklin, Tenn. The panel featured Trillia Newbell, Russell Moore, R. Albert Mohler Jr., Kevin Smith, Matt Chandler, Danny Akin, and D.A. Horton.

In light of recent scandals involving sexual immorality and sexual abuse throughout evangelicalism and the SBC, churches and institutions need to reevaluate and update their policies for dealing with immoral and criminal behavior, said Newbell, director of community outreach for the Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission.

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

MADRID (SPAIN)
BBC News

June 25, 2018

By James Badcock

When an 85-year-old gynaecologist goes on trial in Madrid on 26 June accused of abducting a baby, thousands of victims of a sinister, sprawling network of illegal adoptions will be looking for answers.

They will also be hoping that the case triggers wider investigations into the scandal.

Dr Eduardo Vela will become the first person to stand trial for what victims’ groups claim was a secret practice that saw hundreds of thousands of babies stolen and sold under the dictatorship of Gen Francisco Franco and after his death in 1975.

In the years immediately after Spain’s 1936-1939 civil war, children were removed from families identified by the victorious fascist regime as Republicans and given to families considered more deserving.

Little was known about the private trafficking of babies that continued in the 1960s until two men went public with their story in 2011.

Antonio Barroso and Juan Luis Moreno revealed they had been bought by their respective fathers from a priest in Zaragoza.

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

MADRID (SPAIN)
The Irish Times

June 25, 2018

By Guy Hedgecoe

Doctor accused of involvement in illegal adoption racket during dictatorship

A Spanish doctor will go on trial on Tuesday accused of abducting an infant half a century ago in a landmark case that is expected to clarify the so-called “stolen baby” scandal that is believed to have separated thousands of families during the Franco dictatorship and beyond.

Eduardo Vela, a retired gynaecologist, is accused of unlawfully taking a new-born baby girl from her mother in a Madrid clinic in 1969 and of giving her, via the mediation of a priest, to a couple who agreed to pretend they were the biological parents.

The baby girl, Inés Madrigal, grew up without knowing she was adopted. But when she was an adult, her adoptive mother told her what had happened, prompting her to denounce Dr Vela.

The prosecutor is calling for the Madrid court handling the case to give Dr Vela (85) an 11-year prison sentence and a €15,000 fine for illegal detention, certifying a non-existent birth and forging documents.

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MADRID (SPAIN)
Los Angeles Times

June 25, 2018

By James Badcock

Ines Perez and her husband were unable to have children.

Then a Jesuit priest introduced them to Dr. Eduardo Vela, an obstetrician in Madrid who said he knew a woman who had become pregnant during an affair and did not want to keep the baby. But this would not be a standard adoption.

The doctor told Perez to use a pillow to fake pregnancy. Then when he finally handed her the baby, he signed a birth certificate saying that she and her husband were the biological parents.

“Look, what a gift!” he said that day in June 1969. “I have a girl for you.”

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

CHICAGO (IL)
Chicago Tribune

June 25, 2018

The Rev. C. Frank Phillips, founder of a religious order and pastor at St. John Cantius Catholic Parish, has been removed from his priestly duties after an investigation, according to a letter distributed to parishioners. A letter from Gene Szarek, the provincial superior of the Congregation of the Resurrection — the Resurrectionist order, of which Phillips is a member — was distributed over the weekend inside bulletins at the Goose Island neighborhood church. The letter informed churchgoers that the order’s review board, which looked into allegations of improper conduct involving adult men made against Phillips, had heard from those involved and submitted its conclusions to the Archdiocese of Chicago.

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

NEWARK (NJ)
NJ Advance Media for NJ.com

June 20, 2018

By Kelly Heyboer and Ted Sherman

The scandal over Cardinal Theodore McCarrick’s alleged abuse of a minor while he was a young priest— and the subsequent disclosure by church officials in New Jersey of settlements of at least two cases charging sexual misconduct with adults— has raised new questions over pledges of transparency by the Catholic Church in dealing with the misdeeds of its clergy.

In 2002, American bishops passed the Dallas Charter, requiring that dioceses report all allegations of sexual abuse of minors to public authorities.

But the New Jersey settlements in the case McCarrick, which officials said involved “allegations of sexual misconduct with adults decades ago,” were kept confidential. They only came to light after the cardinal, a former Archbishop of Newark who later became head of the Archdiocese of Washington, D.C., was removed from public ministry Wednesday by the Vatican.

In a statement, the church said McCarrick was removed from public ministry following a “credible and substantiated” allegation of sexual abuse involving a teenager from nearly 50 years ago. He accepted the end of his public role in the church. However, the cardinal said he does not remember the alleged abuse, and believes he is innocent.

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DETROIT (MI)
Archdiocese of Detroit

June 22, 2018

Ned McGrath, Director of Public Affairs

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Monsignor Arthur Michael Karey (1918–1993). Ordained in 1943. More than two decades after his death, an allegation of the sexual abuse of a minor was brought forward to the Archdiocesan Review Board, considered, and deemed to be credible.

Parish assignments included serving as associate pastor at St. Francis Xavier, Ecorse (1944); St. Lawrence, Detroit (1949); St. John the Evangelist, Detroit (1952); and, as pastor at St. Joseph, Lake Orion (1964); Christ the King, Detroit (1968); and St. Aloysius, Detroit (1980).

The Archdiocese of Detroit places no deadlines or time limits on reporting the sexual abuse of minors by priests, deacons, and other personnel and/or to speak to the Victim Assistance Coordinator c/o (866) 343-8055 or vac@aod.org.

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DETROIT (MI)
Detroit Free Press

June 22, 2018

By Ann Zaniewski

An allegation that a now-deceased priest sexually abused a minor has been deemed credible, Archdiocese of Detroit officials announced Friday.

Msgr. Arthur Michael Karey died in 1993 at age 74 after serving as a priest in Detroit, Ecorse and Lake Orion over five decades.

The archdiocese received a complaint last year about Karey abusing a girl under age 16. It occurred during the early to middle years of his ministry, said Ned McGrath, director of public affairs for the archdiocese.

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UNITED STATES
Whispers in the Loggia

June 20, 2018

By Rocco Palmo

With the specter of sex-abuse returned to the fore with a vengeance across the Catholic world, the story’s mounting American angle has suddenly yielded a historic, shocking development: early Wednesday, the archdiocese of New York announced that the Holy See had removed Cardinal Theodore McCarrick from all public ministry following a 47 year-old allegation of abusing a minor during his days as a priest in the city.

By far, the 87 year-old retired archbishop of Washington – who marked his 60th anniversary of ordination last month – becomes the highest-ranking US cleric to be suspended due to a report deemed credible and substantiated, and the third member of the global College of Cardinals to face a founded allegation of sexual misconduct. A fourth, Cardinal George Pell – the Australian tapped by Pope Francis as the founding head of the Vatican’s Secretariat for the Economy – will face a double trial in his home country over the coming weeks on two charges of historic sex crimes; since becoming the first cardinal to be criminally charged on abuse counts a year ago next week, Pell has been on a voluntary leave from public ministry and his Roman role pending the outcome of the court process in Melbourne, where the 77 year-old served as archbishop through the 1990s.

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VATICAN
Times of Malta

June 24, 2018

Priest admitted he had developed a ‘morbid’ desire

A Vatican court has sentenced priest Carlo Alberto Capella to five years in jail for possessing child pornography while he was based in Washington, D.C. as a diplomat.

During his two-day trial, Capella admitted he had developed a ‘morbid’ desire after he arrived in the United States in 2016.

The US State Department says it alerted the Vatican, in August 2017, that a member of their embassy in Washington was possibly breaking child pornography laws.

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ALLENTOWN (PA)
Of The Morning Call

June 25, 2018

By Tim Darragh

The Pennsylvania Supreme Court on Monday said it stopped the planned release of a report investigating decades of child sexual abuse in six Catholic dioceses, including the Diocese of Allentown, because “many” people raised complaints that it would unfairly tarnish their reputations.

The unsigned opinion says most, if not all, of the petitioners are people named in the report who are alleging that it “unconstitutionally infringes on their right to reputation and denies them due process.” Each of the six dioceses last week issued statements saying they had not taken legal steps to block the report.

Under the grand jury law, individuals who are not charged with a crime but about whom the report is critical may be allowed to see it and issue a reply to be incorporated in the final product.

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ALLENTOWN (PA)
Of The Morning Call

June 23, 2018

By Bill White

Church child sex abuse secrets will remain hidden for now

Juliann Bortz called me the morning after the state Supreme Court blocked the release of the grand jury report on child sexual abuse in six Pennsylvania dioceses.

And she began to cry.

“This is what I wasn’t going to do,” she said apologetically. “This has been devastating. But we’re not quitting. I will not quit.”

