ABUSE TRACKER

ILLINOIS
WLS

By Sarah Schulte
Thursday, April 28, 2016

SPRINGFIELD, Ill. (WLS) — On the heels of the Dennis Hastert case, Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan wants to eliminate the statute of limitations for people accused of molesting children.

Illinois took a huge step in 2014 when the statute of limitations for sex abuse crimes was partially eliminated. However, Madigan and the victims’ group SNAP (Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests) say the law doesn’t go far enough. They hope the publicity surrounding the Hastert case will push lawmakers to make more changes.

Often, it takes high profile sex abuse cases – such as Roman Catholic priests, Penn State’s Jerry Sandusky and now, Dennis Hastert – to change the law. Two years ago, the statute of limitations for child sex abuse cases in Illinois was abolished, but, not completely.

“You have until your 18th birthday plus 20 years to report, so after your 38th birthday, in most cases you are out of luck,” Madigan said.

Madigan said it is time to lift the conditions attached to the current law and eliminate the statute of limitations for felony child sex abuse cases altogether.

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
Herald Democrat

By Jerrie Whiteley
Herald Democrat

When former Speaker of the House of Representatives Dennis Hastert was sentenced to 15 months in prison this week, the banking charges to which he pleaded guilty in federal court were likely the least of what captured people’s attention about the case.

Government officials allege that Hastert, a former Illinois high school wrestling coach, practiced his creative accounting to help cover up allegations that he abused some of the young athletes entrusted to his care.

Though Hastert didn’t specifically admit to abusing children, he did say at the sentencing, “I know I’m here because I mistreated some of my athletes as a coach,” according to a report on CNN.com.

One of those alleged victims spoke out in court about how the abuse has impacted his life over the years.

Afterward, Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan said she thinks the statute of limitations should be eliminated when prosecuting alleged child sex crimes.

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.

ILLINOIS
nwi.com

Dan Petrella Lee Springfield Bureau Chief

SPRINGFIELD — After former U.S. House Speaker Dennis Hastert was sentenced Wednesday to 15 months in federal prison for violating banking laws in an attempt to cover up decades-old sexual abuse allegations, Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan called on lawmakers to eliminate the statute of limitations on felony sex crimes against children.

But legal defense experts say doing away with restrictions on how long after an alleged crime someone can be charged could undermine the fairness of the legal process and put innocent people at risk of prosecution.

“It is very, very dangerous,” said William Schroeder, a criminal law professor at Southern Illinois University. “There are reasons for the statute of limitations.”

Chief among those reasons is that the memories of both alleged victims and alleged perpetrators become less reliable over time, Schroeder 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.

UNITED STATES
The Press Democrat

THE EDITORIAL BOARDBY

Less than a decade ago, Dennis Hastert stood second in line to the presidency. On Wednesday, the former House speaker stood before a federal judge who called him a “serial child molester.”

It was an appropriate description of the 74-year-old Hastert, who has acknowledged sexually abusing four teenage boys while working as a high school wrestling coach in Illinois 30 years ago. “I want to apologize to the boys I mistreated,” he said. “They looked (up) at me and I took advantage of them.”

Yes, he did. But the abuse was not the primary reason for his conviction nor for the sentence he received of 15 months in federal prison. His conviction was for bank fraud related to the secretive withdrawal of hush funds to cover up his past actions. It’s equivalent to sending Al Capone to prison on tax evasion charges. It results in jail time but not justice.

Hastert would have faced much more serious charges and a longer prison sentence if not for one thing — the statute of limitations for criminal sexual misconduct in the state of Illinois. It expired long ago.

Such limitations also are at the heart of the cases against actor and comedian Bill Cosby, who has been accused of sexual misconduct and rape by more than 50 women. Many of the accusations date back decades, meaning the statutes of limitations have expired.

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.

WISCONSIN
Fox 1

GREEN BAY — A local retired priest faces multiple charges after he allegedly exposed himself to a minor.

Father Richard Thomas, 78, of Green Bay, was charged with four felonies Thursday.

The Green Bay Catholic Diocese released the following statement:

The Diocese of Green Bay received a report of misconduct involving Father Richard Thomas, a diocesan priest. Upon receiving this report, the diocese notified civil authorities. Following the policies of the Diocesan Code of Pastoral Conduct, Father Thomas, a senior (retired) priest, has been restricted from performing any public ministry pending the outcome of the civil authorities’ investigation. This is an ongoing investigation and the Diocese is fully cooperating. The Diocese asks for prayers for all involved in this matter. The Diocese remains committed to the protection of children and vulnerable adults. Its policies include permanently removing from ministry any clergy who have a substantiated allegation of abuse of a minor against them. In addition, the Diocese requires all clergy, employees, and volunteers in all parishes, schools and diocesan offices to complete mandatory background checks and training on keeping children safe. Since 2003, 35,284 background checks have been completed and 37,054 people have completed the “VIRTUS – Protecting God’s Children” program. (Data reported October 2015) If you know of an incident of sexual abuse of a person who is now under the age of 18 by a priest, deacon, employee or volunteer, please immediately call the civil authorities and then the diocese.

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.

GUAM
Pacific Daily News

Jasmine Stole, Pacific Daily News April 29, 2016

A week after Catholic Church members held a heated protest at the A.B. Won Pat International Airport, the Archdiocese of Agana’s Chancery Office issued a statement responding to that demonstration and others at the Redemptoris Mater Seminary in Yona.

The archdiocese was “extremely saddened by the actions of the angry mob” at the airport, the statement said.

Giuseppe Gennarini, Claudia Gennarini and Rev. Angelo Poschetti arrived the night of April 21. The Gennarinis and Poschetti are high-level U.S.-based officials of the Neocatechumenal Way.

“This is not the warm Hafa Adai spirit that the Chamorro people are well-known for,” the archdiocese’s statement said.

The Gennarinis and Poschetti are board of guarantors’ members for the Redemptoris Mater Seminary in Guam.

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.

UTAH
Deseret News

By Tad Walch, Deseret News

Published: Thursday, April 28 2016

SALT LAKE CITY — An official Mormon website has published the most comprehensive review yet of how the LDS Church works to prevent child sexual abuse in its congregations.

It characterized child sexual abuse as a societal plague and said the church’s first priority when it learns of abuse is to help the victim and stop the abuse.

“Every victim is a boy or girl who is suffering deeply,” the statement said. “We must do everything we can to protect and love them. We urge our local leaders and members to reach out to victims, comfort and strengthen them, and help them understand that what happened was wrong, the experience was not their fault, and that it should never happen ever again.”

The long statement was published Thursday as an approved resource on the official news website of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

Sister Bonnie L. Oscarson, the church’s Young Women general president, also addressed child abuse on Thursday when she presented $125,000 in donations from the church to two child advocacy programs.

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GEORGIA
The Telegraph

BY BECKY PURSER
bpurser@macon.com

More than a 100 pastors and other church leaders gathered at Southside Baptist Church on Thursday for a seminar about safety and security at places of worship.

The daylong seminar was offered by Warner Robins police in partnership with Training Force USA, a training organization based in Tallahassee, Florida. Several Warner Robins police officers also attended the seminar.

Seminar topics ranged from non-custodial parents who might want to go to a church and take a child home to a loud outburst in the sanctuary, said Jennifer Parson, public information officer for Warner Robins police.

“We’re also talking about active-shooter situations and natural disasters and how to create that safety plan and be prepared for anything,” Parson said.

Other topics included domestic and workplace violence, development of safety-security and child-protection policies, recognizing high risk areas in places of worship and offices, and insurance and liability issues.

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.

WISCONSIN
WBAY

By Jorge Rodas and Emily Matesic
Published: April 28, 2016

A local priest appeared in Brown County court on Thursday accused of flashing a teenage boy multiple times last month.

The priest’s bail was set at $750 cash, though prosecutors asked the court for $5,000.

Father Richard Thomas was arrested Wednesday on four felony counts of exposing himself to a minor.

Thomas’s attorney entered a not-guilty plea on his behalf as the Catholic priest appeared via video conference from the Brown County Jail for his initial appearance.

According to the criminal complaint, Thomas exposed himself to a 16-year-old boy on March 14, 15, 16 and 17.

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.

CANADA
The Globe and Mail

LORIA GALLOWAY
OTTAWA — The Globe and Mail
Published Thursday, Apr. 28, 2016

A court is being asked to decide whether the secret nature of the compensation process for people who were abused as children at one of Canada’s Indian residential schools allowed government lawyers to persuade adjudicators to deny compensation unfairly to those who suffered.

Depending upon the outcome of the case, compensation claims from many of the schools’ survivors may have to be reopened just as the nine-year Independent Assessment Process (IAP) is winding down.

An indigenous man who says a priest sexually abused him over a number of years at one of the most notorious schools is asking the Ontario Superior Court of Justice to allow the public release of secret documents that could explain why he was denied a cash settlement.

He also wants government lawyers, whom he accuses of withholding evidence that could have backed up his story – and possibly the stories of other claimants who allege abuse at St. Anne’s Indian Residential School in Fort Albany, Ont. – to be compelled to testify about why they acted as they did.

The man, who is known to the court as H-15019, attended St. Anne’s in the 1970s. People who were sent to that school report being tortured in a homemade electric chair, forced to eat their own vomit, raped and sexually molested.

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.

GUAM
Pacific Daily News

Jasmine Stole, Pacific Daily News April 29, 2016

Three Guam Police Department officers were present Thursday morning at a peaceful protest held by Catholic Church members who continue to take issue with who owns the property of a Yona seminary.

The officers posted themselves between the demonstrators and the entrance gate to the Redemptoris Mater Seminary in Yona. There were just over a dozen protesters. The demonstration never became heated, and no arrests were made. One Guam lawmaker present at the protest said the community’s public safety resources might have been more useful elsewhere.

Law enforcement presence was expected. Police were called to a demonstration held at the seminary on Tuesday after protesters walked into the seminary, which is on private property, and requested to see the archbishop. Prior to Thursday’s protest, GPD spokeswoman Capt. Kim Santos said police planned to come to the demonstration.

The Yona seminary is a registered nonprofit corporation. Who controls the property has been a controversial subject among local Catholics.

Archbishop Anthony Apuron has said in issued statements that the archdiocese controls the property. However, some church members have disagreed, saying the Neocatechumenal Way controls the property.

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.

MINNESOTA
Star Tribune

By Jean Hopfensperger Star Tribune APRIL 28, 2016

A well-known St. John’s Abbey monk, the Rev. Timothy Backous, is accused of sexually abusing two boys decades ago in lawsuits filed Thursday in St. Paul.

It was the second time in recent weeks that a St. John’s monk was sued after being suspended from ministry and then cleared by the abbey. The Rev. Thomas Andert, former abbey prior, also was sued by two men after being cleared by the abbey last November.

Both monks were former headmasters at St. John’s Preparatory School.

“St. John’s claimed to have done a thorough and complete investigation in both cases,” said victims’ attorney Jeff Anderson at a news conference Thursday. Instead, he said, it was “an investigation designed by them to protect the accused offender.”

One of the suits announced Thursday stemmed from incidents during a 1990 St. John’s boys choir trip to Europe. The other suit was filed by a man who alleges that he was abused by Backous as a young teen at the prep school in early 1980s.

The abbey suspended Backous from ministry last year while investigating the choir trip, then reinstated him last November after finding the allegations unsubstantiated.

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MAINE
Portland Press Herald

THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

BANGOR — The Maine supreme court has rejected the appeal of a former Greek Orthodox priest who was convicted of sexually abusing a child.

The justices let the conviction of Adam Metropoulos, 53, stand on Thursday. The Bangor man is serving a 6½-year sentence for four counts of sexual abuse of a minor.

Metropoulos was convicted and sentenced a year ago. A former altar boy at St. George Greek Orthodox Church said he was sexually assaulted by Metropoulos as a teenager. The man, now 23, testified that Metropoulos “stole my 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.

MARYLAND
WUSA

[with video]

Debra Alfarone, WUSA

PRINCE GEORGE’S COUNTY, Md. (WUSA9) — A 22-year-old Prince George’s County woman told prosecutors her boss, Pastor Michael C. Turner of The Miracle Center of Faith Missionary Baptist Church, made unwanted sexual advances to her and sexually abused her during February and March of this year.

In her complaint, she says she worked at the Capitol Heights church for about 4 weeks. During this timeframe, and for 3 of them, Turner sexually harassed her and touched her without her permission. She says, “He would just literally rub his hands all over my body and push his body up against my body.”

But, in the end, she says what happened in his private office one day is what made her speak to prosecutors and file a report, “He pushed me onto his couch and he had got on top of me.”

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
Herald Sun

AAP

The child sexual abuse royal commission has announced it will close off applications for private sessions in September – more than a year before its final report is due.

The decision was announced on Friday by commission chair Peter McClellan who said requests for private sessions were still high but other constraints meant accepting applications beyond September 30 could see abuse survivors disappointed and this would be “intolerable”.