Bortz is one of many alleged victims around the state who testified to the grand jury over the course of a two-year investigation into their abuse and the Catholic Church’s lack of responsiveness to priests’ crimes. They had anticipated the impending release of the grand jury report with anxiety and excitement.

In most cases, their stories never had been told in any kind of public way, in part because the state’s statute of limitations blocked their opportunity to confront their tormentors in court.

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HARRISBURG (PA)
Supreme Court of Pennsylvania

June 25, 2018

[Note: This opinion explains somewhat the terse order issued by the court on 6/20/18, staying the release of Report No. 1 of the 40th Statewide Investigating Grand Jury of Pennsylvania. The opinion references Judge Norman Krumenacker’s 6/5/18 opinion and order.]

Many individuals have lodged challenges to Report No. 1 with the supervising judge, generally asserting a denial of constitutional rights. Although the claims evidently differed in particulars to some degree, they shared certain key commonalities. Most, if not all, of the petitioners alleged that they are named or identified in Report No. 1 in a way that unconstitutionally infringes on their right to reputation and denies them due process based upon the lack of a pre-deprivation hearing and/or an opportunity to be heard by the grand jury. See PA. CONST. art. I, §§1, 11. A number of the petitioners asserted that they were not aware of, or allowed to appear at, the proceedings before the grand jury.

In an opinion and order of June 5, 2018, the supervising judge denied a series of motions seeking pre-deprivation hearings. That decision was released to the public and is self-explanatory. See In re 40th Statewide Investigating Grand Jury, No. 571 M.D. 2016, slip op. at 9 (C.P. Allegheny June 5, 2018). Otherwise, the supervising judge has generally maintained the grand jury seal to ensure that identifying details are not disclosed prematurely.

* * *

Affected individuals have filed multiple petitions for review, along with emergency applications for stay, in this Court. At some dockets, the Office of Attorney General advised that “a temporary stay would be appropriate so that this Court can thoughtfully and dutifully consider the petition for review and the [forthcoming] answer thereto[.]” In later submissions, the Office of Attorney General stated it did not oppose “a brief stay of a matter of days, consistent with the emergency nature of these proceedings.” The Office of Attorney General requested, however, that any such stay be sufficiently limited as to permit release of the report in the week following receipt of the responses.

Some of the petitions for review disclose aspects of Report No. 1. Nevertheless, the report has not yet been presented to this Court in its entirety.

This Court is cognizant that Report No. 1 is a matter of great public interest. The Court has found, however, that a temporary stay is appropriate for the following reasons:

1) the release of Report No. 1 on June 23, 2018 — while affected individuals are permitted to file responses through June 22, 2018 — provides inadequate time for essential judicial review;

2) consistent with the supervising judge’s certification, the Court recognizes that many of the petitions for review pending before it raise constitutional claims and matters of first impression;

3) the proceedings on the petitions for review filed in this Court are incomplete, and adequate development and consideration of the constitutional claims presented is necessary;

4) this Court does not possess sufficient information at this time to address the petitions for review as, for example, Report No. 1 has not yet been presented to the Court in its entirety; and

5) the Office of Attorney General has alternatively confirmed the appropriateness of a stay and otherwise indicated that it has no objection.

The Court intends to revisit the stay order when the proceedings before it have advanced to a stage at which either the petitions for review can be resolved, or an informed and fair determination can be made as to whether a continued stay is warranted. The Office of Attorney General may withdraw its agreement and/or acquiescence to the stay at any time and lodge an objection to a continued stay on developed reasoning addressing the petitioners’ entitlement to orderly judicial review.

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COLUMBUS (OH)
10TV.com (CBS affiliate in Columbus)

June 25, 2018

By Kevin Landers

A Columbus priest was directed to vacate the premises where he worked after an allegation of an assault surfaced.

According to the Catholic Diocese of Columbus, Reverend Pierre Albalaa was accused of the crime when he worked in California. The alleged the crime happened in 2004.

Albalaa worked as an administrator serving Sacred Heart Church in Columbus’ Italian Village. On June 19, the Diocese informed him to leave until the investigation was complete.

According to a statement released by the Diocese, “ The Eparchy of Los Angeles has verified that this is the first complaint of this nature received by them regarding Father Albalaa. Records provided to the Diocese of Columbus before his arrival here also verified that the took part in the Eparchy’s safe environment training and that he had a clean criminal background.”

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MASSACHUSETTS
MassLive.com

June 26, 2018

By Jacqueline Tempera

Allegations against Bryon Hefner, former Senate President Stan Rosenberg’s husband, continue to mount.

And now, Rosenberg faces a civil suit that alleges the longtime Amherst senator knew what his husband was doing and turned a blind eye.

Below is a timeline of events, as we know them, from a civil suit filed by a legislative aide who says Hefner assaulted him, Hefner’s criminal case, interviews, and media reports.

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UNITED STATES
The New York Times

June 23, 2018

By Ross Douthat

The first time I ever heard the truth about Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, the former archbishop of Washington, D.C., finally exposed as a sexual predator years into his retirement, I thought I was listening to a paranoiac rant.

It was the early 2000s, I was attending some earnest panel on religion, and I was accosted by a type who haunts such events — gaunt, intense, with a litany of esoteric grievances. He was a traditionalist Catholic, a figure from the church’s fringes, and he had a lot to say, as I tried to disentangle from him, about corruption in the Catholic clergy. The scandals in Boston had broken, so some of what he said was familiar, but he kept going, into a rant about Cardinal McCarrick: Did you know he makes seminarians sleep with him? Invites them to his beach house, gets in bed with them …

At this I gave him the brushoff that you give the monomaniacal and slipped out.

That was before I realized that if you wanted the truth about corruption in the Catholic Church, you had to listen to the extreme-seeming types, traditionalists and radicals, because they were the only ones sufficiently alienated from the institution to actually dig into its rot. (This lesson has application well beyond Catholicism.)

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PHILIPPINES
Deutsche Presse Agentur

June 25, 2018

By Girlie Linao

Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte has sparked controversy in the predominantly Catholic country for calling God “stupid,” but his spokesman has defended the contentious statement as his personal belief.

Duterte made the statement on Friday evening during a speech in his southern home city of Davao, where he questioned God’s logic in the Biblical creation story of Adam and Eve.

“Adam ate (the fruit of knowledge), then malice was born. Who is this stupid God?” he said.

“That son of a bitch is stupid if that’s the case. You created something perfect and then you think of an event that would tempt and destroy the quality of your work.”

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HARRISBURG (PA)
The Tribune-Democrat

June 26, 2018

An opinion issued Monday afternoon by the Pennsylvania Supreme Court explains some of the reasons why it issued a stay last week on the release of a grand jury report concerning child sexual abuse within several Roman Catholic dioceses in the state.

Last week’s stay – requested by unnamed parties – was granted by the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania’s Western District.

“Although the claims evidently differed in particulars to some degree, they shared certain key commonalities,” the opinion says.

“Most, if not all of the petitioners alleged that they are named or identified … in a way that unconstitutionally infringes on their right to reputation and denies them due process based upon the lack of pre-deprivation hearing and/or an opportunity to be heard by the grand jury.”

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

HARRISBURG (PA)
Philadelphia Inquirer (Philly.com)

June 25, 2018

By Angela Couloumbis & Liz Navratil

After being criticized for halting the release of a long-awaited grand jury report into clergy sex abuse, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court on Monday offered the first explanation of its decision, saying it needs to resolve legal challenges by “many individuals” named in the report who fear their reputations will be harmed.

In a five-page unsigned opinion, the justices offered no clues as to the identity of the petitioners, or the specifics about the circumstances of their objections. Instead, they explained that concerns had been raised about the secretive nature of the grand jury process and the ability of some people to address or respond to the allegations contained in the more than 800-page document, which details decades of abuse in six of the state’s eight Roman Catholic dioceses.

“Most, if not all, of the petitioners alleged that they are named or identified in Report No. 1 in a way that unconstitutionally infringes on their right to reputation and denies them due process based upon the lack of a pre-deprivation hearing and/or an opportunity to be heard by the grand jury,” the court wrote, later adding: “A number of the petitioners asserted that they were not aware of, or allowed to appear at, the proceedings before the grand jury.”

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LEXINGTON (KY)
Hey Kentucky via LEX18

June 25, 2018

By Chris Tomlin

In an open letter released to the public Monday, Tates Creek Presbyterian Church pastor Robert Cunningham detailed allegations of abuse against one of the church’s former clergy — and laid out a plan for the church’s future.

“It has come to our attention that Brad Waller sexually abused boys and men under his care as a pastor of TCPC,” wrote Cunningham in his address to his 1,250-member congregation and the media. ”While all of this misconduct took place over a decade ago, our church leadership is nevertheless committed to handling this horrific news with utmost sincerity, urgency and transparency.”

Cunningham’s statement is in response to the recent deposition of Savannah pastor Brad Waller, who was relieved of senior pastoral duties at Georgia’s Grace Church of the Islands in April after a confession detailing “foot-rubbing” of adult and youth male members of his church.

In a confession from Waller on public record, the former pastor stated: “I, Brad Waller, confess to the sin of abuse of authority in my role as a pastor. I have been rubbing the feet of men and youth in my care. There was a sexual element to this, however, physically it never went past foot-rubbing.” He was deposed from his office at the same meeting.

Waller had served as a minister under the administration of Tates Creek Presbyterian Church from 1995 to 2006, where his responsibilities included directing youth and college ministries. He was also involved in youth ministry at the University of Kentucky.

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PITTSBURGH (PA)
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

June 25, 2018

By Peter Smith

Christa Brown of Tennessee has called on Baptist churches for years to set up an independent panel to evaluate allegations of sexual abuse by clergy— such as the youth minister who sexually assaulted her as a teenager — and to keep predators from striking again at another church.

Pastor Jimmy Hinton — a Somerset Church of Christ minister who confronted his own pastor-father about the sexual abuse that landed the latter in prison — has worked to educate churches on the ways child molesters manipulate fellow believers into trusting them with their children.

Melanie Jula Sakoda has made it her own mission to hold Orthodox Christian churches accountable for sexual abuse by their priests and others.

All of them agree on this: that a future Pennsylvania grand jury could find as much evidence of sexual abuse and cover-up among other religious groups and youth-serving organizations as a current statewide grand jury is expected to find among Roman Catholic dioceses. That grand jury is expected to release a mammoth report if it clears ongoing legal challenges by individuals named in its report.

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HARRISBURG (PA)
The Associated Press

June 25, 2018

By Mark Scolforo

Pennsylvania’s highest court said its decision last week to hold up the release of a major grand jury report on sexual abuse in six Roman Catholic dioceses is the result of challenges filed by “many individuals” cited in the report.

The Supreme Court said in a five-page opinion released Monday that most of those individuals claim they are discussed in the report in a way that would violate reputational rights guaranteed by the state constitution. They also say they have a due process right to be heard by the grand jury.

“A number of the petitioners asserted that they were not aware of, or allowed to appear at, the proceedings before the grand jury,” the court said in the unanimous, unsigned opinion.

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HONG KONG (CHINA)
South China Morning Post

June 22, 2018

By Clifford Lo and Phila Siu

Ngai Lap-yin, who was fired from the Brotherly Love Swatow Baptist Church in Tsz Wan Shan, says he is ready to stand trial in court

A Hong Kong pastor has admitted that he behaved “inappropriately” after a woman accused him on social media of abusing his position as a father figure among church-goers to sexually harass them.

Ngai Lap-yin, who was fired two months ago from the Brotherly Love Swatow Baptist Church in Tsz Wan Shan, confessed on Friday night that he had harmed “sisters” from his church and said he regretted his behaviour.

He told the Christian Times – a widely read publication among the city’s religious community – that he had made mistakes and already reported the “serious matter” to police on Thursday night, accompanied by another pastor.

To express his regret, Ngai said he was willing to stand trial in court. He was first suspended by the church for two weeks in May before eventually being fired in the same month, he added.

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INDIA
Express News Service

June 25, 2018

Father Alphons Aind, a member of the management of the school from where the women were abducted, was arrested on Saturday on charges of not doing enough to prevent the incident and not informing the police even after the accused took the women away.

The Secretary General of Catholic Bishops’ Conference of India (CBCI), Theodore Mascarenhas, said on Sunday that the manner in which multiple charges had been slapped on a Catholic priest arrested in connection with the abduction and gangrape of five women in Jharkhand’s Khunti indicated that there was no intention to let him come out on bail. He also said the Church does not have anything to do with the Patthalgarhi movement.

Father Alphons Aind, a member of the management of the school from where the women were abducted, was arrested on Saturday on charges of not doing enough to prevent the incident and not informing the police even after the accused took the women away. He has been named in both cases lodged in connection with the incident.

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PALM BEACH (FL)
Sun Sentinel

Sun Sentinel Editorial Board

By the time a nasty quarrel reaches the Florida Supreme Court, it’s usually about more than just the people involved. If it doesn’t have a broader implication for the public or for the law, the court is not likely to want to hear it. But if there is a significant public policy question, the court serves the people best when it interprets its jurisdiction liberally and agrees to take the case.

The case of Father John Gallagher vs the Diocese of Palm Beach, Inc., meets the public interest test. The priest is trying to sue the diocese for defamation, alleging that it maligned him after he accused it of trying to cover up the misconduct of another priest who showed child pornography to a teenager. The diocese claims that the lawsuit is really about Gallagher’s pique at not being promoted and that it is exempt from such litigation under what’s known as the ecclesiastical abstention doctrine.

After Palm Beach Circuit Judge Meenu Sasser refused to dismiss the suit, the Diocese won an order from the Fourth District Court of Appeal last month that forbade the trial court from trying the case. It’s that decision that Gallagher’s lawyers are asking the Florida Supreme Court to reverse. They make a good argument.

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VATICAN
The Republican

June 25, 2018

By Anne-Gerard Flynn

In a wide-ranging interview with American journalist Philip Pullella of Reuters News Agency at the Vatican June 17, Pope Francis reiterated that women would not be ordained as priests.

He cited the issue as one of dogma that John Paul II had “closed the door on” and that he was “not going to go back on that.”

However, he said there should be more women in the Roman Curia, the central government of the Church within the Holy See through which the pope governs and whose members Francis had harsh words for in 2014.

“Women have an ability to understand things, they have a different vision of things,” the 81-year-old pontiff told Reuters.

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PHILADELPHIA (PA)
CBS

June 25, 2018

The Archdiocese of Philadelphia has reached a settlement with a family who accused a priest of sexually abusing their son.

The archdiocese reached a settlement with the family of Sean McIlmail, who say that Father Robert Brennan sexually abused him for years. McIlmail, of Willow Grove, died from a drug overdose in October 2013 at the age of 26.

“It is our hope that with the matter resolved, there will be closure and a path forward,” the archdiocese said in a statement.

The statement continues, “We are deeply sorry for any abuse that has taken place at the hands of clergy as well as the pain that survivors and their loved ones have suffered. Each survivor has their own unique story and it would not be our place to discuss it on their behalf.”

Deborah McIlmail, the mother of Sean McIlmail, alleges that the abuse by Brennan lasted four years and began in 1993 when her son was 11 and attending Resurrection of Our Lord Parish school in Rhawnhurst.

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BHOPAL (INDIA)
UCA News

June 25, 2018

By Saji Thomas

Church officials defend Jesuit priest arrested on charges of aiding the abduction and gang rape of five women

Police in India’s Jharkhand state have arrested a Jesuit priest on charges of aiding and abetting the abduction and gang rape of five social activists, but church officials say the charges are fabricated.

Father Alphonse Aind, principal of Jesuit-run Stockmann Memorial Middle School in remote Kochang village in Khunti Diocese, was sent to custody on June 22, a day after the June 19 rape case was reported.

The priest, two Ursuline nuns and two teachers were interrogated on June 21. Police released all but the priest.

The social activists and the two nuns were part of a team holding a street play in the school to create awareness about the trafficking of girls at the invitation of priest, who is also the local parish priest.

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BUFFALO (NY)
The Buffalo News

June 25, 2018

By Jay Tokasz

The Buffalo Diocese priest recently investigated by the Erie County District Attorney’s Office due to a complaint of inappropriate touching has been identified as the Rev. Fabian J. Maryanski, who already was on administrative leave due to a previous allegation of sexual contact with a teenage girl.

Maryanski, 77, was not charged in the recent investigation, nor did he face any criminal charges from the prior accusation, which was not brought to the attention of law enforcement authorities.

A spokesman for the diocese confirmed that Maryanski was the subject of the DA’s investigation.

“District Attorney Flynn notified us today that Fr. Fabian Maryanski was the subject of his investigation. Fr. Maryanski had already been placed on administrative leave as a result of our Diocesan investigation,” spokesman George Richert said.

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NEW ORLEANS (LA)
The New Orleans Advocate

June 23, 2018

By Jim Mustian

In 2002, at the height of the sexual abuse scandal that devastated the Catholic Church, nearly 300 American bishops met in Dallas and created a charter intended to protect children and prevent future cover-ups of predatory clergy.

The letter and spirit of the accord were clear: The church, in its proactive atonement, would impose a “zero-tolerance” policy toward any cleric involved in sexual misconduct. And, in a bid to end decades of enabling and obfuscation — and a lack of communication between parish and parishioner — the prelates pledged to be “open and transparent” in discussing a crisis without precedent in the church’s history.