More than 5000 private sessions, where people met with a commissioner and gave personal accounts of the abuse they endured, have been held across the country since the commission started in 2013.

They have been crucial to the public investigations into church, state and other institutions where shocking levels of child abuse were exposed.

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AUSTRALIA
Sydney Morning Herald

Jane Lee
Legal affairs, health and science reporter

It has spoken to 5111 survivors in private sessions, with 1544 waiting for future sessions. Over the past year, it has held about 37 private sessions a week.

But now, the child abuse royal commission is winding down its private sessions with survivors.
The commission, which is due to deliver its final report in December 2017, will stop accepting survivors’ applications to tell their stories to commissioners in private hearings after September 30.

The chairman of the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse, Justice Peter McClellan, will make the announcement at a hearing in Sydney on Friday.

“There can be no exceptions for any application received after that date,” his prepared statement says. “I know this will mean that some people will be disappointed. For that the commissioners are sorry.”

Survivors will still be able to send written accounts to commissioners and receive help from commission officers to do this.

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.

ILLINOIS
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests

Statement by Barbara Blaine of SNAP (312 399 4747), April 28, 2016

If one in four homes were burglarized in Illinois, lawmakers would be jumping into action.

If one in eight cars were stolen in IL, lawmakers would be climbing over one another to propose solutions.

But one in four girls and one in eight boys are sexually violated as children in Illinois. So where’s the legislative uproar?

And most child molesters, unlike Denny Hastert, never get caught. The relatively few who are caught, like Denny Hastert, hurt several or many kids and perpetrate for years undetected, in part because it takes them so long to be able to tell. Telling is not simple. It usually takes years before victims realize what happened to them as children was criminal and abusive, and that it still cripples them years later. Then it takes strength and courage to come forward. When they do, they are usually told, “You’re too late.” Those who committed the crimes go scot-free. Those who concealed the crimes go scot-free. And those who suffered the crimes keep suffering.

We applaud Attorney General Lisa Madigan for speaking out for statute of limitations reform.

We applaud every lawmaker – and there were plenty of them – who opined in recent days just how awful Hastert’s crimes were.

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.

ILLINOIS
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests

Statement Eric Johnson of Colorado, repeatedly sexually abused as a child by Fr. Bruce Wellems

Although Wellems has publicly admitted to sexually abusing me as 7 year old boy when he was 15, he remains active as a suspended priest, and as an influence with At-Risk Youth. Although his faculties in the Archdiocese have been temporarily suspended; as a Claretian, he is allowed to appear as a leader and have contact with kids.

By the time I found the courage to tell my Mother about Wellem’s sexual abuse, I was well past the Stature of Limitations. Guilt, Confusion, Depression and Shame eat at you to a point so low that you have a choice; Continue to be self destructive and die, or share your story.

It took me decades to begin to heal and share my abuse. And when I did share, it was too late to hold him accountable. I remember vividly how Wellems used me for blow jobs, hand jobs, ejaculations, and other reprehensible acts for his own pleasure. He was in High School, I was in 2nd grade. Picture it. However, because of the short Statute of Limitations, I had no recourse. I had no route to regain my self-respect and dignity.

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ITALY
Newsweek

BY JACK MOORE ON 4/28/16

Italian authorities arrested four people suspected of extremism on Thursday and issued arrest warrants for two more operating in Syria, according to the Milan prosecutor.

Authorities said one of the suspects is a Moroccan-born national living in Italy who had received orders from the Islamic State militant group (ISIS) to conduct an attack in Rome during the Holy Year, a period announced by Pope Francis that lasts from December 2015 to November 2016.

The man, who authorities named as Abderrahim Moutahrrick, is reported to have received a WhatsApp message from ISIS-held territory that read: “Dear brother Abderrahim, I send you… the bomb poem… listen to the sheik and strike,” in reference to ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.

Milan prosecutor Maurizio Romanelli said that Moutahrrick planned to attack the Vatican and the Israeli embassy in Rome and told one of the other suspects, 23-year-old Moroccan-born Abderrahmane Khachia, in a monitored conversation: “I want to hit Israel in Rome.” Authorities arrested Khachia in the northern Italian city of Varese and Moutahrrick was living in the city of Lecco, north of Milan in the province of Lombardy.

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.

ILLINOIS
Chicago Tribune

William Lee
Chicago Tribune

A day after former House Speaker Dennis Hastert was sentenced to prison in a federal banking case tied to the decades-old sexual abuse of a high school wrestler he coached, victim advocates say it’s time to get rid of the deadlines for prosecuting child sex crimes.

In handing down the 15-month prison sentence on Wednesday, U.S. District Judge Thomas M. Durkin repeatedly slammed Hastert as a “serial child molester” after he acknowledged there were several sex abuse victims; but prosecutors have noted that Hastert could not be charged with sex crimes in those cases because the statute of limitations had long passed.

In front of the Chicago Archdiocese’s Gold Coast headquarters, members of the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests pushed for state and federal reform regarding statutes of limitations on sex crimes against children, and called on the public to pick up the phone and ask their elected officials to act.

SNAP wants Illinois to join the handful of states that have completely removed statutes of limitations for child sex crimes.

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.

MINNESOTA
KSTP

Scott Theisen
Updated: 04/28/2016

Two civil lawsuits against a recently reinstated priest accused of sexual abuse have been filed.

St. Paul attorneys Jeff Anderson and Mike Bryant announced the filing of the suits Thursday morning. The Rev. Timothy Backous and St. John’s Abbey are named in both lawsuits on behalf of two men known as Doe 413 and Doe 188.

One man claims he was abused by Backous at St. John’s Prep School between 1982 and 1983 when he was 16 years old.

The other man claims he was abused during a 1990 choir trip to Europe when he was as a member of the St. John’s Boys Choir. He was 12 to 13 years old at the time.

Anderson and Bryant also discussed the internal investigations into Doe 188’s allegations in 1991 and 2015 in which St. John’s cleared Backous.

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.

MINNESOTA
St. Clouid Times

David Unze, dunze@stcloudtimes.com April 28, 2016

Two lawsuits filed Thursday in Stearns County accuse former St. John’s Prep headmaster Rev. Timothy Backous of sexually abusing two children, one in the early 1980s and another in 1990.

The lawsuits don’t describe specifics of the abuse, other than to say one victim was 12 or 13 at the time and was a member of the Boys Choir and the other victim was 16 or 17 and was a Prep School student.

Backous has been accused previously of sexually abusing a boy during a 1990 European tour by the choir. St. John’s Abbey in 1991 looked into the allegations and found them to be unsubstantiated. The parents of the boy who accused Backous of sexual misconduct renewed the allegations in June 2014, and the Abbey retained an independent, third-party investigator to review the claim.

The claims again were determined to be unsubstantiated.

The abbey issued a statement Thursday that said the allegations against Backous are “without merit and false” and that the abbey will “fully and aggressively defend against the false claims.

Jeff Anderson, who is suing the abbey and Backous, said the abbey’s investigations have been far less than thorough. The abbey indicated that it had interviewed eight of the nine chaperones who were on the choir tour.

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.

MINNESOTA
Jeff Anderson and Associates

Backous Worked in Prominent Roles at St. John’s and Duluth after St. John’s ‘cleared’ him of allegations in 1991 and 2015

Doe 188 Complaint
Doe 413 Complaint
Backous Timothy Timeline
Backous Photo
Sketch by Patricia Chiapusio-Riedl
Statement of Patricia Chiapusio-Riedl
Media Advisory

What: At a news conference tomorrow in St. Paul, attorneys Jeff Anderson and Mike Bryant will:

• Announce the filing of two civil lawsuits naming St. John’s Abbey and Father Timothy Backous as defendants. One suit is being brought by Doe 413, a survivor who was sexually abused by Backous at St. John’s Prep School in approximately 1982-1983 when he was 16 years old. The second lawsuit is being brought by Doe 188, a former member of the St. John’s Boys Choir who was abused by Backous on a choir trip to Europe in 1990 when Doe 188 was 12 to 13 years old.
• Discuss St. John’s internal investigations into Doe 188’s allegations. St. John’s cleared Backous of Doe 188’s allegations after investigations in 1991 and 2015.
• Encourage survivors of sexual abuse by Fr. Timothy Backous, and others, to come forward safely and confidentially before the Child Victims Act window legislation expires on May 25, 2016.

WHEN: Thursday, April 28, 2016, at 11:00 AM CT

WHERE: Jeff Anderson & Associates
366 Jackson Street, Suite 100
St. Paul, MN 55101

Notes: The event will be live-streamed online with links available on our homepage shortly before the event at www.andersonadvocates.com

Timothy Backous has been a long time priest and monk of St. John’s Abbey with prominent positions as Prep School Headmaster director of campus ministry, and athletic director, and who has been heavily involved in the St. John’s Boys Choir over the years. Backous was most recently assigned by St. John’s to work as Vice President of Mission Integration and Benedictine Sponsorship for Essentia Health in the Diocese of Duluth. When the parents of a child he abused in 1990 made their son’s allegations public in 2014, St. John’s placed Backous on temporary administrative leave pending an investigation. In November 2015 St. John’s announced they finished a “thorough and complete investigation” and found that the allegations were “unsubstantiated.” This was the second time St. John’s cleared Backous of the 1990 abuse allegations. The first was in 1991 when it initially learned of them from the boy’s parents.

St. John’s Abbey, Timothy Backous, and many of his colleagues including Reverend Billy Graham of the Diocese of Duluth made much fanfare about the fact that Backous had been ‘falsely’ and ‘wrongfully’ accused. Graham wrote in the Duluth News Tribune that Backous had been ‘victimized’ by his accuser, and that St. John’s ‘comprehensive’ investigation proved the allegations were nothing but lies.

During the pendency of the 2015 investigation, while Backous was on leave, Jeff Anderson, one of the attorneys representing the two survivors filing the new lawsuits, brought forward information from an independent witness that walked in on Backous lying on a bed with a child in a dark room during a trip with the St. John’s Boys Choir in 1990. The witness was a chaperone on the trip. It was the same trip the 1991 allegations against Backous stemmed from. However, nobody from St. John’s ever spoke to the chaperone in 1991 before finding the allegations against Backous “unsubstantiated,” and Backous was placed back in ministry with no restrictions. In fact, the chaperone didn’t learn of the allegations until she read about them in 2015. St. John’s Abbey chose not to thoroughly investigate Backous in 1991, and chose to again reinstate Timothy Backous to ministry in 2015 after a second internal “thorough and complete investigation” cleared him again.

“This is a repeat performance of gross malfeasance by St. John’s,” Anderson said. “Two investigations in one year, Tom Andert and Tim Backous, and two findings that allegations were ‘unsubstantiated.’ St. John’s chose to believe the wrong people again, the offenders, and chose to protect them again.

Survivor Doe 413’s complaint also refers to Brother John Kelly, who is on the list of credibly accused and is supposed to be living under restrictions at St. John’s. In addition to sexual abuse by Backous, John Kelly attempted criminal sexual conduct upon Doe 413 when he was a student at St. John’s Prep School in the early 80’s. At the press conference on Thursday, Anderson will discuss the fact that despite his “restrictions,” John Kelly continues to seek and pursue contact with the victim.

Also to be released will be the complaints, pictures of Backous, and the statement of the independent witness who came forward to report that she had walked in on Backous in bed alone with a child.

• A copy of the complaints will be available at the press conference and on our website and the event will be live-streamed online with links available on our homepage shortly before the event at www.andersonadvocates.com.

Contact Jeff Anderson: Office: 651.583.7633 Cell: 612.817.8665
Contact Mike Bryant: Office: 320.259.5414 Cell: 800.359.0061

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
Crux

By Ines San Martin
Vatican correspondent April 28, 2016

ROME— More than 540 suspicious financial transactions in the Vatican were flagged in 2015, leading to the suspension of eight of those transactions totaling over $10 million, and the freezing of four accounts at the Vatican bank worth another $8 million.

Those figures came from an annual report released Thursday by the Vatican’s financial watchdog unit, the Financial Information Authority, which was launched under emeritus Pope Benedict XVI in 2010.

In terms of the number of red flags raised, the total of 544 from 2015 represents a substantial increase from 147 in 2014 and 202 in 2013.

However, only 17 of those cases led to reports forwarded to the Promoter of Justice in the Vatican City State’s tribunal for investigation, which means that, upon review, only a handful was judged possibly to be the result of criminal activity.

“We’re talking about suspicion, not evidence,” said René Brülhart, President of the Vatican’s Financial Information Authority, in presenting Thursday’s report.

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VATICAN CITY
Times of India

Vatican City, April 28, 2016 (AFP) –
A clean-up of the Vatican bank has been completed, with the final tally of suspect accounts that had to be closed nearing 5,000, the Holy See’s financial watchdog said Thursday.