“This is especially so with regard to informing parish and other church communities directly affected by sexual abuse of a minor,” the Charter for the Protection of Children and Young People states in its seventh article.

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UNITED KINGDOM
OneNewsNow.com

June 25, 2018

By Michael F. Haverluck

A recent report has exposed widespread child sex abuse across the United Kingdom at the hands of teachers, clergy, doctors and social workers.

A new “Truth Project” report – based on the largest archive of evidence provided by abuse victims ever produced in the U.K. – reveals that pedophile attacks by some of the most trusted professions is pervasive across all U.K. communities and social classes.

“[The report] presents detailed accounts from 50 of the 1,400 people who have so far given evidence to the Truth Project – part of the huge Independent Inquiry on Child Sexual Abuse (IICSA) set up by Theresa May when she was Home Secretary,” the Daily Mail announced. “Researchers believe [that child sex abuse] has been perpetrated in schools and other institutions much more widely than previously thought.”

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PENNSYLVANIA
GetReligion

June 25, 2018

By Julia Duin

In newspapers across Pennsylvania, many Sunday editorial pages were filled with angry protests against the Catholic Church and the Pennsylvania Supreme Court. The reason?

Everyone had been waiting for a huge grand jury report on clergy sexual abuse in six dioceses (Greensburg, Pittsburgh, Erie, Harrisburg, Allentown and Scranton) across the state.

In this case, it’s crucial to note that even the leaders of the various Catholic dioceses – not to mention the victims – wanted this 800-page report released. But then last Wednesday, the state supreme court ordered it sealed.

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CHICAGO (IL)
The Associated Press

June 22, 2018

By Michael Tarm

Chicago Public Schools correspondence provided to The Associated Press shows that the nation’s third largest school district gave a former Roman Catholic priest access to its schools for months despite knowing he was forced to leave the priesthood for sexually abusing a boy of 6 when he was around 15.

Only after the victim and the AP asked why the district let former cleric Bruce Wellems enter schools as part of alternative-schooling programs he oversees, did the nation’s third-largest school district recently ban him.

Criticism that the district hasn’t done enough to protect 370,000 students at nearly 650 schools from sexual misconduct intensified after a June 8 article in the Chicago Tribune, which reported CPS didn’t adequately vet its own employees and cited scores of alleged cases of sexual abuse by staffers. Illinois lawmakers held hearings on the issue this week.

Wellems, 61, isn’t on the district’s staff. But he has worked with CPS as executive director of the a nonprofit Peace and Education Coalition, which runs CPS-sanctioned alternative schools at CPS properties for at-risk kids, including the Peace & Education Coalition High School in Chicago’s Back of the Yards neighborhood. The AP reported last year that Wellems has remained executive director even after leaving the priesthood over the abuse. CPS spokeswoman Emily Bolton said in a statement to the AP Thursday that, in addition to the new ban on Wellems, the district was now doing a full review “to determine if an ongoing relationship” with the coalition “remains appropriate.”

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

NASHVILLE (TN)
Tennessean

June 24, 2018

By R. A. Mathews

Men in power have long been using the Apostle Paul’s words to silence women. Not anymore.

Paige Patterson isn’t alone; there are many like him. This disgraced Southern Baptist seminary president’s actions promise to unleash a wave of voices.

A tidal wave — #MeToo4Christians.

Allegedly, in a 2000 audio recording, Patterson tells a battered woman to “be submissive in every way” to her violent husband. Patterson uses words from the Apostle Paul, forgetting a few — I’ll get to that.

There are also the rape incidents he allegedly mishandled terribly. Not to mention repeatedly demeaning women.

I attended a Southern Baptist seminary and have been a Baptist theologian for decades. Do I have stories? I wouldn’t know where to begin.

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

LOS ANGELES (CA)
Los Angeles Times

June 24, 2018

By Maura Dolan

At least 200 former University of Southern California students have joined lawsuits against the university, alleging it failed to heed warnings for nearly 30 years that a campus gynecologist was sexually abusing patients.

Lawyers representing the alleged victims expect the number of women suing to reach at least several hundred and possibly thousands. If successful, the suits could cost the university hundreds of millions of dollars.

“I have never seen anything like the volume of calls we are getting,” said John Manly, a lawyer who has represented sex abuse victims in mass litigation cases.

In the first three weeks following the Los Angeles Times’ revelations, Manly said he received calls from 120 former patients of Dr. George Tyndall, a student health clinic gynecologist who was employed by USC and is now under investigation by the Los Angeles Police Department over allegations of sex abuse.

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

LOS ANGELES (CA)
FOX News

June 25, 2018

The University of Southern California is reportedly facing a growing number of lawsuits against the school over allegations that a campus gynecologist sexually abused patients for nearly 30 years.

The Los Angeles Times reported on Sunday that at least 200 former students have joined suits against the school. The paper reported that that number could increase to thousands and potentially cost the school hundreds of millions of dollars.

“The alarming thing is we have women from the very beginning of his employment in 1989 to the very end,” John Manly, a lawyer who has defended sex abuse victims, told the paper. “It indicates he engaged in this behavior throughout his tenure at USC.”

The Times reported earlier this month that complaints about Dr. George Tyndall weren’t properly address by USC for years and university officials never reported him to the medical board, even after he was quietly forced into retirement.

Tyndall, 71, denied wrongdoing in interviews with the Times and hasn’t responded to phone calls and emails requesting comment from The Associated Press.

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

MADISON (WI)
The Associated Press

June 25, 2018

A state senator is taking a judge to task for sentencing a former University of Wisconsin-Madison student accused of sexual assault to three years in prison.

Alec Cook, 22, of Edina, Minnesota, pleaded guilty to sexually assaulting three female students as well as choking or stalking two others. He was initially charged with more than 20 crimes against nearly a dozen women.

Cook faced up to 40 years in prison; prosecutors wanted 19 years. Dane County Circuit Judge Stephen Ehlke gave him three years on Thursday.

Sen. Lena Taylor, a Milwaukee Democrat, said in a statement Friday that Ehlke for some reason thought Cook was special and let him off the hook. She questioned the message Ehlke sent to Cook’s victims.

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

WALTHAM (MA)
BishopAccountability.org

June 25, 2018

We are very sorry to report that our wonderful friend and colleague Kathy Shaw died Sunday evening at St. Vincent’s Hospital in Worcester MA after a long illness.

Kathy had been a distinguished and award-winning religion reporter at the Worcester Telegram & Gazette, as well as a mental health crisis counselor and a union activist. Beginning in 1992 and continuing through 2005, Kathy did groundbreaking reporting on the clergy abuse crisis in the Diocese of Worcester and beyond. In 2002, she started working on Abuse Tracker, the news blog about the clergy abuse crisis created in March 2002 by Bill Mitchell and the Poynter Institute. The byline “Posted by Kathy Shaw” first appeared on June 12, 2002, when the U.S. bishops were meeting in Dallas.

In the sixteen years since, Kathy posted tens of thousands of articles in Abuse Tracker, transforming the news blog into an indispensable resource and record, used by everyone who works on the clergy abuse crisis or cares about it. Thanks to Kathy and Abuse Tracker, every local development in the abuse crisis could be followed by people everywhere. Abuse Tracker was hosted by Poynter for a year, then by the National Catholic Reporter until 2006, and then by BishopAccountability.org, where it will continue.

Kathy Shaw was a steadfast friend, a tireless and generous colleague, an exuberant presence on social media, and a loving advocate for survivors everywhere. When arrangements for her memorial service are set, we will announce them here, along with a longer appreciation of her life and legacy.

Terence McKiernan
Anne Barrett Doyle

• Please view a brief video about Kathy.

• See also the bio that Kathy wrote when she and Abuse Tracker joined BishopAccountability.org.

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

KERALA (INDIA)
The News Minute

June 25, 2018

By Megha Varier

Kerala man has alleged that a group of priests blackmailed and sexually abused wife using her confessions.

The Malankara Orthodox Church in Kerala has suspended five priests over allegations that they sexually abused a woman from Thiruvalla.

According to a complaint submitted to the Church by the survivor’s husband, his wife was sexually preyed upon by the five priests. This after they allegedly blackmailed her based on her secret confessions.

Confirming the complaint to TNM, Church spokesperson PC Elias said that the five priests have been suspended pending inquiry in the wake of allegations against them.

“We received a complaint from the woman’s husband and the priests who have been accused have been suspended pending inquiry. We do not know if these allegations are true. Only after the inquiry can we say if it is genuine or fake. Future course of action will be decided based on the internal inquiry report,” he said, refusing to divulge the identities of the five accused priests.

The priests have been indefinitely suspended, until the inquiry is completed. If the allegations are found to be false, they will be reinstated, the spokesperson added.

According to reports, three of the priests belong to Niranam Diocese in Thiruvalla, and one each from Thumbamon in Pandalam and Delhi. The church has 30 dioceses across the country.

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

MANILA (PHILIPPINES)
Philstar.com

June 25, 2018

Malacañang Monday brought up the child sexual abuse involving Roman Catholic priests as President Rodrigo Duterte is facing backlash over his controversial remarks about God.

Duterte drew flak after questioning the creation story in the Christian Bible and saying that God must have been stupid for allowing temptation to destroy his work in a speech in Davao City last week.

The president’s statement did not sit well with some Christians who accuse Duterte of blasphemy and disrespecting religious beliefs.

Critics have also scored Duterte for using his public speeches to rant about religion and to attack the Catholic Church, the religious group of more than 80 percent of Filipinos.

Presidential spokesman Harry Roque said Duterte’s comments about God stemmed from his bad experiences in the hands of a priest when the president was young. Duterte previously claimed to have been molested by an American Jesuit priest when he was still a student of Ateneo de Davao.

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

NORTHERN IRELAND
Belfast Telegraph

June 25 2018

A convicted paedophile priest has pleaded guilty to sexually abusing a boy in Northern Ireland more than 20 years ago.

His appearance at Downpatrick Crown Court is the sixth time 68-year-old Daniel John Curran has faced sex abuse charges.

Standing in the dock Curran, from Bryansford Avenue in Newcastle, confirmed his personal details while defence counsel Noel Dillon confirmed he had been “fully advised about the issue of credit” for pleading guilty at an early stage.

The court clerk having put the charge to him, that of indecent assault on a date unknown between 16 August 1989 and 18 August 1991, Curran said simply that he was “guilty.”

In applying for bail pending sentence, Mr Dillon revealed that sentences for Curran’s previous convictions resulted in jail sentences totalling 16 years “either immediate or suspended”.

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

DETROIT (MI)
The Associated Press

June 25, 2018

The Roman Catholic Church in southeastern Michigan is urging people to step forward if they believe they were sexually abused by a priest who died in 1993.

The archdiocese says it investigated a complaint against Monsignor Arthur Karey and found it credible. Spokesman Ned McGrath says the allegation involved a girl decades ago but was received just last year.

Karey died in 1993 at age 74. He was a priest for 50 years in Detroit, Ecorse and Lake Orion. His service included work as a Detroit police chaplain.

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

LOS ANGELES (CA)
The Columbus Dispatch

June 24, 2018

By Jim Woods

A Maronite Catholic priest serving as administrator for the Sacred Heart Church in Italian Village was removed from the position by the Diocese of Columbus because of an investigation of an abuse allegation in California.

Parishioners at Sacred Heart were told at the 4 p.m. Saturday Mass that Father Pierre Albalaa had been ordered to leave the position he had started in March.

The diocese was informed last Monday by the Maronite Eparchy of Our Lady of Lebanon of Los Angeles that Albalaa was being investigated for a credible allegation of abuse of a minor in 2004 in California. Eparchy is the term for diocese used by Eastern rite Orthodox and Catholic churches.

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

MESA (AZ)
Salt Lake City Tribune

June 24, 2018

By Jessica Miller

Two young women told investigators in Mesa, Ariz., that one of the department’s former officers had groped and sexually assaulted them 11 years earlier at sleepovers.

The handwritten report from 1995 doesn’t explain the steps detectives took next, but within months, the case went dormant. An investigator wrote that there was scant evidence and no likelihood that Officer Gerald Salcido would ever be convicted.

Years went by.

Salcido moved to Utah, where he worked as a Provo officer for 12 years and then another decade as a deputy with the Utah County Sheriff’s Office.

While he was working for Provo, he allegedly confessed to his crimes — not to police, but to his wife and his Mormon bishop. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints excommunicated Salcido in 2006, but it appears church officials never told investigators about the confession.

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

LOS ANGELES
Los Angeles Times

June 24, 2018

By Maura Dolan

At least 200 former USC students have joined lawsuits against the university, alleging it failed to heed warnings for nearly 30 years that a campus gynecologist was sexually abusing patients.

Lawyers representing the alleged victims expect the number of women suing to reach at least several hundred and possibly thousands. If successful, the suits could cost the university hundreds of millions of dollars.

“I have never seen anything like the volume of calls we are getting,” said John Manly, a lawyer who has represented sex abuse victims in mass litigation cases.

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

SCOTLAND
The Sunday Post

June 24, 2018

By Gordon Blackstock

Children’s home abuse survivors are calling for a leader of the Catholic Church in Scotland to say sorry when he appears at a public inquiry next week.

Archbishop Emeritus Mario Conti will appear before the Scottish Child Abuse Inquiry on Tuesday.

The inquiry, headed by Lady Smith, is investigating allegations of abuse at Nazareth House homes across Scotland.

Archbishop Conti’s appearance comes after inquiry witnesses accused him of dismissing their claims against the Sisters of Nazareth as “fantasy”.

The inquiry has heard evidence from former residents at the Nazareth House home.

In April, one witness claimed she was sexually abused by a priest after she went to confession.

But in 1998, Archbishop Conti dismissed the allegations against the nuns as “improbable” and said some alleged victims were making “fantastical claims” and chasing a “pot of gold”.

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

NEW ZEALAND
New Zealand Herald-Newstalk ZB podcast series

June 25, 2018

By Georgina Campbell

Sharing stories of sexual abuse amidst #MeToo

[This article is based on extracts from the Speaking Secrets podcast, a co-production by NZ Herald and Newstalk ZB. You can listen to the podcast below or subscribe to Speaking Secrets on iHeartRadio and iTunes.]

Police, courts and sexual abuse help agencies are starting to experience a surge in reported cases as the #MeToo movement encourages survivors to come forward.

The trend has emerged in a series of interviews conducted for a New Zealand Herald-Newstalk ZB podcast series, Speaking Secrets, which explores the global campaign against sexual abuse and harassment in New Zealand.

The series, which starts today, has discovered cautious optimism about the newfound ability of victims to speak out, mixed with concern that agencies and institutions will be swamped by the growing number of cases.

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

WASHINGTON D.C.
WTOP-TV

June 24, 2018

By Patrick Roth

The Archdiocese of Washington said it found no allegations made against the former archbishop of Washington Cardinal Theodore McCarrick during his time in D.C.

McCarrick, who served as D.C.’s archbishop from 2001 to 2006, was removed from ministry after an allegation he sexually abused a teen 50 years ago when he was serving as a priest in the Archdiocese of New York.

In a letter from the Archdiocese that the Cardinal Donald Wuerl said he requested a review of all records in the Archdiocese of Washington while the Archdiocese of New York investigated the claim against McCarrick.

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

UNITED STATES
GetReligion (Blog)

June 24, 2018

By Terry Mattingly

If you have not had a chance to do so, check out the waves of reader comments that we have received in response to GetReligionista Julia Duin’s epic post at the end of last week entitled “The scandal of Cardinal Theodore McCarrick and why no major media outed him.”

As you can see from the headline, a major theme in this post is directly linked to life on the religion-news beat. On a technical level, in terms of journalism craft and ethics, why was it so hard for veteran reporters – like Julia – to nail down the final details of hard-news reports about McCarrick and the years and years of rumors and allegations about his sexual abuse of seminarians (among others)?

Part of it, of course, was getting people to go on the record. In some cases, people even had documentation to help support their horror stories. But, but, but … They just could not go on the record.

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

PENNSYLVANIA
The Tribune-Review

June 24, 2018

By Debra Erdley

The Pennsylvania Supreme Court’s decision to block the release of a grand jury investigative report into clergy sexual abuse hit Mark Rozzi “like a punch in the gut.”

“At first, (the decision) was very emotional and frustrating,” Rozzi said. “But then my thoughts turned to all the other victims and their families who have been hanging on by a thread. We have heard from dozens of them.”

Rozzi, a state representative from Berks County, previously testified before a grand jury about his abuse at the hands of a priest 30 years ago.

“The pain never goes away,” he told the Tribune-Review.

Victims of clergy sexual abuse and their attorneys were stunned last week at news that the report would not be made public. The grand jury investigation examined decades of allegations of abuse and cover-ups in six Catholic dioceses across the state, including Pittsburgh and Greensburg.

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

SANTA FE (NM)
Las Vegas Optic

June 24, 2018

By Jason Brooks

The Catholic priest abuse set of civil suits that has involved Our Lady of Sorrows Church and many other Archdiocese of Santa Fe locations recently grew by one more plaintiff, though the abuse is alleged at a Bernalillo County site.