Unveiling the 2015 annual report of the Financial Information Authority (FIA), its director Tommaso Di Ruzza said a three-year examination of the scandal-hit Institute of Religious Works (IOR), as the bank is officially known, was now finished.

“We took a very strict line towards any accounts that were not in compliance (with Vatican legislation) and now finally the process of closures is done,” Di Ruzzo told a Vatican press conference. “A total of 4,935 were closed and that is a final figure.”

The FIA was established in 2010 by now-retired Pope Benedict XVI to bring the Vatican’s financial institutions into line with international standards designed to reduce the risk of accounts being used for nefarious purposes.

IOR account holders in the past have included mafia figures and it became notorious around the world because of a 1980s scandal centred on the death of banker Roberto Calvi, whose corpse was discovered hanging under Blackfriars bridge in London.

At the same time as it established the FIA, the Vatican signed up for external evaluation by Moneyval, a European body that combats money laundering and the financing of terrorism.
Moneyval reported in December that the Vatican had addressed most of its structural weaknesses.

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TEXAS
Raw Story

BETHANIA PALMA MARKUS
28 APR 2016

A bizarre “non-religious” church in Texas is set to hold an event this weekend in which participates will drink a potentially-fatal chemical found in pesticides because the organization’s leader claims it holds the power to heal conditions including erectile dysfunction, the Houston Chronicle reports.

Jim Humble, the archbishop of Genesis 2 Church of Health and Healing, hawks “Miracle Mineral Supplement” as a cure-all for cancer, AIDS, arthritis, malaria, acne, erectile dysfunction and other ailments, the Chronicle reports. The catch? It’s made from sodium chlorite — a chemical used in pesticides, fracking and fabric bleaching.

It can be deadly if swallowed. Yet participants will fork over $500 a head for a three-day seminar at a Houston-area hotel to learn about the supposed health benefits of the “the world’s most important broad-spectrum, nontoxic anti-microbial agent.”

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MAINE
Bangor Daily News

By Judy Harrison, BDN Staff
Posted April 28, 2016

PORTLAND, Maine — The Maine Supreme Judicial Court on Thursday upheld the conviction of a former Greek Orthodox priest on sex charges involving a former altar server in a one-page memorandum of decision that did not explain the reasons for the decision.

Adam Metropoulos, 53, of Bangor was sentenced a year ago to 12 years in prison with all but 6½ years suspended, to be followed by three years of probation.

Metropoulos, who was the priest at St. George Greek Orthodox Church in Bangor for 14 years, is incarcerated at the Maine Correctional Center in Windham, according to the Maine Department of Corrections inmate locator. His earliest possible release date is May 14, 2020.

Superior Court Justice Ann Murray in March 2015 found Metropoulos guilty on four felony counts of sexual abuse of a minor following a jury-waived trial. The charges stemmed from the former priest’s sexual assault on a 15-year-old altar server at the church in 2006 and 2007.

Before the trial began, Metropoulos pleaded guilty to one count of felony possession of sexually explicit materials — for nearly 400 sexual images including many involving children — found on his computer. He also pleaded guilty to misdemeanor violation of privacy for filming a relative taking a shower just days before his arrest.

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UNITED STATES
Verdict

28 APR 2016 MARCI A. HAMILTON

So far in the 21st century, U.S. religious leaders are best known for negative positions like their demands for a “free exercise right” to discriminate against the beleaguered minority of LGBTQ individuals, a First Amendment right to discriminate against their own ministers, a right of secular employers to deprive women of reproductive health care choices in their employment benefit plans, and, last but not least, child endangerment, from starvation, to neglect to sex abuse. Small wonder that institutional religious affiliation has been dropping. At the same time, the headlines persistently cover religiously-fueled global terrorism, which is a sobering reminder of the atrocities that religion can justify, as we know from even a cursory study of world history.

Others have tried to paint the contemporary push for extreme religious liberty as a new “Great Awakening” when in fact it has been a time of global darkening for the vulnerable, including LGBTQ individuals, women, and children.

The Supreme Court has abetted some of this by failing to stand up for its power to interpret the First Amendment and instead letting Congress, via the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, unilaterally set free exercise standards. Moreover, the Court acquiesced in RFRA’s allowing the courts to become unaccountable policymakers, letting a majority of Justices hand employers an unnecessarily broad right to discriminate against their employees well beyond the category of clergy in Hosanna Tabor. Finally, at least while Justice Antonin Scalia was on the Supreme Court, a majority significantly narrowed the indispensable separation of church and state by carving back the Establishment Clause’s standing doctrine and opening doors to and more.

Thus, the Court with Scalia responded to the era of darkening by reinforcing the voices of negativity, discrimination, and oppression. A majority often seemed to have abandoned the pose of blind (fair) Lady Justice and instead flirted with theocracy. The one bright spot has been the Supreme Court’s majority affirming the fundamental right for same-sex couples to marry, but the hysterical voices in dissent in Windsor and Obergefell no doubt mobilized and empowered the ugly developments we now see in North Carolina and

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ILLINOIS
Capital Fax

Thursday, Apr 28, 2016

* In the wake of Dennis Hastert’s sentencing yesterday, this press release landed in my in-box…

Attorney General Lisa Madigan and the Illinois Coalition Against Sexual Assault (ICASA) [yesterday] called on Illinois lawmakers to eliminate the statute of limitations for felony criminal sexual assault and sexual abuse crimes against children.

Madigan and ICASA’s Executive Director Polly Poskin have long supported the removal of the current statute of limitations for sexual assault crimes against children. Illinois law should allow children who have been victims of sexual assault and abuse the time to come forward and report their crimes. Survivors of sexual assault crimes during their childhood should be afforded the time it takes to process their assault and come forward to report their crimes to authorities.

“Sexual assault continues to be pervasive in society, affecting far too many children and families across Illinois,” said Madigan. “When a prosecutor cannot indict an offender for these heinous acts because the statute of limitations has run, it raises serious moral, legal and ethical questions. We have long supported extending the time period for prosecutors to file sexual assault and abuse charges, and we urge the Legislature to eliminate the statute of limitations on all sex crimes involving children.”

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RHODE ISLAND
Boston Globe

By Bella English GLOBE STAFF APRIL 28, 2016

After a private meeting with a group of victims, a committee of the board of trustees at the embattled St. George’s School has agreed to get training on the “lifelong impacts” of childhood sexual abuse, and will enter into reparation talks with some alumni who were allegedly assaulted as students at the elite prep school in Middletown, R.I.

According to a statement posted Monday night by the victims’ group SGS for Healing, trustees will also consider concerns about headmaster Eric Peterson, who has been criticized by some alumni for his handling of abuse complaints. An independent investigation of the school is due from attorney Martin Murphy in June, and the trustees agreed to take action on “issues raised regarding Peterson” within 30 days of the report’s release.

The agreements came at a meeting held Saturday in Boston between five members of SGS for Healing and five members of the school’s board of trustees. It was the first time the two groups have met since St. George’s became embroiled in a sex abuse scandal in December, with some allegations dating to the 1960s.

The trustees, according to the statement, also agreed to inform victims about actions regarding Zane Dormitory, named for a former headmaster, Tony Zane, who has also been criticized for his handling of allegations of sexual abuse by staffers. Victims have asked that the dorm be renamed.

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AUSTRALIA
The Australian

APRIL 29, 2016

Tessa Akerman
Reporter
Melbourne

Ronald Mulkearns helped draft a protocol for dealing with alleg­ations of criminal behaviour by clergy while running the nation’s worst diocese for pedophile priests and brothers.

The former bishop of Ballarat, who died this month, was ­appointed to the special issues committee run by the Australian Catholic Bishops Conference ­despite failing to deal with some of the world’s worst abusers.

Mulkearns presented a draft protocol to the conference in November 1989. It was to be observed if accusations of criminal behaviour, ­including pedophilia, were made against priests. The protocol, which was tendered to the child sex abuse royal commission, states that bishops have a responsi­bility to protect the reputation of individuals and the image of the church as a whole.

It states that bishops and major superiors must have ­regard to the welfare of any complainant, victim and accused, and safeguard individuals’ reput­ations and their right to privacy.

“They must safeguard the good name of the church as a whole and act to prevent or remedy scandal,” it said. “They must have a pastoral solicitude for those involved in criminal behaviour­, mindful of the words of the Lord who came ‘to seek out and save what was lost’ (Lk 19:10).”

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MINNESOTA
KAAL

Scott Theisen
Updated: 04/28/2016

Attorneys plan to discuss the filing of two civil lawsuits against a recently reinstated priest accused of sexual abuse.

St. Paul attorneys Jeff Anderson and Mike Bryant will have a news conference Thursday morning to discuss the suits naming the Rev. Timothy Backous and St. John’s Abbey. The attorneys are representing two men known as Doe 413 and Doe 188.

One man claims he was abused by Backous at St. John’s Prep School between 1982 and 1983 when he was 16 years old.

The other man claims he was abused during a 1990 choir trip to Europe when he was as a member of the St. John’s Boys Choir. He was 12 to 13 years old at the time.

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VATICAN CITY
Wall Street Journal

By FRANCIS X. ROCCA
April 28, 2016

ROME—The Vatican’s financial watchdog registered 544 suspicious transactions in 2015—almost four times as many as the previous year—but officials said Thursday it reflected greater vigilance rather than any rise in illicit financial activities.

The Financial Information Authority, or AIF, said it turned over 17 of those cases, mostly involving potential money laundering, to Vatican prosecutors.

“I would like to see the figure zero,” René Brülhart, the AIF’s president told reporters. “But it doesn’t reflect reality. Wherever you have financial transactions, financial activity, you always see something potentially suspicious.”

Mr. Brülhart said the Vatican’s oversight system uses a “rather low reporting threshold,” in part to raise awareness of potential problems. He said it was a “fair assessment” that none of the suspicious activity was related to the financing of terrorism.

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MARYLAND
NBC Washington

[with video]

A 22-year-old woman says the prominent bishop of a Baptist church in Prince George’s County repeatedly stalked, harassed and made unwarranted sexual advances toward her at the church.

Bishop Michael C. Turner Sr., the senior pastor at The Miracle Center of Faith Missionary Baptist Church in Capitol Heights, Maryland, has been charged with second-degree assault, fourth-degree sex offense and harassment, according to court documents obtained by News4’s Jackie Bensen.

The woman said during the four weeks in February and March that she worked at the church, Turner, 61, repeatedly assaulted and harassed her in his private office, the copy room and the elevator.

“On many occasions he would repeatedly touch me all over my body with his hands, press on my body with his body and his private parts…kiss me on my forehead, and hold me captive in his office and copier room,” the woman said in a written statement to police.

She said she was frightened to tell anyone because she was afraid of him and afraid of losing her job.

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VATICAN CITY
Crux

By John L. Allen Jr.
Editor April 28, 2016

Contrary to popular mythology, the Vatican is hardly a sprawling bureaucracy comparable to, say, the roughly three million people who work for the federal government in the United States. All in, we’re talking about a work force of under 5,000, which means it’s more akin to a village than an empire.

In such a small world, personnel is always policy: Choices about who gets the most important jobs inevitably drive how decisions are made.

Pope Francis has been running the show for three years now, and at first blush, it’s tempting to say that almost nothing has changed on the personnel front. As of today, almost three-quarters of the officials who lead important departments are still hold-overs from the reign of emeritus Pope Benedict XVI.

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FRANCE
Mediapart

Accusé d’actes de pédophilie et d’agression sexuelle sur majeur, un ancien religieux de la communauté Saint-Jean, qui a reconnu les faits en 2015, est jugé ce vendredi à Chalon-sur-Saône. Des documents consultés par Mediapart révèlent que des supérieurs de cette fraternité contestée savaient tout du mal-être et des agissements de leur frère, mais n’ont jamais alerté les autorités.

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FRANCE
France 3

Ce vendredi 29 avril 2016, Régis Peillon va comparaître devant le tribunal correctionnel de Chalon-sur-Saône pour agressions sexuelles sur deux victimes françaises, un mineur et un adulte. Il portait alors l’habit et appartenait à la communauté de Saint-Jean, déjà entâchée de scandales du même ordre

Par Maryline Barate

Une nouvelle fois, la communauté de Saint-Jean, basée à Rimont en Saône-et-Loire, voit un des ses anciens membres comparaître devant la justice. Régis Peillon, 57 ans, sera jugé demain par le tribunal correctionnel de Chalon-sur-Saône. Il est accusé d’avoir agressé sexuellement un mineur et un majeur alors qu’il était « frère Jean-François Régis » dans cette congrégation.

Un religieux qui avait été déjà été repéré par sa hiérarchie pour des actes de pédophilie
L’agression sur mineur a eu lieu au prieuré de Murat, dans le Cantal, qui accueille de nombreux camps de jeunes. Ce lieu d’affectation, décidé par les reponsables de la communauté, indigne progondément l’AVREF, l’association d’aide aux victimes des dérives de mouvements religieux en Eruope et à leurs familles. En effet, ce religieux venait d’être rappatrié du prieuré d’Abidjan où il avait reconnu avoir touché 10 à 15 jeunes garçons africains pour vérifier “si leurs organes sexuels étaient bien développés “, d’après ses propres mots couchés dans document interne de la congrégation.

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FRANCE
RFI

A priest in the French Basque country was accused of sexually assaulting a teenager on Wednesday and a former monk was to appear in court on Friday in ongoing revelations of paedophilia in the French Catholic church. Lyon Archbishop Philippe Barbarin is currently under investigation for allegations that he covered up cases of sexual assault on minors in his diocese.

The mother of the alleged victim filed a case for sexual assault on her son in the 1990s against a priest in Bayonne on Wednesday and he has been relieved of his functions.

In a letter published on the diocese’s website Bayonne Archbishop Marc Aillet said he had notified the legal authorities of the case on 15 April and promised to cooperate with the investigation.

The priest has already tried to commit suicide twice – once after being investigated for allegedly molesting his nephew on a camp in Poland, the other time during a scandal over the molesting of a teenage girl in 2007.

He went into therapy after that attempt and on arriving in the diocese Archbishop Aillet met him and assigned him to tasks that did not involve contact with children, according to his letter.

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IRELAND
The Irish Catholic

The final tranche of reports from the national safeguarding board is expected to be released next week, The Irish Catholic understands.

The National Board for Safeguarding Children in the Catholic Church (NBSCCC) has now completed reviews of safeguarding practice and procedures in almost every Church body that comes under its authority.

The few exceptions who have not yet been reviewed include some religious orders whose exclusively female memberships are aging and declining in numbers, and who have no ministry with children, as well as a small number of religious orders currently subject to investigation under the Northern Ireland Historical Inquiry.

Reports by the board into child safeguarding practices within these orders cannot be produced publicly until after the Northern inquiry has reported its findings, which will happen next year.

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IRELAND
The Irish Catholic

by Michael Kelly
April 28, 2016

The watchdog set up to monitor the Church’s adherence to stringent child protection rules has published a new set of ‘standards’. Amongst other things, the document aims to redress a perception that a priest who is accused of abuse is treated unfairly. These concerns have been particularly evident when a priest has been stood aside, forced to leave his home and months, or even years later, is found to have no case to answer.

The new standards from the National Board for Safeguarding Children in the Catholic Church (NBSCCC) are currently being rolled out across all 26 dioceses and, evidently, have been well received.

I can say without fear of contradiction that the Catholic Church in Ireland is now governed by some of the strictest policies and procedures in the country when it comes to safeguarding children and vulnerable adults.

The heightened sense around safeguarding is only to be welcomed and it is to the Church’s credit that such a comprehensive job of work has been undertaken.

In parishes and communities up and down the country there is a veritable army of volunteers charged with implementing safeguarding policies – it has, in fact, been one of the largest lay-led initiatives in the Catholic Church in Ireland in decades. Literally thousands of Catholic parishioners have volunteered their time and energy to ensure that the Church is a safe environment.

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FRANCE
Metro News

EGLISE CATHOLIQUE – Les faits remontent à 1990. C’est la mère de l’une des victimes, neveu du prêtre, qui a porté plainte auprès du parquet de Clermond-Ferrand.

L’Eglise catholique fait-elle face à une nouvelle affaire de pédophilie ? Dans les Pyrénées-Atlantiques, un prêtre du diocèse de Bayonne est en tout cas mis en cause pour des faits de pédophilie remontant à 1990 et vient d’être suspendu de toute fonction ecclésiastique, informe l’AFP d’après le parquet de Bayonne.

Mercredi soir, l’affaire a également été signalée dans une lettre à ses “chers diocésains” par l’évêque de Bayonne, Mgr Marc Aillet, connu pour ses positions conservatrices et qui mène une croisade contre l’avortement. Ces nouvelles accusations apparaissent trois mois après l’affaire de pédophilie du diocèse de Lyon où un prêtre a été mis en examen pour agressions sexuelles le 25 janvier 2016.

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FRANCE
La Republique des Pyrenees

Une affaire de pédophilie met en cause un prêtre du diocèse de Bayonne. L’information a été livrée par l’évêque Marc Aillet sur le site du diocèse de Bayonne, ce mercredi soir.

“Mgr Aillet prend la parole au sujet d’une affaire de pédophilie dans notre diocèse.” C’est sous ce titre que le site Internet du diocèse de Bayonne, Lescar et Oloron publie une lettre de l’évêque Marc Aillet adressée aux diocésains. Il y évoque en détail l’affaire mettant en cause le prêtre Jean-François Sarramagnan.

Monseigneur Aillet commence par placer le contexte. “En octobre 2007, il avait fait une tentative de suicide, alors qu’il était curé de la paroisse St-Etienne de Bayonne, en raison d’une affaire avec une jeune fille, pour laquelle la justice s’est prononcée.” Au cours de l’entretien qu’il eut avec l’évêque en 2009, l’abbé Sarramagnan l’informa “de faits plus anciens, qui s’étaient produits dans le cadre familial, au cours de l’été 1990, et qu’il porta à la connaissance de son frère et de sa belle-sœur”.

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FRANCE
The Local

A priest in south-western France has been accused of sexually abusing a minor, the latest in a long line of alleged paedophilia in French churches.

It was the mother of the victim who spoke out, claiming that her son – the nephew of the priest – was abused two decades ago.

The assaults allegedly occurred in Bayonne, in south western France, when the victim was a teenager.

Bayonne Bishop Marc Aillet (pictured below), who is known for his conservative positions and leading a crusade against abortion, said in an open letter to his diocese on Wednesday said he had reported the matter to the Bayonne prosecutor.

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VATICAN CITY
Vatican Radio

(Vatican Radio) A press briefing was held on Thursday morning, in the John Paul II Hall of the Press Office of the Holy See, for the presentation of the Annual Report of the Autorità di Informazione Finanziaria (the Financial Information Authority, AIF), on the activities of financial reporting and supervision, both with regard to prudential decisions and for the prevention and combatting of money laundering and the financing of terrorism during Year IV, 2015.

Present at the briefing, in addition to the Father Federico Lombardi, SJ, the Director of the Holy See Press Office, were the President of the AIF, Dr René Brülhart, and the Director of the AIF, Dr Tommaso Di Ruzza.

Below, please find the official Press Release regarding the 2015 Annual Report of the Autorità di Informazione Finanziaria:

AIF press release | Annual Report 2015 | Effective regulatory framework

The Autorità di Informazione Finanziaria(AIF) of the Holy See and the Vatican City State has presented its Annual Report for 2015. The report reviews the activities and statistics of AIF for the year 2015.

2015 has seen an effective implementation and application of the regulatory framework of the Holy See and the Vatican City State. Furthermore, international cooperation of the Vatican competent authority with its foreign counterparts to fight illicit financial activities has been intensified.

“The full implementation and application of Regulation No. 1 has shown the effectiveness of the regulatory framework of the Holy See and Vatican City State,” said René Brülhart, President of AIF. “International cooperation remains a key commitment of AIF. Additional Memoranda of Understandings with competent authorities of other jurisdictions were signed and the exchange of information on a bilateral level has increased significantly.”

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VATICAN CITY
Montreal Gazette

Associated Press

VATICAN CITY – The Vatican’s financial watchdog says it received 544 reports of suspicious financial transactions last year, thanks in large part to beefed-up efforts to flag potential tax cheats who are using the Vatican bank to hide money.

In its annual report, the Financial Information Authority said Thursday it passed 17 cases on to Vatican prosecutors for possible investigation, up from seven a year earlier. In December, European evaluators urged prosecutors to actually bring charges in some of those cases since no indictments have been handed down.

Since 2011, 36 out of 900 suspect transactions have been forwarded to prosecutors for possible follow-up.

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VATICAN CITY
National Catholic Reporter

Joshua J. McElwee | Apr. 28, 2016

VATICAN CITY
The Vatican’s financial watchdog agency registered a three-fold increase in suspicious transactions undertaken in the city state’s financial institutions in 2015, marking 544 activities as questionable and freezing or halting movement of a total of some $2.4 million and 15.3 million Euros.

The Financial Information Authority, or AIF, says it also made 17 reports to the Vatican’s Office of the Promoter of Justice for possible review of crimes such as fraud, tax avoidance, tax evasion, and “more serious financial crimes … such as market disruption in foreign states.”

The watchdog agency revealed the statistics with the release of its fourth annual report Thursday. The agency, which was started by Pope Benedict XVI in 2010 but continued and strengthened under Pope Francis, has been working to bring the Vatican’s diverse set of financial organizations into compliance with international standards.

Thursday’s release comes as the city state’s financial dealings have again been in the spotlight, with news in recent weeks that the Vatican had suspended an external audit it had contracted with the international firm PricewaterhouseCoopers.

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DEUTSCHLAND
General-Anzeiger

27.04.2016 BONN. Die Skulptur vor der Kirche sieht dem ehemaligen Schulleiter und 2010 verstorbenen Missbrauchstäter, Pater Stüper, täuschend ähnlich. Nun wurde sie entfernt.

Das Aloisiuskolleg (Ako) hat eine seit Jahren heiß umstrittene Statue vor dem Eingang seiner Kirche entfernt. Offiziell war sie als Statue des Heiligen Jeremias ausgewiesen, inoffiziell wurde sie als „Stüper-Denkmal“ gehandelt. „Der Respekt vor den zahlreichen Betroffenen von sexualisierter Gewalt und Machtmissbrauch und ihr Schutz haben mich nach langem Abwägen zu dieser Entscheidung kommen lassen“, schreibt Rektor Pater Johannes Siebner an die Mitarbeiter, Eltern und Jesuitenbrüder.

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AUSTRALIEN
Katholisch

Drei frühere Kirchenmitarbeiter in Australien haben die Glaubwürdigkeit von Kurienkardinal George Pell im Missbrauchsskandal infrage gestellt. Medienberichten zufolge zeigten sich die drei ehemaligen leitenden Mitarbeiter des Schulamtes der Erzdiözese Melbourne am Mittwoch vor der Missbrauchskommission “geschockt”, “enttäuscht” und “verärgert” über die Aussage von Kardinal Pell im vergangenen Monat.

Pell hatte erklärt, er sei als damaliger Weihbischof von Melbourne bei den Missbrauchsvorwürfen gegen den Pfarrer Peter Searson vom Schulamt “hintergangen” und nur unvollständig informiert worden. Die Leitung des Schulamtes habe den Fall zum Schutz des damaligen Erzbischofs Frank Little “vertuschen” wollen, so der Kardinal in seiner von Rom aus per Videoschaltung getätigten Aussage. Trotz wiederholter Missbrauchsvorwürfe war der inzwischen verstorbene Searson jahrelang im Amt geblieben.

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AUSTRALIA
Bay 939

Rob McLennan / 28 April 2016

A former Christian Brother who abused children at a Geelong orphanage has admitted to a dozen charges of indecently assaulting young boys.

William Stuart Houston worked at St Augustine’s in the 1960’s. He left the Christian Brothers in the 1990’s.

The County Court yesterday lifted a supression order that had prevented the media from identifying the 77-year-old.

The charges are believed to relate to male victims during Houston’s time at St Augustines.

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ILLINOIS
WJBD

4/27/2016

SPRINGFIELD, IL (AP) – The Illinois attorney general is calling on state legislators to eliminate the statute of limitations for child sex crimes in the wake of former U.S. House Speaker Dennis Hastert’s sentencing.

Attorney General Lisa Madigan and the Illinois Coalition Against Sexual Assault issued a statement Wednesday, the day Hastert was sentenced to 15 months in a federal hush-money case. He pleaded guilty to breaking banking law while trying to pay someone millions to conceal sexual abuse.

Prosecutors contend the abuse occurred while Hastert was a teacher and wrestling coach decades ago, but too much time had passed to bring charges for the abuse.

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SOUTH AFRICA
Sowetan Live

Gauteng Social Development MEC Nandi Mayathula-Khoza has reacted with anger at the reports of abuse of women by Gauteng faith leaders.

On Monday‚ two national dailies‚ the Sowetan and Daily Sun‚ with chilling pictures‚ reported stories of two Gauteng pastors sexually and physically abusing young women in their teens and early 20s.

Mayathula-Khoza said the actions of Pastor Fezile Gxokwe of Mount Olive Church of Poortjie in Sedibeng were an indictment to gains achieved so far with freedom of women.

She also welcomed the arrest of another pastor who assaulted two teenage girls and a young lady in Carletonville‚ in the West Rand‚ whose sordid story was carried in the Sowetan.

“We welcome the arrest of the wicked man who prey on girls whilst masquerading as a man of God.