“John Doe 79” filed suit May 21 in the Second District Court in Bernalillo County against both the Archdiocese of Santa Fe and the Parish Catholic Church of Saint Therese of the Infant Jesus.

The suit alleges abuse against a male victim, who was born in 1956 and currently lives in Albuquerque, was committed by the late Father Ron Roth when the male victim was age 14

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

NEW ORLEANS (LA)
New Orleans Advocate

June 23, 2018

By Jim Mustian

In 2002, at the height of the sexual abuse scandal that devastated the Catholic Church, nearly 300 American bishops met in Dallas and created a charter intended to protect children and prevent future cover-ups of predatory clergy.

The letter and spirit of the accord were clear: The church, in its proactive atonement, would impose a “zero-tolerance” policy toward any cleric involved in sexual misconduct. And, in a bid to end decades of enabling and obfuscation — and a lack of communication between parish and parishioner — the prelates pledged to be “open and transparent” in discussing a crisis without precedent in the church’s history.

“This is especially so with regard to informing parish and other church communities directly affected by sexual abuse of a minor,” the Charter for the Protection of Children and Young People states in its seventh article.

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

AUSTRALIA
AAP (Australian Associated Press) via the Otago Daily Times

June 24, 2018

Some child sexual abuse survivors may end up with nothing or “insulting” payments under the $A3.8 billion national redress scheme, advocates warn.

People sexually abused as children in Australian institutions can start applying for redress under the scheme on July 1.

Advocates fear many survivors will be disappointed with their redress offers, given few are expected to receive the $150,000 maximum and previous compensation received from governments or institutions will be taken into account.

Tuart Place director Dr Philippa White said survivors in states such as Western Australia, Queensland and Tasmania that ran their own redress schemes will have those payments deducted from their offers and upscaled for inflation.

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

AUSTRALIA
9New.com.au

June 24, 2018

NATIONAL REDRESS SCHEME FOR CHILD SEXUAL ABUSE SURVIVORS SET TO BEGIN:

WHAT IS THE SCHEME?

It provides redress for about 60,000 people who were sexually abused as children while in the care of institutions.

About 93 per cent of eligible survivors are currently covered.

It begins on July 1.

WHAT DOES IT INVOLVE?

A monetary payment, access to counselling and a direct personal response, such as an apology, from the responsible institution (if the survivor wants it).

HOW LONG DOES IT RUN?

For 10 years – until June 30, 2028.

Applications can be lodged until June 30, 2027.

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

VATICAN CITY
The Hill

June 23, 2018

By Emily Birnbaum

The Vatican court on Saturday sentenced a former Holy See diplomat to five years in prison for possessing and distributing child pornography in the first trial of its kind, according to the Associated Press.

Monsignor Carlo Capella admitted he downloaded child pornography when he was serving as a Vatican diplomat in the Holy See’s Washington Embassy last year. The court found 40 to 55 pornographic photos, films and Japanese animation on his cellphone, an iCloud and Tumblr account, the AP reported.

The State Department alerted the Vatican to the existence of the child pornography, leading to Capella’s recall last year, according to The Washington Post.

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

DETROIT (MI)
WDIV-TV, Ch. 4

June 23, 2018

Archdiocese investigated complaint against Monsignor Arthur Karey

The Roman Catholic Church in southeastern Michigan is urging people to step forward if they believe they were sexually abused by a priest who died in 1993.

The archdiocese says it investigated a complaint against Monsignor Arthur Karey and found it credible. Spokesman Ned McGrath says the allegation involved a girl decades ago but was received just last year.

Karey died in 1993 at age 74. He was a priest for 50 years in Detroit, Ecorse and Lake Orion. His service included work as a Detroit police chaplain.

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

VATICAN CITY
Deutsche Welle via USA Today

June 23, 2018

A Vatican court sentenced Carlo Alberto Capella to five years in prison for the possession and distribution of child pornography on Saturday.

The 51-year-old priest admitted to viewing images of under-aged teenagers engaging in sexual acts during a period of “fragility” and internal crisis while serving as a diplomat for the Holy See in the United States and in Canada.

He apologized to his family and the Vatican. He described the episode as little more than a “bump in the road” on his priestly vocation and appealed for leniency, explaining that he loved the priesthood and wanted to continue.

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

VATICAN CITY
Associated Press

June 23, 2018

By Nicole Winfield

The Vatican tribunal on Saturday convicted a former Holy See diplomat and sentenced him to five years in prison for possessing and distributing child pornography in the first such trial of its kind inside the Vatican.

Monsignor Carlo Capella admitted to viewing the images during what he called a period of “fragility” and interior crisis sparked by a job transfer to the Vatican embassy in Washington. He apologized to his family and the Holy See, and appealed for leniency by saying the episode was just a “bump in the road” of a priestly vocation he loved and wanted to continue.

Tribunal President Giuseppe Dalla Torre read out the verdict after a two-day trial and sentenced Capella to five years and a fine of 5,000 euros ($5,830.) Capella will serve the sentence in the Vatican barracks, where he has been held since his arrest earlier this year.

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

PENNSYLVANIA
GoErie.com

June 23, 2018

By Ed Palattella

Unsettled questions of law appear to be behind state Supreme Court order to hold off on making findings public.

The statewide grand jury report on child sexual abuse in six Roman Catholic dioceses, including the Catholic Diocese of Erie, is unprecedented due to its scope and the legal issues surrounding its release.

The extraordinary nature of the legal issues appears to have influenced the Pennsylvania Supreme Court’s decision to delay releasing the report until the court rules on requests from several individuals who are named in the 884-page document, which remains under seal.

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

UNITED STATES
christabrown.me

By Christa Brown

[Note: “Yoga as a Practice of Restorative Justice” appeared as a chapter in Restorative Justice in Practice, edited by Sheila M. Murphy and Michael P. Seng, Vandeplas Publishing, 2015. ]

“A life of wholeness does not depend on what we experience. Wholeness depends on how we experience our lives.” – Desmond Tutu

We began the class lying on our backs, one hand on the belly and one on the chest. Our teacher, Laura, gently directed our focus inward and talked us toward becoming aware of our breath and of its movement in our bodies. She asked us to follow the cycle of our breath as our bellies rose with each inhale, as our breath filled our lungs’ upper lobes, and as our chests and bellies then fell in sequence with each exhale.

As we continued in this pattern, and as Laura continued to draw our focus inward, she suggested that we think about what our bodies needed from us today. “Where might there be some place that needs extra attention?” she asked. “Keep feeling your breath and just try to listen to your body as you breathe.”

“What is your body saying to you today?”

That was when I laughed out loud. My body was chewing me out big time. And though I quickly squelched my startled guffaw — it seemed so un-yoga­ like — I continued to imagine the pissed-off voice of my body as though it were in some profanity-laden cartoon bubble: “&#%!@?!”

Who knew that a body could be so angry? Or that it could somehow make its angry voice so loud in my mind?

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

NEW ORLEANS (LA)
The New Orleans Advocate

June 22, 2018

Days after The Advocate reported that the Archdiocese of New Orleans had agreed to settle a sex-abuse case involving a former church deacon, Archbishop Gregory Aymond issued a letter to members of the deacon’s former parish and to Catholics generally to alert them of the accusations.

The letter was addressed primarily to parishioners at Our Lady of the Rosary, where the alleged abuse by Deacon George Brignac began in 1979. It was posted on Aymond’s Facebook page Friday afternoon.

The letter says that Brignac was removed from the ministry in 1988, and that prior to that, he had worked as a teacher at St. Francis Cabrini School, St. John Vianney Prep, and St. Matthew the Apostle before his ordination as a deacon.

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

CHILE
La Tercera

June 23, 2018

[Google Translation: Chile becomes a benchmark in the fight against abuse and elevates pressure on the Pope]

By Juan Paulo Iglesias

Activistas lanzaron campaña para exigir al Papa a actuar en el resto del mundo con la misma decisión que en Chile. “La iglesia chilena no es única”, asegura a La Tercera Anne Barret Doyle, fundadora de Bishop Accountability.

“Mientras todos están mirando Chile, el arzobispo Wilson de Australia fue condenado en una corte criminal por cubrir abusos (será sentenciado el 3 de julio). Se retiró de su diócesis por el momento, pero no ha renunciado y no ha sido removido por el Papa. ¿Por qué?”. El tuit de Marie Collins, la activista contra los abusos sexuales en el clero que renunció a la Comisión Pontifica para la Protección de Menores, reiteró el jueves pasado un llamado que se ha repetido en redes sociales y en el que han insistido diversas organización contra los abusos: que las señales dadas por el Papa Francisco en el caso chileno se extiendan a otras partes del mundo. Por ello, varios promotores de la lucha contra la pedofilia en la iglesia están aprovechando lo que la agencia The Associated Press califica como “el momentum” de la crisis de abusos chilena para impulsar una respuesta global del Vaticano.