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PENNSYLVANIA
Reuters

HARRISBURG, PA. | BY DAVID DEKOK

A Pennsylvania judge on Wednesday ordered three Franciscan friars to stand trial on charges they endangered boys by assigning a fourth cleric they knew to be a sexual predator to work at a Catholic high school in the 1990s.

Magisterial District Judge Paula Aigner ordered Fathers Giles Schinelli, 73; Robert D’Aversa, 69, and Anthony Criscitelli, 61, to stand trial in Blair County Court of Common Pleas in Hollidaysburg, Pa., on felony charges of endangering the welfare of children and conspiracy. No date for the trial was set.

“We’re obviously pleased at the court’s ruling and are ready to take the case to trial,” Deputy Attorney General Daniel Dye, the prosecutor, said in a phone interview.

Lawyers for the three priests could not be reached for comment.

The three are accused of enabling Brother Stephen Baker, a member of their order, to sexually assault numerous boys at Bishop McCort High School in Johnstown, Pennsylvania, and elsewhere. According to testimony, they assigned him to jobs where he would have contact with boys despite knowing he was an active pedophile. Baker committed suicide in 2013.

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UTAH
Slate

By Dahlia Lithwick

Brigham Young University made national headlines this month when it was revealed that female students who reported being raped could be suspended or expelled for violating the school’s onerous honor code. The details of the case are infuriating. Whether or not the school is technically in violation of Title IX remains to be seen, but the school is clearly violating the spirit of the law in a way that does untold damage to rape survivors and makes future rapes more likely.

BYU, a private university in Provo, Utah, is owned by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. A handful of students came forward at a rape awareness conference earlier this month to describe their experiences with the school’s honor code policy. The Salt Lake Tribune then picked up and expanded upon the story, reporting that the practice of expelling rape victims for violations of the university’s honor code dates back decades. A petition with more than 110,000 signatures is calling for the school to amend the honor code to afford amnesty to the victims of sexual assault. BYU says it is “studying” its policies around investigating the victims of sexual assault for conduct that may represent small honor code violations.

The BYU honor code is far more restrictive than most other university codes. Created by BYU students in 1949, it forbids students from drinking, using drugs, wearing tight clothing, gambling, drinking coffee, homosexual conduct, engaging in premarital sex, or being in the bedroom of anyone of the opposite sex. Code violations may lead to expulsion. The problem? This code is on a collision course with Title IX, the federal law that prohibits sex discrimination at any schools that receive funds from the U.S. government. Title IX requires that sexual assaults be counted and investigated; it certainly does not contemplate that any young woman fighting to protect her civil rights will be tossed out of her school for violating an honor code, a threat that is clearly antithetical to the promise and goals of Title IX.

The aforementioned online petition was launched earlier this month by 20-year-old BYU student Madi Barney, who reported last September that she was raped in her off-campus apartment by a man who is not a BYU student. According to police documents, the alleged attacker, Nasiru Seidu, admitted to Barney during a phone conversation that he had raped her. He now claims the sex was consensual. After agonizing for four days over whether she could report the assault and afford to be charged with an honor code violation, Barney went to the police and not the university. Seidu was arrested in September and is awaiting trial. But the school got ahold of her police report when sheriff’s deputy Edwin Randolph turned it over to the BYU Honor Code Office. Both her alleged attacker and Randolph were charged with witness retaliation, but the charges were later dropped. (A court petition filed by a prosecutor in the case described Seidu and Randolph as “friends,” something that Randolph denied.)

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UNITED STATES
Love, Joy, Feminism

April 25, 2016 by Libby Anne

There’s something we need to talk about. Opposition to trans bathroom access is perhaps most pronounced among evangelical Christians, a group whose inability to deal with sexual abuse in their own communities rivals that of the Catholic church. Evangelicals claim they oppose trans bathroom access because of the threat this access poses to women and children. Why, then, are they so quick to turn a blind eye to the abuse of women and children in their own communities?

When 15-year-old Tina Anderson was raped by a church elder and became pregnant, the church leadership believed her rapist’s claim that the interaction was consensual and punished Tina by making her confess to sexual immorality in front of the congregation, sending her away for the duration of her pregnancy, and forcing her to give her baby up for adoption. Meanwhile, her rapist was allowed to retain his position in the church’s children’s ministry.

For decades, Christian homeschool families overlooked warning signs and allowed Bill Gothard to maintain his leadership position in IBLP and his contact with and control over the teenage girls he hired as his personal secretaries. The IBLP Board of Directors was aware that Gothard had crossed lines and done things that were inappropriate and yet they took no action. Meanwhile, the many dozens of girls who suffered harassment and sexual molestation at Gothard’s hands suffered in silence, knowing that they would not be believed if they told someone what was happening.

There was a time I thought such abuses were rare, perhaps confined to more fundamentalist groups and certainly not characteristic of evangelicals as a whole. I’m no longer so sure of this.

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ALABAMA
Reveal: The Center for Investigative Reporting

By Amy Julia Harris / April 27, 2016

The day care owner was arrested in 2010 in Birmingham, Alabama.

Three young girls said Robert Frost, the owner of Christian’s Day Care and Learning Academy, had molested them for years at his church day care. They reported that Frost would sit them on his knee, slip his hands beneath their clothes and violate them.

The consequences for Frost came quickly. At trial, he was criminally charged with first-degree sexual abuse, convicted and sentenced to 20 years in prison.

The family of one of Frost’s victims then sued the organization they thought was in charge of the day care: Wooten Chapel Freewill Baptist Church.

They had good reason to think the church was responsible. Frost’s day care was registered under Wooten Chapel’s name. The church’s pastor was the day care’s contact person.

Several of the day care workers were longtime Wooten Chapel congregants and taught Bible study at the church. Frost offered parents discounts if they attended the church’s worship services. And kids were transported to the day care in the church’s white van.

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TEXAS
Baylor Lariat

By Kalyn Story

April is Sexual Assault Awareness Month, and Baylor has held several opportunities for students to get involved and educated on the issue. Although the month is ending, sexual assault awareness remains relevant.

Justin Smith, 2010 Baylor Law School graduate and current partner vat Sloan, Bagley, Hatcher & Perry Law Firm in Longview, has tried several sexual abuse and assault cases. Smith said he believes it is a much bigger problem than people realize.

“It is great that we have Sexual Assault Awareness Month, but we don’t need a month, we need 12 months,” Smith said. “We need 365 days of awareness and support for victims. Victims are affected for much longer than a month, and we need to be aware all the time.”

Smith said he is glad America is recognizing sexual assault as a problem now, but he believes sexual assault awareness had been virtually nonexistent until recently. Specifically, he cites the realization of abuse within the Catholic Church and Boy Scouts as helping open up the discussion about sexual assault. Despite this, Smith said he doesn’t want the conversation to stop there.

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MALTA
Independent

A court has turned down a request by the victims of clerical sex abuse to have their compensation case reassigned.

Lawrence Grech, Joseph Magro, Leonard Camilleri, David Cassar, Noel Dimech, Angelo Spiteri, Raymond Azzopardi, Charles Falzon, Philip Cauchi and Joseph Mangion had filed a case for compensation after Godwin Pulis and Carmelo Scerri had been found guilty of sexually abusing them at the St Joseph Home in Santa Venera in the late 80s.

The accused were sentenced to five and six years in prison and were later defrocked. Their sentences were confirmed on appeal.

The compensation case had been assigned to Mr Justice J.R. Micallef but the plaintiffs had requested the judge to recuse himself. They argued that since he was the President of the catholic Radju Maria radio station he could not be impartial. The judge had turned down the request and the plaintiffs then filed a separate constitutional application requesting the case to be reassigned.

The application was filed against the Attorney General, the Missionary Society of St Paul, the Archdiocese of Malta, Godwin Scerri and Charles Pulis. The men claimed a breach of their fundamental right to a fair hearing.

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MALTA
Malta Today

Matthew Agius 28 April 2016

A Constitutional court has turned down a request that it order a judge to recuse himself from hearing a case asking for damages for clerical sex abuse, due to his involvement in church-related organisations.

Judge Mark Chetcuti delivered the judgement in the Constitutional case filed this May by eleven victims of clerical sex abuse, after Judge Joseph R. Micallef had turned down their request that he abstain from deciding the claim.

The plaintiffs had been seeking redress after suffering abuse at the hands of priests whilst they had been children in Church care in the late 80s and early 90s. Carmelo Pulis and Godwin Scerri, both now defrocked, had been jailed, for 5 and 6 years respectively, for their cruelty and abuse against the boys in July 2011, confirmed on appeal in November 2012.

But when the subsequent civil case for damages against the Archdiocese of Malta was assigned to Mr. Justice Micallef, a staunch Catholic and president of the Malta Radio Maria Association, the men filed a request that the judge recuse himself, citing a perceived risk of pro-church bias on the part of the judge.

Micallef did not uphold their request and the men had then, in April 2015, filed urgent Constitutional proceedings, claiming a breach of their right to a fair trial.

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MALTA
Times of Malta

by Keith Micallef

Mr Justice Joseph R Micallef will continue to preside a case filed by victims of clerical sex abuse at Dar San Ġużepp in the late 1980s, who are seeking compensation from the Church.

The victims had questioned the judge’s impartiality on grounds that he presides the Radju Marija Foundation, which they claimed had strong links with the ecclesiastical authorities.

However, Mr Justice Micallef had turned down their request to stop hearing the case, forcing the plaintiffs to file an application before another court.

In a judgment this morning, Mr Justice Mark Chetcuti rejected the victim’s request saying that their fundamental right to a fair hearing had not been breached.

In July 2011, Charles Pulis and Godwin Scerri, both members of the Missionary Society of St Paul’s, were sentenced to six and five years’ imprisonment respectively for sexually abusing 11 boys in their care at St Joseph’s Home in Sta Venera in the late 1980s. The sentence had been confirmed on appeal in November 2012.

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NEW YORK
New York Daily News

BY LARRY MCSHANE NEW YORK DAILY NEWS Wednesday, April 27, 2016

Only the 2011 arrest of Penn State pervert Jerry Sandusky convinced an upstate sex abuse victim to end decades of silence about his own nightmarish abuse.

“Something happened — I said to myself, ‘You know what? I have to come forward,’” recalled Jack Cesare, a former upstate Catholic schoolboy molested by a predatory janitor while in grammar school.

Sandusky, tried and convicted in Pennsylvania, will die behind bars. The man who raped 13-year-old Cesare in Albany lived another 20 years and died a free man, a beneficiary of New York State law.

The 1977 assault inside the St. Teresa of Avila School was never addressed in its aftermath, with Cesare too humiliated to say anything until long after the statute of limitations in his case expired.

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VATICAN CITY
Vatican Information Service – Bollettino

Vatican City, 27 April 2016 – Yesterday at 3.30 p.m. a new hearing began in the ongoing trial for the dissemination of reserved information and documents in Vatican City State Tribunal, according to information provided by the director of the Holy See Press Office, Fr. Federico Lombardi, S.J. It was attended by the members of the Tribunal (Professors Giuseppe Dalla Torre, Piero Antonio Bonnet, Paolo Papanti-Pelletier and Venerando Marano), the Promoter of Justice (Professors Gian Pietro Milano and Roberto Zannotti), and the defendants Ángel Lucio Vallejo Balda, Francesca Immacolata Chaouqui, Nicola Maio and Gianluigi Nuzzi, with their respective legal representatives Emanuela Bellardini, Laura Sgrò, Rita Claudia Baffioni and Roberto Palombi. The defendant Emiliano Fittipaldi was absent, but his lawyer Lucia Teresa Musso was present.

The examination of witnesses began during the hearing, which was dedicated fully to the testimony of the first, Stefano Fralleoni, who was the Accountant General of the Prefecture of Economic Affairs of the Holy See at the time of the events in question. He was interrogated by the members of the Tribunal, the Promoter of Justice and the defendants’ lawyers. Finally, the report of the proceedings was read and approved. The hearing was adjourned at approximately 6.45 p.m.

The next hearing will take place on Thursday 28 April at 3.30 p.m., during which the interrogation of admitted witnesses will continue.

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AUSTRALIA
Herald Sun

Andrew Bolt

HIS critics still claim — falsely — that Cardinal George Pell tried to save his church by covering up for paedophiles.

Yet Pell today is in an open war with Vatican officials who seem to be covering up for crooks.

You might call that ironic. I call it a lesson to Pell haters that he’s not the kind of man they take him for.

Last week Archbishop Giovanni Becciu, from the Vatican’s powerful state secretariat, ordered Vatican officials not to co-operate with the PricewaterhouseCoopers audit overseen by Pell into church finances.

To the public it must suggest the Godfather films weren’t too wrong and criminals have their fingers on the Vatican’s billions.

But to Pell’s critics it should suggest he’s not actually a man who’d do nothing about criminals in his church.

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PENNSYLVANIA
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests

For immediate release: Wednesday, April 27, 2016

Statement by David Clohessy of St. Louis, Director of SNAP, the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (314 566 9790, 314 645 5915 home, davidgclohessy@gmail.com)

We’re grateful that the trial of three Pennsylvania Catholic officials who repeatedly ignored and hid child sex abuse reports against a cleric will go forward.

[ABC News]

[PennLive]

Church officials claimed they did nothing wrong because they sent Brother Stephen Baker to a doctor who essentially cleared him to stay on the job. We’re not buying it. We’re glad the judge didn’t either.

Catholic bureaucrats have made this claim about thousands of predators: “A doctor said he was ok.” But in most cases, bishops carefully pick devout Catholic doctors who will provide the “diagnosis” bishops seek. Or they give doctors inaccurate and inadequate information about the predator. Or they pick general practitioners who know little or nothing about sexual deviants. So it’s “garbage in, garbage out.”

Church officials often use these carefully-chosen professionals for “cover” to keep sexually troubled priests, nuns, brothers and seminarians in parishes and schools, and later feign shock when abuse reports surface.

We are saddened but not surprised that Franciscan officials didn’t tell principal William Rushin about Brother Baker’s crimes. And we hope that anyone with knowledge or suspicions of wrongdoing by Franciscans, especially Anthony Criscitelli, Giles Schinelli and Robert D’Aversa will speak up now.

No matter what lawmakers or church officials do or don’t do, we urge every single person who saw, suspected or suffered child sex crimes and cover ups in Catholic churches or institutions – especially in the Altoona area – to protect kids by calling police, get help by calling therapists, expose wrongdoers by calling law enforcement, get justice by calling attorneys, and be comforted by calling support groups like ours. This is how kids will be safer, adults will recover, criminals will be prosecuted, cover ups will be deterred and the truth will surface.

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CANADA/UNITED STATES
BishopAccountability.org

Summary of Case: Raoul Gauthier was ordained for Canada’s Diocese of Gravelbourg in 1933. He assisted in several Saskatchewan parishes before going on leave in 1939. He reappeared in 1940 as a hospital chaplain in the Diocese of Crookston MN, in the United States. After four years in Crookston, he was sent to a hospital chaplaincy in the St. Cloud diocese. It is unclear where Gauthier spent 1948-53. During 1953-78 he was chaplain at St. Michael’s Hospital in Sauk Centre, MN, except for a period 1968-69 when he was at a “clergy retreat center” run by the Servants of the Paraclete in Nevis. In 1979 Gauthier was charged with fourth-degree criminal sexual conduct after he admitted to fondling a developmentally disabled man. He fled shortly thereafter to Canada. He died in 1995, never having been extradited to the Unites States. Gauthier’s name was included on the Diocese of St. Cloud’s list January 3, 2014 of clergy involved in incidents of likely claims of sexual abuse of minors.

Ordained: 1933
Retired: 1979
Died: 1995

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PENNSYLVANIA
WTAE

HOLLIDAYSBURG, Pa —Three Franciscan friars must stand trial on charges linked to their role in supervising a suspected sexual predator accused of molesting more than 100 children, a judge ruled Wednesday.

The decision comes after additional testimony in their preliminary hearing on child endangerment and conspiracy charges.

Giles Schinelli, Robert D’Aversa and Anthony Criscitelli assigned or supervised Brother Stephen Baker when he served at Bishop McCort Catholic High School in Johnstown in the 1990s.

The defense had argued that it’s too late to file charges and that their clients did their best to supervise Baker given what they knew.

More than 90 students have settled lawsuits for more than $8 million claiming Baker molested them, mostly while acting as a sports trainer. Baker fatally stabbed himself in the heart days after a diocese settled claims by former high school students in Warren, Ohio, that they had been abused in the late 1980s.

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PENNSYLVANIA
Tribune-Democrat

By Dave Sutor
dsutor@tribdem.com

HOLLIDAYSBURG – Blair County Magisterial District Judge Paula Aigner has ruled that sufficient evidence has been presented and charges can move forward against all three Franciscan leaders accused of allowing Brothers Stephen Baker to be around children at Bishop McCort High School or other locations – even though they allegedly knew he was suspected of having sexually abused students previously.

The Attorney General’s Office rested its case Wednesday at the Blair County Courthouse against the Revs. Giles A. Schinelli, 73; Robert J. D’Aversa, 69; and Anthony M. Criscitelli, 62 – Third Order Regular, Province of the Immaculate Conception, minister provincials – who are accused of conspiracy and endangering the welfare of children.

The attorneys for the Franciscan leaders are expected to present their cases after the lunch recess.

Earlier Wednesday, Former Bishop McCort High School Principal William Rushin testified that no one ever told him about Baker.

“I should have been notified,” he said.

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OKLAHOMA
Texomas Homepage

[with video]

LAWTON, Okla.

A Lawton Catholic priest who previously plead guilty to sexual battery, has now been removed from his post.

Father Jose Alexis Davila was convicted of his crime in 2012 while working in San Diego.

New reports claim he arrived in Lawton in December of 2015 having been deemed “fit to minister.”

Archbishop Paul Coakley says “new information” about the allegations against Davila led to his removal from Blessed Sacrament and Saint Mary’s Catholic School.

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PENNSYLVANIA
KARE

A Pennsylvania judge has ordered three Franciscan friars, including one with Minnesota ties, to stand trial on charges linked to their role supervising another friar accused of molesting scores of children.

The decision comes after more testimony Wednesday in their preliminary hearing on child endangerment and conspiracy charges.

Anthony Criscitelli, who recently served at St. Bridget’s Parish in Minneapolis, Giles Schinelli and Robert D’Aversa assigned or supervised Brother Stephen Baker when he served at Bishop McCort Catholic High School in Johnstown in the 1990s. Prosecutors say they enabled him.

The defense argued that it’s too late to file charges and said their clients did their best to supervise Baker given what they knew.

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UNITED STATES
Chicago Sun-Times

Bill Goodykoontz | USA TODAY Network

Chilean writer and director Pablo Larraín moves away from films about the Pinochet regime with “The Club,” in which he takes on the Catholic Church.

It’s an interesting movie, odd and disturbing by design. But it’s also effective.

Four men and a woman share a house in a small coastal village. They train a greyhound and mill around. Over time, we learn why they are there.

They are disgraced priests, sentenced, basically, to the house to keep them both out of trouble and out of the public’s notice. They have committed various offenses against the church, which, as someone notes later in the film, are also crimes. (“Has it ever occurred to you that you’re a criminal?”)

The woman, Mother Monica (Antonia Zegers), looks after the priests, keeps things in order — and has sins of her own.

Another priest arrives, and Mother Monica explains the house rules and curfews to him. It’s a monastic existence, you might say, though the irony is uncomfortable. Lots of prayer and meditation, some TV and not much else, other than working with the dog.

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PARAGUAY
La Nacion

[con audio]

[The Apostolic Nuncio, Eliseo Ariotti, spoke about the case of censorship of the series of publications that the research team of the newspaper La Nacion brought to light under the name of “Dark Church”, which exposed Argentine priests accused of sexual abuse of children were hiding in Paraguay and protected by by authorities of the Catholic church in Paraguay.

Monsignor Ariotti told Channel 13 RPC he made a phone call to the owner of the Nacion Communications – Sarah Cartes Group – but did not specifically request that the investigation be stopped but “to be allowed to clarify what happened.”]

El Nuncio Apostólico Eliseo Ariotti habló sobre el caso de censura de la serie de publicaciones que el equipo de investigación del diario La Nación sacó a la luz bajo el nombre de “Iglesia Oscura”, en la que se dejaba al descubierto como sacerdotes argentinos denunciados por abuso sexual a niños eran escondidos en Paraguay por autoridades de la iglesia católica en nuestro país.

Monseñor Ariotti reconoció a Canal 13 RPC que realizó un llamado telefónico a la propietaria del Grupo Nación de Comunicaciones Sarah Cartes, pero que no pidió expresamente que la investigación se dejara de publicar, sino “que se me permita aclarar lo que pasó”.

Ariotti dijo que le comentó a Sarah Cartes que estas publicaciones lo dañaban moralmente, pero que no expresó que le dañaban la carrera.

“No era oportuna la publicación, fue nomás fue lo que le dije a Sarah Cartes”, siguió la alta autoridad de la Iglesia Católica en nuestro país.

En otra parte de la entrevista, en Nuncio Apostólico dejó en claro que los periodistas de La Nación primero le debían entregar los documentos con los que contaban antes de publicarlos.

“¿Por qué si periodistas de LN sabía de documentos no vinieron a pasármelos?. Solo en abril me pidieron aclaraciones del caso que estaban investigando. Este caso debía ser primeramente estudiado, los documentos eran fotocopias y mensajes de mail”, lamentó en otro momento Nuncio Ariotti.

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ARGENTINA
La Nacion

[The Benedictine Abbey of the Child Jesus in Argentina agreed not to receive into its midst the pedophile priest Fabian Nestor Monzon, 47, He was detained and accused of seriously outrageous sexual abuse, aggravated because he was minister of a religious cult. Abuse caused serious damage to the health of the victim, a child under 3 in Reconquista.]

José E. Bordón

SANTA FE.- Tolerancia cero de la iglesia argentina para los casos de abusos de menores comprobados que hayan cometido sacerdotes. La Abadía Benedictina del Niño Dios, de Victoria, Entre Ríos, no aceptó recibir al sacerdote pedófilo, Fabián Néstor Monzón (47 años), detenido e imputado por abuso sexual gravemente ultrajante, doblemente agravado por la condición de ser un ministro de un culto religioso reconocido, y por producir un grave daño en la salud de la víctima, una menor de 3 años, en la parroquia de un barrio de Reconquista, al norte de la provincia.

“El cura Monzón no ha estado, no está, ni va a estar en la Abadía”, fue la respuesta que dio a conocer el abad Carlos Oberti, de la comunidad benedictina de Victoria. Además, la comunidad no está en condiciones de recibir a un sacerdote en esta situación”, dijeron desde la Abadía.

El abad Oberti mantuvo una comunicación con Jorge Lozano, obispo de Gualeguaychú, que tiene jurisdicción sobre Victoria, y juntos acordaron dar a conocer un pronunciamiento público respecto de este espinoso asunto. De ese modo, los benedictinos procuran quedar al margen de una polémica desatada en torno a la decisión de la Justicia santafesina, que rechazó un pedido de la fiscalía de mandar al cura Monzón a la cárcel, y en su lugar resolvió permitirle ir a un retiro espiritual.

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PARAGUAY
Clarin

[Journalists of the newspaper La Nacion of Paraguay rallied yesterday in front of the newspaper because of as decision by the company to suspend the publication of a series of reports on pedophile priests accused in Argentina who received ecclesiastical protection of the Church of Paraguay .

At the same time, the journalist Paul Noah, co – author of the research, released an open letter to Pope Francis in which remarked that he hoped the pope received his complaint and take care of the matter. The journalist told the pope that the only thing he could do was banish the practice of moving accused priests and encourage people to continue fighting against the arkness which many want to keep in the church.

The Union of Journalists denounced the apostolic nuncio (Vatican representative), Monsignor Eliseo Ariotti, who encouraged suspension of publication because it was “inconvenient” for the church. The newspaper’s management said there was no censorship because the series of notoes on priests who ministered in the country was published and there was the expected reaction from church authorities.]

Periodistas del diario La Nación de Paraguay se manifestaron ayer frente a las instalaciones del periódico por la decisión de la empresa de suspender las publicación de una serie de informes sobre curas argentinos acusados de pedofilia que recibieron protección eclesiástica de la Iglesia de Paraguay.

A la vez, el periodista Pablo Noé, el coautor de la investigación, divulgó una carta abierta dirigida al papa Francisco en el que remarca: “Espero, papa Francisco, que llegue esta denuncia a sus manos y que se tomen cartas en el asunto. En este tipo de situaciones no importan las cuestiones superfluas ni las medias verdades. Lo único que se puede hacer para desterrar este tipo de prácticas es seguir el camino que usted marcó, que desde el ejemplo nos impulsa a seguir peleando contra la oscuridad en la que mucha gente quiere mantener a la Iglesia”.​

En otro tramo de la carta al papa, Noé dice: “Por la influencia histórica, por la preponderancia que tiene usted como líder mundial, por la necesidad de que los modelos a seguir sean contundentes, le ruego humildemente que pueda dar una mirada al trabajo de investigación publicado en este medio. Estoy convencido de que servirá como un esfuerzo más para hacer de este un mundo mejor, que es el mensaje que más me impactó de su pontificado”.

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PENNSYLVANIA
PennLIve

By The Associated Press
on April 27, 2016

HOLLIDAYSBURG, Pa. (AP) — A former principal of a Roman Catholic high school testified Wednesday that he was never told by a Franciscan religious order that a friar he hired as a teacher had been accused of child sexual abuse.