[Google Translation: Activists launched a campaign to demand the Pope to act in the rest of the world with the same decision as in Chile. “The Chilean church is not unique,” assures Anne Barret Doyle, founder of Bishop Accountability.

“While everyone is looking at Chile, Archbishop Wilson of Australia was convicted in a criminal court for covering abuses (he will be sentenced on July 3). He retired from his diocese for the time being, but has not resigned and has not been removed by the Pope. Why?”. The tweet of Marie Collins, the activist against sexual abuse in the clergy who resigned from the Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors, reiterated last Thursday a call that has been repeated in social networks and in which various organizations have insisted against the abuses: that the signals given by Pope Francisco in the Chilean case spread to other parts of the world. For this reason, several promoters of the fight against pedophilia in the church are taking advantage of what The Associated Press agency describes as “the momentum” of the crisis of Chilean abuses to promote a global response from the Vatican.]

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

UNITED STATES
The Open Tabernacle (blog)

June 23, 2018

By Betty Clermont

* On June 19, Archbishop Charles Scicluna, described as Pope Francis’ “top expert” on sex abuse, said, in effect, that his report on clerical sex abuse in Chile would remain secret. His plan for “healing” and “reconciliation” in Chile was rejected by victims of ecclesial sex abuse.

* On May 20, Pope Francis announced he was elevating Archbishop Luis Ladaria Ferrer to cardinal. The pope had already promoted Ladaria as head of the Vatican department that handles sex abuse claims. Ladaria had previously served as second in command. In April, a French court set a date for Ladaria’s trial. He is accused of covering up a child sex abuse scandal. Far worse, after Ladaria covered up for Fr. Gianni Trotta, the priest sexually assaulted an 11-year-old and there are nine other alleged cases of sex abuse against boys that occurred in 2014.

* On May 5, Guam Archbishop Anthony Apuron was given a place of honor at an event attended by Pope Francis. Apuron is accused of rape and sexual assault of minors. In February, Pope Francis had greeted Apuron “with affection” and “privately giving him a few words of encouragement.” Pope Francis removed Apuron in 2016, meaning he found the charges to be credible, but the archbishop has always remained a free man, retaining his title, income and honors.

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CHICAGO (IL)
Associated Press via Channel 5 News, Chicago

June 22, 2018

By Michael Tarm

Chicago Public Schools correspondence provided to The Associated Press shows that the nation’s third-largest school district gave a former Roman Catholic priest access to its schools for months despite knowing he was forced to leave the priesthood for sexually abusing a boy of 6 when he was around 15.

Only after the victim and the AP asked why the district let former cleric Bruce Wellems enter schools as part of alternative-schooling programs he oversees, did the nation’s third-largest school district recently ban him.

Criticism that the district hasn’t done enough to protect 370,000 students at nearly 650 schools from sexual misconduct intensified after a June 8 article in the Chicago Tribune, which reported CPS didn’t adequately vet its own employees and cited scores of alleged cases of sexual abuse by staffers. Illinois lawmakers held hearings on the issue this week.

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NEWCASTLE (AUSTRALIA)
Newcastle Herald

June 23, 2018

By Joanne McCarthy

Glen Walsh was the whistleblower Catholic priest who died alone in a Newcastle church building in November, only weeks before he was due to give damning evidence at the trial of Archbishop Philip Wilson.

He took his own life, aged 55 – a priest who paid a devastating price for reporting Hunter paedophile priest Jim Fletcher to police in 2004, while the archbishop kept silent about what he knew.

“The church turned its back on Glen,” said his brother, John, only weeks after Wilson was convicted in Newcastle for concealing Fletcher’s crimes, in a case that made headlines around the world.

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VATICAN CITY
Reuters via The Guardian

June 23, 2018

Monsignor Carlo Alberto Capella tells court he developed ‘morbid’ desire

A Catholic priest who worked as a diplomat at the Vatican’s embassy in Washington has admitted at the start of his trial that he had possessed images of child sexual abuse while based in the US.

Monsignor Carlo Alberto Capella, who was arrested in the Vatican in April after he had been recalled, told the court in the Vatican that he had developed a “morbid” desire after he arrived in the US to take up the diplomatic post in 2016. “It was never part of my priestly life before,” he told the court, adding that he was unhappy at the embassy in Washington.

In August 2017, the US state department notified the Holy See of a possible violation of laws relating to images of sexual abuse of children by a member of the diplomatic corps of the Holy See accredited to Washington.

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NEW SOUTH WALES (AUSTRALIA)
ABC (Australian Broadcasting Corporation) Radio

June 23, 2018

By Emily Bourke on AM

[AUDIO]

The New South Wales government has created new laws around sentencing and the criminal justice process in cases of child sexual abuse.

There will be tougher penalties for those who fail to report or protect against child abuse, and possible life sentences for abusers.

And legal loopholes that have made it hard for survivors to sue institutions will be closed off.

But the government is not moving on the vexed issue of breaking the Catholic seal of the confessional, saying it requires a national response.

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HARRISBURG (PA)
Catholic News Agency/EWTN

June 22, 2018

By Mary Rezac

The release of a Grand Jury report detailing cases of clerical sex abuse in six of the eight Catholic dioceses in Pennsylvania has been blocked by the state’s Supreme Court for unspecified reasons.

The court released the unsigned order June 20, but did not state which individuals or groups had applied for the stay or the reason behind the application. It also does not state for how long the stay applies or when the report could be published in the future.

“And now, this 20th day of June, 2018, the Applications for Stay are granted. The Honorable Norman A. Krumenacker, III, and the Office of the Attorney General are enjoined from releasing Report No. 1 of the 40th Statewide Investigating Grand Jury pending further order of this Court,” the order, issued by the state’s Supreme Court, reads. Krumenacker is a Cambria County judge who has overseen the Grand Jury proceedings.

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NEW ORLEANS (LA)
WDSU-TV

June 22, 2018

By Travers Mackel

[VIDEO]

A victim of alleged sexual abuse by a member of the clergy is speaking out to WDSU Investigates.

His comments come after the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of New Orleans gave him a high six-figure settlement. The man’s lawyer said there could be more victims.

The victim and his lawyer now want the Orleans Parish District Attorney’s Office to look into a criminal prosecution.

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NEW DELHI (INDIA)
UCANews.com via La Croix International

June 23, 2018

Guide produced in 2015 with Vatican approval was circulated only among bishops and major superiors of religious congregations

The Indian Church’s effort to deal with clergy sexual abuse cases continues to be entangled in confusion and obscurity as guidelines bishops produced three years ago remain out of reach to Catholics.

Archbishop Leo Cornelio of Bhopal confirmed that the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of India had produced a guide to dealing with allegations of clergy abusing children.

“It is not meant for public consumption. It is for bishops to address the exceptional aberration of sexual abuse of children by a member of the clergy,” said the archbishop.

The bishops’ conference published a guide on sexual harassment in the workplace in September 2017 after it was drawn up two years earlier. It reiterated the church’s policy to maintain “zero tolerance” of sexual abuse of children and women.

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EAST LANSING (MI)
The Associated Press

June 22, 2018

The Latest from a meeting of Michigan State University’s governing board on how it will handle a $500 million settlement with victims of sports doctor Larry Nassar (all times local):

10:45 a.m.

Michigan State University will sell bonds to pay for a $500 million settlement with hundreds of women and girls who said they were sexually assaulted by former sports doctor Larry Nassar.

Trustees approved the plan Friday after rejecting calls to fire interim President John Engler for unflattering emails that disparaged victims and their lawyers. Engler apologized Thursday for suggesting Rachael Denhollander was getting a kickback from her attorney for her steady criticism of the school.

Michigan State is freezing salaries for top administrative and leadership roles and raising faculty salaries by 1.5 percent instead of the typical 2.5 percent. Engler also is counting on payments from insurance companies.

Tuition will be higher for most students in fall, but Engler says the new revenue won’t help cover the Nassar settlement.

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NEW DELHI (INDIA)
CNN

June 22, 2018

By Manveena Suri

Five female anti-trafficking activists were gang-raped in the eastern Indian state of Jharkhand, police said Friday, the same region where two teens were raped and then set on fire last month.

The latest incident took place on Tuesday afternoon in Kochang village in Khunti district, a tribal area in the state, according to Amol Homkar, deputy inspector general of police in Jharkhand’s capital, Ranchi.
The five women and three men were performing a street play on the issue of human trafficking when a group of armed men on bikes disrupted the performance.