William Rushin spoke at the preliminary hearing of three Franciscan friars accused of allowing Brother Stephen Baker to hold jobs where he molested children or posed a threat to children.

The hearing will determine whether Giles Schinelli, Robert D’Aversa and Anthony Criscitelli will stand trial on child endangerment and conspiracy charges.

William Rushin was principal of Bishop McCort Catholic High School in Johnstown from 1989 to 1997.

He said he hired Baker as a religion teacher and Baker eventually volunteered as an athletic trainer.

When asked if he would have hired Baker had he known of the allegations, Rushin replied, “Obviously, it would have been inappropriate to have someone like that working with children.”

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AUSTRALIA
Stuff

LOUISE HALL

A notorious paedophile priest in Australia has pleaded guilty to historical child sex offences on the eve of his trial.

On Wednesday, Vincent Gerard Ryan, 78, pleaded guilty to attempted homosexual intercourse with a male aged between 10 and 18, indecent assault on a male and gross indecency with a male under 18.

Ryan had been due to face a two-week trial in the Downing Centre District Court. The offences occurred in the mid-1980s in the Hunter region of New South Wales. The victim was aged between 13 and 15.

The Catholic priest, commonly known as Vince Ryan, has previously spent 14 years in jail for preying on 35 boys aged six to 14 between 1972 and 1991. He was released from Long Bay jail in 2010.

In a statement, Bishop Bill Wright of the Catholic Diocese of Maitland-Newcastle, welcomed Ryan’s guilty pleas.

“While a small consolation, I am grateful that Ryan’s victim and others were spared the ordeal of a trial. Ryan’s past crimes continue to throw a dark shadow onto the Diocese’s present and I am terribly saddened that there is yet another child whose innocence was robbed by the sins of this man,” he said.

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AUSTRALIA
Daily Mail

By AUSTRALIAN ASSOCIATED PRESS and NELSON GROOM FOR DAILY MAIL AUSTRALIA

A Catholic priest working at a notorious boarding college enticed a Year 7 student into his office with computer games then raped him on the floor.

Michael Scott Aulsebrook, 60, of Traralgon, was found guilty of one count of rape after he fought the charge in the Victorian County Court. He has also admitted to sexually assaulting two other children.

During his trial, the jury heard Mr Aulsebrook invited the boy into his office at Salesian College Rupertswood after lights-out with an offer to play on his computer, then gave his victim a soft drink that had been spiked with a sedative.

The boy woke up on the floor while Mr Aulsebrook was raping him and pushing his face into the floor.

‘He felt a large amount of pain,’ prosecutor Andrew Grant said during the trial.
Afterwards, Aulsebrook said to the boy: ‘Get out of my sight. You disgust me’.

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PENNSYLVANIA
ABC News

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
HOLLIDAYSBURG, Pa. — Apr 27, 2016

The Latest on a hearing to decide whether three Franciscan friars should stand trial on child endangerment and other charges for their role in supervising another friar accused of molesting more than 100 children (all times local):

——

3:05 p.m.

A lawyer for one of three Franciscan friars ordered to stand trial in Pennsylvania in a child endangerment case says there is no evidence his client did anything wrong.

Giles Schinelli, Robert D’Aversa and Anthony Criscitelli assigned or supervised another friar accused of molesting scores of children at a Catholic high school in Johnstown, Pennsylvania, in the 1990s.

They now face trial on charges of conspiracy and child endangerment.

Attorney Charles Porter Jr. says Schinelli investigated an allegation against Brother Stephen Baker and had him examined by a doctor, who found he had no sexual disorder. Given that, the attorney says there’s no evidence of criminal intent.

The attorneys for the other two men declined to comment after the hearing, as did all three friars.

Baker killed himself in 2013.

———

2:35 p.m.

A Pennsylvania judge has ordered three Franciscan friars to stand trial on charges linked to their role supervising another friar accused of molesting scores of children.

The decision comes after more testimony Wednesday in their preliminary hearing on child endangerment and conspiracy charges.

Giles Schinelli, Robert D’Aversa and Anthony Criscitelli assigned or supervised Brother Stephen Baker when he served at Bishop McCort Catholic High School in Johnstown in the 1990s. Prosecutors say they enabled him.

The defense argued that it’s too late to file charges and said their clients did their best to supervise Baker given what they knew.

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PENNSYLVANIA
WRAL

HOLLIDAYSBURG, PA. — A former principal of a Roman Catholic high school testified Wednesday that he was never told by a Franciscan religious order that a friar he hired as a teacher had been accused of child sexual abuse.

William Rushin spoke at the preliminary hearing of three Franciscan friars accused of allowing Brother Stephen Baker to hold jobs where he molested children or posed a threat to children.

The hearing will determine whether Giles Schinelli, Robert D’Aversa and Anthony Criscitelli will stand trial on child endangerment and conspiracy charges.

William Rushin was principal of Bishop McCort Catholic High School in Johnstown from 1989 to 1997.

He said he hired Baker as a religion teacher and Baker eventually volunteered as an athletic trainer.

When asked if he would have hired Baker had he known of the allegations, Rushin replied, “Obviously, it would have been inappropriate to have someone like that working with children.”

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GUAM
Pacific Daily News

Jasmine Stole, Pacific Daily News April 28, 2016

Police plan to check on protesters expected at the Redemptoris Mater Seminary in Yona Thursday, after two protests occurred in the past week.

Following a heated protest at the A.B. Won Pat International Airport last Thursday, the Guam Police Department was called to another protest at the seminary Tuesday.

Police will be making occasional checks at the seminary Thursday in anticipation of the protest, according to Capt. Kim Santos, GPD spokeswoman.

After dozens of silent protests in front of the Dulce Nombre de Maria Cathedral-Basilica in Hagåtña for the past year or so, the protests in the past week have not been as silent.

Police have not been present at the silent protests, hand billing or prayer demonstrations hosted by the Laity Forward Movement or the Concerned Catholics of Guam at various local churches, according to Robert Klitzkie, former senator.

Robert Klitzkie and members of Concerned Catholics and Laity Forward have been calling attention to Archbishop Anthony Apuron, some calling for his resignation, consistently over the past two years. Apuron’s ties with the Neocatechumenal Way have angered some local Catholics.

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MISSOURI
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests

For immediate release: Wednesday, April 27, 2016

Statement by Barbara Dorris of St. Louis, Outreach Director of SNAP, the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (314 503 0003 cell, bdorris@SNAPnetwork.org)

Bishop Edward Rice, the new head of the Springfield diocese, should publicly urge a statewide Catholic men’s group from honoring perhaps the most disgraced US prelate ever, his predecessor, Cardinal Bernard Law

Yesterday, we suggested other steps he should immediately take, steps that are frankly more important than this one about the Knights of Columbus.
http://www.snapnetwork.org/mo_new_bishop_named_victims_respond

But if he’s too timid to warn his flock about predator priests, this request – stop Catholics from honoring a proven wrongdoer – is as quick and simple as it gets.

A large statewide Catholic group that met last weekend just gave a scholarship named after law, who was forced to resign because of widespread abuse cover ups.

The Missouri Knights of Columbus donated money to a student for his education as the “Cardinal Bernard Law Youth Scholarship.”

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OKLAHOMA
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests

For immediate release: Tuesday, April 26, 2016

Statement by David Clohessy of St. Louis, Director of SNAP, the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (314 566 9790, 314 645 5915 home, davidgclohessy@gmail.com)

We’re thrilled that caring and courageous parishioners challenged a reckless and secretive archbishop, and that a convicted predator priest will not head a parish with an elementary school.

[News OK]

[KFOR]

Frankly, we don’t believe Archbishop Paul Coakley’s claim to have found “new information” about Fr. Jose Alexis Davila. We believe Oklahoma City Catholic officials buckled under public and parishioner pressure. And it shouldn’t take outraged moms and dads to keep a predator priest out of the pulpit.

We renew our challenge to Coakely: disclose whether you’ve secretly welcomed other sex offender clergy into your archdiocese and hold an open public meeting to answer questions about your secretive and irresponsible decisions.

Sadly, we predict in a few months, Fr. Alexis Davila will quietly be re-assigned to a church again. Remember, since 2012, he’s been sent to Nevada, Utah and to four Oklahoma parishes. In a few years, we predict, he’ll be discovered again working around unsuspecting families and vulnerable teenagers.

We hope that anyone in any of the four states where Fr. Alexis Davila’s been who has information or suspicions about his crimes or cover ups by his supervisors will come forward now.

This case reminds us that every single person who saw, suspected or suffered child sex crimes and cover ups in Catholic churches or institutions to protect kids by calling police, get help by calling therapists, expose wrongdoers by calling law enforcement, get justice by calling attorneys, and be comforted by calling support groups like ours. This is how kids will be safer, adults will recover, criminals will be prosecuted, cover ups will be deterred and the truth will surface.

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ROME
Accounting Today

ROME (APRIL 26, 2016)
BY MICHAEL COHN

The Vatican’s Holy See has suspended its contract with PricewaterhouseCoopers but stressed that the suspension is not due to problems with PwC’s work.

The Vatican has been struggling to straighten out its finances and appointed the former chairman and CEO of Deloitte & Touche Italy last year to oversee a cleanup of its scandal-scarred bank (see Former Deloitte Italy CEO Appointed to Audit Vatican). Pope Francis has pledged to replace the bank’s top management, which has been plagued for years by accusations of corruption, financial mismanagement and money laundering. However, the suspension of the auditing contract with PwC may be a sign that the struggle to properly audit the Vatican’s finances is far from over.

A spokesperson for PwC’s Italian firm declined to comment.

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CANADA
The Catholic Register

BY MICHAEL SWAN, THE CATHOLIC REGISTER
April 27, 2016

A $21-million shortfall on a $25-million fundraising campaign was a fiasco, but it wasn’t an attempt to weasel out of the legal or moral obligations Catholics have in the wake of the residential schools tragedy, Grouard-McLennan Archibishop Gerard Pettipas told The Catholic Register.

This newspaper first reported the shortfall in January of this year, but a Globe and Mail report that hit the front page April 19 has raised accusations that the 50 Catholic organizations party to the 2006 Indian Residential Schools Settlement Agreement used legal trickery to sidestep their obligations.

“It isn’t accurate,” said Pettipas, who chairs the board of 50 Catholic Entities who are party to the settlement. “There was a cash contribution.

There was in-kind payment. There was a best-efforts campaign. We did all those. There wasn’t any weaselling out.”

As the final report of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission was pending last year there was a disagreement between the federal government and Catholic lawyers over whether or not the Catholic Entities had fully paid the last $16.6 million of $29 million owing in cash contributions to healing programs that would be run by First Nations organizations. The government contended the Catholic entities had paid $15 million and still owed a final $1.6 million.

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OKLAHOMA
KSWO

[with video]

By Allie Haddican, Reporter

LAWTON, OK (KSWO) – A priest who was convicted of an assault and battery charge in California, and who has been serving at a church here in Lawton, has been removed from his position on Tuesday. This was following public outcry over his appointment.

The news of Father Jose Alexis Davila’s removal from Blessed Sacrament Catholic Church came just days after details of the crime surfaced. He had pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor assault and battery charge for inappropriately touching a 19-year-old woman in 2011. The priest completed his probation requirements and the charges were dismissed last October.

In a statement on Saturday, Oklahoma City Archbishop Paul Coakley says because of this, he believed Father Davila could return to the ministry.

But in another statement from the Archbishop Tuesday night, he says that new information he received made it necessary to remove Father Davila from all work at Blessed Sacrament, and at the other churches he served in Elgin, Apache and Sterling.

St. Mary’s Catholic School is right next door to Blessed Sacrament. Students and parents stood silently holding signs across the street from where the Oklahoma City Archbishop was meeting with school staff about Father Davila. They were holding a silent protest over Father Davila’s position there.

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OKLAHOMA
Lawton Constitution

Wed, 04/27/2016

Mike Andrews

A priest who had been convicted of assault and battery for an incident with a parishioner in San Diego in 2011 and had been hired to serve churches in Lawton, Elgin, Apache and Fletcher has now been relieved of his duties by the Archdiocese of Oklahoma City.

Archbishop Paul S. Coakley of the Archdiocese of Oklahoma City said in a statement: “After a continued investigation by archdiocesan staff, I became aware late Monday of new information regarding the allegations against Father Alexis Davila that made it necessary for me to remove him from pastoral work in the Archdiocese of Oklahoma City. Father Davila left the archdiocese on Tuesday.”

Davila had been hired to assist at Blessed Sacrament Catholic Church in Lawton and in March had been named administrator at Saint Ann Church, Elgin, and missions to Mother of Sorrows Church, Apache, and Our Lady of Perpetual Help Church, Sterling. He had been named to become pastor of Blessed Sacrament Church in Lawton effective June 28.

The statement said that Coakley had traveled to Southwest Oklahoma to meet with concerned parishioners, parents, staff and clergy.

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AUSTRALIA
ABC News

By Nick Dole

A notorious paedophile from the New South Wales Hunter region who has already served a 14-year sentence could be sent back to prison.

Former priest Vincent Gerard Ryan has pleaded guilty to three charges, including an act of gross indecency and attempting sexual intercourse with a boy in 1984.

He was due to face trial on seven offences but the remaining charges were dropped following his guilty plea.

Bishop of the Maitland-Newcastle diocese, Bill Wright, described the guilty plea as a “small consolation”.

“I am grateful that Ryan’s victim and others were spared the ordeal of a trial,” he said in a statement.

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AUSTRALIA
Herald Sun

April 26, 2016

Shannon Deery
Herald Sun

A FORMER Catholic priest linked to one of the state’s most notorious alleged paedophile rings has been found guilty of rape.

Former Salesian priest Michael Aulsebrook is now behind bars for the second time after a County Court jury returned their guilty verdict today.

Aulsebrook was found guilty of raping an 11-year-old boarder at Salesian College, Rupertswood, in 1988.

He had lured the boy into his office by letting him play computer games, then drugged him and attacked him.

The boy woke to found himself being raped by Aulsebrook.

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AUSTRALIA
The Age

April 27, 2016

Adam Cooper

A Catholic priest found guilty of raping a student at a notorious boarding school outside Melbourne has also admitted sexually assaulting two other children, it can now be reported.

Michael Aulsebrook, 60, was on Wednesday found guilty by a County Court jury of raping an 11-year-old boy at Salesian College Rupertswood, in Sunbury, in 1988, when the priest was the boarding co-ordinator at the school.

Aulsebrook pleaded not guilty to one charge of rape. The jury had begun their deliberations on Tuesday morning.

Aulsebrook is one of a number of priests who taught at Salesian College Rupertswood who have been convicted of sexually assaulting children at the school.

It is is understood that Aulsebrook is no longer practising as a priest. He has previously served time in jail for sexually assaulting a 12-year-old boy in 1983.

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AUSTRALIA
9 News

AAP

A Catholic priest working at a notorious Salesian College in the late 1980s enticed a Year 7 student into his office with computer games then raped him on the floor.

Michael Scott Aulsebrook, 60, of Traralgon, has been found guilty of one count of rape after he fought the charge in the Victorian County Court.

During his trial, the jury heard Aulsebrook invited the boy into his office after lights-out with an offer to play on his computer, then gave his victim a soft drink that had been spiked with a sedative.

The boy woke up on the floor as Aulsebrook was raping him and pushing his face into the floor.

“He felt a large amount of pain,” prosecutor Andrew Grant said during the trial.

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VATICAN CITY
The Commentator

Tim Hedges

When the then Cardinal Bergoglio came to the papacy three years ago, no one really knew what to expect. At his investiture I wrote in these pages: “A new pope begins with a huge well of optimism and confidence which will last a while but not forever. Francis needs to reassure the faithful.”

So, in three years, how has he done?

The concerns three years ago were about child abuse in the clergy and corruption in the Vatican. As to the first, Francis has shown himself willing to listen to the victims and ready both to apologise and to punish the guilty.

Work began on reforming the Curia, the Vatican’s government, almost on the new pope’s first day. He appointed a Council of Cardinal Advisers to restructure the government, many of them outsiders. Francis has made dramatic changes to the IOR, the Vatican Bank, which had too often received money from criminal sources. IOR is now subject to international banking and money laundering norms.

So far, so good. But Francis is such an odd incumbent of his office, people started wondering about him. He, in turn, seems to have encouraged their curiosity.

Odd? Yes: he is the first Jesuit pope, after his order had been persecuted by many of his predecessors. He is the first from the southern hemisphere, indeed the first non-European since an obscure Syrian in the 8th century.

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CALIFORNIA
SFGate

By Kimberly Veklerov Updated Tuesday, April 26, 2016

An East Bay minister has been charged with 23 counts of sexually abusing a teenage parishioner over a three-year period.

The Contra Costa County district attorney’s office charged Fernando Maldonado, a 32-year-old Concord resident, on Monday with 12 counts of lewd acts with a minor, 10 counts of unlawful sexual intercourse with a minor and one count of sodomy of a minor.

The alleged abuse occurred from September 2012 to mid-2015 and involved one victim at the two churches in which Maldonado presided as a minister, said Sgt. Dave Mathers, a detective in the Martinez Police Department. The churches were Morello Avenue Baptist Church in Martinez and the Grace Bible Church of Pleasant Hill, where church leaders and congregants, including the alleged victim, moved after the church in Martinez closed, Mathers said.

Authorities have been conducting interviews to determine whether there were additional victims, said Paul Graves, deputy district attorney of Contra Costa County and the prosecutor for the case.

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HAWAII
Hawaii News Now

HONOLULU (HawaiiNewsNow) –
Nearly 150 victims of child sex abuse have filed lawsuits against Hawaii’s Catholic Church and other local institutions in the past four years.

This includes more than two dozen lawsuits that were filed within the last two weeks to beat Sunday’s deadline to sue.

Many of these cases date back to the 1950s, but state lawmakers passed legislation twice to extend the statute of limitations for child sexual abuse claims.

Randall Rosenburg will represent the vicitms in court.

“They’ve been damaged and dealing with the damage in the shadows for decades,” Rosenburg said. “They were immensely grateful for the opportunity to come forward and in many cases we were able to resolve their cases and get them some relief and some closure.”

Hawaii news Now has learned that the Hawaii Archdiocese and other religious organizations have agreed to pay about $20 million to victims.

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CALIFORNIA
Daily Democrat

By Katrina Cameron, kcameron@bayareanewsgroup.com
POSTED: 04/26/16

MARTINEZ — An East Bay minister was charged with 23 counts of sexually abusing a teenage girl over a three-year period, police said.

The Contra Costa County District Attorney’s Office charged Fernando Maldonado, 35, of Concord, on Monday, said Martinez police detective Sgt. Dave Mathers. He has been charged with lewd acts with a minor, unlawful sexual intercourse with a minor and sodomy of a minor.

The alleged victim is now 17, police said Saturday. They have not released the girl’s city of residence.

The investigation began when the victim reported the alleged abuse April 18 to Martinez police, the agency leading the investigation. The abuse began when Maldonado was a minister and the victim was a parishioner at Morello Avenue Baptist Church in Martinez, police said.

Maldonado is a former resident of Martinez. Morello Avenue Baptist Church has since been shut down, Mathers said. Maldonado left that church to become a minister at Grace Bible Church in Pleasant Hill in 2014, where the victim began attending the church and the abuse continued, police said.

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NEW YORK
Albany Democrat-Herald

Neil Zawicki
Albany Democrat-Herald

An unnamed plaintiff has sued the Albany First Assembly church for alleged sexual abuse suffered between 1984 and 1987. The National Council of the church as well as the Oregon Ministerial District Network are also named as defendants.

Attorney Gilion Dumas said the lawsuit stems from alleged events involving Ralph Wade Gantt and Todd Clark, two men who had worked as leaders with an all-boys’ church group called the Royal Rangers, which is similar to the Boy Scouts.

Gantt and Clark were both convicted of sexual abuse in 1988 in an unrelated case that did not involve the church, and both men served time for their convictions. The suit does not name the men as defendants, but rather argues that the church leadership is culpable under Agency Law, which allows victims of such crimes to sue an organization because it controls the alleged offenders.

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NEW YORK
Buffalo News

By Jay Rey | News Staff Reporter
on April 26, 2016

The little boy who claimed to be sexually molested by a student nearly twice his age while on a Buffalo school bus with no bus aide late last year was telling the truth all along, new video evidence shows.

While his claims had been dismissed based on initial reviews of footage from the bus camera, investigators have recovered additional video from the bus that captured the 6-year-old being sexually abused by the older student during the ride from their Catholic school on the West Side, the boy’s mother told The Buffalo News.

Three separate sources familiar with the investigation corroborated this new development in the case.

In fact, video showed the sexual abuse took place on the bus on more than one occasion, the mother said.

“He was sexually assaulted on that bus not one time, but five times,” the mother said.

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AUSTRALIA
Herald Sun

April 27, 2016

Shannon Deery
Herald Sun

A SHADOW has been cast over Cardinal George Pell’s evidence to the child abuse royal commission with a former senior Catholic official stopping just short of calling him a liar.

A former director of Victoria’s Catholic Education Office (CEO) today told the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse parts of Cardinal Pell’s evidence were “quite wrong”.

In his testimony to the commission in March, Cardinal Pell said he was the victim of a widespread deception, lasting decades, that kept him in the dark about child abuse.

He said senior church officials, including a cousin, kept details about allegations of abuse from him.

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AUSTRALIA
Sky News

The former deputy director of the Catholic Education Office says he was shocked and angry when he heard Cardinal George Pell say he was deceived by the CEO during his time in Melbourne.

Education consultant Peter Annett was deputy director of the Archdiocese of Melbourne’s education office when Dr Pell was auxiliary bishop with responsibility for education.

On Wednesday he told the child abuse royal commission at one stage in the late 80s a number one priority for the office was that notorious paedophile priest Peter Searson be removed from the parish of Doveton.

Mr Annett is one of four former education officers responding to evidence given by Cardinal Pell from Rome in March that the CEO withheld information about Searson.

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AUSTRALIA
The Australian

APRIL 27, 2016

Dan Box
Crime reporter
Sydney

Three former Catholic Church officials have directly challenged evidence from Cardinal George Pell, who claimed to have been “deceived” and made the victim of a “cover-up” over the activities of a paedophile priest.

The former Melbourne Catholic Education Office officials told the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse today they were in “shock, “disappointed” and “angry” at the Cardinal’s claims, which were “quite wrong”.

Giving evidence to the commission last month, Cardinal Pell, now a senior Vatican official, accused the Education Office of keeping from him reports of violent and sexual misconduct by the late Peter Searson.

Father Searson, who sexually abused children, threatened parishioners with a gun and allegedly stabbed a bird to death with a screwdriver, was able to continue working as a priest for years despite repeated complaints about him, the inquiry heard.

Cardinal Pell told the commission he had been “deceived” about Searson’s activities during late 1980s and early 1990s, when he was a bishop in Melbourne with responsibility for the Doveton parish where the priest worked.

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AUSTRALIA
SBS

Source: AAP
27 APR 2016

Three former Catholic education officers have denied Cardinal George Pell’s claims their office deceived him about the activities of a violent and sexually abusive priest.

Former Catholic Education Office director Monsignor Thomas Doyle and his deputy Peter Annett told the sex abuse royal commission of their shock, disappointment and anger on hearing Dr Pell allege the office withheld information about pedophile priest Peter Searson in the 1980s.

Cardinal Pell, an auxiliary bishop in Melbourne in the ’80s, told the royal commission in March education officials were fearful of telling him the full story about Searson because they knew he would be “decisive” and not accept the status quo.

In giving his evidence from Rome where he is now the Vatican’s finance chief, Dr Pell also said he thought the education office at the time was protecting Archbishop Frank Little.

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AUSTRALIA
Sydney Morning Herald

April 27, 2016

Rachel Browne
Social Affairs Reporter

Senior Catholic education officials have spoken of their shock and anger at Cardinal George Pell’s evidence to a royal commission that staff had covered up complaints about a paedophile priest.

Cardinal Pell told the royal commission last month that staff from the Catholic Education Office deceived him by failing to give a full account of allegations about Father Peter Searson.

The Royal Commission into Institutional Responses into Child Sexual Abuse has heard evidence that Father Searson, who died in 2009, killed a bird in front of children, showed them a dead body in a coffin, held a gun to the heads of parishioners, threatened to stab a child and repeatedly molested youngsters during confession.

Senior staff from the Catholic Education Office in Victoria strongly rejected Cardinal Pell’s evidence that he was not made fully aware of Father Searson’s behaviour while parish priest of Doveton in Melbourne in the 1980s.

Former deputy director of the Catholic Education Office Peter Annett told the royal commission parishioners and staff at Doveton’s Holy Family school would have been “cheering from the rooftops” if Cardinal Pell, then an auxilliary bishop in the Melbourne Archdiocese, had worked to convince then-archbishop Frank Little to remove Father Searson.

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AUSTRALIA
ABC News

By James Hancock

A former director of Catholic Education Melbourne has firmly denied claims by Cardinal George Pell that management deceived him about the actions of accused paedophile priest Peter Searson.

Monsignor Thomas Doyle was one of four former officers of the Catholic education office to give evidence to the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse today.

Earlier this year while speaking from Rome, Cardinal Pell accused management of the Melbourne Archdiocese of keeping him in the dark about allegations against Searson.

The inquiry heard the Doveton parish priest was accused of sexually abusing children from the 1970s to the 1990s.

Searson died in 2009 without conviction for child sexual abuse.

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