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NEW DELHI (INDIA)
CBS NEWS

June 22, 2018

By Arshad R. Zargar

Five female activists working for an organization backed by a Christian missionary group were gang-raped at gunpoint in the eastern Indian state of Jharkhand this week, police said on Friday. The women were accompanied by four men and two nuns as they performed a street play to raise awareness of human trafficking in the Khunti district on Tuesday when at least six armed men attacked them.

They attackers beat the male members of the team and forced the five women into a car, took them to a nearby forest and raped them for three hours before releasing them, police officials have told CBS News.

“We have taken the statement of the victims,” Homkar Amol Venukant, Deputy Inspector General of Police in Ranchi, the state capital of Jarkhand, told CBS News on Friday. The victims told officers that the attackers “filmed the act on their mobile phones,” and threatened to publish the videos on the internet if the crime was reported.

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MADISON (WI)
The Associated Press

June 21, 2018

A judge on Thursday sentenced a former University of Wisconsin-Madison student to three years in prison for sexually assaulting three female students and choking or stalking two others.

Dane County Circuit Judge Stephen Ehlke also sentenced Alec Cook, 22, of Minnesota to eight years of extended supervision once he’s released from prison. Cook pleaded guilty to the charges in February.

Prosecutors were seeking 19 years behind bars, while defense attorneys sought probation with the possibility of jail time.

Ehlke said he had to give Cook credit for having no criminal record, no bail violations and sparing the victims a trial. The judge said he hoped that the end of criminal proceedings against Cook would “give closure” to the victims, the Wisconsin State Journal reported .

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ERIE (PA)
Erie News Now

June 21, 2018

Victims react to court ruling delaying public release of grand jury report on clergy sex abuse.

Abuse victims today reacting to yesterday’s court ruling delaying the release of that grand jury report into clergy sex abuse.

The panel investigated Erie and five other Catholic Dioceses around the state.

Pennsylvania Attorney General Josh Shapiro launched the investigating in 2016 and had planned to make the results public next week.

The court ruling blocked that release.

Victims today told us they are confident Shapiro will keep fighting to make the massive report public.

And they think ultimately the public will learn about the abuse they suffered.

But in the meantime, the decision has been difficult to accept.

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EL PASO (TX)
Oxygen

June 22, 2018

By Jon Silman

Former Priest Miguel Luna allegedly molested an 8-year-old girl during confession, telling her not to say anything because what happens in confession, stays there.

A former Texas priest has been accused of molesting and raping a female altar server for years — with the alleged abuse starting in confession.

Miguel Luna, 68, was arrested June 11 on charges of aggravated sexual abuse of a child, according to court documents cited by KVIA-TV in El Paso.

Luna was arrested after the victim, now 34, decided to come forward. The abuse allegedly began when the victim was 8. Luna was taking a confessional with the victim and then start “kissing her passionately,” court documents said.

He would tell the little girl “remember this is confession, so whatever happens here stays in here,” according to the complaint.

By the time the girl turned 10, he was touching her breasts, according to KVIA-TV. When she turned 12, he allegedly raped her. The girl said she felt pain and bled after it happened, according to court documents.

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KANSAS CITY (KS)
The Associated Press

June 21, 2018

A Kansas priest has been revoked of his rank years after an investigation into multiple child sexual abuse allegations against him.

The Kansas City Star reports that Archbishop Joseph Naumann issued a decree in December removing the Reverand John Wisner from the clergy. The decree was announced May 25th.

The Archdiocese of Kansas City in Kansas says it suspended Wisner from active ministry in 2012 after receiving many allegations he sexually abused minors decades ago. The archdiocese says an internal investigation found the allegations credible.

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PHILADELPHIA (PA)
The Philadelphia Tribune

June 22, 208

By Tim Darragh

The Pennsylvania Supreme Court on Wednesday blocked the expected release of a massive report examining sexual abuse and misconduct by priests in six Pennsylvania dioceses, including Scranton and Allentown.

The state’s high court issued an order barring Cambria County Judge Norman Krumenacker, who supervised the grand jury that heard testimony over two years, and Pennsylvania Attorney General Josh Shapiro from releasing the report until further order.

The court’s order does not indicate who sought to block release of the report, but it indicates the court received more than one application for a stay.

Representatives from both the Diocese of Scranton and Diocese of Allentown said those institutions were not among petitioners who moved to block the report.

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KANSAS CITY (KS)
The Associated Press

June 22, 2018

A Kansas priest has been revoked of his rank years after an investigation into multiple child sexual abuse allegations against him.

The Kansas City Star reports that Archbishop Joseph Naumann issued a decree in December removing the Rev. John Wisner from the clergy. The decree was announced May 25.

The Archdiocese of Kansas City in Kansas says it suspended Wisner from active ministry in 2012 after receiving many allegations he sexually abused minors decades ago. The archdiocese says an internal investigation found the allegations credible.

Wisner has denied the allegations. The archdiocese says it notified law enforcement, but Wisner was never criminally charged in relation to the allegations.

The Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests criticized the archdiocese on Wednesday for taking so long to announce Wisner’s defrocking.

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ENGLAND
Church Times

June 22, 2018

By Hattie Williams

ALL Church of England clergy will be required by canon law to submit their name and ministerial authority to a new national register, assuming that the General Synod follows the recommendations of the National Safeguarding Steering Group (NSSG).

The group’s report, published on Friday, will be debated by the Synod when it meets in York next month.

The report also calls for a new policy on granting and renewing Permission To Officiate (PTO), a review of the Clergy Discipline Measure (CDM), and new requirements to “strengthen suitability and selection” of candidates for all forms of ministry.

The report has been produced by the NSSG in response to safeguarding failures, concerns, and recommendations highlighted during the public hearing conducted by the Independent Inquiry into Child Sex Abuse (ICSA) in March. The hearing used the diocese of Chichester as a case-study to investigate the extent to which the Anglican Church had failed to protect children from sexual abuse.

The inquiry established that there is no public national database for the clergy besides Crockford’s Clerical Directory, which is incomplete since clerics can elect not to appear in it. Also, records of clerics with current or expired PTO, criminal records, and other concerns kept on file by dioceses tend to be incomplete, lost, ignored, or blighted by poor record-keeping.

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AUSTRALIA
Australian Associated Press

June 21, 2018

By Tom Rabe

New laws that could see people jailed for failing to report child sex abuse have passed NSW parliament but religious clergy remain exempt.

The bill passed the NSW upper house late on Wednesday night strengthening state laws surrounding child sex abuse – but Greens MP David Shoebridge said the legislation doesn’t go far enough.

The new laws provide an exemption for lawyers, health professionals and religious clergy, unless the attorney-general provides special permission to prosecute.

Mr Shoebridge moved an amendment in the Legislative Council to scrap exemptions for church figures but neither the coalition nor Labor supported it.

“When it comes to the confessional the coalition and Labor both put the interests of the church ahead of the safety of children,” Mr Shoebridge said in a statement after the bill was passed.

Despite upper house Nationals not voting for Mr Shoebridge’s amendment, their party voted last week to introduce such measures at its annual general conference in Cowra.

Police minister and former Nationals leader Troy Grant said he thought the amendment to expose priests to the laws could garner support from his colleagues.

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HARRISBURG (PA)
Penn Live

June 21, 2018

By Ivey DeJesus

This report has been updated to clarify information on the unidentified and unindicted individuals.

The Pennsylvania Supreme Court was clear and succinct on Wednesday when it barred the release of a long-awaited statewide grand jury report into clergy sex abuse.

The court’s four-sentence order offered no explanation as to why the court made the decision; what, if any, vote count was taken; nor did it give indication as to whether the order signals that the court will hear future arguments on the matter.

The seemingly abridged order simply blocked the Office of the Attorney General and the Cambria County Court of Common Pleas judge overseeing the grand jury from releasing the findings of the probe. The order may have been blunt, but it was within the strictest bounds of the law.

“The mantra here is that grand juries are secret and that’s the problem,” said Nicholas Ressetar, chief law clerk with the Harrisburg-based law firm Costopoulos, Foster & Fields. “Their dilemma is, ‘How could we become more transparent without giving up the names of the individuals or institutions making these claims?’ It’s a dilemma really.”

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ALLENTOWN (PA)
Penn Live

June 20, 2018

By Ivey DeJesus

Rep. Mark Rozzi on Wednesday expressed concern for the safety and welfare of victims after a state high court blocked the release of a report that would have exposed predators across six Catholic dioceses in Pennsylvania.

Rozzi, who himself at 13 was sexually molested by his priest, said he was deeply troubled that victims would be devastated by the news and act out that desperation.

“We must make sure they are protected and that they are not going to hurt themselves,” said Rozzi, who minutes after news broke about the court order received text messages and phone calls from victims. “I want them to know this fight is not over by any means and I will use every resource available to continue to fight to seek justice.”

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